Avatara

Don’t forget to remember.

Exhausted, you follow the gentle murmur of a stream, its voice carving a path through the cavern walls. The unseen sound has brought you to the cavern’s opening, and you feel the heavy, stifling cavern air give way to a crisp, biting breeze that sweeps over your damp skin.

As you stagger toward the opening, a flood of blinding light engulfs you, forcing you to collapse and shield your eyes. Curled on the ground, trembling, a sudden warmth envelops you. Something unseen lifts you gently, carrying you through the refreshing air toward a faint, rhythmic pulse—soft at first but steadily growing louder, each beat strangely soothing. Yet, as the rhythm begins to lull you to sleep, an unease awakens within the depths of your soul.

What lies beyond the light?

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Time

Time is the root and the seed, it gives and it takes away.

— Vyasa (Mahabharata)

As the Nile River gently carried baby Moses deeper into Egypt, Time carries each of us toward an unknown future. But unlike Moses, whose journey delivered him into the hands and hearts of Egyptian royalty, our deliverance by Time has no final destination. What awaits us is not a throne, but a horizon—a vast outpouring of unknowns cascading endlessly into more unknowns.

What lies ahead is always veiled in mystery. Mystery, despite its uncertainty, is wonderful, igniting curiosity and motivation. Outcomes unknown keep us engaged—if we knew we’d win, we’d ease up; if we knew we’d lose, we’d quit. Mystery is the magic that makes life exhilarating, a spark that keeps us moving forward.

Yet, mystery is also wonderful—that is, it is full of wondering, which bounds us to wonder...and wonder...and wonder. And all that unresolved wondering can get frustrating. After all, we crave certainty about tomorrow like there’s no tomorrow—I mean, like there is tomorrow. Did I get that right? I’m not so sure...

But I’d like to be sure. We all would. This craving for certainty runs deep. Life itself seems to be a process that relentlessly attempts to reduce uncertainty¹, bringing order to chaos through intelligent organization. Mystery gives Life its purpose. Without uncertainty to reduce, Life would wither, like a flame without fuel.² Yet, like the flame, Life depends on its fuel—on mystery—to persist. And in the act of consuming that fuel, Life diminishes it.

Herein lies the paradox: Life thrives on uncertainty, but also on its reduction. It is this complicated relationship that leaves Life wondering about how it can stop wondering, perpetually reorganizing itself to shed more light on that dark, mysterious future.

Let’s organize our thoughts on how this reorganization unfolds, shall we?

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Cause for Confusion

Stupidity is brief and guileless, while reason hedges and hides.

— Dostoevsky

In ignorance he drinks poison, in confusion he refuses the antidote.

— Valmiki (Ramayana)

Study of past offers the only way to predict the future; present action offers the only way of influencing it.

Causes exist solely in the past, so only through understanding the past can we shed light on the effects that causes may produce. Effects, however, truly occur only in the present, making present action our sole means of shaping what lies ahead. Past informs present; present transforms future. For those of us who wish to carve out a cherished future, we have but two tools: (1) understanding the past and (2) acting in the present.

Understanding lays the plan; action carves according to it. But let’s remind ourselves what we’re attempting to carve here: the future. The future is the essential ingredient; the uncarved block that holds the mystery that we wish to carve away; the uncertainty we wish to minimize.

But planning and carving demand effort, and we’re penny pinchers, so we’ll often be tempted to narrow our temporal scope, seeking relief from the burden of deep understanding and deliberate action. This narrowing confines us to the narrow self—the self of the last few moments and the next few moments. And because space and time are intertwined, this restriction to a few moments in time implies a narrowing in space, too. This penny pinching, as we’ll discover, comes at a cramped cost.

For the nearsighted, the narrow self is considered most precious. It is all that can be seen, naturally becoming an object of worship. Self-serving offerings pass from one fleeting moment to the next, as ‘next-moment’ self need only reach back a moment in time to pat ‘this-moment’ self on the back. Discomforts are quickly identified and easily soothed, but the narrow self remains blind to where the discomforts come from (the past) and whether they’ll return (the future). What matters to the narrow self is the immediate reward: relief that is simple, close, and gratifying.

