Why do things change?

Question

Why does it hurt so much?

Answer 1

Many fine answers have approached the first question quite well, yet none can find reason for the pain or suffering sometimes felt when change occurs..you've asked a fine question, allow me some input from a Buddhist's perspective and perhaps I might shed some light on "Why it hurts so much.."

Quite correctly most of these fine answerers have understood the true nature of experiences, that being that these experiences are Impermanent, unsatisfactory because of such Impermance and that these experiences have a nature of changing..always changing..all experiences and all things change thus..quite so..

Why does this cause suffering then ..?

It is our knowledge which logically tells us the true nature of things as they are. This knowledge, however is not how we see these experiences within our Minds..this is because most folk see through their consciousness and not through such logic..

The consciousness deceives us..

We see a pretty flower..when we do so, we generally say "Oh, how nice, a pretty flower.." Is this not so..? A week later we see the same flower, yet its beauty has faded..we generally say to ourselves.."Oh, how sad, the flower has faded.." Isn't that right..?

We know that the flower's nature is to grow old and fade..thus why is it that we feel sadness at such a natural sight..?

It is because we perceive something about the flower..what is it then that we perceive..? We perceive permanence..yet we know in our logical Mind that this is not it's true nature..!!

Our perceptions have deceived our Minds, as well we have made a false decision using this false perception..what have we decided..? We have decided that the sight of the faded flower was sad..!!

This is ILLUSION..!! We have suffered a sadness because of an Illusion..!! The Illusion..? Permanence..!!

How then did this illusion overcome our Mind's knowledge..? Why did we not see the truth ..?

Because when we experience experiences, we do not use our Mind..we use our consciousness and our consciousness is a minefield of such illusions..thus we suffer unnecessarily..

Without proper thinking methods, these illusions will always plague us as will this kind of suffering..

To Buddhists, the consciousness is part of what we generally and since birth, have associated with that entity and that idea of what we have called the Self..it is who we think we are..we are wrong..!!

This entity and this idea of Self is entirely selfish and self serving..when we experience experiences using this consciousness and therefore this Self, it (the Self) arises within the consciousness, it is thus caused by this interaction with the environment..this cause and subsequent consequential rise of the Self causes feelings and perceptions to arise..when they do thus arise, we take ownership of them via this Self entity..

Take a simple example..someone pokes fun at us and we feel anger at the embarrassment..generally we say to ourselves.."I am angry..?" Is this not so..? We have placed an ownership label on this feeling of anger.."I am angry.." This is the Self and this ownership will make it nearly impossible to let go of this anger..we protect this anger and make it valid.."I am angry and I am justified in being thus angry.."

Likewise when we do not expect changes to occur..these changes in the environment or in our circumstances likewise cause feelings to arise..all experiences thus cause feelings to arise..this arising of feelings is how we interact with the environment..and these feelings are thus caused and cannot be spontaneously felt, as it were..ever tried to spontaneously feel happy or sad without either thinking of a memory or without some other trigger..? It cannot be done without training, which is why great actors go to great lengths to train their minds to trigger such emotion..

Feelings being thus caused are caused by outside influence and by experiences either in the past or the present..they rightly do not therefore belong to us, (the real us) they rightly belong to the experience, yet without thinking about this phenomenon, we "pick these feelings up" making them our own, taking ownership of them..all illusion yet we do it without thought..

When we pick these feelings up and take ownership of them, we suffer unnecessarily..it is for this reason that Buddhists let these feelings go..we do so by not picking them up in the first place..leaving them where they belong..with the experience which caused them..we then let these feelings wane when the experience wanes, thus there is no suffering and "it does not hurt.."

This is known to Buddhists as Not Self and is a concept which means that we do not take ownership of feelings or experiences thus these feelings are "let go"..suffering is thus "let go"..we do this because these feelings do not belong to the Self..that is the real Self, the real us, as it were..they are thus not us..they are Not Self..thus the concepts title..

A Buddhist...

Answer 2

Living on the earth everyone lives like as if being two people. One good and one not so good. Each time the one thats not so good mucks things up for you it hurts. As everyone is the same, sometimes other people muck things up for you too, and its not fair. Therefore don't be too unhappy when things change. Nobody can be cool all the time. Rather, work on silencing the bad within, or building the good so it dominates..
When the good matures and the bad disolves, you can reach salvation where only positive change will ever happen.

My opinion is that the trick with life is: When you let yourself down, don't lie down. Take nothing personally, as your personality is just brain and body, that is the false sense of self. Find the true self that belongs not to the temporary world. Get up and build the bridges that have blown down, no matter the personal sacrifice. Use one's sufferings to drive personal development. That can bring understanding, and compassion.

Answer 3

Without change - there would be no life. Christian try to stop changes, atheists like changes. It hurts when you have attaches too much to something that will sooner or later change. It is only a matter of your own perspective whether it hurts or not.

Answer 4

Nothing is permanent. That's just the nature of things.

If change hurts, it's probably because of the way you're reacting to the change. We suffer when reality doesn't conform to our expectations.

I'm not saying it's always easy to roll with the changes, but just accepting that change is always inevitable can help to make things hurt a little less ...

Answer 5

sometimes things change because nature is repairing things
sometimes because people change
sometimes bad to good and good to bad if we make all the changes we make personally good ones then may be the other changes wont be so painful
like if my health changes for the better and I manage to walk again the painful ulcers won't worry me so much but if my health gets much worse I will cry?
change is in the natural order of things and so we have to ourselves change things for the better or accept the things we cannot.
complicated innit?

Answer 6

I would like to address the second question. It hurts so much because we resist it. We hold on so tight thinking that nothing could be as good as it is now, until we pull our metaphorical arm out of socket. All the while we are grieving for the way it was and we cannot see the newness of what is. Let go.

Answer 7

"The phenomena of life can be compared to a dream, a ghost, an air bubble, a shadow, glittering dew, and the flash of lightning – and must be contemplated as such."
Buddha
c. 563-483 BCE, Indian Prince, Mystic, Founder of Buddhism

The world is in a constant state of changing flux and the unknown governs the world as 'the king of the universe', who one day would knock at your door and hurt you. (my own explanation)

Answer 8

change is the true nature of life, nothing is perminent and what seams perminent it isn't when we look at things at the stomic and lower levels. it hurts so much not sure exactly what your on about whether it is life in general due to change or a specific thing but ill answer as if it were the former, due to clinging, attachment to things as the self when they arn't, such as my friend, my family, ect, this is clinging by the ego, the I, the me, the mine which cause us to believe that things are for us instead of seperate from us

Answer 9

The only thing that is certain in this world is change. As for the hurtful part, i think that these are referred to as growing pains. It is through these experiences that we gain our strength, courage and wisdom....

bb
)o(

Answer 10

My friend,

A great question and some really great responses. To put it as simply as possible:

"Change is inevitable. Pain is optional."

We can either bend like a birch or shatter like an oak. Go with the flow.

Namaste

Peace and Love