Seeing reality as it is: the Buddhist way

(Buddhism Podcast) Seeing reality as it is: The Buddhist way of seeing life

The Buddhist Way: As it is

(Bhikkhu Bodhi) Intro to Buddhism Series, Lecture 01. The Buddha

Dalai Lama: Things are not as they appear

What?! Only I, John Oliver of Last Week Tonight, have understood you, Dalai Lama?

Why things are not as they appear, explained by the 14th Dalai Lama

• What is the true nature of existence or reality?

(Bhikkhu Bodhi) American Theravada scholar-monk gives Buddhist perspective of reality

(The Royal Institution) The neuroscience of consciousness with Anil Seth

Glitch in Matrix: Upside down plane crash

Clearly the "real" world is not real, not flawless and flowing but glitching and sharing features with tapes, loops, reels, video, audio, warped and resetting like a computer program, a simulation of a real thing or dimension. When it's caught on film for all to see, able to be reviewed, then who can doubt it? Sure, there's chance, coincidence, eerie confluence, but that does not explain all of these glitches.

HOW did Delta plane crashing in Toronto flip UPSIDE DOWN?

• CRJ 900 carrying 80 passengers crashed at Toronto's Lester B Pearson Airport. About 17 were injured, but there were no fatalities. The commercial plane somehow ended up on its back, missing a wing, which leads us to ask three things: Why? How? And where's Pete Buttigieg? Oh, wait, new Pres. Trump made someone else secretary of transportation, after which these transport anomalies started.

21 History Mandela Effects

Fly cheap to Toronto. Buy discount tix now.

(All Time) TIMESTAMPS: ▼ Intro - 0:00 Betsy Ross Mandela Effect - 0:49 Al Capone Mandela Effect - 2:21 WW2 Balloons Mandela Effect - 3:58 Egypt Mandela Effect - 5:47 JFK Mandela Effect - 8:07 Bologna Train Station Clock Mandela Effect - 10:26 Hurricane Erin Mandela Effect - 12:55 WW2 Submarine Mandela Effect - 15:21 Hindenburg Mandela Effect - 17:45 Video Phone Mandela Effect - 21:46 Harry Houdini Mandela Effect - 23:52 Olympic Torch Mandela Effect - 25:46 Lindbergh Baby Mandela Effect - 26:38 Jackie Robinson Mandela Effect - 28:43 Nikola Tesla Mandela Effect - 30:50 Tank Mandela Effect - 32:42 Dazzle Ships Mandela Effect - 34:10 D-Day Balloons Mandela Effect - 38:42 Ben Franklin Kite and Key Mandela Effect - 40:22 The Black Tom Explosion Mandela Effect - 41:52 The Statue of Liberty Mandela Effect - 2:20

Glitches in the Matrix (complete edition)

(All Time) Check out all of All Time's glitch videos: Glitches in the Matrix ➤ Glitches in the Matrix 2 ➤ Glitches in the Matrix 3 ➤ Glitches in the Matrix 4 ➤ Glitches in the Matrix (Complete Edition) ➤ Real Glitch in the Matrix Stories

Exclusive videos ➤ bit.ly/3EjUG2h ➤ All Time Scary ➤ bit.ly/2sr328S ➤ All Time 2 ➤ bit.ly/2Tmvp39 ➤ All Time Clips ➤ bit.ly/3pqmxHU

• All Time, YouTube.com, Nov. 28, 2023; Pat Macpherson, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Glitches in the Matrix (video)

Most banned female comic: L Jonie

• Guest Leonarda Jonie, Host Jimmy Dore (jimmydore.com); Pfc. Sandoval, Seth Auberon, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

72-y.o. Golden Bachelor: Meet his dates

ABC; Wall Street Journal (WSJ) ARTS & CULTURE TV; ABC, Family Guy; The View; Sky News Australia; Seth Auberon, Ashley Wells, Sheldon S., CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

I would do date Gerry. wait is it Gary  or Jeri? Oh, I'd date him hard, better then these...

Hi, I'm Grandpa Gerry. But you can call me Fabrizzio, the Golden Fox and geriatric lover.

