As I move across time zones and get lost in incessant work without much worry about the fruits of my labor the fault lines between today, yesterday and tomorrow disappear. And time becomes a seamless continuum.
Just a week ago I was in Kalamazoo, Michigan and today I am sitting in my hut in New Delhi. My plan was to fly to Australia day after tomorrow. But that plan got scuttled by a dark planet that jumped from nowhere into my planetary constellation. As I ponder on these complex and borderless events I lose touch with the concepts of day, week, month, year, decade, century etc.
They say that time is the distance between two events. And events are recorded in consciousness as experiences. Therefore time is the gap between experiences.
Time is a projection of thought, which is situated in those gaps. Those who are conditioned by thoughts of the past and of the future experience the phenomenon of time.
So conventionally we say that a year has ended and a new year has begun. But experientially it doesn't make any difference — time is just thought. At the same time we have to have time to pause and take stock of the past so that we can prepare ourselves mentally to face the future. For that purpose we escape into thought and set arbitrary time frames.
They say that one year is the time that the planet earth takes to go around the sun. But who can say the beginning and end points of the circumference of a circle. We set arbitrary beginnings and ends. The Christian era that divides time before and after the birth of Christ is arbitrary.
So too is the Islamic calendar arbitrary that follows the lunar movement around the earth. The financial world has its own calendar. Their year begins either in March or in June.
For me every morning is a new day, a new year. As I see the bright sun that lifts itself from the blue ocean, my heart jumps in joy. The sun, the earth and me together create the miracle of a new dawn every day. For me every day is a new year, every year a new day - - a new beginning.
Let us look at time in that perspective and let us make everyday a day of celebration.
Swami Bodhananda
New Delhi, 16 November 2002