Everything Is Transient Quotes

We long for permanence but everything in the known universe is transient. That’s a fact but one we fight.

The window glows. The slow sandy light of dawn permeates the room. Everything transient and aching; everything tentative. To be here, in this room, high in this house, out of the cellar, with her: it is like medicine.

What a difference! Under the esthetic sky, everything is buoyant, beautiful, transient! when ethics arrives on the scene, everything becomes harsh, angular and infinitely boring

she understood as never before that home wasn’t a place but rather a place in the heart. In this troubled world, everything was transient except what we could carry with us in our minds and hearts. Every home ceased to be a home sooner or later, but not with its demolition. It survived destruction as long as just one person who had loved it still lived. Home was the story of what happened there, not the story of where it happened.

I've learned that it is important to be beautiful to people. That all that matters is that you are lovely to the people around you and the people that you meet. It doesn't matter if you're a show off or a little bit vain, as long as you're good to your mum, and that you're kind, and that you're lovely. And that everything is transient and superficial and to not get attached to material things because you're going to lose it all. And the only thing that is constant is love.

Everything is indefinite, misty, and transient; only virtue is clear, and it cannot be destroyed by any force. —MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO

People and things will come and go. Everything in this life is transient. This is why spirit must always be our first priority. For it is our only true constant.

the only thing that lasts a whole lifetime is life itself, everything else is inevitably precarious, unstable, transient

the only thing that lasts a whole lifetime is life itself, everything else is inevitably precarious, unstable, transient, time has taught me that one great truth

Everything is transient. You must transcend and transform for higher self realization.

Everything is transitory. What are we trying to grasp or hold?? What are we worried about??

Everything is transient and temporary, so be patient and don't get angry.

I feel to that the gap between my new life in New York and the situation at home in Africa is stretching into a gulf, as Zimbabwe spirals downwards into a violent dictatorship. My head bulges with the effort to contain both worlds. When I am back in New York, Africa immediately seems fantastical – a wildly plumaged bird, as exotic as it is unlikely. Most of us struggle in life to maintain the illusion of control, but in Africa that illusion is almost impossible to maintain. I always have the sense there that there is no equilibrium, that everything perpetually teeters on the brink of some dramatic change, that society constantly stands poised for some spasm, some tsunami in which you can do nothing but hope to bob up to the surface and not be sucked out into a dark and hungry sea. The origin of my permanent sense of unease, my general foreboding, is probably the fact that I have lived through just such change, such a sudden and violent upending of value systems. In my part of Africa, death is never far away. With more Zimbabweans dying in their early thirties now, mortality has a seat at every table. The urgent, tugging winds themselves seem to whisper the message, memento mori, you too shall die. In Africa, you do not view death from the auditorium of life, as a spectator, but from the edge of the stage, waiting only for your cue. You feel perishable, temporary, transient. You feel mortal. Maybe that is why you seem to live more vividly in Africa. The drama of life there is amplified by its constant proximity to death. That’s what infuses it with tension. It is the essence of its tragedy too. People love harder there. Love is the way that life forgets that it is terminal. Love is life’s alibi in the face of death. For me, the illusion of control is much easier to maintain in England or America. In this temperate world, I feel more secure, as if change will only happen incrementally, in manageable, finely calibrated, bite-sized portions. There is a sense of continuity threaded through it all: the anchor of history, the tangible presence of antiquity, of buildings, of institutions. You live in the expectation of reaching old age. At least you used to. But on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, those two states of mind converge. Suddenly it feels like I am back in Africa, where things can be taken away from you at random, in a single violent stroke, as quick as the whip of a snake’s head. Where tumult is raised with an abruptness that is as breathtaking as the violence itself.

The only road to freedom is self-education in art. Art is not a luxury for any advanced civilization; it is a necessity, without which creative intelligence will wither and die. Even in economically troubled times, support for the arts should be a national imperative. Dance, for example, requires funding not only to secure safe, roomy rehearsal space but to preserve the indispensible continuity of the teacher-student link. American culture has become unbalanced by its obsession with the blood sport of politics, a voracious vortex consuming everything in its path. History shows that, for both individuals and nations, political power is transient. America's true legacy is its ideal of liberty, which has inspired insurgencies around the world. Politicians and partisans of both the Right and the Left must recognize that art too is a voice of liberty, requiring nurture without intrusion. Art unites the spiritual and material realms. In an age of alluring, magical machines, the society that forgets art risks losing its soul.