America’s new most eligible bachelor, 72-year-old grandpa Gerry Turner, is a retired restaurateur who fills his days with pickleball. He’s about to date 22 women, one as young as 61, on national television (WSJ).

• Hollywood's The Golden Bachelor premieres tonight

ABC has high hopes for senior dating (Variety)

(WQ) It's a spectacle that will have bedrooms across the nation's old folks' homes retirement villas roiling with lust and provocative thoughts ("girl porn" romantic ideas sure to make married men groan, regretting they gave up the remote control because the game is on, and the power tools are getting cold in the garage and shed, and the lawn needs mowing, and there's a poker game over at Big Al's, and they're showing ESPN clips at the bar, and and...uh, help, there's got to be more to life than this garbage programming!)

Preview review

OMG, my work is never done.

The critics have seen it, and here's the problem: On the regular youthful version of the show with 20-somethings, if imbalanced young ladies come on and entertain us with their drama and humiliating loss of love after being drummed out, it's easy to imagine them meeting someone new the very next week. There's no reason for them to mope.

But here, in this golden years version, with all the silver foxes coming after the geriatric bachelor, if they're heartbroken, it's really easy to imagine that this was their last chance at true love or any love. They're hitting the wall, and now they're about to hit the ceiling as they get beat out by brighter, craftier, more cunning opponents. Will 60-year-old Nancy, Maria, or Joan win out because of their age...or will a crone rule the roost -- and the pickleball court -- and take the man chicken in hand as she does a man chicken walk in front of the other hens?

Will the Bidens be watching, Jill?

Gender Bending Agenda revealed (video)

Eric Dubay (bitchute.com, May 25, 2019); Eds., Wisdom Quarterly

Buddhism, Sexuality, Gender

(EricDubay) In the world today there is an agenda well underway that is purposely subverting and transforming the family unit, creating sexual confusion, and normalizing gender dysphoria while promoting and celebrating mental illness.

This Gender Bending Agenda has existed covertly for decades and in fact centuries but recently, due to its successes, is now becoming more overt, obvious, and ostentatious to the point that celebrities like Charlize Theron are openly, physically, and pharmaceutically transgendering their children as young as 7 years old.

Disorders of sexual development are "intersex"

All over North America drag queens are setting up library story hours to passively push transgenderism on children, and through new school "cyber-bullying" initiatives LGBTQ's with their army of outrage and pronouns are becoming part of elementary curriculums.

• AtlanteanConspiracy.com
• EricDubay.com
• IFERS.123.st
• Category: Education
• Sensitivity: Normal (content that is suitable for ages 16+)
• sexchangeregret.com

Escape to Reality: Nirvana (video)

This video will make you question your existence: Prepare to be amazed!

(Fexl) July 8, 2023. So maybe everything we perceive and experience, from the vivid colors that saturate our vision to the tangible sensations that course through our fingertips, is nothing more than an elaborate illusion. Or could it be that the world around us is an intricate fabrication, meticulously designed to deceive us?

NOTE: Sri Shankara, the systematizer and founder of "Hinduism" as a British-style "religion" (combining many disparate spiritual traditions long existing in India, including Raja Yoga and Brahmanism, claiming to be rooted in the ancient pre-Indian Vedas of the Indus Valley Civilization), was not the originator of the analogy of the elephant and blind men. The historical Buddha gave this analogy. If Sri Shankara retold the tale, he was using the Buddha's wisdom. But Sri Shankara was against the Buddha and Buddhism, regarding it as a foreign teaching (dharma) that came to India. In his effort to systematize an indigenously Indian religion or Eternal Dharma, he subordinated Buddhism to play a minor role as a kind of incarnation of Vishnu tradition (as happened to Krishna and Christ).

Escape to Reality: "Life or Death?"

Wheel 45/46. Escape to Reality: Buddhist Essays (BPS.lk) edited by Wisdom Quarterly

"By one's own deeds the fool is consumed, as by a fire." —The Dhammapada

In his address delivered at Oslo when he was awarded the Noble Peace Prize, the great humanitarian Dr. Albert Schweitzer spoke for all humanity when he said:

“Let us face the facts. Man has become a superman. Not only has he innate physical forces at his command but, thanks to science and to technical advancement, he controls the latent forces of nature. But this superman suffers from a fatal imperfection. He has not raised himself to that superhuman level of reason which should correspond to the possession of superhuman strength.”

