Living in Time

When we look backward from the present, we tend to see inevitability. We can’t imagine history could have turned out otherwise. But if we pick a thing, any thing, and try to put ourselves at its beginning, we’d see chaotic motions working out patterns and regularities. No thing is inevitable and fore-ordained, and no thing stands solely on its own.

The essays collected here attempt the experiential process of tracing the chaotic and unpredictable motions at the origins of familiar things — the earth, human speech, the eruption of volcanoes, sleep.

These essays are an exercise in seeing and experiencing what Nagarjuna called pratityasamutpada — i.e., the dependent origination of all things.