What we had between us was nothing as simple as longing or sexual desire. It was a hunger for beauty and meaning, and a willingness to search in the world and in ourselves to find it. We had a sense of permanence and the fear of oblivion. We knew, of course, that everything was transient and nothing could last- and yet it didn't stop us from wishing for something eternally beautiful

To be detached from the world, (in the sense that Buddhist and Taoists and Hindus often talk about detachment), does not mean to be non-participative. By that I don't mean that you just go through doing everything mechanically and have your thoughts elsewhere. I mean a complete participation, but still detached. And the difference between the two attitudes is this.. On the one hand, there is a way of being so anxious about physical pleasure, so afraid that you won't make it, that you grab it too hard..that you just have to have that thing, and if you do that, you destroy it completely.. and therefore after every attempt to get it, you feel disappointed, you feel empty, you feel something was lost..and so you want it again, you have to keep repeating, repeating, repeating, repeating..because you never really got that. And it is this that's the hang up, this is what is meant by attachment to this world... But on the other hand, pleasure in its fullness cannot be experienced, when one is grasping it.. I knew a little girl to whom someone gave a bunny rabbit. She was so delighted with the bunny rabbit and so afraid of losing it, that taking it home in the car, she squeezed it to death with love. And lots of parents do that to their children. And lots of spouses do it to each other. They hold on too hard, and so take the life out of this transient, beautifully fragile thing that life is. To have it, to have life, and to have its pleasure, you must at the same time let go of it.

Look about and contemplate life! 1 Everything is transient and nothing endures. There is birth and death, growth and decay; there is combination and separation. 2 The glory of the world is like a flower: it stands in full bloom in the morning and fades in the heat of the day. 3 Wherever you look, there is a rushing and a struggling, and an eager pursuit of pleasure. There is a panic flight from pain and death, and hot are the flames of burning desires. The world is vanity fair, full of changes and transformations.

Those of us who write love letters know that their aims are impossible. We try, and fail, to make the ethereal material. We strive against the inevitable ending, knowing that everything is transient. We choose to be grateful for the time, however brief it may be.

By the time Bibi reached her bedroom, she understood as never before that home wasn’t a place but rather a place in the heart. In this troubled world, everything was transient except what we could carry with us in our minds and hearts. Every home ceased to be a home sooner or later, but not with its demolition. It survived destruction as long as just one person who had loved it still lived. Home was the story of what happened there, not the story of where it happened.

See, the thing is that happiness is a whore. I’ve never met a more disloyal emotion in my life. Nothing like misery, which proposes to you on the first date. Yet, like a mistress I swear off every time, all happiness has to do is peek its head around the corner, contrite and apologetic, and I give myself over to it completely. It’s transient and fleeting, and I know it won’t still be in my bed the next morning, but while I have it, it’s everything. That night, it was everything.

you will always have to find out whether a need is transient or persistent

She had sacrificed everything she knew for a love as ephemeral and transient as the rainbows that glimmered through the sea spray.

In this troubled world, everything was transient except what we could carry with us in our minds and hearts.

History, Jared Diamond notes, is full of diseases that ‘once caused terrifying epidemics and then disappeared as mysteriously as they had come38’. He cites the robust but mercifully transient English sweating sickness, which raged from 1485 to 1552, killing tens of thousands as it went, before burning itself out. Too much efficiency is not a good thing for any infectious organism.

That which never was, cannot exist, and that which exists, cannot cease to exist. Even the Sun is transient, coming into existence and vanishing. The candle both exists and does not exist, for, when it is burnt, its substance dissolves back into the five elements. Everything which has a name and a form ceases one day to exist in that particular mode, though it does not cease to be a creation of God.

Sometimes, even when I'm standing on a remarkable slice of terra firma, I'm besotted with wanderlust, my heart thumping for the next unknown place and my mind wondering what's next. But right now, in this rain forest, floating in crystal waters after a walk on ancient, sacred soil with my flesh and blood, I want to be nowhere else. Nowhere. This, right now, is home. I can hear God through the rustling of the prehistoric fan shaped leaves, the scurry of alien insects on the bark, the familiar laughter of my children slipping on stones in the water. Everything here is unfamiliar, but it's familiar. We are transient, vagabonds, and yet we're tethered.

I saw her weighed down in the tumultuous water not just by the iron chains in which my father had bound her but also by the terrible truth that she had sacrificed everything she knew for a love as ephemeral and transient as the rainbows that glimmered through the sea spray

The blue-grey river, still ice dappled, the soft rucking of the water, creased like sheets between a lover's fingers, to mark our passage. Behind us, transient arrows left upon the surface fading into nothing but dreams and stillness. And everything else—the promise of sky. Endless, unreachable light.

In this troubled world, everything was transient except what we could carry with us in our minds and hearts. Every home ceased to be a home sooner or later, but not with its demolition. It survived destruction as long as just one person who had loved it still lived. Home was the story of what happened there, not the story of where it happened.

