Chapter 101 damsel and granny

The beautiful girl turned into an old woman with snakeskin and white hair. The poet mourned the death, but the wise man was complacent in another way. Time is a wonderful feeling.Confucius said on the river: The dead are like husbands, never giving up day and night.Time is the dead, it comes like flowing water day and night, but it doesn't stop for anyone.When a knife is cut off, water flows more. The more a person tries to keep time, the faster it seems to pass. The more we become aware of time, the more we lose the notion of eternity, which is another non-time or timeless phenomenon.Among the various experiences of human beings, the most similar to eternity should be the experience of dreaming. In dreams, there is no movement of time, especially no causal relationship of linear time.In other words, it breaks down the sequence of events and presents them in our minds as a whole.

Breaking down the linear relationship between time and events can give us a more rounded view of life.For example, when ordinary people see a piece of firewood being burned to ashes, because the firewood comes first and the ashes follow, it is the firewood that disappears and turns into ashes.Although the ashes can no longer be restored to the original firewood, we should not think that the later ashes are the former firewood. We should understand that firewood is firewood and ashes are ashes. This means that although everything arises and ceases in a moment, each moment is independent and is an endless present.Sixty years ago, a girl as beautiful as a flower turned into an old woman with snake skin and white hair. The poet sighed and said: "The most difficult thing to keep in the world is that the beauty is like a mirror and a flower is a tree; but a wise man can watch and be content, because he thinks that the beautiful and flowery The young girl and the old woman with snake skin and white hair are independent existences. When he sees the young girl, he will not think that she will become an old woman in the future; when he sees the old woman, he will not think that she was our beautiful young girl before .In other words, he breaks the linear relationship between the young girl and the old woman, grasps the present, and regards every moment as eternity.

Only by breaking the shackles of linear time can we approach eternity. (End of the book)