For a long time, I found that reflecting on impermanence, as important as it is, could also bring a subtle sense of uncertainty.

If everything is constantly changing, if nothing can be held onto and nothing is guaranteed, then the next moment is always unknown. There is something wonderfully liberating about that. But, at the same time, it can also feel unsettling. If we take this understanding to its extreme, we might even wonder: Why make plans? Why commit to anything? Why choose one direction rather than another if everything is so fluid?

The teachings, however, also speak about something called confidence in the View. When we hear the word view, we often think of an intellectual understanding: impermanence, dependent arising, karma, emptiness. And that understanding does bring confidence. It becomes a ground we can return to whenever life puzzles us or takes an unexpected turn. But I suspect there is another kind of confidence.

Not one that comes from thinking more clearly, but from experiencing more directly. A confidence that cannot really be explained, only gradually discovered through meditation. As the sense of separation softens, as the constant need to hold on begins to relax, something else quietly appears. Not certainty. Life remains as unpredictable as ever. But a growing trust that, whatever arises, awareness itself is not threatened by it.

Perhaps this is the beginning of the fearlessness so often described in the Buddhist texts. Not the absence of uncertainty.

But the discovery that everything changes…. And yet nothing changes.