Thus Spake Sri Rama

[Guest guest]

Time which is colossal in its dimensions, brings a thing into being in

a trice and breaks it to pieces in a moment. Time recurrently shifts,

from heaven to hell and back, a creature which identifies itself with

its body.

 

Time devours everything. Man's ill luck and good fortune, restlessness

and composure, greed and infatuation -- everything resides in the womb

of Time.

 

From a blade of grass and particle of dust to the oceans and the

Sumeru and even Indra himself -- all are subject to the mercy of Time.

 

Causing the rain and the moon to rise and set in this firmament, Time

plays, as it were, with them in the fashion of a boy with his ball.

 

The ocean produces and destroys a series of waves in a single

operation. Likewise Time maintains on its bosom the flux of creation

-- originating our species now, destroying it next moment, and

creating another, endlessly. The numberless worlds are like falling

figs, the innumerable living things are like mosquitoes and Time is

like the fig tree that bears the figs.