Anicca
I contest that whatever your reason for arriving in the cell, there is only one door; and for that door there is only one key.
"Here, too, I saw a nation of lost souls,
Far more than were above: they strained their chests
Against enormous weights, and with mad howls
Rolled them at one another. Then in hast
They rolled them back, one party shouting out:
'Why do you hoard?' and the other: 'Why do you waste?'"Dante's Interno, Circle IV; reserved for hoarders and wasters
For those that aren't aware; I live in the developed western world. I doubt any of my readers will be surprised to hear that we have, use and waste a lot of stuff. Consumption in the west is at an all time high. We churn through shoes, plastic straws, TVs, manicure sets, fairy lights, bed spreads, reusable water bottles (ironic, I know), phone chargers and non-stick pans. Millennials like myself may find this unbelievable, I myself have simply read about it in old dusty books, but there was a time where if something broke, get this, we got it fixed. Warranties meant you'd send something to the manufacturer and they'd send back your device with only the broken parts replaced. Of course, now a warranty means that it's cheaper for them to conjure a new device from scratch than it is to replace one or two broken component parts. What happens to the old device? Well they seldom ask for it back… Bin.
The environmental costs of all this stuff is obvious and I implore you, my sweet readers, to peruse the relevant literature at your (existential) leisure. Today, however, I wish to speak about the psychology and spirituality of our relationship to stuff. Why are we attracted to new things, when our old things work just fine? What makes a materialist become a materialist? More importantly, what can turn a materialist into a happy minimalist, or even, god forbid, a happy materialist? What can we do to combat the marketers and advertisers, the designers and purveyors of our shiny new stuff? How does a person reclaim their relationship with the sum of their items, planting a flag of intentionality and purpose atop their Ikea pyramids? In a single and possibly alien word; anicca. First though…
“I am free and that is why I am lost.”
Franz Kafka
Jerry Seinfeld once explained the virtue of his consumerism despite its obvious and ultimate futility. When he sees an item advertised in the hands of a rugged and adventurous man, he feels desire, which feels good. When he goes in and searches for the item, stalking the isles of the department store, he feels good. When he finds the item and inspects its list of features and glossy patina, he feels good. When he buys it, takes it home, unboxes it, sets it up, plays with it without reading the instruction manual; he feels good. And that is all he asks for. Upon hearing this, my inner conflict between the youthful Jack Kerouac inspired distaste for all things material and my somewhat secret attraction to (or obsession with) expensive Japanese knives, were melded together into a calming synthesis. I thought, finally, it is okay to enjoy the purchasing, the chase, the experience of consumption, even though I know that in the end it is relationships, work, blah blah blah that matters most. I felt relief. Not so fast. As my roommate will testify, my attachment to my coffee machine and Japanese knifes is not cheerful and serene but instead vicious and electric. There must be pieces missing here. My spartan-yuppie dichotomy still unhealthily tips toward; stuff.
Attraction to the new and possessable can be attributed to a number of causes. In an evolutionary sense, all ye who snooze, lose. New stuff meant being on the edge of abundance, rather than complacence. In addition, it is Aesop's grasshopper and ant who remind us of the time when winter meant an actual lack of food that we needed to frugally prepare for. Hoarding and grasping is safety and security in a harsh, cold world. Then there's keeping up with the Jones'. The phenomena of copying one's neighbour's purchases, a boat, a haircut, a pool, is well documented and quite the cliche (see American Beauty or the American Psycho business card scene). A digital form of consumer conformity manifests itself in influencer marketing. In my city, a coastal walk on a Saturday morning will reveal hordes of young people dressed in near-identical activewear and sneakers, even with matching Daschund's trotting alongside. These two myths; that we can survive winter if only we have enough trendy winter coats and that we can be accepted by our tribe only if we sport the correct combination of brands, are, I believe, trumped by another myth; the myth of the infinite chinos.
I have pants. Every pair of my pants are stained. My stained pants are ready to be sent away and never seen again. Their days are numbered. Despite this, they are still around, confined to gardening and the gym and hanging out with old friends who are aware that I am, at heart, a slob. The impermanence of shirts with bolognese stains is clear. Their death-row status is visible at a glance. My pants are doomed. New chinos are forever. Not-yet-stained and pristine, the new chinos are ready for any event. They are versatile, confident and attractive, much like an ideal but unreal best friend. The myth of the infinite chinos is potent and rich despite being void upon rational inspection. But it persists nonetheless. Perhaps I'm being simple. Perhaps there are hundreds of reasons why we seek new stuff and feel attached to old stuff. Regardless, I contest that whatever your reason for arriving in the cell, there is only one door; and for that door there is only one key.
"If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change."
