Lesson 39 from A Comprehensive Commentary on the Words of My Perfect Teacher concludes the chapter on the impermanence of life with a sustained teaching on the threefold function of impermanence as the gateway to all practice.
Drawing on Geshe Potowa's instructions in three parallel sets, the lesson shows that impermanence serves as the cause of entering the Dharma, the condition for diligent practice, and the companion for realising the nature of all phenomena. It then serves as the cause of cutting ties with this life, renouncing samsara, and entering the path of nirvana. And finally it is the source of faith, diligence, and wisdom. The lesson illustrates these with the story of a king who spent twelve years beside his consort's rotting corpse until a master shattered a clay pot before him and shook him awake, and with Sogyal Rinpoche's account of a terminally ill American woman who found healing through accepting impermanence under Dudjom Rinpoche's guidance.
The lesson closes with Jigme Gyalwai Nyugu's first-person instruction on what genuine conviction in impermanence feels like from the inside, Geshe Kharak Gomchung's thorn bush, and Jigme Lingpa's uncut steps — each a living illustration that conviction in impermanence is measured not by words but by how one actually spends each hour.