Introductory paragraph incorporating the thesis: After a challenging childhood marked by adversity, Adam Parrish has become a successful freshman at Harvard University. In the past, he had spent his time doubting himself, fearing he would become like his father, obsessing that others could see his trailer-park roots, and idealizing wealth, but now he has built a new future where no one has to know where he's come from. Before becoming a self-actualized young man at Harvard, Adam had been deeply fascinated by the concept of the ley lines and also supernaturally entangled with one of the uncanny forests located along one, but he has now focused on the real world, using only the ghost of magic to fleece other students with parlor trick tarot card readings. He hasn't felt like himself for months, but he is going to be just fine. Followed by three paragraphs with information that supports the thesis. First: Adam understands that suffering is often transient, even when it feels permanent. This too shall pass, etc. Although college seems like a lifetime, it is only four years. Four years is only a lifetime if one is a guinea pig. Second paragraph, building on the first point: Magic has not always been good for Adam. During high school, he frequently immersed himself in it as a form of avoidance. Deep down, he fears that he is prone to it as his father is prone to abuse, and that it will eventually make him unsuitable for society. By depriving himself of magic, he forces himself to become someone valuable to the unmagic world, i.e. the Crying Club. Third paragraph, with the most persuasive point: Harvard is a place Ronan Lynch cannot be, because he cannot survive there, either physically or socially. Without such hard barriers, Adam will surely continue to return to Ronan Lynch again and again, and thus fall back in with bad habits. He will never achieve the life of financial security and recognition he planned. Thesis restated, bringing together all the information to prove it: Although life is unbearable now, and Adam Parrish seems to have lost everything important to him in the present by pursuing the things important to him in the past, he will be fine. Concluding paragraph describing what the reader just learned and why it is important for them to have learned it: He will be fine. He will be fine. He will be fine. He will be fine.

But when I thought of Scylla, I thought of the foolish and all-too-human girl, gasping for breath amid the froth of waves churning in the wake of my father’s boat. I saw her weighed down in the tumultuous water not just by the iron chains in which my father had bound her but also by the terrible truth that she had sacrificed everything she knew for a love as ephemeral and transient as the rainbows that glimmered through the sea spray.

desire are united to his purpose by the use of Sigils, or sacred letters. By projecting consciousness into one object, sensation becomes intensified because not dissipated by the usual distractions.This intensification is attained by abstaining from desire in anything but the object [i.e. the Sigil]. By non-resistance (involuntary thought and action), any worry or apprehension of it not working, being transient, find no permanent abode, and the practitioner desires everything. Anxiety defeats the purpose, because it retains and exposes the desire; desire is non-attraction. When the mind is quiet and focused, and undisturbed by external images, there is no distortion of the sense impression (there should be no hallucination: that could end in fulfilment of whatever it is that is imagined). Instead, the mind magnifies the existing desire, and joins it to the object in secret.

Life is a funny thing. We claim it to be our own; but the truth is, it's not. It belongs to something much bigger. We, like everything else, are transient. This life is temporary and everything about us is temporary. What we call our life is nothing more than borrowed energy from something much bigger--nature, the universe, God--whatever floats your boat. And one day, when we pass, we will give that energy back to the world we borrowed it from in the first place.

Finally we touch that Great Fact, which Goethe incorporated into his final words: the 'ever-womanly.' It is a sin against Goethe to say that here he means the female sex. He refers to that profundity signifying the human soul as related to the mystery of the world; that which deeply yearns as the eternal in man, the ever-womanly which draws the soul to the eternally immortal, the eternal wisdom, and which gives itself to the 'eternal masculine.' The ever-womanly draws us towards the ever-masculine. It has nothing to do with something feminine in the ordinary sense. Therefore can we truly seek this ever-womanly in man and woman: the ever-womanly which aspires to the union with the ever-manly in the cosmos, to become one with the Divine-Spiritual that inter-penetrates and permeates the world towards which Faust strives. This mystery of man of all ages pursued by Faust from the beginning, this secret to which Spiritual Science is to lead us in a modern sense, is expressed by Goethe paradigmatically and monumentally in those five words at the conclusion of the second part of Faust represented as a mystic Spirit Choir; that everything physical surrounding us in the sense world is Maya, illusion; a symbol only of the spiritual. But this spiritual we can perceive if we penetrate that which covers it like a veil. And in it we see attained what on earth was impossible of attainment. We see that, which for ordinary intellect is indescribable, transformed into action as soon as the human spirit unites with the spiritual world. 'The ineffable wrought in love.' And we see the significance of the moment when the soul becomes united with the eternal masculine of the cosmic world. That is the great secret expressed by Goethe in the words: 'All of mere transient date As symbol showeth; Here the inadequate To fullness groweth; Here the ineffable Wrought is in love; The ever-womanly Draws us above ...

