Love and Loss Volume Two

THE HOUSE OF ETERNITY, Part 1 The passage of time is like walking through an immense dark house with a candle. We are living the past, which becomes the present as we walk from room to room in the house, illuminating new spaces as we go. The whole house with all its rooms is there all the time; but parts of it are invisible to us until we reach the rooms of the future with our light. The corollary to this progressive illumination of the future is the progressive darkening of the past. As our light moves into the future, it leaves the past in darkness, as if it had never been. The past recedes into the darkness, into the fullness and emptiness of the Dao, the Eternal Now, the silent invisible foundation of all things, where it joins the silent invisible future that is yet to unfold. Only the present is in the light, visible, but past and future are all around. A bodhisattva carries not just a candle as she moves through the house, but also a brilliant lightning bolt that illuminates the entire house in brief flashes. Flashes of light illuminating eternity. Enlightenment. THE HOUSE OF ETERNITY, Part 2 As we walk through the House of Eternity with our candle, we discover that most rooms have multiple doorways in and out, like a giant maze. Which way do we turn in our journey from past to future? Everything that will ever be already is. The future has already happened in eternity. But as we wander through space-time we can make choices as to which direction we will take, which doorways we will walk through in our House of Eternity. The future can be arrived at by different routes. Some routes are longer or more treacherous or more picturesque than others. How we get to the future in space-time is the exercise of free will. The ultimate goal – our reunion, atonement with God – is predestined, but not every choice we make. But every possible choice we could make is already there for us, real now, in the House of Eternity. This phenomenon is mirrored in how we get to God, or the Truth. Sometimes it is quick, through revelation or epiphany or direct pointing, a straight line from darkness to light. Other times it is a long arduous journey through religious dogma and years of prayer or meditation, going down blind alleys and dead ends until a path with meaning emerges, something resonates, and the light shines through. Or experiencing pain so great that all logic, reason, dogma, study, and analysis – all thoughts and sensory processes – are blotted out, overridden by elemental life-and-death forces. And sometimes, as in my case, it is all of the above. What is the grace of God? Why do some people see the light and others not? Is it good karma, a reward for living a good life? Is there an element of quality to the choices we make as we wander through the House? Are some choices better than others? Do we really know what we are doing when we make decisions, or are our choices just freak accidents or semi-conscious knee-jerk reactions? For myself, I know only that I follow my bliss, riding the wave of spiritual forces, going where their gravity pulls me. In the House of Eternity I do not choose a doorway; I am swept through it. I know that I have done nothing to earn spiritual elevation. I am not a better person than anyone else. Why then, have I been graced to see eternity and cursed to bear the weight of that enlightened knowledge in a dark world of ignorance? THE HOUSE OF ETERNITY, Part 3 The razor’s edge, the knife-edge ridge, the Middle Way. Veer off the ridge to one side, seeking pleasure, and you take the first poison. Veer off to the other side, avoiding pain, and you take the second poison. Choosing to not walk the ridgeline at all, to get off the wheel of life and avoid situations that present poisonous temptations, is taking the third poison. Another insight into the House of Eternity: The future is the past. The future meets the past on the back porch of the House, connecting the opposite ends of the thread, and we and our candle find ourselves traversing the same rooms again. We relive the past, reinvent the wheel, relearn the lessons of history, repeatedly retrace our steps. We keep going forward but never get anywhere. That’s why history repeats itself; why art, religion, and philosophy change in style from one century to the next but are never improved. Time is a straight line, and also a closed circle. Civilizations rise and fall, ever greater feats of technology are achieved, but human nature never changes. Many roads are traveled, but progress can never be made in the worldly realm. The choices we make in life can change our route to the future, making our karma better or worse, taking us more or less time to get to the end of existence, but by any route we get to the same place in the end, which is the same place we started. The Dao is the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega. I have lived long enough now to have seen several complete cycles of birth, innocence, growth, learning, light, success, fatigue, decay, corruption, darkness, atrophy, death – and then sometimes a new burst of energy leading to another round of rising and falling. With each generation comes a rebirth, a reset, a new beginning to the cycle.