So rewarding is this blend of simplicity and proximity that we find it difficult to resist. Finding a solution is straightforward, and this straightforwardness; this narrow knowing; this local certainty of what’s to come is what we as uncertainty minimizers find so deeply attractive.

But those of us in the dark about the past are unlikely to have bright futures. The path ahead is not straightforward, it winds. With little to prepare for what’s to come, ignorance presses upon us a perpetual precipice that engulfs us in darkness, leaving anxiety and confusion and reactive frustration in its wake. And, in this confusion, we distract ourselves from a world we don’t understand by focusing on the narrow self that we (think we) do, leaving us even more confused.

But what if we could look a little further ahead? What would we find?

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Lights, Foresight, Action

What shape waits in the seed of you

to grow and spread its branches

against a future sky?

— David Whyte

One thing we’d find is that the narrow self reasons little and therefore has little reason to act.

Finding appropriate reasons for events—understanding historical cause and effect—is what we call reasoning. And as we tread backwards in time, we face a mysterious unknown not unlike the one that awaits us in the future that, as we reason through it, forces our eyes to adjust to its darkness, gradually revealing even more nuanced causes and effects. Not only does this adjustment allow us to better see the past, but, as the past becomes understood (by rationing mental resources to prioritize relevant information), past understandings form the foundation for the rational and reasonable predictions that help us to see a little further into the future.

And so if we reason little, we see little, squinting and turning away when reasons too profound are shone upon us. Blinded, we’re buffeted by unseen forces, forced into predictable patterns of reaction. The unexamined life becomes, by self-preserving necessity, a reactive one. This state of perpetual re-activity drains our creative potential, for the nature of the creative act is proactive, leaving us like tumbleweeds blown by the winds of causation. And when we create little, we leave little effect on the world.

With (quite literally) little to look forward to, our reservoirs of motivation and presence run shallow. Why invest energy in action if the future feels within arm’s reach? And with little reason to act, why maintain the presence of mind to act effectively? This absence of purpose leaves us adrift, prone to aimless wanderings through imaginary pasts and futures—distractions conjured to escape our ineffectual lives and stagnating surroundings.

Wake up.

Strive to discover the true cause of things. Trace the roots of cause and effect deep within the soils of history. The deeper those roots, the stronger the foundation upon which your predictions will be built, and the further your understanding will sprout into the future. With this elevated perspective, you’ll foresee challenges and reorganize yourself to meet them when they arise. You’ll transition from reactivity to proactivity, cultivating response-ability.

When the world speaks, you’ll be ready to answer—and the world will carry your response forward. Chains of cause and effect will flow through you, from past into future, and your ability to respond will allow you to effect these currents in the present, carving channels of order from the chaos of mystery. Your awareness will extend further into the future, revealing both paradise, born of diligence, and disaster, born of neglect. This foresight will ignite in you a sense of mindful urgency—for the most effective time to act is now and attention can only strengthen the effectiveness of your action.

To summarize:

1. Nearsightedness makes us reactive, ineffectual, unmotivated and mindless.

2. Foresight makes us proactive, response-able, effective, motivated and present.

   

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You awaken on your side, bathed by that same refreshing breeze. As you lift a hand to rub your eyes, blades of damp grass brush gently against your skin. Blinking awake, your gaze catches a drop of dew clinging to a blade—a tiny crescent moon and scattered stars captured in its delicate bulb. You suddenly realize the blinding light that once overwhelmed you has since given way to a dim midnight glow.

Summoning strength, you prop yourself up and take in your surroundings. You find yourself in a glade at the edge of a cliff. Just beyond the horizon you make out a faint flickering glow. If only you could see a little further...

Your eyes settle on a tree standing taller than the rest, its roots gripping the precipice and its branches reaching bravely into the night sky. It seems to beckon you. “If I climb it,” you wonder, “perhaps I’ll see the source of that glow.”

