Serial virginity
"Religions remind us of our cherry blossom nature, our falling leaf nature. They emphasize time passing, the fact that we are perpetually poised on ultimate thresholds, that we live in the fleeting and incredible interstices of sentience that sparkle between voices containing our absence, seemingly endlessly, within their unmapped maws. and this awareness of transience leads sometimes to exhortations to live each moment as if it is our last, to stand ever ready for some kind of Day of Judgment, whether this is conceived in terms of crude theistic trial and retribution or mechanistic karmic consequence, past deeds automatically determining our future. The Zen phrase ichigo ichie, usually translated as 'one life, one meeting' (or, 'one time, one meeting') stresses the way in which every moment is both first and last. That time unrolls before us with a kind of serial virginity, so that every step we walk, each breath we take, we never have before and never will again."
From Irish Elegies, by Chris Arthur.
From Irish Elegies, by Chris Arthur.