If someone doesn’t want to be in your life, let that person go. There’s no wisdom in holding on to a partner, person, employer or a thing. Everything and everyone must ultimately perish. Separation from all that we love is not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’. It’s inevitable, only a matter of time. Our childhood, adolescence, youth, old age, all phases pass. Those who loved you deeply yesterday may loathe you tomorrow. The memories of the one who you loved deeply once, may only give you grief now. This is samsara – cyclical and transient.

Now this room would soon belong to someone else, perhaps another child who would cultivate his or her own memories. All the dreams he had dreamed, the lives he had wished for himself, the secret yearnings and longings he had felt, were all associated with this room. But as he had learned from an early age with the death of his parents, everything in the world is transient, and we can only hope our time is well spent. And most importantly, those dreams and longings become a part of you, not of a place, and they go with you wherever you go.

Christians have nothing to rely on but Christ, their Lord and God. They willingly surrender all things for His sake and say: 'Before I deny or forsake my Christ, I will bid farewell to neck and belly, honor and goods, house and home, wife and child, and everything!' Therefore this courage cannot be a sham or a delusion; it must be genuine and real. Its comfort is not rooted in earth's temporal or transient things, for the sake of which it would be willing to suffer this. No, it pins its hopes solely on the Lord Christ, who was crucified and died for us.

A faith that despises the mind and the free individual, that preaches submission and resignation, and that regards life as a poor and transient thing, is ill-equipped for self-criticism. Those who become bored by conventional “Bible” religions, and seek “enlightenment” by way of the dissolution of their own critical faculties into nirvana in any form, had better take a warning. They may think they are leaving the realm of despised materialism, but they are still being asked to put their reason to sleep, and to discard their minds along with their sandals.

In Buddhism monks recite daily the Five Remembrances, which are: I will lose my youth, my health, my dear ones and everything I hold dear, and finally lose life itself, by the very nature of my being human. These are bitter reminders that the only thing that continues is the consequences of our action. The fact that all the things we hold dear and love are transient does not mean that we should love them less but—as I do Karen and Serena—love them even more. Suffering, the Buddha said, if it does not diminish love, will transport you to the farther shore.

What is our life but this dance of transient forms? Isn’t everything always changing: the leaves on the trees in the park, the light in your room as you read this, the seasons, the weather, the time of day, the people passing you in the street? And what about us? Doesn’t everything we have done in the past seem like a dream now? The friends we grew up with, the childhood haunts, those views and opinions we once held with such single-minded passion: We have left them all behind. Now, at this moment, reading this book seems vividly real to you. Even this page will soon be only a memory.

Everything on earth is in continuous flux: nothing preserves a constant fixed form, and our affections towards external things pass and change with them... There is nothing solid to which the heart can attach itself. Also, there is scarcely a pleasure here below which does not pass; as for enduring happiness, I doubt that it can be known. In our most vivid joys there is scarcely an instant at which our hearts could truly say: would that this moment might last forever; and how can one call that transient state happy which still leaves our hearts disturbed and empty, which makes us regret something beforehand or still desire something afterwards.

Criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment A pattern of intense and unstable interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self Impulsivity in at least two areas that is potentially self-damaging Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood Chronic feelings of emptiness Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms

Liberation, the ending of sorrow, ceasing to be what you ignorantly think you are and becoming what you are in fact. For a little while, thanks to the moksha medicine, you will know what it's like to be what in fact you are, what in fact you always have been. What a timeless bliss! But, like everything else, this timelessness is transient. Like everything else, it will pass. And when it has passed, what will you do with this experience,? What will you do with all the similar experiences that the moksha medicine will bring you in the years to come? Will you merely enjoy them as you would enjoy an evening at the puppet show, and then go back to business as usual, back to behaving like silly delinquents you imagine yourself to be? Or, having glimpsed, will you devote your lives to the business, not at all as usual, of being what you are in fact?

The most transient visitor to this planet, I thought, who picked up this paper could not fail to be aware, even from this scattered testimony, that England is under the rule of a patriarchy. Nobody in their senses could fail to detect the dominance of the professor. His was the power and the money and the influence. He was the proprietor of the paper and its editor and sub-editor. He was the Foreign Secretary and the judge. He was the cricketer; he owned the racehorses and the yachts. He Was the director of the company that pays two hundred per cent to its shareholders. He left millions to charities and colleges that were ruled by himself. He suspended the film actress in mid-air. He will decide if the hair on the meat axe is human; he it is who will acquit or convict the murderer, and hang him, or let him go free. With the exception of the fog he seemed to control everything. Yet he was angry.

