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We want pleasant experiences; we don’t want unpleasant ones.
     
    The third noble truth proclaims the good news that the end of dukkha is possible. And in the fourth noble truth, the Buddha sets out the lesson plan to accomplish this. That lesson plan is contained in the Eightfold Path. By following the Eightfold Path, we can learn to cultivate the wholesome and joyful mind states I referred to above. With the end of dukkha comes “enlightenment,” “awakening,” “liberation,” “freedom,” or “unbinding”—I recommend you pick the translation that resonates best with you.
     
    We may not be able to complete the lesson plan of the Eightfold Path during our lifetime. That is, we may not become fully enlightened beings, but that glimpse of awakening, that moment of liberation, that taste of freedom is available to us all—and can take us a long way toward easing our experience of dukkha.
     

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    The Universal Law of Impermanence
     
    Better a single day of life seeing the reality of arising and passing away than a hundred years of existence remaining blind to it.
    —THE BUDDHA
     
     
    ENDING DUKKHA IN THE MIND includes understanding what the Buddha called the “three marks of existence.” We have already been discussing the first mark: the fact of dukkha in our lives. The other two are impermanence ( anicca ) and no-self ( anatta ). When the Buddha began explaining these characteristics of our existence, he began with impermanence. It is a universal law, recognized in other spiritual traditions and in science as common to the life of every living being.
     
    At a Spirit Rock retreat in the late 1990s, Joseph Goldstein gave what has come to be my favorite description of anicca as I experience it in everyday life: “Anything can happen at any time.”
     
    Initially, I reacted to his statement the same way I reacted when I first heard anicca translated from the Pali as “Everything is impermanent.” I thought, “Yeah, tell me something I don’t know.” But when I didn’t recover my health, I began to deeply contemplate the meaning of “anything can happen at any time”—like getting sick and not getting better, like having to give up my profession, like rarely being able to leave the house. Yes, anything can happen at any time. Life is impermanent, uncertain, unpredictable, ever-changing.
     
    How are we to find any solace in this universal law? The great Zen master Dogen offers a clue:
    Without the bitterest cold that penetrates to the very bone, how can plum blossoms send forth their fragrance all over the universe?
     
     
     
    When we begin to see the truth of anicca , there’s a tendency to focus on “the bitterest cold that penetrates to the very bone” phrase in Dogen’s words. Having had to give up my profession still feels like that on some days. The challenge becomes finding the fragrance sent forth by those plum blossoms. Without the bitter cold of giving up my profession, I wouldn’t have the fragrance of Mozart and Beethoven wafting through my bedroom. (Of course, I could have enjoyed that fragrance before I got sick, but the fact is, I didn’t.) Without the bitter cold of having to stay in bed most of the day, I wouldn’t be so attuned to the changing seasons; I never realized they are on view right outside my bedroom window. I return to Dogen’s verse over and over for inspiration.
     
    The writings of the Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh have also helped me see the beauty inherent in the fact of impermanence. In his biography of the Buddha, Old Path White Clouds, Thich Nhat Hanh points out that impermanence is the very condition necessary for life. Without it, nothing could grow or develop. A grain of rice could not grow into a rice plant; a child could not grow into an adult. There are so many ways in which I’ve “grown” only because of this illness, from my newfound love of classical music, to a heightened compassion for the chronically ill and their caregivers,