Everything Is Ageing

This Rains Retreat I don’t have much strength; I’m not well, so I’ve come up to this mountain here to get some fresh air. People come to visit but I can’t really receive them like I used to because my voice has just about had it; my breath is just about gone.

You can count it a blessing that there is still this body sitting here for you all to see now. This is a blessing in itself. Soon you won’t see it. The breath will be finished; the voice will be gone. They will fare in accordance with supporting factors, like all compounded things. The Lord Buddha called it khaya-vayaṃ, the decline and dissolution of all conditioned phenomena.

How do they decline?

Consider a lump of ice. Originally it was simply water; people freeze it and it becomes ice. But it doesn’t take long before it’s melted. Take a big lump of ice, say as big as this tape recorder here, and leave it out in the sun. You can see how it declines, much the same as the body. It will gradually disintegrate. After not many hours or minutes all that’s left is a puddle of water. This is called khaya-vayaṃ, the decline and dissolution of all compounded things. It’s been this way for a long time now, ever since the beginning of time.

When we are born we bring this inherent nature into the world with us; we can’t avoid it. At birth we bring old age, sickness and death along with us.

So this is why the Buddha said khaya-vayaṃ, the decline and dissolution of all compounded things. All of us sitting here in this hall now, monks, novices, laymen and laywomen, are without exception ‘lumps of deterioration’. Right now the lump is hard, just like the lump of ice. It starts out as water, becomes ice for a while and then melts again. Can you see this decline in yourself? Look at this body. It’s ageing every day – hair is ageing; nails are ageing – everything is ageing!

You weren’t like this before, were you?

You were probably much smaller than this. Now you’ve grown up and matured. From now on you will decline, following the way of nature. The body declines just like the lump of ice. Soon, just like the lump of ice, it’s all gone.

All bodies are composed of the four elements of earth, water, wind and fire. A body is the confluence of earth, water, wind, and fire, which we proceed to call a person. Originally it’s hard to say what you could call it, but now we call it a ‘person’. We get infatuated with it, saying it’s a male, a female, giving it names, Mr, Mrs, and so on, so that we can identify each other more easily.

But actually there isn’t anybody there. There’s earth, water, wind and fire. When they come together in this known form, we call the result a ‘person’. Now don’t get excited over it. If you really look into it, there isn’t anyone there.

This reflection by Ajahn Chah is from the book The Collected Teachings of Ajahn Chah, (pdf) pp. 133-134.