Eternity is one of the notions we cherish as an encouragement in our lives. We feel that since there is eternity there will be eternal communication. Somehow or other there will be an endless continuity to give meaning to things: a spiritual background or an atmosphere of transcendental promise.
We hardly realize how this attitude influences our approach toward relationships. When we become good friends with somebody in high school, we automatically expect the friendship to go on forever. It may be fifteen years since we built a cabin with a friend but now we continue to celebrate our comradeship by going over how skillfully we did the framing, the joints, what nails we used, and so on.
Many relationships are formed on the basis of some common pain or some shared task. We tend to make a big deal of this pain or task: we make it the keepsake of the relationship. Or else we meet someone in circumstances of lively common interest where communication flows without obstacles and then we celebrate the smoothness as if fending off a common enemy. Either way, the pain or the smoothness develops a legendary quality in regard to the relationship.
"Good friends" implies forever. You expect that the person you are committed to in that way will pour honey on your grave; otherwise you will feel you have been cheated. You are constantly struggling to keep your eternal friendship beautiful, which becomes an enormous strain on the relationship. Nevertheless, this is the model of relationship presented by theistic traditions, such as Christianity or Hinduism. Having such a relationship is regarded as behaving as God commanded or as coming closer to the example of God's own love, which is eternal.
The idea of eternity has been misunderstood; it has been used to prove the profundity of our relationship, our deathless friendship. We tend to assume that something is going to go on forever, and therefore we venerate it like someone might venerate a piece of rusty fence wire known to have been hanging on a fence at a famous Civil War battle. We venerate it for its eternity rather than for its profundity. Ironically, it actually becomes a profound statement because of the basic truth of impermanence.
In societies influenced -- at the sophisticated level at least -- bo a nontheistic point of view, such as Buddhist of Confucian, relationship is more a matter of manners and integrity than of approaching an eternal divine model. There is less sense of guilt, but there is still a sense of righteousness or of acting justly. In the humanistic context, relationship seems to be based on a model derived from ancient patterns of barter. In the commerce of barter more is involved than just vying for monetary units: something of value has to be given and something of value has to be received in exchange. But this approach is still based on the backdrop of eternity and on the veneration of ancient models of relationship.
Distrust and suspicion of eternity arise when we develop a sense of what might go wrong with the relationship -- or what might go right for that matter -- independent of our will. There is a suggestion of inevitable chaos or death. Fearing the independent, spontaneous development of the relationship we try to ignore our actual emotions and independent will. Brave people do this semiconsciously by developing a sense of mission or dogma in the relationship. Cowardly people manage it as a subconscious twist.
In general the brave strategy is less successful than the cowardly in creating an "ideal" relationship. This dogmatic approach can only succeed by continually making a basically illogical position logically believable to the friend or partner. Then constant maintenance of the magnificent edifice is required. The less brave but more diligent do the whole work without ever confronting the partner on major issues. Instead he or she continually puts off the sense of death onto a thousand small things. the partner forgets to put the cap back on the ketchup bottle, or always squeezes the toothpaste tube at the wrong end. The fault lies in all these little things.
In spite of philosophical and religious beliefs in eternity, there is a sense of the constant threat of death, that ultimately the relationship is doomed. Whether cowardly or brave, we are trapped in that actual situation, making a constant patchwork in order to survive.
Making a big deal out of relationship is deathly -- as when in chopping an onion, we become more conscious of the chopper than the chopping process. Quite possibly we might chop our fingers off. When we begin to realize this, the sense of helplessness is startling. Viewpoint and attitude don't help. the are no more than a shell. The theistic view of naive belief in eternity and the humanistic view of good manners and dignity are both merely conventional games remote from the actuality of the situation. Their adages of relationship, such as "patience is virtue" or "death before dishonor" are not just the products of convention; they are in themselves purely conventional.
The idea of relationship needs to fall apart. When we realize that life is the expression of death and death is the expression of life, that continuity cannot exist without discontinuity, then there is no longer any need to cling to one and fear the other. There is no longer any ground for the brave or the cowardly. One sees that relationship is the lack of any viewpoint whatsoever.
We might think that such a relationship is only for the spiritually advanced, but actually it is just normal and ordinary. Any conceptual reference point becomes destructive. We actually begin to suspect that the relationship does not exist. But there is no need to worry: that nonexistence continues as a powerful breeding ground of further relationship. Such wariness is still a viewpoint, but it is one that is open to surprises, unlike living in the promise of eternity. It is also unlike complete mistrust, which does not allow the naiveté of relationship to flower. Whereas a covenant of trust breeds further mistrust, wariness of trust can bring enormously warm and genuine relationships.
Composed during 1972 retreat in Charlemont, Massachusetts.