I was at the temple the other day helping them prepare for the Memorial Day weekend food sale at the Polo Fields in SF. I was helping make lime juice. I used a small juicer. LP Anan said it would be nice if we had two juicers, but the second one was broken. I checked to see if I could use the juicing head on the device, but I couldn’t. I told LP Anan that I had a juicer at home, but we decided that it wouldn’t be worthwhile for me to go home and get it. After using the juicer for about half and hour, it burned out so I went home to get my juicer. After the juicing was done. The Wat had a lot of lime juice. I thought about leaving my juicer at the Wat, but I figured they probably won’t be juicing again that weekend. So I took it home. The following day I came back to the Wat to help. This was their first day of food sales and they sold a lot of food, so they had to go shopping again to prepare for the second day. One of the things they needed was more lime juice and they had another case of limes to juice…..so I had to go back home and get my juicer. Since they hadn’t prepared for the third day, I decided to leave my juicer at the temple.

For me the above was a funny example of impermanence. We cannot control what happens in life. We make plans, sometimes they work out, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes we chose correctly, sometimes we don’t. The difference between acceptance of impermanence and not accepting it, is the amount of suffering and frustration we feel. Before, I would get frustrated and angry (the bus is late, something I’m using is broken, I suddenly can’t make an event I have been planning for, or a friend cancels a plan). But in understanding impermanence, that I cannot control what happens around me, I spend time less or no time getting angry or frustrated and just accept what has happened. Thus I can think more clearly, and plan accordingly. When the juicer broke, I fiddled with it a little then just went home and got mine since I knew it worked. I came back to the Wat and continued squeezing limes.