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
What is it to recognise impermanence? Pull aside someone in the supermarket and ask; "do things change?" and they'll first look at you with a blinking incredulity that you could possibly ask such a stupid question, and then answer yes with a justifiably peeved attitude that reflects the 30 seconds of their time you've just wasted. We know, theoretically, that things change. We know that nothing is immune to this. Whether a butterfly, our aunt Mable or the sun, the clock is ticking and sometime, possibly soon, it will tick no more. We know this, sure. But how often does this recognition actually occur? How many times a day do you counter attachment with the understanding that the object of your awareness is halfway out the door, one foot in the abyss? Impermanence (in Pali, anicca) plays a large role in Buddhist thought and meditation practice. Mindful focussing on bodily sensations is to recognise experientially, not theoretically, that our sensations are impermanent. As a matter of experience pain and discomfort are arising and falling away. Pleasure, tingling, heat, cold are all in a process of passing away and if you watch them beneath the spotlight of awareness, you'll experience it first hand. Flexing this muscle and getting the reps in on the mat can also have a profound impact off the mat. Attachment is very different, when you conjure a recognition of anicca into your daily experience.
When it comes to Jerry Seinfeld's feel-good shopping experience, recognising impermanence makes all the difference. We're walking in store, flicking through a catalogue, scrolling our instagram feed and there it is; the initial attraction, the stirring of desire. Watching the desire arise, we can turn to it and say "oh look, desire. I wonder how long it will last". This, remarkably, is enough to turn desire from an enchanting whirlpool to a passing cloud that is present… present… present… and then passing away. The case of the infinite chinos also dissolves beside anicca. The recognition of change projects a tomato sauce stain right onto every pair of chinos on the rack. Their demotion to the back of my cupboard is obvious and inevitable. I breath in. I breath out. The myth of the infinite chinos passes into a kind of solidarity amongst that which I have and that which I don't; they're all marked, a bounty on their crotch, for relegation to the garden and the gym.
"Everything changes and nothing remains still… you cannot step into the same river twice."
Hereclitus
Incoming and outgoing, hunting and gathering, clinging and collecting. The certainty, safety and security of the ant assumes that things can remain the way they once were. I gather things, those things will be there for me later. We pretend and we hope and yet it is not guaranteed. The consistency we seek is an impossibility. The items in our wardrobes will be incinerated, the only question is; when?
Stemming the incoming flow of consumer goods is only half the story. For most of us, getting rid of stuff is just as fraught. Letting go of things means letting go of futures and pasts, dreams and memories. One day I might look cool in that shirt. We got that couch when we were students. I might need that camping gear one day. She gave me those shoes. We often locate our biography, our identity in our stuff which makes letting go of it feel like we're losing a part of ourselves; a part that we like to remind ourselves still exists. Nevertheless and hopefully without sounding too cold-hearted or too much like the manager of a rug warehouse; everything must go. If our faded shirt isn't forever, perhaps its time is now. To help this particular medicine go down, I offer a sugary concession nicked from the Minimalists; take a photo. Any item with no practical but significant sentimental value can be captured on film and stored, next to its story, in a scrapbook or private instagram page. It doesn't take up much physical or digital space and still prompts you to reminisce on your high school sweetheart or days as a carefree student. An impermanent photo album filled with pictures of stuff is certainly less of a burden than a room or wardrobe filled with actual stuff. Kickstarting the process of lightening the load is the recollection that everything is on its way out the door already. It just needs a little push. Anicca.
"One can furnish a room very luxuriously by taking out furniture rather than putting it in."
Francis Jourdain
You might be thinking that I'm sounding an awful lot like a minimalist myself. You may be picturing some young digital nomad who only owns three shirts and lives out of other people's B&B's like a lonely and enlightened modern monk. You'd be wrong. My place is filled with stuff; shelves overflowing with books (most I'll never read), mid-century chairs that are used as makeshift tables for my incoming junk, far too many plants and chests brimming with smaller and more sentimental junk. Impermanence didn't lead me to asceticism, it lead me to gratitude. Bear with me.
The quote that inspired this article is lifted from the New Philosopher; Stuff edition. In it, the editors write that "a 2014 study has suggested that the consistent relation between high levels of materialism and low levels of life satisfaction arises because of the diminished ability among materialists to experience gratitude."
We cannot have gratitude without impermanence, nor impermanence without gratitude. My more depressive 18 year old self might believe that the fragility of life, the inability to access real consistency or predictability and the knowledge that, in the worlds of Sufjan Stevens, "all things go", leads necessarily to nihilism. I beg to differ. To take things for granted is to wrongly assume their permanence. To be thankful is to recognise anicca. If you need help cherishing something, linger on how fleeting it really is, how you actually can't know for sure when you'll see it again. When looking into the eyes of a friend, recognition of impermanence dictates that I appreciate them in a deep and sincere way. This moment only happens once; I'm glad I'm paying attention.
Nagori oshii is a Japanese phrase that expresses the reluctance to say goodbye. It often manifests in watching and waving to the exiting subject until they're out of sight. The tradition honours the impermanence of everyone involved. We know there will be a last time we see someone and we want it to be special. We don't want to close the door and rush to our to do list, lost to the winds of incoming obligations. We want to cherish our loved ones. Acknowledging impermanence means we hold each moment in our minds as a birth and a death, something never before seen and never to be seen again.
Change, impermanence, finitude and flux set us free. Free from the advertisement and its crafty rousing of desire, free from the shackles of what we don't have and don't need, from what we do have and yet don't need. Free from the guilt of having too much, free from the embarrassment of not having enough. Anicca provides gratitude for the unique and singular moment that we're always in, gratitude borne by the impermanence of every experience we'll ever have.
“Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.”Robert Frost
W.
