Dhyana, meditation, is the practice of calming, concentrating, and looking deeply. Meditation should be understood first of all as the cultivation of samadhi, meditative awareness. Then when we take teachings such as the Three Dharma Seals – impermanence, non-self, and nirvana – as the object of our concentration, they become real insights into our lived experience, not just ideas or concepts.

The core Buddhist teaching of impermanence tells us that all things arise and pass away according to their causes and conditions. Nothing lasts forever; nothing is a permanent, unchanging thing unto itself. Many practitioners think that they understand the teaching of impermanence perfectly, but they do not really believe in it. We have a strong tendency to believe that we will remain the same person forever and that our loved ones will also remain the same forever, but this is a kind of delusion that prevents us from living in a more mindful and compassionate way. If we believe that everyone and everything we love will always be there, we have little concern to take care of them, to treasure them deeply right here and now. When we lose something or someone we love, we suffer. Yet when that thing or person was still present in our lives we may not have treasured it, we didn’t fully appreciate him or her, because we lacked the insight of impermanence. It’s very important to make the insight of impermanence the object of our meditative awareness, because this insight is an essential element of love and compassion.