You approach the tree. Your fingers grasp the rough bark of its lowest branch, and with a deep breath, you begin to climb...

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Thread Lightly

The ways to be bad are plenty, the choice easy—

The path is smooth, the destination close;

But to goodness, the gods adorn, we must sweat our way

— Hesiod

There’s something else I’ve found—or perhaps it found me.

We found each other, how about that. And that something is a Hindu concept that, upon reflection, I’ve found to be deeply intertwined with one’s relationship to time.

This concept is the gunas, which means threads (among other things), of which there are three: sattva (which corresponds with goodness and harmony), rajasa (passion and pursuit), and tamas (ignorance and sloth). It is said that these three gunas interweave to form the tapestry of your being, shaping the constitution and nature of each and every thing.

Hmm...if that’s the case, the gunas and I didn’t find each other—the gunas found themselves!

What follows is an exploration of these threads, their interplay over time, and how they relate to comfort and discomfort over time: the depressive decay of tamas, the progressive stability of sattva, and the sensual cycles of rajas.³ The shaded areas will represent convenience or inconvenience experienced over time, which draw us toward—or repel us from—a particular behavior. The extent of the area considered, however, depends on how far ahead we look, which, as we’ve seen, is tightly linked to how well we understand the past.

Alright, moving ahead. The nearsighted nature of the narrow self we’ve spoken of thus far aligns with the rajasic and tamasic threads. Nearsightedness at its extreme—blindness—belongs to tamas, which yields the greatest short-term convenience, making it the easiest behavior to choose. But this convenience comes at the cost of long-term decay. The qualities and consequences of tamasic behavior are:

That ‘one thing that that is clung to as if it were the whole’ is the narrow self, which, in our blindness, where we mistake up for down, we gleefully grasp even as it drags us down into misery.

While still narrow, the rajasic self begins to expand its circle of concern—broadening to include group identities, such as family. This expansion arises from a slightly farther gaze into the future and a recognition that our actions tie us to more than just ourselves.

This expansion of perspective, though still nearsighted, increases the area underneath the rajasic curve, creating larger impulses of action. This makes rajasic action impulsive, preoccupied with bouts of near-term discomfort avoidance and comfort pursuit, creating a sort of perpetual forgetfulness as we ride the exhilarating highs and debilitating lows of motivated existence. As it happens, forgetfulness turns out to be quite the crucial resource for Life’s unending appetite for mystery (more on this near the end). For now, here are some more rajasic attributes:

Rajasic existence fluctuates between tamasic torpor and sattvic elevation: comfort provoking complacency, complacency creating discomfort, discomfort provoking initiative, and initiative creating comfort. Its peaks offer more sustained comfort than brief tamasic bliss, although its troughs fall below sattvic discomfort.

Which brings us to sattva. The area underneath the sattvic thread is tremendous, although it takes a correspondingly tremendous amount of effort to (1) see far enough ahead to reveal its eventual benefits and (2) withstand the period of inconvenience that precedes those benefits.

From the outside, someone with a sattvic orientation may appear calm, even effortless, compared to the restlessness of rajas. But in this calm belies intense, disciplined effort. Sattvic action is subtle and controlled, dragging forward tamasic stubbornness while reining in rajasic recklessness.⁴ Lets see the other qualities befitting a sattvic orientation:

While tamas has us clinging to one thing as if it were the whole, sattva gradually reveals the whole itself. But this whole cannot be grasped entirely. Even our attempt to represent it with the word ‘whole’ is a means of carving grooves into it that can be grasped—but that carving removes some of it in the process.⁵ Meaning, if we want to grasp the meaning of what it truly is, pure and unaltered, part of that journey involves letting it go—

Wait a minute, you’re telling me that cultivating intimacy with the whole requires letting it go? How in the whole do we grasp something by letting go of it?

