October 22, 2026

Turn Away From Clinging

All conditioned things are impermanent (Sabbe sankhara anicca): when one sees this in wisdom, one turns away from suffering. This is the path to purity.

Walpola Rahula was a Sri Lankan Buddhist monk and scholar who wrote What the Buddha Taught in 1959 to explain core Theravada teaching clearly to readers in the West who had little access to the Pali texts. Here he translates a verse from the Dhammapada, one of the oldest collections of the Buddha's sayings, reminding the reader that every conditioned thing, from a mood to a body to a nation, arises and falls away. The verse says wisdom is not resignation but clear seeing: once a person truly observes how things change, the grip of craving loosens on its own and suffering eases. In the Eastern Wisdom tradition, impermanence is not treated as a grim fact to escape but as the very ground of practice, so meditators train to watch sensations, moods, and thoughts rise and pass without chasing them or pushing them away. Freedom comes not from freezing the wave but from meeting its motion honestly.

A principle of Eastern Wisdom: Impermanence →