Friday, August 29, 2008

The End is the Beginning

This is not a new concept. Big Frank finds it appealing because it's familiar; it's old; it's been said by many wise people, and it is eminently psychologically satisfying. In addition, it's one of those sayings that doesn't make any sense whatsoever; yet it makes complete sense and Big Frank likes that:

The disciples said to Jesus, ‘Tell us how our end will be.’ Jesus said, ‘Have you discovered, then, the beginning, that you look for the end? For where the beginning is, there will the end be. Blessed is he who will take his place in the beginning; he will know the end and will not experience death.’
- The Gospel of Thomas 18

Approach it and there is no beginning;
follow it and there is no end.
You can't know it, but you can be it,
at ease in your own life.
Just realize where you come from:
this is the essence of wisdom.
- Lao-tzu, Tao Te Ching

We shall not cease from exploration
And at the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
— T.S. Eliot, ‘Little Gidding’

The core of philosophy is no longer an autonomous transcendental subjectivity, to be found everywhere and nowhere: it lies in the perpetual beginning of reflection, at the point where an individual life begins to reflect on itself. Reflection is truly reflection only if it is not carried outside itself, only if it knows itself as reflection-on-an-unreflective-experience, and consequently as a change in the structure of our existence.
— Merleau-Ponty (1945, 72)

The Beatles had their own take on this: "In the end the love you take is equal to the love you make."

And if you still find this difficult to believe. If the concept that the end really is the beginning then experience it for yourself.

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