This is the Great Showdown. The latent forces of nature that humans now control will destroy us as readily as they will serve us. They are mindless and efficient, like a razor: It is for humans to decide whether to shave — or cut our throats. The razor does not care. It waits, supremely indifferent.

Can we raise ourselves to that superhuman level of reason necessary for our survival on this planet? Are we mature enough to realize that we cannot destroy each other any longer without destroying ourselves?

This sensual world is a world of delight -- a realm within the Sensual Sphere (Kama Loka). But the strands of pleasure are better for the sensual devas above us and even better in the Fine Material Sphere above this region. This sphere is full of desire, pursuit, and pleasure but also much disappointment and suffering. Higher worlds have more pleasure with less struggle (though, ultimately, things still fail to fulfill and end craving).

Yet, how many of us are able to give up these lesser pleasures for greater ones? Could we stop clinging to this sensual existence for the tremendously more blissful nirvana? It's not likely. (Why? It's because we do not see the danger inherent in our predicament).

We are like monkeys, grasping some lump of salt inside through a small opening. Thus holding onto it, our hand has become a greedy fist that cannot pull out of the coconut. The coconut is fastened to a tree, and the hunter (Mara) is coming to collect us. And still we can't let go. What the?

Are We Grown Up?

The Buddha's advice? "If, by renouncing some lesser happiness, one may gain a greater one, let the wise person renounce the smaller out of consideration for the larger" (The Dhammapada).

The capacity to renounce a small, immediate happiness in order to secure some greater, more distant happiness is a mark of maturity.

Few children have it, and those who do are really more mature than many adults. It means clear vision, sound judgment, and self-control, all of which are sings of a truly adult mind.

Many people go through life without ever growing up. We find it impossible to resist the temptation of immediate pleasures.

Under the wise guidance and control of some mentally more mature person, we may forego such pleasures and pursue a line of action that yields greater happiness in the long run. But it is not of our own independent choice.

Given the necessary opportunity and freedom to decide for ourselves, we will fritter away our time and energy in the pursuit of the moment’s pleasures, letting the future look after itself.

For such people, a theistic religion is a great help. It serves as a steadying and guiding influence. Most people are like children who need a wise parent, a parent who rewards virtue and punishes vice, who encourages honest endeavor and discourages laziness.

But, as Ingersoll once said, in nature there are no rewards or punishments. There are only consequences.

A person who plants a fruit tree, tends it carefully, and waits patiently, is not “rewarded” when at last it bears fruit. One may die before that happens, or the fruit may be indigestible because of some change in one's personal chemistry. But the fruit appears all the same, not in order to reward but because that is the way of nature.

It is the same when a person trains a puppy badly and it grows up into a surly dog. The dog may or may not bite one, and if it does happen, it will not be as a “punishment.” It will merely be a consequence of bad training.

To the Buddhist, all phenomena are consequences, including all personal phenomena. However pleasant or painful they may be, one does not regard them as the rewards or punishments dispensed by some Supreme Being.

One accepts them as the results of one's own karma (past deeds), one's own past physical, verbal, and mental actions.

One stands on one's own feet and molds one's own destiny [though often quite unaware of one's own power to create one's fate], in this and in countless future lives.

It is a religion for adults. For this very reason, it does not appeal to those who lack mental maturity. It is too free, too unsheltered. But to the mature, it is the only reasonable and acceptable way of life.

Accepting this doctrine (Dharma) of personal responsibility, the Buddhist faces life fairly and squarely. One can pursue the slight happiness offered by this world (and sphere) of the senses, or if one has clear vision, sound judgment, and self-control, one can forego such happiness and seek something infinitely higher.

What is this “something”? It is mental progress, clearer and ever clearer vision, sounder and ever sounder judgment, greater and ever greater mastery over self, until at last, as an enlightened being (arhat), one reaches the very zenith of mental evolution and attains nirvana.

This is the Way taught by all buddhas. It is not an easy road or a short one. Most of us have far to go. But we must all go on that road sometime, and the sooner we start, the sooner we will reach the ultimate goal.

