PRAYER AND CONTEMPLATION

             The foremost concern of the capuchin reformers in their sincere effort to return to st. Francis’ gospel way of life involved an urgent and irresistible re-evaluation of the contemplative element of Francis’ life. It was prayer that gave Francis the powerful experience of god, providing him the needed consistency to realize the integral gospel vision of life. In Francis’ personality prayer was at the very centre of his being so much so he did not only pray but become a ‘pray-er’ himself. It is out of his own practical experience of prayer, for example, he wrote the ‘rule for hermitage’ which combined both life of prayer and life in brotherhood. His brotherhood was a praying brotherhood. Being well aware of the importance as well as the vital necessity of prayer, the capuchin of the first generation had, as all the earlier Franciscan reformers, a singular attraction to prayer occupied central place. The first capuchin statutes were therefore found to prescribe two hours of mental prayer every day, while affirming that ‘a true friar minor prays always’.

          The prayer life understandable required an appropriate atmosphere, especially a situation of deep solitude and quite retreat. The houses of the early capuchin were accordingly never situation too near the cities, so as to be assured of peace and quiet necessary for prayer. They were however not too far from the cities either, so as not to feel themselves left our or un-integrated and or uncommitted to humans and their situation through ministerial service. Capuchin fraternity, on the one hand, is basically a prayer fraternity and no fraternity can be called Franciscan if prayer is not a regular occurrence in them. Their life gives primacy to the spirit of holy prayer and devotion…to which all other temporal things ought to be subservient. On the other hand, however, they were not monastic communities but ‘evangelical fraternities’, purporting to maintain a delicate balance between the solitary contemplative concern and the vital apostolic disposition or ‘disponibility’. Capuchins therefore always maintain a certain dynamic tension in the search for harmony between action and contemplation. 

FRANCISCAN CHARISM

The capuchin charism is basically Franciscan. It means that it is, as Francis envisaged, christo-centric, evangelical, ecclesial, existential, devotional, prophetical and practical. Francis, after his conversion, was known to have just one desire in life, namely, to follow the teaching and the footsteps of Jesus Christ poor humble obedient, a ‘suffering servant’ who died and rose for us. He aspired to follow Christ and his gospel even literally and radically, although he was neither a fundamentalist nor a literalist. To him love alone was the reason why god became human and redemption was the way God’s love overcame the evil in this world. Francis therefore developed a tender devotion to the humanity of Jesus who made himself our ‘brother in the flesh’. For this reason he looked as well upon all creatures as brothers and sisters united as one in the vast ‘friary of the universe’. He campaigned  thereby for all that is moat liberal and sympathetic to human especially of today, namely “the love of nature; the love of animals the sense of social compassion; the sense of the spiritual danger of prosperity and even property”. To live such a life of the gospel however, he did not want any rule, written by someone else. Scripture and liturgy were to be his sole guides. Gospel in fact was his only rule and he desired to model his life upon it. According his life is seen to be characterizes with the pure gospel wisdom, i.e. surrender to truth poverty and humility prayer, and penance, ministerial service, especially to the poor, helpless and downtrodden and love for one and all after the example of Jesus Christ. This in brief is the ideal of Francis’ spirituality.

              The rule of Francis that enclosed this spirituality is evidently to be understood as the unalterable pattern of life for all his followers. However it had to be also interpreted now and then in the light of Francis’ own life and testament as well as the practical demands of the order and its apostolic purpose. The capuchin reform may therefore be said to have been born out of the continual struggle over the practical interpretation of this Franciscan ideal of spirituality. Included in the struggle were the constant efforts to return to gospel way of life initiated by Francis and to make adaptations and adjustments necessitated to incarnate it. Knowing the reform and growth of the capuchin order down the centuries therefore are of utmost importance if we are to recapture our particular capuchin charism and re-established our specific identity. A thorough investigation of this charism would certainly require a far longer amount of time and space than right away available. For the present it is restricted, among other things, to including a few of the most salient features or characteristics of the capuchin reform and spirituality.   

  The universal impermanence

The universal impermanence is the impermanence of the self nature of the conditional things. Just as we have the impermanence of the life period so we have the impermanence of all the conditional things in the world. To realize that every living being will die sometime or other is very easy, but it is not so easy to feel that every living being is coming near to death and is continuing to change as the moments pass. This draws a final conclusion that all things are impermanenent, and it brings us to the doctrine of śūnyatā. writers imagine that the word śūnyatā is synonymous with what we understand by nothingness but it means “perpetual changes happening at every step in this phenomenal world.”

It is on the truth of the impermanence of the nature of all things that the possibility of all things depends. If things were not subject to continual change but were permanent and unchangeable, then the evolution of the human race and the development of living things would come to a dead stop. If the human beings had never died or changed but had continued always in the same state, what would the result have been? The progress of the human beings would ever stop.

 Momentary impermanence.

