The Impermanence of a Championship Ring

I've been a Laker fan for many, many years, my whole life in fact. In the early 70s, my father took me to the "Fabulous Forum" to celebrate thirty three consecutive victories, a record that still stands today. In our family, as they say, we bleed purple and gold, the team colors. On the night my father died, he was watching a Laker game. When my brother was in the hospital suffering from cancer, I called him with the news that Kobe Bryant had scored 80 points in a single game. It cheered him up immensely.

So of course it makes me very sad to see the current state of the Laker franchise. These are definitely not the glory days of West and Chamberlain, Magic and Kareem, Kobe and Shaq. Will they ever come again? Nobody knows. This is impermanence in action. Nothing stays the same, there are no guarantees, and it's never going to be exactly the way it was "back then," in life or in basketball.

In my mind, for example, it's a complete and fortunate blessing that our zen practice has survived intact to this day, for us to benefit and learn from, to pass on. How many dark periods of history has Zen Buddhism passed through to reach this point? It's really an incredible thing if you think about it, and we are quite lucky, to say the least.

So when the Lakers' glory days come back around, I hope to be there. But one never knows.