Beginningless And Endless Time

R. Carlos Nakai / Paul Horn: Tunnel Canyon

In endless space
countless luminous spheres,
round each of which
some dozen smaller
illuminated ones revolve,
hot at the core
and covered over
with a hard cold crust;
on this crust
a mouldy film has produced
living and knowing beings:
this is empirical truth,
the real, the world.

Yet for a being who thinks,
it is a precarious position
to stand on one of those
numberless spheres
freely floating
in boundless space,
without knowing
whence or whither,
and to be only one
of innumerable similar beings
that throng, press, and toil,
restlessly and rapidly
arising and passing away
in beginningless
and endless time.

--Arthur Schopenhauer