The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living

by Dalai Lama XIV

Meditating on one’s blood circulation could serve to reinforce this idea: the blood is constantly flowing, moving, it never stands still. This momentarily changing nature of phenomena is like a built-in mechanism. And since it is the nature of all phenomena to change every moment, this indicates to us that all things lack the ability to endure, lack the ability to remain the same. And since all things are subject to change, nothing exists in a permanent condition, nothing is able to remain the same under its own independent power. Thus, all things are under the power or influence of other factors. So, at any given moment no matter how pleasant or pleasurable your experience may be, it will not last. This becomes the basis of a category of suffering known in Buddhism as the “suffering of change.” ’