Living in the Present: Selections from "The Pathway of Life" by Leo Tolstoy (vegetarian): Volume 2, Part 1 of 2

In addition to his renowned epic novels, Leo Tolstoy wrote essays and letters that conveyed the spiritual truths he came to realize in life. Along with adopting and promoting the vegetarian diet, he became deeply interested in spirituality and living by the ethical teachings of Christ.

Supreme Master Ching Hai spoke about the uplifting nature of Leo Tolstoy’s work during a group meditation session with our Association members in July 1997, in Los Angeles, USA. “Because Tolstoy was a practitioner. That's why when you read his stories, most stories are about spiritual things, about God, and very happy and very positive. It's very good to read him, to read his books. You try. If you haven't, you try. You can read more. Such thing is very good for you.”

We would like to share with you an insightful excerpt from Volume 2 of “The Pathway of Life,” called “Living in the Present.”

“People imagine that the course of their life is in time – in the past or in the future. But this is a delusion: the true life of men is not in time, but always is in that timeless spot where the past and the future meet and which we inexactly call the present time. In this timeless point of the present, and therein alone, man is free, and therefore the true life of man is in the present, and in the present alone.”

“For the supreme reason there is no time: that which will be, is. Time and space is the disintegration of the infinite for the convenience of finite creatures. There is no before nor after. That which will happen tomorrow already really exists in eternity.”

“Our soul is thrown into our body where it finds numbers, time and space. Meditating upon these things it calls them nature or necessity, and indeed it cannot think otherwise.”

“It is well to remember frequently that our true life is not the outward physical life which we live here on earth, before our eyes, but that alongside of this life there is within us another life, an inner and spiritual life which has no beginning and no end.”

“‘Live for a day — live for an age’ — the meaning of this adage is to live as though any moment you await the last hour of your life, and have time to attend only to the most important matters, and at the same time so to live as though you could continue to do without end that which you are doing.”