Karmic Cause and Effect It is very important to contemplate the connection between our mental states and our actions. Our karmic patterns are formed and sustained by the intentional actions of the “three gates” of body, speech, and mind—everything we do, say, or think with volitional intention. Our actions and reactions form the cause and effect of action (Skt. karma; Tib. las) that in turn determines the kinds of experiences we have. As such, our mind has the potential to transport us to elevated states of existence or to plunge us into demeaning states of confusion and anguish. Our actions are not like footprints left on water; they leave imprints in our minds, the consequences of which will invariably manifest unless we can somehow nullify them. As the thirteenth Karmapa, Dudul Dorje (1733–97) states: In the empty dwelling place of confusion, Desire is unchanging, marked on the mind Like an etching on rock.13 The thoughts and emotions we experience and the attitudes and beliefs we hold all help to mold our character and dispositions and the kind of people we become. Conditioned existence is characterized by delusions, defilements, confusions, and disturbances of all kinds. We have to ask ourselves why we experience so much pain, while our pleasures are so ephemeral and transient. The answer is that these are the karmic fruits of our negative actions (Skt. papa-karma; Tib. sdig pa’i las). Jamgön Kongtrül says: The result of wholesome action is happiness; the result of unwholesome action is suffering, and nothing else. These results are not interchangeable: when you plant buckwheat, you get buckwheat; when you plant barley, you get barley.14 This cycle of cause and effect continues relentlessly, unless we embark on a virtuous spiritual path and learn to reverse this process by performing wholesome actions (Skt. kusala-karma; Tib. dge ba’i las). It is our intentions that determine whether an action is wholesome or unwholesome, and therefore it is our intentions that will dictate the quality of our future experiences. We have to think of karmic cause and effect in the following terms: “My current suffering is due to the negative actions, attitudes, thoughts, and emotions I performed in the past, and whatever I think, say, and do now will determine what I experience and become in the future. So from now on, I will contemplate the truth of karma, and pursue my spiritual practices with enthusiasm and positive intentions.

True reverence is more than a transient feeling. It involves being ever mindful of God’s presence and honoring Christ by being “temple-appropriate” in everything you do.

Do not hesitate to give and do not give with bad grace; for you will discover who He is that pays you back a reward with a good grace. Do not turn your back on the needy, but share everything with your brother and call nothing your own. For if you have what is eternal in common, how much more should you have what is transient!17

atomic motions cause the waxing and waning of rivers, so too do they produce the transient body that you—whatever “you” means—currently inhabit before its substance flows back into the great global sea of atoms. Consider, then, the particles that are departing your body at this very moment. There is no need to wait for death to scatter you to the winds, waters, and soils of the world. It is already happening.

Nothing can exist permanently unless it is observed because it is Mind that influences and shapes Quanta of Energy, without which Quanta would once again become a ―potential‖ for something else.If, for example, everyone in the world were to cease observing everything in the world that was created by humans by ceasing to focus on its perceived existence, then everything on Earth that was man-made would cease to physically exist and would dissipate back into formless Energy. There would be no thought Energy to perpetuate the illusion of its existence. This is why everything on Earth and indeed the Astral worlds are referred to in some cultures as ―maya‖ or illusion, due to its inherent transient and ephemeral nature.

There is no illusion in awaken mind, because everything is perceived as impermanent and transient.

The mask, he’d say, was something that you wore but was opposite to you; because it was not wholly real, it could withstand pain that you could not; because it was not wholly human, its beauty was not diminished by age or feeling. Father’s hands never smelled of the same thing twice; and fragrances hung in the house like sweet invaders, like opulent chains of memories that no longer belonged to anyone. We’d encounter his models on their way up or down the stairs, in the ordinary prettiness of their unmade-up daytime faces; it was always a shock to find them in the magazines a few months later, and see what Father had made from them. Louche, tomboy, prissy, gauche; Cleopatran, Regency, Berlin decadent; flappers and hippies and Arabian princesses—he mined their faces for stories and myths and desires old as history, or older, like seams of rare ore that lay buried in the earth of their youth. In the magazines, the faces of these transient girls had a power, a power that my father could summon and balance, like those old music hall acts that spun plates on sticks. They could call into being any age or emotion or state of mind; and everything around them would be transformed too, turned from diffuse, unwieldy life into a story, something with direction and significance. Looking out from the glossy pages, their faces seemed to promise everything; they promised that you could become anything; they promised that they would take you with them, that you could leave yourself behind.

The second of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths states that the root of suffering is attachment. Everything in the world is transient, so it’s wise not to get attached to anything or the way anything currently is. The Buddha

I felt that I was finally facing a fundamental fact of life: that everything is transient and loss is inevitable; that is just the way it is. Since most of the time I try to ignore this immutable fact, finally embracing it bore the sweetness of embracing Truth. And embracing that truth, painful as it is, can make me feel more authentically alive.

