Anicca, Kamma, and the Continuity of Change

Content

Wednesday Evening — Bodhi Tree Dharma Center
~90 minutes total

POEM

Leaves moving,
Sky above,
A wren looks my way.
I smile,
Ground beneath,
Warm in the afternoon sun.
I walk a path through the woods,
The same as last year,
All new.

— Bob Harrison, June 2026
(Spirit Rock)

WELCOME (~5 min)

Bathrooms, water, phones, dana — brief and warm, no pressure
Frame the evening: movement → sit → talk → dialogue
Tonight's territory: anicca — impermanence — and how it touches some of the most personal ground we carry: memory, shame, the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what happened to us
"You don't need any background in this. You just need to be willing to notice."

MINDFUL MOVEMENT / QIGONG (~10 min)

Usual sequence — unhurried, nothing to achieve
Invite noticing throughout: where is there ease, where is there resistance, where does the body want to move and where does it hold
Close: "Even after we stop, something is still moving. Breath. The hum of being alive. We don't have to manufacture stillness — we just have to stop adding movement to what's already here."

SIT (~30 min)

Opening guidance (2–3 min):

Stable, at-ease posture — upright without rigid
Eyes close or soften downward
A few deliberate breaths to arrive — not controlling, just landing
"Nothing in this room is actually still. The breath moves. Sensations arise and pass. Sounds appear and disappear. Even the quality of attention shifts. We're not here to stop that — we're here to notice it."

Body of the sit — release into silence after this:

Wandering mind is itself anicca — thoughts arise, thoughts pass; gently return without commentary
If something charged comes up: note it arising, stay with the breath, let it pass in its own time
The practice isn't to have a quiet mind; it's to know what the mind is doing

Closing (1–2 min):

Soften the attention, a few deeper breaths
"Whatever arose — you stayed. That's not a small thing. That's the practice."
Bell

TALK (~15–20 min)

Opening

Anicca (ah-NI-cha) — impermanence — but that word doesn't quite catch it
Not just things appearing and disappearing
Everything in continuous transformation — arising, shifting, intensifying, softening, becoming something else
Vipariṇāma (vi-pa-ri-NA-ma) — change, alteration, transformation — the Buddha used it in the same breath as anicca; points to continuous becoming, not just on and off
Nothing holds its shape. Everything is already becoming something else.
That's the doorway — wide open, right now, in this room.

The bench

Bench at Spirit Rock labeled Anicca — sat there many times
The whole valley: clouds moving, grass shifting, leaves shimmering, sound of bees rising and falling
Nothing is still. Nothing holds its shape.
Don't need meditation experience — just need to sit still long enough to notice what's already happening
The world is teaching the Dhamma constantly; we mostly just aren't listening

Continuity of change

If the world isn't the same from moment to moment, how could I be?
Not the same person I was this morning, last week, ten years ago
The conditions that make me "me" always shifting — body, mood, memories close at hand, stories that feel true now but not next week
This isn't a problem to solve. It's the nature of everything that exists.

Sutta: Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta
(Discourse on the Characteristic of Not-Self — SN 22.59; the Buddha's second teaching, to the original five monks at the Deer Park in Varanasi)

The Buddha inquired — didn't lecture:

"Is form permanent or impermanent?"
"Impermanent, venerable sir."
"And is what is impermanent satisfactory, or unsatisfactory?"
"Unsatisfactory, venerable sir."
"Then can what is impermanent, unsatisfactory, and subject to change rightly be regarded as 'This is mine, this I am, this is my self'?"
"No, venerable sir."