Let us not wait for many more lifetimes before we start. Let us not fool ourselves that if we wait patiently, trusting in some Supreme Being, our reward will be eternal bliss.

Let us not hang about, like grubby children, expecting a parent or governess to wash us, undress us, and tuck us safely into bed. If we do, we shall wait indefinitely. More

I'm the world's hottest (social media/reality TV)

Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Ashley Wells, Seth Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

I'm so hot. But how will the world know unless I can catch the ineffable it in a selfie? (DP/IG)

I'm the hottest animal in the world! Who could dispute that? (boredpanda.com)

It's my first selfie! Who owns it, me or the guy?

The Real Truman Show is an unreal world -- a world the movie warned us about -- one we all now live in.

Don't disturb Disha. She's “finally” got the time to burn off all those calories she gained eating delicious desserts during Diwali [and sugar-laden Halloween candy]. Like many of us, Ms. Patani also relished mouth-watering sweets during the Festival of Lights.

 

Does my butt look big in this tooth floss thong?

But the fitness enthusiast is wasting no time quickly jumping back into her workout routine to burn fat and calories, a glimpse of which she shared on Thursday.

On her Instagram Stories, DP posted a new video and photo. She's the hottest person in the world.

Actor Disha Patani

The first one starts with the actress walking towards a mirror, showing off her toned midriff. “Finally burning my Diwali sweets,” she captioned it. The next features Disha taking a selfie at the mirror (shown above). Her toned physique will give many major fitness goals. The video show her boxing martial arts workout. More:

• Disha Patani "burning sweets" (ndtv.com)
• Hot 8 Yoga – CA’s Hottest Yoga Workout
• Shamanic Yoga, Downey, California. Yelp
• Science of Success for High Perf Women
• Inside Shanaya's b-day party with Navya
• VIDEO: Navya Naveli Nanda podcast
• FilmWeek: KPCC, NPR News for SoCal
• All That Breathes (India, 2022) IMDb
• Monkey selfie copyright dispute (Wiki)

107 Animals Taking Selfies That Will Make You Smile | Bored Panda

Look at me, look at me, everybody! I'm Jimmy Chuck, and I don't give a... Like me on SnapGram!

World's Worst Public Toilet (Meditation)

Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Yum, potpourri! My loo is beautiful and healthy with a Buddha to remind me to be mindful.

What does it mean to be "mindful" (sati)? It is being aware and accepting what is.

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"Let that sh*t go" (The Buddha)

A British writer traveled the planet to find the world’s worst public toilet. He says it’s in the country of [formerly Buddhist] Tajikistan, once a part of the Czar's Empire, The Stans, the old USSR or Soviet Union.

It looks like an outhouse that’s about to fall down. It’s built on a pile of rocks with filthy rats and venomous snakes all around.

There are two walls are just a sheet for a third wall, which people sometimes use as toilet paper with which to wipe (929Rock).

By the way, most of the world uses and has always used water for wiping, even before the fancy French bidet craze caught on.

Classy French female riding the "pony" or toilet bidet cleaning herself.

I'm an American hard ass from the no-nonsense Midwest. We take our outhouses seriously.

Women will have to hold it in.

If we had £150,000 to spend, the last thing we would want to do is tour Planet Earth looking for the very worst public toilet. Butt to each his own.

That being said, that's exactly what travel writer and blogger Graham Askey (pronounced \ass-key\ or Phileas Bog) -- also known as the "King of Porcelain" -- did when he trekked terra firma to find the world's worst lavatory.

He believes he has found it -- in faraway Tajikistan of all places. The toilet in question has been dubbed the "perfect hell hole" -- a poorly constructed tent where the walls double as a loo roll (reusable cloth toilet paper rag). Not gonna sugarcoat it, but that sounds disgusting. More

• There are worse places to meditate than toilets: For example, charnel grounds
• Lust? Contemplate foul aspects of the body mindfully
• Meditate (be mindful and clearly comprehend) on the foul

The world's worst toilet

Brit blogger says he's found the world's worst toilet where walls are used as TP (Daily Mail)

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Toilet investigator Graham Askey