I ask myself often: “Why is it that everything changes?” And only one answer comes back to me: That is how life is. Nothing, nothing at all, has any lasting character. The Buddha said: This existence of ours is as transient as autumn clouds. To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance. A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky, Rushing by, like a torrent down a steep mountain.

The birds inspired me." “They may be born with wings, but they too fall before learning to fly. While they begin life amongst other birds, growing up, they must fend for themselves. Some may express displeasure, others would show admiration, but they cannot allow either of the emotions to get to them. Riding on winds and touring the sky, they do not worry about the ones who do not keep up with their pace, because if they halt to look back at the companions they lost, they will never reach the heights they were destined to. Birds do not carry excess baggage; the weight will hinder their flight. Free-spirited, they explore the skies with faith, trusting Allah to take care of them. Everything else is transient. Ibn al-Qayyim used their example and said, the heart, in its journey to Allah, The Exalted, is like that of a bird: love is its head, fear and hope are its two wings.

May I continue?” YES, BUT NOT INDEFINITELY, said Death. EVERYTHING IS TRANSIENT.

He taught that everything is transient, that happiness and youth can never last, that all life is suffering, and we are trapped by an endless cycle of birth and rebirth. If you have a good life, your next life will be better. If you do bad things, you will return next as a beggar, or a beast of burden perhaps. But only by giving up all desire can you escape the endless wheel and reach heaven.

There is a word in Hebrew—nitzotzot. It means ‘divine sparks.’ It refers to the infinitesimal fragments of godliness that inhabit everything—all of creation, both animate and inanimate. When something is used as it was divinely intended, these sparks are said to be ‘liberated’; they shine, become a reflection of the face of God himself in this transient world.

The world around us is in a constant state of flux. Everything that comes will eventually go, and this transient nature of life is not something to be feared but understood.

Privacy is a transient notion. It started when people stopped believing that God could see everything and stopped when governments realised there was a vacancy to be filled.

Endless Love Like the river never stops, I too shall never stop loving you, Like those shining stars, I too shall always shine for you, Like the wind that paces through the forest where I spent few moments with you, I too shall in that forest of memories always seek you, just you, Maybe it is my compulsive proneness that I only seek you, In my wakeful state and in my subconscious slumbers I only think of you, Maybe it is my memories that refuse to exist without you, And before this stubbornness of my mind and heart , I surrender and I allow myself to love you, just you, In the Summer garden where many roses bloom, I find none like you, Like the desperate butterflies seeking their flowers of choice, in the garden of life, I only seek you, just you, The roses have wilted, butterfly wings lie strewn on the grass blades, and they all remind me of you, But unlike the changing seasons, my heart always stays in the perennial state of loving you, Everything in this universe seems to be seeking something or someone, just like I endlessly seek you, In the summer joys, in the forest wind, in the gushing river, wherever I see, I just see a reflection of you, As the palpable world grows around me in these transient forms, I seek my world within you, In your beautiful eyes, in your smiles, in your scent and in every essence that reflects you, I transpose these beautiful reflections on this world, until everything looks like you, exactly like you, Maybe Irma, love is what I feel when I see you, when I touch you, when I just say nothing and simply sit beside you, And the palpable world transforms into your smile, and I resume loving you, In the forest of my endless memories of you, Where I often tread in the brightness of the day and the silence of the night, to be with you, just you, The river still flows, the stars still twinkle, the forest still grows, and with them your love in my heart grows too, I have entered a precarious state where there is only one certainty, that to keep on loving you, And wonder if you feel so too, I have every reason to believe you do too Irma, because the trails of life we tread together, still remind me of you, and there at discrete corners I hear the echoes of your longings too, And then my heart whispers, while my mind quietly lets it be its own master, “I love you!” And the river of my feelings gains a renewed momentum to rush endlessly and forever unto you, And as lovers, we fill our senses where you become me and I become you, And what a joy it is to love you, And say again and again, “my darling Irma. I love you!

Moreover, there is no known reason why the geometry of space and time should be described by the particular types of curved geometry defined by Riemann. There exist other more complicated varieties that could in principle have been employed by Nature. Only observation can at present tell us which mathematics is chosen by Nature for employment in particular situations. This may of course merely be a transient manifestation of our relative ignorance of the bigger picture in which everything that is not excluded is demanded.