Same question through all five aggregates — form, feeling, perception, mental formations, consciousness
Not asking us to believe him. Asking us to look.
[Backstage: sutta's destination is anattā; anicca and dukkha are the argument that carries us there; entering through the anicca door is sound — the three characteristics are inseparable; you cannot look deeply at any one without meeting the other two]

Trauma and memory

Can see the ways trauma shaped me — not just what I lived through, but what I created through my own unskillful actions
Even that isn't one thing. Trauma sensations move. Stories move. Meaning shifts.
Say this clearly: meditation is not therapy. Being direct about that.
If carrying something that needs professional attention — trauma, depression, grief that isn't moving, shame with roots you haven't reached — please seek that help. A skilled therapist, a counselor, someone trained to work with these things. Not optional. Not something meditation can replace.
Meditation does not go in and fix what trauma has done. Not designed to. Doesn't have the tools for that.
What meditation offers is different: helps us see that whatever is arising right now — including the most painful memory, the most entrenched story — is a present-moment process. It is moving. It is not the whole of who we are.
Not a small thing. But a specific thing. Therapy helps us understand and work with the story. Meditation helps us see the nature of the mind that holds it.
Not competing. Not the same. Both matter.
When a memory arises in sitting: not touching the past — touching what's happening now; sensation, narrative, emotional tone — all present, all moving
Not that it didn't happen. Not that it doesn't matter. What's here now is the present-moment arising of perception and feeling in response to old conditions — still reverberating, still asking to be met.

Kamma: Upanisā Sutta
(Discourse on Supporting Conditions — SN 12.23; Bhikkhu Bodhi translation)

Kamma almost always misunderstood
The Buddha's own definition: "Cetanāhaṃ bhikkhave kammaṃ vadāmi" — "Monks, it is intention that I call kamma." Intention is the seed. That's it.
Not a moral scorecard. Not the universe keeping receipts. Not punishment and reward from outside.
Popular misreading almost always gets this wrong: kamma is not only our own intentional actions — it includes the intentional actions of others that land on us as conditions
When someone acts toward us with anger, neglect, cruelty, or love — those are their intentional actions, their kamma; what we receive is the fruit of their intentions, not a reflection of our worth or our fault
And the Buddha was careful to add — in the Sīvaka Sutta — that not everything we experience is the fruit of kamma at all; some experience arises from physical causes, environmental conditions, the simple conjunction of circumstances; the world is not a total ledger of intentions, ours or anyone else's
Kamma is not a teaching that says "you brought this on yourself" — that reading collapses a distinction the Buddha kept very carefully
What becomes our kamma is how we respond — what intentions we bring to this moment, in the presence of whatever has been handed to us
Every intentional action plants conditions — ground of what arises next, for us and those around us
Past doesn't disappear — becomes the present. Present becomes the future. One unbroken stream.

The Buddha's image from the Upanisā Sutta:

"Just as rain descends heavily upon a mountaintop, and the water flows down along the slope, filling the clefts, gullies, and creeks; these being filled fill up the pools; these being filled fill up the ponds; these being filled fill up the streams; these being filled fill up the rivers; and the rivers being filled fill up the great ocean — in the same way, one condition flows into the next."

No gap. No ledger. No cosmic judge. Just conditions flowing into conditions — ours and everyone else's, and some that belong to no one in particular, flowing together.

The turn

The person who lived that moment isn't here anymore — say this carefully, it can be misheard
Doesn't mean it didn't happen. Doesn't mean it doesn't matter. Means the self who lived it was itself a flowing stream of conditions — that stream has continued; it hasn't stopped, it has transformed
Conditions set in motion then still unfolding now — as habit, reactivity, the particular texture of how I meet difficulty
When a painful memory arises: thank the arising — not for the story, not for the pain, but for showing what conditions are still alive, still asking for attention, still capable of being met with more wisdom than the first time

Trauma done to us

Not all conditions that shaped us were ones we chose or created — kamma is clear: we are not to blame for what was done to us
Grew up in a chaotic household — not because parents were bad people, but because they were carrying their own unmet conditions
They came of age during the Great Depression — a historical catastrophe shaped by the intentions and failures of countless people across an entire era, and by conditions that belonged to no one in particular; landed on them as something they didn't choose
They brought their own prior conditions into that — inherited streams, unexamined fears, whatever kamma they had accumulated from their own histories and the histories handed to them
All of that together — the era, the inheritance, their own responses, conditions with and without intentional origins — shaped who they were in that household
Handed forward — as anxiety, scarcity, emotional unpredictability — into the household I grew up in
Didn't choose those conditions. Received them. They became part of my stream.
The mountaintop image becomes personal: conditions flowing from an entire historical era, through my parents' own histories, through the household, into me — all the way down, just like the water, until they reached this room, tonight
Not fixed. Some of what I received I've been able to meet, examine, soften — in practice, and in therapy. Some still alive, still asking for attention.
When that kind of memory arises — something done to me, not by me — same principle: present-moment arising of old conditions. Not happening now. Can meet it with care rather than be re-consumed by it.
Don't have to carry it as permanent identity. Part of the stream — not the whole river.

