The Spontaneous Certainty of Being Bound by Neither by Space nor Time

When every detail of our life is planned and regulated, and every fraction of time determined beforehand, then the last trace of our boundless and timeless being, in which the freedom of our soul exists, will be suffocated. This freedom does not consist in being able “to do what we want,’ it is neither arbitrariness nor waywardness, nor the thirst for adventures, but the capacity to accept the unexpected, the unthought-of situations of life, good as well as bad, with an open mind; it is the capacity to adapt oneself to the infinite variety of conditions without losing confidence in the deeper connections between the inner and the outer world. It is the spontaneous certainty of being neither bound by space nor by time, the ability to experience the fullness of both without clinging to any of their aspects, without trying to take possession of them by way of arbitrary fragmentation.

The machine-made time of modern man has not made him the master but the slave of time; the more he tries to “save” time, the less he possesses it. It is like trying to catch a river in a bucket. It is the flow, the continuity of its movement, that makes the river; and it is the same with time. Only he who accepts it in its fullness, in its eternal and life-giving rhythm, in which its continuity consists, can master it and make it his own. By accepting time in this way, by not resisting its flow, it loses its power over us and we are carried by it like the crest of a wave, without being submerged and without losing sight of our essential timelessness.

Lama Anagrika Govinda

from The Way of the White Clouds; A Buddhist Pilgrim in Tibet