Think of it this way: if we were to cling to a single letter within a word, wouldn’t we lose sight of the word? By itself, a letter is simple and unambiguous; however, it’s also meaningless in isolation—reading one letter at a time would leave us lost and confused.⁶ Only when we relax our grip on letters and grasp the words they belong to can the meaning of the words pour into us. Of course, letters must be learned so that words can be understood in the first place, but it’s also important to keep in mind that letters are only meaningful insofar as they collaborate to produce a word, and to absorb the word’s meaning paradoxically requires letting go of the letters we’ve learned.

The same is true for words in sentences, sentences in paragraphs, and paragraphs in a story. As we loosen our grip on the components, we inch closer to the meaning of the story itself.

This process—this discovery of the larger story—is what it means to mature. Much suffering stems from a failure to mature, leaving us clinging to letters or words as if they were the whole story, or seeing paragraphs and chapters as independent fragments rather than interconnected parts of a greater whole.

And so, only by shedding attachments, Hindu philosophy posits, may we transcend towards the entire library of experience and enlighten ourselves to its contents. But, as a balloon attached to a string is restrained from reaching the sky, so the sattvic remain tethered to an anchor that prevents them from reaching enlightenment.

And that anchor is joy.

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Give It Up

He must increase, but I must decrease.

— Gospel of John

You have a right to your actions, but never to your actions’ fruits.

— Bhagavad Gita

It brings me no joy to admit this, but there’s something elusive about the sattvic curve that I haven’t told you about yet.

You know that vast area of convenience we were promised for being sattvic? Well, here’s the catch: life for the sattvic doesn’t actually get easier—

What gives? What about all that future convenience I was promised? What’s the point of bearing a burden if I don’t benefit from it?

Well, you do benefit from it, insofar as you delight in the elevation of others. This delightful feeling—joy—is what the sattvic attach themselves to, recognizing that joy, in this sense of the term, can only be obtained through sacrifice: a giving up of the narrow self for the sake of some greater self.

It would be easier to order takeout, yet you cook dinner for a friend. You could indulge in anger, but you hold back a bitter remark toward a loved one. These are sacrificial acts. They require giving up part of yourself because the relationship matters more than your convenience or pride. If it didn’t, wouldn’t you simply choose the easier path?

By now, you’ve probably noticed that, because you belong to the relationships you elevate, your sacrifices elevate you as well. Cooking for friends makes for a more meaningful meal. Managing your anger maintains peace. Yet the true magic lies in how these sacrifices ripple outward, contributing to a more meaningful, peaceful, and convenient whole—despite some inconvenience for you.

Heaven is often depicted as being ‘up there’ rather than ‘down there’ because it requires effort to rise—a distinctly inconvenient truth. How much easier it would be to tumble ‘down there’ into hell, surrendering to the gravity of selfish desires that draw us effortlessly into its abyss. Yet heaven’s brilliance and vastness call us upward, offering clarity and farsightedness in stark contrast to hell’s dark, narrow depths, which confine us to nearsightedness and perpetual unease.

The path upward requires lightening the burdens of selfishness. Only through sacrifice can we shed⁷ these weights, casting a yoke toward the heavens and pulling with all our might. Whether this effort draws earth toward heaven or heaven toward earth, one essence remains: the unrelenting drive to bridge the gap between what is and what could be.

This pursuit cannot be solitary. Heaven is a collective endeavor, unattainable for those who pull alone. It will not come to those who ask what they can do to get into heaven, but to those who ask what they can do to bring heaven to the whole.

Now that we’ve touched on the afterlife, it seems fitting to finally lay this discussion to rest. Let’s talk about death, shall we?

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To See, or Not to See

What they undertook to do

They brought to pass;

All things hang like a drop of dew

Upon a blade of grass.

— W. B. Yeats

The righteous man departs, but his light remains. […] Your work is for the whole, your deed is for the future.

— Dostoevsky

When we lose sight of the future, we lose sight of death. And when we forget about death, we forget to live.