After Sidney had given her his handkerchief and ordered further drinks, Amanda turned the conversation towards her childhood; how she wanted to run away back to the time when she was last happy, holidaying on the island of Skye, on a day with strong winds and dark skies, the barking of dogs, the bleating of sheep, the collapse of telephone wires – with no boat daring to go out to sea, and everyone stuck inside. ‘No one thought we would ever go out again, but then the dark clouds moved and everything blew over the Cuillins and the sun came through the clouds and light fell across the tops. The wind was stilled and we could go out again and I felt such happiness that the darkness had passed. I often think that if I ever go back there then the same thing will happen, that the clouds will clear and the air will still be fresh, and the dogs will stop barking, and the light on the mountains will be sharp even if it’s only for a short time. I will still have seen it. Do you understand, Sidney?’ ‘Like Noah after the flood.’ ‘We always need something to remember. A time when everything was possible. Do you think this too will pass?’ ‘Eventually. The compensation for losing happiness, for discovering that it never lasts, is that our troubles are transient too.’ ‘I don’t think that’s of much comfort to those who are in distress.’ ‘One cannot be trite about these things. But the ultimate end to suffering is death.’ ‘Then perhaps I could find the person behind all this and kill them myself?’ ‘I’ll ignore that remark, Amanda.

I feel a kinship with him over this tragedy. All of life is transient, no matter how permanent and unyielding we like to imagine it. Everything we think matters can be swept away in a moment. From fire. Death. Floods. War. Life. Which begs the question: What really matters in the end? If all that we cling to is just illusion, what is the truth? What is real? What will last?

Jesus used the language of being born again because in that day and time almost everything about your identity was determined by your birth. Your ethnicity, your religion, your occupation, your economic status—everything about you—was determined by your natural birth. However, according to Jesus, if you want to perceive the kingdom of God in this world, (to have an awakening to where you see it everywhere) you need to be born again.

are constantly taking transient experiences, cramming them into prearranged slots, turning discontinuity into continuity, and making solid what is actually fluid. The technical term for what’s happening is reification—giving immaterial experiences “thingness.” So convincing is this transformation that rocks seem solid and heavy when, in fact, your mind reified them—you have created solidity and heaviness in your own awareness. This constitutes another outrageous conclusion to anyone who is out to reinforce and reaffirm the spell/dream/illusion. But you cannot thaw out the “thingness” of the physical world unless you break down the process that created it. I’m hesitant to use any kind of jargon, but we need to delve into how reification works. The dictionary definition of reify is “to make something more concrete or real.” The mental image of money gets reified into a dollar bill, which you can fold up and stick in your wallet. “Parenting” gets reified when you decide to have a baby you can hold in your arms. What’s earthshaking is that virtual reality owes its existence entirely to reification. The web of connections that entangles everything in the spell/dream/ illusion with everything else comes down to the mind, because connections are mind-made. No object is actually a physical thing, pure and simple. “Object” and “thing” and “physical” are strands of a mental web. People find it relatively easy to accept that a piece of paper currency is the reified form of a concept (money), but they balk when they are told that the same is true of body, brain, and universe. The key is to

Of all the nouns we use to disguise the hollowness of the human condition, none is more influential than "myself". It consists of a collage of still images - name, gender, nationality, profession, enthusiasms, relationships - which are renovated from time to time, but otherwise are each a relic from one particular experience or another. The defining teaching of the Buddhist tradition, that of non-self, is merely pointing out the limitations of this reflexive view we hold of ourselves. It's not that the self does not exist, but that it is as cobbled together and transient as everything else. [With] the practice of meditation, ... we can begin to see how each artifact of the mind is raised and lowered to view, like so many flashcards. But we can also glimpse, once in a while, the sleight-of-hand shuffling the card and pulling them off the deck. Behind the objects lies a process. Self is a process. Self is a verb.

The dying mall has attracted some odd tenants, such as a satellite branch of the public library and an office of the State Attorney General's Child Predator Unit. As malls die across the country, we'll see many kinds of creative repurposing. Already, there are churches and casinos inside half-dead malls, so why not massage parlors, detox centers, transient hotels, haunted houses, prisons, petting zoos or putt-putt golf courses (covering the entire mall)? Leaving Santee, Chuck and I wandered into the food court, where only three of twelve restaurant slots were still occupied. On the back wall of this forlorn and silent space was a mural put up by Boscov, the mall's main tenant. Titled "B part of your community", it reads: KINDNESS COUNTS / PLANT A TREE / MAKE A DONATION / HELP A NEIGHBOR / VISIT THE ELDERLY / HOPE / ADOPT A PET / DRIVE A HYBRID / PICK UP THE TRASH / VOLUNTEER / CONSERVE ENERGY / RECYCLE / JOIN SOMETHING / PAINT A MURAL / HUG SOMEONE / SMILE / DRINK FILTERED WATER / GIVE YOUR TIME / USE SOLAR ENERGY / FEED THE HUNGRY / ORGANIZE A FUNDRAISER / CREATE AWARENESS / FIX A PLAYGROUND/ START A CLUB / BABYSIT These empty recommendations are about as effective as "Just Say No", I'm afraid. As the CIA pushed drugs, the first lady chirped, "Just say no!". And since everything in the culture, car, iPad, iPhone, television, internet, Facebook, Twitter and shopping mall, etc., is designed to remove you from your immediate surroundings, it will take more than cutesy suggestions on walls to rebuild communities. Also, the worse the neighborhoods or contexts, the more hopeful and positive the slogans. Starved of solutions, we shall eat slogans.

