Most people value stability highly. We have our daily routines, we seek a regular job, we want a place to come home to every evening, with our own things around us, where familiar faces greet us, and so on. Even when we fly to some unknown, exotic location for a holiday, we have unconscious expectations: that our health will remain more or less the same through the vacation, and that when we turn homeward again, there will be a serviceable plane waiting on the tarmac to receive us. Still further, we maintain certain days throughout the year, such as birthdays, and various anniversaries and religious festivals, that give time a steady, reliable pulse. Stability and predictability appear to be our ideal.

From a wider point of view, though, the pursuit of the permanent is completely illusory, a dream that we cling to while we sleep. If it is our time to sleep, then we should sleep on as comfortably as we are able, but if we are starting to awaken, then we should try to open our eyes to the light of reality. In Nirtan, Boulas, Hazrat Inayat Khan makes this observation: Walking on the turning wheel of the earth, living under the ever-rotating sun, man expects a peaceful life. In a similar vein, the brief post of the Tibetan Buddhist Jamgon Kongtrul on impermanence urges the meditative student to recognise that nothing in this life, including our life itself, is certain.

These warnings from the wise tell us two things. One is that we must be prepared to see the world differently as we travel the spiritual path, because behind the veil of permanence all is in constant motion. Our concepts and dogmas will be of no use; they will only obstruct our view. The other point is that we should not waste our opportunity: having set out on the journey, we must not linger near our doorstep, nor look back as we stride forward. If we think we will have time enough later–once we have completed some project, or perhaps when we retire–to do some serious spiritual work, to really get to the bottom of those troublesome questions about the purpose of life and the nature of truth, then we should think again. Even our next breath is not guaranteed.