Hiri and Ottappa: Lokapāla Sutta
(Guardians of the World — AN 2.9)

Sometimes what arises when looking honestly at the past: moral sensitivity — a felt sense of conscience
The Buddha gave this two names, always kept them together:
Hiri (HI-ri) — inner integrity; the quiet clear voice that says "that's not who I want to be" — not harsh self-judgment, not shame that punishes and contracts, but a compass; the part of us that knows the difference between who we are and who we are capable of being
Ottappa (ot-TAP-pa) — sensitivity to the ripple our actions make outward; wholesome apprehension about causing harm, not toxic fear but genuine care for the effect we have on others

"These two bright states protect the world."

Guardians — not wardens, not judges, but guardians — of ethical life
The kamma connection: the arising of hiri and ottappa in this moment is itself a wholesome intentional condition, a seed of cetanā being planted right now; what we do with what we've been given is our kamma — the only part of the stream we actually get to shape
Hiri and ottappa are the felt sense of that responsibility — not as burden, but as orientation

Universalizing

Not telling you this so you'll think about my life
Your shame moves. Your fear moves. Your stories move.
Some of what you carry is yours — fruit of your own intentions, skillful and unskillful. Some was handed to you before you had any say. Some arose from the conjunction of conditions no one intended and no one could have predicted.
All of it subject to anicca. None of it permanent identity.
Conditions that shaped you are not fixed — arising right now, in this room, as sensation, as memory, as the quality of attention you bring to this moment
Next moment is not determined. It is conditioned — which means it can be influenced. By how clearly we see. By how wisely we act. By whether hiri and ottappa are awake in us right now.
We are not trapped in what happened. We are the continuity of conditions that includes what happened, still unfolding.

Closing

"Something that wasn't here… appears. Something that was here… is gone — or rather, has become something else."

Not a problem. Not a loss. The nature of everything that exists.
In that seeing — clear, steady, kind — there is more freedom than any fixed story could ever offer.
That's the whole Dhamma.

DIALOGUE (up to 30 min)

Brief pause after talk — 20–30 seconds — let it settle
Open: "What came up? In the sit, in the talk, in the room — anything you want to bring."

Pump-primers if slow to start:

Was there a moment in the sit when you noticed something arising and passing — or shifting and transforming — that you didn't expect?
"The person who lived that moment isn't here anymore" — does that land as freeing, or does it feel like something's being taken away? Both worth examining.
Is there a difference between a painful memory and the pain that arises when the memory appears? Has anyone noticed that gap — even briefly?
Kamma includes the intentional actions of others that land on us as conditions — and some of what we carry has no intentional origin at all; does that change anything about how you hold something that was done to you, or something that simply happened?
Is there something in your life right now that you can see is changing, but that you're still relating to as if it were fixed?
What does your own hiri feel like from the inside — not as punishment or self-criticism, but as compass? What does it actually feel like in the body when that voice arises?
The image of rain flowing down a mountain into the ocean — did that land for you in relation to your own sense of how the past lives in the present? Can you find the Depression → your parents → their histories → your household → you somewhere in that image?

Closing:

Read the room — close when the energy is complete, not when the clock runs out
Brief dedication of merit
"Thank you for being here. Thank you for your practice."

SUTTA REFS (background only)

Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta (SN 22.59) — suttacentral.net/sn22.59
Upanisā Sutta (SN 12.23) — accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn12/sn12.023.bodh.html
Lokapāla Sutta (AN 2.9) — accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/bps-essay_23.html
Sīvaka Sutta (SN 36.21) — suttacentral.net/sn36.21 (kamma and the limits of kammic determinism)