This … perception of impermanence … gives rise to the knowledge that even those things which seem most intimate to us – such as our emotions – are transient states which come and go. … From … detached observation it … becomes clear that even one's conscious mind is but a process like everything else. Most people regard their mental life as their true inner essence ( … ), but insight meditation discloses that the stream of consciousness is just one more facet of the complex interaction of the five factors of individuality, and not what one 'really is'.

Theism and materialism, so indifferent when taken retrospectively, point, when we take them prospectively, to wholly different outlooks of experience. For, according to the theory of mechanical evolution, the laws of redistribution of matter and motion, tho they are certainly to thank for all the good hours which our organisms have ever yielded us and for all the ideals which our minds now frame, are yet fatally certain to undo their work again, and to redissolve everything that they have once evolved. You all know the picture of the last state of the universe which evolutionary science foresees. I cannot state it better than in Mr. Balfour's words: That is the sting of it, that in the vast driftings of the cosmic weather, tho many a jeweled shore appears, and many an enchanted cloud-bank floats away, long lingering ere it be dissolved—even as our world now lingers, for our joy-yet when these transient products are gone, nothing, absolutely NOTHING remains, of represent those particular qualities, those elements of preciousness which they may have enshrined. Dead and gone are they, gone utterly from the very sphere and room of being. Without an echo; without a memory; without an influence on aught that may come after, to make it care for similar ideals. This utter final wreck and tragedy is of the essence of scientific materialism as at present understood. The lower and not the higher forces are the eternal forces, or the last surviving forces within the only cycle of evolution which we can definitely see. Mr. Spencer believes this as much as anyone; so why should he argue with us as if we were making silly aesthetic objections to the 'grossness' of 'matter and motion,' the principles of his philosophy, when what really dismays us is the disconsolateness of its ulterior practical results? No the true objection to materialism is not positive but negative. It would be farcical at this day to make complaint of it for what it IS for 'grossness.' Grossness is what grossness DOES—we now know THAT. We make complaint of it, on the contrary, for what it is NOT—not a permanent warrant for our more ideal interests, not a fulfiller of our remotest hopes. The notion of God, on the other hand, however inferior it may be in clearness to those mathematical notions so current in mechanical philosophy, has at least this practical superiority over them, that it guarantees an ideal order that shall be permanently preserved. A world with a God in it to say the last word, may indeed burn up or freeze, but we then think of him as still mindful of the old ideals and sure to bring them elsewhere to fruition; so that, where he is, tragedy is only provisional and partial, and shipwreck and dissolution not the absolutely final things. This need of an eternal moral order is one of the deepest needs of our breast. And those poets, like Dante and Wordsworth, who live on the conviction of such an order, owe to that fact the extraordinary tonic and consoling power of their verse. Here then, in these different emotional and practical appeals, in these adjustments of our concrete attitudes of hope and expectation, and all the delicate consequences which their differences entail, lie the real meanings of materialism and spiritualism—not in hair-splitting abstractions about matter's inner essence, or about the metaphysical attributes of God. Materialism means simply the denial that the moral order is eternal, and the cutting off of ultimate hopes; spiritualism means the affirmation of an eternal moral order and the letting loose of hope. Surely here is an issue genuine enough, for anyone who feels it; and, as long as men are men, it will yield matter for a serious philosophic debate.

Nuremberg war crimes trials of the surviving leaders of the National Socialist regime. During the trial, one defense that many of the accused articulated was that everything done on their orders had been directly or indirectly sanctioned by the German state. The law was the law, and the moral rightness or wrongness of the law was consequently not relevant. The prosecution responded by maintaining that while this may have been the case, such actions were not only rendered illegal by international law, but were called into question by strong Western legal philosophical traditions which emphasized that there are indeed universal laws which no positive law (no matter how firmly sanctioned by the state) can annul. The chief Nuremberg prosecutor, Justice Robert H. Jackson (a Justice of the United States Supreme Court and a firm believer in natural law), contended that the International Military Tribunal sought to “[rise] above the provincial and transient and [sought] guidance not only from international law but also from the basic principles of jurisprudence which are assumptions of civilization and which long have found embodiment in the codes of all nations” (Jackson, 1947: part 2, 29).