Before World War I, my great-grandparents left Bohemia for Ukraine. Half a century later, their children fled the Communists and returned to Czechoslovakia, but they didn't feel at home there. The faded photographs they brought back captured the silhouette of a farmhouse in an apple orchard. 

From a young age, although I could not relate the feeling to anything I knew, there was something missing in my existence. It was a deep dark, transparent, empty space looking at itself. All households evoked a strange, subtle anxiety in me. 

Thirty years later, I am still a stranger everywhere I go, but what I missed I found in the blessing of my Lama. I also know that the anxiety comes from the inability to accept impermanence[1]. 

It is said that all bodies in the universe are constantly moving away from each other.

[1] Impermanence: Refers to the fact that phenomena arise dependently, and therefore do not have a permanent, stable nature.