If time itself is an illusion, what is the numeration of years? Illusion or not, it was jet lag that kept me awake last night thinking about life, and not a concern for new year’s resolutions. Yet I decided three things:
- There must be progress towards embracing the underlying unity.
- How to correct the fallacy in perception that causes us to see a world of objects with ourselves as subject… the fallacy that has plagued our civilization from the beginning and has now grown to be of critical importance with our destruction of the biosphere? It’s hard to go from our normal insensitive and self-centered everyday behaviour towards this rational realization. Probably the way goes through the practical means of reducing our exploitation of people, animals or the earth itself for our selfish wants. It involves living with the bare necessary to sustain our existence, care in sourcing the products we use, love for those around us and sensitivity in our interaction with the earth and the creatures and humans with which we share it. The Biblical injunction ואהבת לרעך כמוך (love your companion as yourself) sounds preachy only as long as we insist on the unnatural separation of self from other, forgetting the underlying unity.
- Work must be done henceforth in a spirit of non-doing, without pressure or effort.
I don’t know what will come, but from now on, I will work in this way. The hours spent may be long, and I don’t live for enjoyment, but the work will be achieved without pressure or sense of effort. This is the way I work best; or rather this is the best way that work is achieved through me. - Entertainment is of no more use
We become so addicted to activity that when there is nothing to do, we feel a need to fill all available time with something else. The silence between activities is there to be enjoyed. Rather than “killing time”, or filling time, why not just enjoy it by simply being?
vikshepa 