This impermanence presupposes impermanence of moments (kșhana). It is logical to know how any great change in human being or in any other thing, which takes place within a certain space of time, is nothing else but the aggregate of minute changes which occur therein every moment. Thus, every man, everything is ever changing and can never be the same for even two consecutive moments. This is what is known in the Buddhist philosophy as “momentary impermanence.” It is with the support of this principle that the Buddhist seeks to explain any change. The treatise of the great exposition of philosophy says that, a day of twenty four hour has six thousand four hundred millions, ninety nine thousand nine hundred and eighty kșhanas or moments and that the five skandhās or aggregates of being are repeatedly produced and destroyed in every kșhana.

In fact, all things need some sort of motive power to be changed from one state to another. We know that the sword cannot cut itself, and then we may ask, what is the power which makes all things change? Buddha said it is origination, staying, growth and decay and destruction. These are the four characteristics by which all things undergo modification and are subjected to change of themselves in endless revolution.

 The theory of the four characteristics is followed in the following way: (i) Through the origination all things are brought to a state of existence from the future to the present. (ii) Through the staying it makes a thing to stay in its present actual or identical state as soon as a thing emerges by the force of the origination. (iii) Through the growth and decay everything grows and is brought in the state of old age. (iv) And fourthly, through the destruction all things are destroyed. So such is the reason which explains why nothing can continue in the same state for even two consecutive moments in this phenomenal world. In short all things are always changing by the operation of the four characteristics.

The impermanence of life period

What is meant by the impermanence of life period? As we all know in this modern world there are laws of the indestructibility of matter and of the conservation of energy. Buddhism acknowledges all these laws in this noumenal world. It is impossible also that there should exist a thing which does not change. In the “stanzas of the Law” Buddha says the following sayings:

That which seems everlasting, will perish. That which is high will be laid low. Where meeting is parting shall be. Where birth is death will come.

There is more of less similar stanza in the Chinese which goes like this, “Not in the sky neither in the depths of the ocean nor having entered the caverns of the mountain, nay, such a place is not to be found in the world where a man might dwell without being overpowered by death.According to Buddhism we keep on changing from birth to old age and death the end of life is one of the prime miseries.

Idealist school of Buddhist Philosophy says, “All things are produced by the combination of causes and conditions and have no independent noumenon of their own. The body of a living being consists of the combinations of the four great elements, earth, water, fire and air; and when this combination is resolved into the four component elements dissolution ensues. This is called the impermanence of a composite entity.

 Buddhist concept of impermanence

                Early Buddhism dealt with the problem of impermanence in a very rational manner. This concept is known as annichā in Buddhism, according to which, impermanence is an undeniable and inescapable fact of human existence from which nothing that belongs to this earth is ever free. Even the ancient western philosopher Heraclitus held the same opinion as he had declared that, ‘all things are in constant flux.’

According to Buddhist, there is no Being there is only a becoming the state of every individual being unstable, temporary, sure to pass away. Even among things we find in each individual form and material qualities and living organisms too possess a continually ascending series of mental qualities the union of which makes up the individual. Everything be it a person a thing or a God is therefore, merely a putting together of component elements .Further in each individual without exception the relation of its component parts is eternally changing and never the same for even two consecutive moments. Putting together implies becoming; becoming means becoming different and becoming different cannot arise without dissolution a passing away which must inevitably at some time or the other be complete.

But we may ask that why is it that all things are impermanent? The Buddhism will replay that this law of universal impermanence is inseparably connected with the cause and effect, for nothing in this phenomenal world can exist without some causes while the very name phenomenon presupposes origination which again implies destruction, exactly in the same way as destruction invariably implies origination. Buddha himself before departing this world said to said disciples, “Know that whatever exists arises from causes and conditions and is in every respect impermanent.”

The principle of Universal impermanence is being considered in a three-fold aspect, namely as ­-

(a)   The Impermanence of life period

(b)   Momentary Impermanence

(c)    The Impermanence of the self nature of conditional things.

Annichā: The Buddhist Concept of Impermanence

                   

Buddhists system or a way of life was founded by Siddhartha Gautama. This system occupies the leading position in the Indian Philosophy. Gradually this system has developed in a significant way and carries lots of weight and meaningful insights. It has contributed noteworthy doctrines such as momentariness of all entities, denial of the soul …..

            This present work is intended to provide information on the concept of annichā. While I was doing my vippāsanā[1] course in Hyderabad I was so much struck at the hearing of the word annichā, which guru would always utter. At that time I understood its meaning just on peripheral level as it meant to me, arising and passing away. But now as I have read some books and with the teaching in the class it has been more clear and vivid. As far as, what I understand and as per my knowledge I feel that it’s really true what Buddha means with this concept of Impermanence.  After all we too realize that in this world nothing is permanent not even our own existence. Everything that exists will have an end one or the other day. In this paper we shall see the concept of annichā in detail.