Embracing Impermanence: What Buddhist Philosophy Can Teach Us About Estate Planning

I am an estate planner. And, as of late, I have been reading about Buddhist philosophy, from a secular perspective. Two of its fundamental tenets¹ are that there is a lot of suffering in the world; and that such suffering is largely caused or exacerbated by our unwillingness to accept that truly everything is impermanent. Intellectually, we all know this. Nothing lasts. Yet we cling to the good stuff, we push away the bad, and we delude ourselves into thinking we can control our destiny - and that of others.

I see this suffering in my practice with clients as they wrestle with hard decisions in estate planning. For example, Client A might naively - or stubbornly - hang onto the idea that if A appoints all three children as executors, the three will finally get along. Client B might think they know best how to manage the business, the money, and the family. They have been doing it forever. They want the best for their children, and they know how hard life can be. They don’t want their family to suffer like they did. So, they protect and shelter them from risk and failure. But the weight of the world rests heavy on their shoulders. I can hear frustration and its sinister cousin, contempt, creeping in as they talk of their adult children’s lack of maturity.

Buddhist philosophers have been grappling for centuries with the notion of impermanence, and how we can acknowledge and accept it to reduce our suffering. What can we learn from this line of thought that might help us ease our clients’ suffering, and in time, increase their - and our- peace of mind?

Buddhist philosophy is grounded in four truths:

1. We All Suffer

First, acknowledge that where there is life, there is suffering. Even in birth, there is suffering. No matter how hard we try to build fortresses- physical and figurative- to keep the good in, and to shelter us from the bad- it all inevitably flows in and out, like water between the cracks. Suffering from a Buddhist perspective includes the granular to the grandiose. It includes the disappointment I feel as I am eating my last mouthful of cheesecake, knowing there will be no more for tomorrow; the poignancy of seeing my child get her driver’s license, knowing my chauffeuring days are over (and with that, the coveted bird’s eye view of her stream of consciousness chattering as she goes through her day); and certainly the changing of my body over time so that when I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror I am surprised to see the fluttering gauze curtain of my aging parents’ image merging with my own reflection.

Yet there is comfort and community in acknowledging that we all suffer. Oh how satisfying- and what a relief it is- to commiserate with a friend over the idiotic drivers who cut me off on my way to work. To acknowledge that no matter how hard I try to ‘reframe’ it, I will always have bad days, hours and minutes. Bad stuff will happen to me. And to everyone and everything else. We are all united in our common humanity.

Our common frailty. And our common good. There is tremendous joy and beauty in the big and the small moments of life that are fleeting. If we accept impermanence, then we are liberated to see that ’this too shall pass.’ The moment of pain will pass. As will the moment of beauty. And for the beauty, since it too is fleeting, perhaps we learn to pause, share and savour it all the more for its sweet, temporal nature. As per Poet Robert Herrick in 1648: “Gather thee rosebuds, while thee may;” and as per Bob Seger, pop songwriter in 1978: “We’ve got tonight.” (I also acknowledge that embedded herein is a tried-and-true 400-year-old pick-up line.)

It is paradoxically liberating for us, as advisors, to embrace this truth as well. One of our core talents is our ability to come up with solutions. We are fixers. We obtain tremendous career satisfaction in preparing a well thought out and duly executed estate plan. Yet, we also know that we cannot plan for every contingency, and that the human condition dictates that future potential conflict is embedded in even the most apparently blissful family structure.

2. The Cause of Suffering

The second truth is that the source of suffering is our failure to accept impermanence, which takes three forms (called the three poisons in Buddhist philosophy): attachment, or clinging; aversion, or avoidance; and delusion. We cling to the sweet and comforting; we push away the ugly and the messy; and we delude ourselves that we can control and protect ourselves from reality. Tara Brach, a scholar whose research focuses on compassion, explains “Ego is entirely organized around avoiding or resisting what is unpleasant and grasping onto what serves us or pleases us. Ego’s role is essential for survival, but we hang onto it so much more than is needed for survival.”²

In working with clients in the estate planning context, I have witnessed examples of these three ways we perpetuate suffering. These include:

• Client A puts off updating their estate plan because life is going so well, they don’t want to jinx it by talking about death or incapacity. Or because they don’t want to admit that their children don’t get along. Or that they may have contributed to the dysfunction.
  
• Client B puts life trusts in place in their will for each of their adult children, thinking that they are protecting them, and the family legacy, from ‘outlaw’ spouses.
  
• Client C does an estate freeze and keeps full control by being the sole trustee of the family trust, and the sole voting shareholder of the company. C’s children work in the business, but in C’s opinion, nobody can run the business as well as C. C never gets around to mentoring - or maybe even naming- the successor trustees, or day to day managers of the business. A few years later, C is now showing signs of cognitive decline, is in denial, and is resentful and defensive when family suggest that C might consider passing some of the control along to others.
  
• Client D is adamant that continuity and consistency is the key to the long-term sustainability and success of the business. D’s past successes dictate the approach to future successes.

In his book “Meditations for Mortals,” author Oliver Burkeman writes that “the driving force of modern life is the fatally misguided idea that reality can and should be made even more controllable- and that peace of mind and prosperity lie in bringing it ever more fully under my control” (at p. xix).

