The reason why we remain seekers and not finders in scientific and religious quests is becoming apparent to me: it is because life is a process, not an attained goal. Our individual life, and the general universal Life is a journey, a path, not a final resting place in some beatific vision. Would we have it otherwise? A.J. Muste said “There is no way to peace; peace is the way.” The same can be said about life, and about all quests. The Pilgrim’s Progress is never complete, but goes on and on.

The fundamental reason for this is that life unfolds in Time, not in Eternity, where goals have been attained. But while we live, we have no access to eternity. (Perhaps mystics have.) Pro-entropic and anti-entropic structures (like us) possess an arrow of time which purely mechanical or equilibrium structures lack.

Newly emerging buds in spring are a part of the flow of life, the flow of Tao, and (not “but”) falling leaves in autumn, when their sterns have been deliberately cut by a natural process, are both parts of life. Time does not stand still in the bloom of Summer, when already at the Mid-Summer Night Solstice the spirits of winter dance, nor in the snow and ice of winter, when already at the Winter Solstice we hear the angels sing.

Would we have it otherwise? I am not ready for a static blissful Nirvana – not yet.