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Every now and then, one comes across a nugget that sparks a kind of recognition. Here is one such nugget – a four-line poem titled “Eternity,” penned by the 18^th century English poet William Blake:

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy:
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sun rise.

Images of a butterfly, a hummingbird, a bumblebee, the reflection of sunlight in a rippling brook might come to mind when experiencing these brief lines. All beautiful and filled with joy, yet fleeting. Here, although Blake didn’t use it in his poem, I think fleeting is the operative term.

The poet makes a contrast between attachment to an emotion, joy in this poem, and the immediate experience of that emotion. When we experience it in the immediate present – feel it and then let it go – it becomes eternal. I would rather say it is timeless, out of time. It’s like the thoughts that come and go in our minds while we meditate on the cushion: when we can let them happen and pass by, like clouds in the sky, they become ephemeral, timeless. But when we bind to them, they become intractable. We see them as distractions, permanent obstacles to the peace and silence we seek.

Could our experience of our whole lives be like this, as well? Let me remind you of a verse from the Buddhist Diamond Sutra, which you may have heard from me before. (For me, this verse is profound in its message. Unforgettable, and also unavoidable.) This is Verse 32, which ends the Sutra. It gives a sort of eternal, timeless picture of life itself – at least in my view. Here:

Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:
As a star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.

Like a dream (and that includes nightmares, which we’d all rather not have). Once again, fleeting is the operative term. For me, this is another expression of joy, of liberation. The startling realization that all things are passing – in that peace that passes understanding – this realization lends such a freedom to the experience of being!

This is a joyful expression of what the Buddhist teachings remind us is the impermanence of all things. Everything is change; no thing endures. All the forms we see and live with come into being, and then pass away. Both the joyful and the sorrowful, the peaceful and the angry, the enriching and the impoverishing. All the pairs of opposites. In binding to them, we create obstacles to liberation. In letting them go lies our freedom.

Our joys and sorrows are conditions of the moment, whether “the moment” be long or short. And if we bind to them, we deprive them and ourselves, as the poet Blake admonishes us, of their very life. And our very lives. So, let fleeting be the operative term as we live our lives and our circumstances. It’s an old saw, but one we would do well to remember: This, too, shall pass.

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy:
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sun rise.

So wrote William Blake. A credible witness to and spokesman for Life, don’t you think?

Thank you.