Perhaps we can use these three concepts to gently help clients see more clearly where they are grasping so tightly to the good that they will get rope burn as it inevitably slips through their grasp (clinging); or where they are avoiding a difficult conversation with family, thereby feeding the tension (avoidance); or where they are putting their head in the sand and ignoring the reality of their situation (delusion).

3. There Is a Way to Reduce Suffering

The third truth is that there is a way to address our suffering. George Mumford, a Meditation teacher and renowned sports performance psychologist who has worked with athletes such as Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, outlines the four A’s as an action plan out of this unhelpful, and ultimately unhealthy, way of thinking- Awareness, Acceptance, Action and Assessment. As advisors, if we are aware of our collective tendency towards clinging, aversion and delusion, we can help clients become more aware of these propensities, and then turn instead towards deep acceptance of the current reality (whether we like it or not), and then wise action to address the reality (this is where we shine- think of the structures we can put in place!- the trusts, the Unanimous Shareholder Agreements, the letters of wishes!), and finally ongoing assessment to adjust to new realities.

Trusts are such splendid, adaptable creations, but here is a thought: do trusts perpetuate suffering by trying to create permanence and control in the guise of legacy? I say no, as long as the purpose of the trust is perpetuating values and principles, not just wealth. As my grandmother said, “Money is not the problem. It is the love of money.” After all, Buddhist philosophy is espousing enduring principles. The Buddha wanted his ideas to last. So perhaps it is the failure to accept that it is impermanence of our bodies, our homes, and our things, that keeps us trapped. Ideas and values last. People and things do not.

In the natural world, mushrooms are the above ground, visible fruiting body of the mycelium growing below. Mycelium can be miles and miles of interconnected thin threads of fungi, as big as football fields, all underground, and all interconnected. We see the mushroom, and then it decays and dies. But the mycelium continues. Likewise, we humans live and die, but our ideas and our values and our family and connections live on through our families and communities.

We all know the statistics about failure rates for business, from first, to second, to third and successive generations. We toil gallantly to implement structures and systems to encourage succession, and to prevent or postpone what statistically is probable. The founders come to us, looking for practical solutions to their existential dilemma of facing their own mortality. They look to us for help with reconciling their desire for immortality with their fear of death.

Some of our laws endorse immortality. Corporations, like the mycelium, can last for many generations. The individual owners, or mushrooms, may die, but the underlying structure or roots remain intact.

Other laws force us to let go. The rule against perpetuities, which is in force in most common law provinces across Canada (except Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Nova Scotia) requires trusts to wind up in a set period. Our Income Tax Act often explicitly forces us to accept impermanence. Every 21 years a trust is deemed to dispose of its assets for tax purposes. When we die or gift property, the deemed disposition triggers tax on any unrealized gain, even though no money has changed hands. The Income Tax Act teaches us to let go. Who knew?!

4. The Steps Memo

The final, fourth truth is a suggested road map of eight ways of being in life to guide us away from clinging, aversion and delusion, and towards greater ease and less suffering. In succession planning we would call this the steps memo.

The psychiatrist and author Mark Epstein M.D. goes into great detail about each of these steps, or the eightfold path, and the merging of Buddhism and western psychotherapy concepts in “Advice Not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself.” The eightfold path shares much with other religious and secular teachings on leading a fulfilling life, focussing on such universal concepts as kindness, gratitude, and service to others. It is at once deceptively simple, and perpetually challenging.

These eight ways include:

1. How we view the world (wise view)
2. Paying attention to our core motivations (wise motivation)
3. How we communicate with one another (wise speech)
4. Wise action
5. How we make our livelihood (wise livelihood)
6. Wise effort
7. Wise mindfulness, and
8. Wise concentration.

Applying the eightfold path to helping our estate planning clients wrestle with their mortality, a few themes emerge. Invest in the now. Share skills, talents, values, and interests. Not end results, accomplishments. Celebrate the process, not the end. The emergence of value focussed succession planning in family enterprise/family office approaches is a nod to this age-old wisdom.

In his moving book “The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully” Frank Ostaseski says, “In Buddhism, impermanence is often referred to as the ‘Law of Change and Becoming.’ These two correlated principles provide balance and harmony. Just as there is constant ’dissolving’, there is also constant ‘becoming’”(at p. 20). Without impermanence, the spruce tree I planted to shelter our front window from the road would never grow; the rut I am in watching too much Netflix in the dark winter months would never end; my neighbour’s daughter would never take her first wonderful, wobbly steps.

A client who is a gardener explained to me that the blossoming of her dahlias each summer is all the sweeter because she knows their flourish is fleeting, and unpredictable. Some years, if there is a bad frost, some will die. Other years, the colour will be more vibrant than ever before. In his poem “Garden Time” American Pulitzer Prize winning poet W.S. Merwin wrote “Would I love it this way if it could last?” Frank Ostaseski reflected: “Why do real flowers appear so much more magnificent than plastic ones? The fragility, the brevity and the uncertainty of their lives activate us, invite us into beauty, wonder, and gratitude.” (at p. 21).

Poet Mary Oliver issued a call to action in 2004 in her poem “Snow Geese”

Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!

What a task

to ask

²YouTube, The Three Steps of Letting Go