The reason we act at all is because we know we won’t always be able to. Death is the ultimate uncertainty for individuated existence, and, fundamentally, it is Uncertainty, the Wonderful that propels Life. When we grow nearsighted, we lose sight of this great motivator.

Instead, we drift through life in apathy—eyes glazed, mindlessly chasing this desire, grumbling about that inconvenience—missing the vibrant whole unfolding around us. It is the moments that bring us closest to death, whether through brushes with danger or the mundane challenges of daily life, that remind us we’re alive. Death calls us to life.

Foresight not only reveals death but also, as far as I know, the only afterlife we can be certain of: that Life will carry on after yours ends. Yet, when we depart, part of us remains in the grooves we’ve carved into the lives of others. Viewed in this way, we don’t truly die in the way we imagine. You’re not going anywhere—you are reborn in them. Your life carries on through others. It just won’t belong to you anymore, but then again, it never truly did.

When we are born, we forget who we were. Some grooves left by past lives are washed away, allowing mystery to pour into us again and fill us with wonder, rekindling our love for the wondrous whole and reminding us it is worth holding onto. And so, back to work we go—gradually remembering who we were while carving new grooves, grasping them tightly, and forgetting to let go, until we are reborn once again, forgetting what we’ve gained and remembering what we’ve lost.

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You’ve nearly reached the top of the tree. The wind roars here and the tree groans in protest, its branches creaking as they sway. They’ve offered shelter from the whipping wind, but your hands bear the cost—tender, raw, and bloody, the coarse bark having carved itself into your flesh as you’ve climbed.

One final branch, thin and trembling, holds your weight as you push yourself upward. At last, your head breaks free of the canopy, and the horizon unfurls before you. You scan for the light that brought you here—and there it is! A dazzling core surrounded by a flickering light holds your gaze captive as you squint, straining to make out the form at its heart.

Then everything halts. The wind vanishes, the tree freezes, and a deafening silence fills the air. Only the flickering light remains in motion. Its radiant core sinks deeper into your sight. As it sinks a pang of recognition arises within—its form feels achingly familiar, as if from a dream or a memory long forgotten. Could it be...? No, surely not... and yet...

WHOOSH! A sudden gust tears through the stillness, wrenching the tree sideways toward the cliff’s edge. The fragile branch beneath your foot snaps, sending you tumbling. Your hands scramble for something to hold, but the branches are too slender, snapping like twigs under your grasp. Falling, you stretch for the infinite sky, the crescent moon looming large and the stars scattered like jewels. As you blink, you notice that the bright form lingers—softly burned into your vision, even as everything else fades away and the earth below rushes up to reclaim you...

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Discover'd not by sight,
But by the sounds of brooklet, that descends
This way along the hollow of a rock,
Which, as it winds with no precipitous course,
The wave hath eaten. By that hidden way
My guide and I did enter, to return
To the fair world: and heedless of repose
We climb'd, he first, I following his steps,
Till on our view the beautiful light of heaven
Dawn'd through a circular opening in the cave;
Thence issuing we again beheld the stars.
— Dante Alighieri

Remember to forget.

The End.

…Or Beginning.

1. At least at the level of the individual. At the macro level, Life ends up generating more systemic uncertainty, despite each individual in the system minimizing uncertainty locally. If this interests you, I encourage you to check out this post where I wrote all about entropy (thermodynamic uncertainty) and life.

2. Or Batman without the Joker.

3. My interpretation of the gunas is heavily influenced by Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the Bhagavad Gita.

4. Meditation, for instance, seems calm and peaceful from the outside. But getting your butt on the pillow requires overcoming tamasic torpor, and maintaining concentration requires restraining rajasic mind-wandering.

5. Ah, it seems we’re carving away that mystery again. The Tao that can be named is not the Tao; the Mystery that can be named is not the Mystery.

6. Tamas, anyone?

7. In Exodus 3:5, when God instructs Moses, who is standing on holy ground, to ‘take off’ his sandals, the Hebrew word used is ‘shal’ (שַׁל), which more closely translates to shed. Hmm…