In the East, people have largely thought of time as cyclic. We are born, we die, and we are reborn. What we think, say, and do will come back to us. A cause leads to a result that in turn becomes a new cause.
Viewing life as cyclic, the interconnectedness of everything becomes apparent. What I do here impacts what happens there. So before I say or do something, I need to first consider what I am about to do. To do this, I need to know what my intentions are. To know my intentions, I need to know my “self,” who I am. Such introspection lends itself to reflection, reflection to realization, realization to awakening, awakening to joy.
In the West however, we think of time as linear, a forward progression. People such as economists, politicians, scientists, and corporate executives have usually interpreted that to mean that our civilization will progress into a future that stretches endlessly before us. A future of more—more economic growth, more power to influence the lives of others, more scientific advancement and technology, and more unwitting customers.
We in the developed countries who enjoy some degree of good fortune also have our vision of more—more income and anticipated wealth, more living space to store more possessions, longer vacations to destinations farther away from home, new technologies to solve any problems we encounter, and medical advancements to cure diseases and the problems we bring upon ourselves by ill-chosen habits, to name just a few.
We have envisioned ourselves moving along an imaginary highway that stretches out into the future. We have seen ourselves as always advancing faster and higher. Any problems along the way would be handled by those economists, politicians, scientists, and corporate executives.
But with such forward-focused thinking, we have missed the interconnectedness. We have often distanced ourselves from our parents and grandparents, thinking them old-fashioned, so we cut off our past. We have used not only our fair share of what the Earth offers but our children’s share as well, so we have cut ourselves off from our children. We have seen ourselves as individuals apart from the world, so we have not realized that the suffering of others is also ours. We have immersed ourselves in self-indulgence, so we have suppressed our innate goodness that seeks awakening and perfection.
We have advanced more in the past one hundred years than at other such time in history. But we advanced in only one direction, and an unsustainable one at that. We haven't paid near enough attention to the inner advancement. And so it is hardly surprising that many are looking around and saying "This needs to change. We need to change. I need to change. Now."