"I'd Be In Heaven Now, If It Weren't For Hell"
"When driven by craving, I am convinced that if only I were to achieve this goal, all would be well. While creating the illusion of a purposeful life, craving is really a loss of direction. It is a process of propulsive becoming. It spins me around in circles, covering the same ground again and again."
- Stephen Batchelor, Buddhism Without Beliefs (1997)
We wither from our youth, we gasp away -
Sick - sick; unfound the boon - unslaked the thirst,
Though to the last, in verge of our decay,
Some phantom lures, such as we sought at first -
But all too late, - so are we doubly curst.
Love, fame, ambition, avarice - 'tis the same,
Each idle - and all ill - and none the worst -
For all are meteors with a different name,
And Death the sable smoke where vanishes the flame.
- Lord Byron (d. 1824),
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto the Fourth
TITLE - "I'd Be In Heaven Now, If It Weren't For Hell"
WHERE - Vancouver, British Columbia (2014)