According to Mr. G. Askey, the toilet in the Ayni region of Tajikistan, on the western edge of the Pamirs and not far from the Afghanistan border, is so vile that the locals refuse to use it unless "absolutely desperate."  Askey, a self-confessed "squatter spotter" [and loo investigator], visited hundreds of public toilets in six of the world's seven continents before crowning the Tajikistan, Central Asia, outhouse the worst of them all. More

Doesn't seem so bad except for the poop, rats, and snakes

We sell butt-washing bidets (myomigo.com)

Beware: Thoughts are not Truths (video)

Science: There's NO objective reality

CoasttoCoastAM.com, 3/17/19; TechnologyReview.com, 3/12/19; Editors, Wisdom Quarterly

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A quantum experiment suggests there’s no such thing as objective reality

TechnologyReview.com, 3/12/19

Physicists have long suspected that quantum mechanics allows two observers to experience different, conflicting realities. Now they’ve performed the first experiment that proves it. 

Back in 1961 the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Eugene Wigner outlined a thought experiment that demonstrated one of the lesser-known paradoxes of quantum mechanics.

The experiment shows how the strange nature of the universe allows two observers -- say, Wigner and Wigner’s friend -- to experience different realities.

1. India says it has just shot down a satellite in space
2. The pioneers of deep learning have won the Turing Award
3. Nearly all Bitcoin trades are fake, apparently
4. Watch two astronauts take a spacewalk to give the ISS a power upgrade
5. Russia wants to cut itself off from the global internet

Since then physicists have used the “Wigner’s Friend” thought experiment to explore the nature of measurement and to argue over whether objective facts can exist. That’s important because scientists carry out experiments to establish objective facts.

But if they experience different realities, the argument goes, how can they agree on what these facts might be?

 

That’s provided some entertaining fodder for after-dinner conversation, but Wigner’s thought experiment has never been more than that—just a thought experiment.

Last year, however, physicists noticed that recent advances in quantum technologies have made it possible to reproduce the Wigner’s Friend test in a real experiment. In other words, it ought to be possible to create different realities and compare them in the lab to find out whether they can be reconciled.

 

And today, Massimiliano Proietti at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and a few colleagues say they have performed this experiment for the first time: They have created different realities and compared them.

Their conclusion is that Wigner was correct: These realities can be made irreconcilable so that it is impossible to agree on objective facts about an experiment. More

Knapp's News

Broadcaster George Knapp loves ETs (caricature by Dennis Rano, 2011)

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These items have recently caught Coast to Coast occasional host George Knapp's attention, including articles on who owns Mars, strange cryptids, and UFO "metamaterials."

• WHAT? A quantum experiment suggests there’s no such thing as objective reality
• Physicists and Philosophers debate the Boundaries of Science
Mysterious box found in dumpster
• Are the Mars Rovers really on Mars?
• What will become of America's wild horses?
• Mysterious fireball over Las Vegas
• The strange adventures of a Nazi Holy Grail hunter
• Climate Change Survival Plan
• 24 extremely local Cryptids you’ve never heard of
• The future's coming: Why we need to prepare for Sci-Fi tomorrows today
• Who owns Mars?
• Preparing to unleash Crispr on an unprepared world
• Government briefed on metamaterials; UFO program “alive and well” – Elizondo
• Gigantic galaxy clusters sing a spooky song into the cosmos
• How the increasing belief in extraterrestrials inspires our real world
• Robbie Williams admits he’s afraid of being "taken over by hitchhiking aliens
  after visit to UFO-plagued ranch
• The epic hunt for a lost World War II aircraft carrier
• Does a new genetic analysis finally reveal the identity of Jack the Ripper?

The Republican fantasy (cartoon)

This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow

When right wing Republican conservatives decided to create their own reality in America

"Buddha Nature"?

Laura Murphy, Jordan Kramer, Seven Dharmachari (Against the Stream)

Buddha in Sukhothai, Thailand, Sri Chum Temple (Roba66/Flickr.com)

Ever try to define your "true" nature? Can it differ in different contexts? If success is more lasting when it follows our natures, why do so many desert their talents?

I am? I am that I am? I'm basically good, naturally bad? These are the questions I ask.

Pema Chodron (Tibetan nun) on "Basic Goodness"

Then there is the issue of identity, I am... what? What is there identification with? Descartes famously misspoke, "I think therefore I am." Surely, based on the evidence, all that could really be said as a foundational truth was "There's thinking so there's thinking."

