It Comes and Goes

By Jayden Kyryluk  

"Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced." 

Soren Kierkegaard

It comes and goes. It comes and goes...

We're all so trapped in our own melodrama that we forget how brief our time is. We've all heard those older than us recite the prophetic words that "time flies."

If there is one inalienable law in the universe, it's that history repeats. Whether you like it or not, you'll be reciting the same prophecy one day.

Our bodies’ time on earth is but a snap of the finger, but it's our souls that carry on our story. In every death, there is life. When we move on from our body, our souls assume a new form in accordance with our karma. With each birth, we carry with us the karma we've acquired in past lives. It manifests as habits, deep character traits, and even trauma (Many Lives, Many Masters by Bryan Weiss). We’ve been trapped in this near infinitesimal process of life and death for such an unfathomable amount of ‘time.’ It’s only natural that our rational minds cannot understand this whole cycle of birth and death thing.

When in doubt, consult Buddha.

When the Buddha described how long our souls have been stuck in the cycle of birth and death, he described a mountain six miles wide, six miles high, and six miles long. Every hundred years a bird would fly with a silk scarf in its beak and run it over the mountain once. The length of time it takes the scarf to wear away the mountain is the length of time you have been on the path (Promises and Pitfalls of the Spiritual Path by Ram Dass).

So yeah, we’ve been here awhile.

Perhaps the Ocean, too, can give us perspective on our place in the universe.

The Ocean is living, breathing, and moving. The thousands, millions, and countless ripples, waves, and movements in the water come and go as we do. As our thoughts do. Every ripple and wave symbolize one lifetime in the Ocean of our souls existence. Each movement is one flight of Buddha’s bird. The countless ripples, waves, and movements in the water characterize our essential Truth – that we are born only to die, to transition to our next form in a long line of birth and death on our journey Home. We journey to re-discover our true nature; that we are the Ocean. We journey to experience this essential Truth.

So when you look at the ripples in the water, know that every brief movement is but the life you are living right now.

We are everything and we are nothing. We are but a ripple in the Sea of Existence, unaware of what we really are, drifting towards the end of who we think we are. Unaware of its surroundings, a wave lives its existence believing it is a wave and only a wave. Around it is a vast Ocean manifesting itself as a wave playing a simple game with itself to see when it will come home.

The Ocean shows us the millions and billions of our past and future lives all at once. We can witness this current life of ours in every movement in the sea. Every wave is connected by the Ocean, and every life is connected with the soul. With the Ocean, we see our true nature. We see One whole and One reality. But seeing and realizing are different things. The first step is seeing, but ultimate Truth lies in realization. That is the purpose of it all. To realize the Ocean within us. Not just see it, but experience it.

Ah, so. It comes and goes. It comes and goes…

Originally written on February 25, 2023 in Gokarna, India