In Western thought, a single pervasive fallacy, largely perpetuated by a long-running obsession with the Judaeo-Christian end of the world, is that things end.

While the science of the Heat Death of the universe is compelling for instance, there are some rumblings that not even that is the true end of the universe.

This obsession with ends trickles down through our culture, permeating the sociology and priming it for dissatisfaction.

The truth is that nothing really ends. Nothing is finished, simply abandoned. No project reaches completion.

A common Buddhist metaphor is a floor. One does not sweep a floor with the intent that it will never need to be swept again. Instead, he or she decides to sweep the floor because it needs doing in that moment, and for the immediate gain of having a clean floor. The floor will always get dirty again but that is not the concern of the sweeper. The only concern that particularly matters is the doing.

I bring this story up to deliver a simple message that is supremely difficult in today’s world to follow that nothing really ends.

And if nothing really ends, then well, it’s all a practice, it’s all a skill, and there is always the next time until there isn’t.