Something's thinking, but it does not follow that it is some permanent, perfect, unchanging self. "Self" changes. It changes at every moment. It can identify with anything. What is it? The Buddha defined it as "materiality and mentality" or "form (body), feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness."

These are the Five Aggregates of Clinging. They cling to one another, and illusion clings to them. They are empty and impersonal in an ultimate sense.

In a conventional sense, here "I am" questioning what is "I," who is "self," what have I been, what will I be? The questions of fools who go on revolving in rebirth and suffering. Renewed becoming depends on this confusion. Rather than being mindful and fearlessly looking at the truth AND THEREBY BEING LIBERATED, we assume the answer and ponder in a hopeless circle.

To be fully oneself, to embody one's potential, to utilize the talents brought over from countless past lives (or given as "gifts" at birth for no reason), to cultivate skills, to move beyond personal suffering and self-esteem issues... are a few angles to investigate.

To fathom the enigma of my "true" nature -- as Christian evil and fallen, or as essentially good with the potential to be a buddha -- is something any ancient Greek could agree on: KNOW THYSELF.

Watchers of Gilligan's Island already know, "To thine own self be true." That is important. But is that enough. What is the self "I am" being true to?

The historical Buddha warned: Thinking won't get you there. If it did, he would have advocated philosophy and debating, voting for truthiness and creating consensus realities. There is a Truth beyond all that. And it is accessible. And the Buddha pointed the way. The pointer is not the way anymore than the reflection of the Moon is the Moon.

We talk about Truth. But Buddhism is a practice, not a dogma, not something to believe. "Come and see. Investigate," the Buddha bid others. You need not take anyone's word for it. "Relying on no one, depending on no other's truth, you will see." The Truth shall set us free.

Of course in our culture, this was hijacked. That famous Bible character became that Truth, that way, that beacon of light. Was that copied from the Buddha's title as the "Light of Asia"? The Buddha did not seek glory. The Truth cannot be hidden forever, whoever found it, rediscovered it, or pointed to it.

If only Western mystics had a way, a step by step way.

All thinking, none knowing
All speaking, none showing
All searching, none finding
Traveling roads that go on winding.
- Seven (unforgettable words scrawled on my philosophy class desk)

JORDAN: The Buddha never said the words, "Buddha Nature." Where did he say we are naturally or basically good? Before one again starts a sentence "I am...," it might be better to rephrase it: "For right now, it is this way..."

The mind is confused. The mind confuses. The mind, to keep itself a going concern, delights in illusion. It deceives itself. It drags us to suffering. And all the while that seems the thing it dreads. But there it is, standing in the way of Truth and freedom.

SEVEN: You know that saying, "If someone's in your way, and you kick him/her as hard as you can, your butt is going to hurt"? I identify with mind, which is changing at every moment, and stand in my own way. Maybe if I just was rather than imagining "I am this, I am that, I was this, I will be that," maybe if I followed the Buddha's advice and pondered four useful things, I could be free of all suffering.

LAURA: The solutions I come to are based on a thinking mind, which confuses me time and time again. Probably the best way to know is to go inward and experience the luminosity from within -- shining without, and actually see it and feel it, rather than thinking about it. I must pay close attention to this luminous expression, how it feels in my body, in all of my interactions with others, my actions and habits in day to day life. I think that's when -- well, there I go again!

I start to get a deeper understanding beyond mental discernment. It takes repetition -- catching the mind/myself/the Thinker is being mindful -- before this inner knowing starts to make sense, before it can be trusted, before I know that my very being is rooted in life and everyone and everything just as a tree is far larger when the roots are revealed.

It is so easy to become distracted, to forget, to lose direction, to fall off the wagon or get carried away. But I am learning to true my wheel, which can be as simple as coming back to my breath. That is the first and maybe only step in reevaluating my true nature.

I may be uprooted at times, which happens even to the healthiest of trees, so one aspect of my nature is impermanence. In the breath my true nature is revealed, and in feeling the unsatisfactory nature, in mind the impersonal nature... and in nirvana the boundless liberation free of all impermanence, suffering, and delusion.