यथा काष्ठं च काष्ठं च समेयातां महोदधौ।समेत्य च व्यतीयातां तद्वत् भूतः समागमः॥
The literal meaning is: “As two logs of wood floating on the great ocean come together and, after meeting, drift apart again, so is the meeting of living beings in this world.” The verse does not interpret the meeting or justify the parting. It records the movement and moves on.
The force of the image lies in its restraint. The meeting is not elevated into something exceptional, nor is the separation treated as a disruption. The ocean continues, the currents persist. Coming together happens when conditions allow. Drifting apart follows by the same logic, both belong to the same structure.
There were people in my life who once felt inseparable, almost familial, and who later drifted away as if that shared past had left no residue. For a long time, I couldn’t make sense of it. Perhaps I carried an unresolved bitterness, less about their leaving than about the apparent ease with which it happened. Encountering this way of seeing i.e. as described in Śānti Parva helped me in reframing it. The departure no longer felt like a negation of what had been, but it felt like its completion. That shift brought a softer regard for those who moved on, and a calmer kind of peace for myself.
Impermanence is treated in this verse as a premise rather than a conclusion. The Mahābhārata does not present transience as a problem waiting for resolution. It treats it as the ground on which life unfolds. Attention is drawn to motion but not to disappearance.
Indic thought returns to this recognition without softening it. Forms arise and dissolve. Relationships gather and scatter. Time does not preserve what has occurred. In the Śānti Parva, this understanding is voiced amid aftermath—after war, after death, after events that cannot be reversed. It is spoken from within consequence, not from a position of withdrawal.
Indic thought returns to this recognition without softening it. Forms arise and dissolve. Relationships gather and scatter. Time does not preserve what has occurred. In the Śānti Parva, this understanding is voiced amid aftermath—after war, after death, after events that cannot be reversed. It is spoken from within consequence, not from a position of withdrawal.
This movement does not halt at the horizon of human affairs. In the Indic treatment of Cosmology, even universes follow this movement - arise, endure for some time, and finally dissolve. Transience is an underlying pattern by which the very existence expresses itself at every scale. As Bhagavad Gītā simply put it:
सर्वभूतानि कौल्येऽस्य प्रभवत्यहरागमे।रात्र्यागमे प्रलीयन्ते तत्रैवाव्यक्तसंज्ञके॥
“O son of Kunti, at the coming of day all beings manifest from the unmanifest, and at the coming of night they again dissolve into that very unmanifest.”
Seen from this vantage point, relationships resemble meetings rather than holdings. They occur when trajectories cross. Their reality lies in presence rather than duration. The pain of separation does not negate the meeting. It reveals an expectation that the meeting should have remained unchanged. The verse releases that expectation.
The following may appear to be an exercise in optimization, but the intent is slightly different. Also, it needs to be said in this context as it's an overlooked truth: Because time and energy are finite, attention cannot help but be selective. It settles where conditions allow, lingers for a while, then shifts. What matters is not that attention is “valuable,” but that it is transient, and therefore cannot be given everywhere or indefinitely.
When the logs separate, they do not resume the course they would have taken had they never met. The encounter alters their direction, however slightly. Drift continues, but from a different orientation. The meeting leaves a trace without needing to last.
In the Mahābhārata, responsibility does not depend on outcomes remaining intact. Actions are undertaken even when continuity cannot be secured. Bonds are honored without claims of possession. What persists is not the arrangement itself, but the order within which arrangements arise and pass.
Non-attachment, understood in this context, does reflect accuracy. When transience is seen clearly, engagement becomes unburdened by expectations the structure cannot sustain. Action continues within impermanence rather than against it.
Loss appears as part of the same movement that made connection possible. The verse does not instruct or console. It offers orientation. Life appears less as a sequence of acquisitions and forfeitures and more as a series of crossings within a larger flow. Meaning does not vanish under this view but instead shifts location, resting in participation rather than preservation.
The logs do not resist the ocean, nor do they attempt to fix their meeting into permanence. They move within a system that continues regardless of their contact. In that movement, connection and separation no longer appear as opposites. They register as phases of the same passage, carried forward by currents that do not pause and do not erase.
The following may appear to be an exercise in optimization, but the intent is slightly different. Also, it needs to be said in this context as it's an overlooked truth: Because time and energy are finite, attention cannot help but be selective. It settles where conditions allow, lingers for a while, then shifts. What matters is not that attention is “valuable,” but that it is transient, and therefore cannot be given everywhere or indefinitely.
When the logs separate, they do not resume the course they would have taken had they never met. The encounter alters their direction, however slightly. Drift continues, but from a different orientation. The meeting leaves a trace without needing to last.
In the Mahābhārata, responsibility does not depend on outcomes remaining intact. Actions are undertaken even when continuity cannot be secured. Bonds are honored without claims of possession. What persists is not the arrangement itself, but the order within which arrangements arise and pass.
Non-attachment, understood in this context, does reflect accuracy. When transience is seen clearly, engagement becomes unburdened by expectations the structure cannot sustain. Action continues within impermanence rather than against it.
Loss appears as part of the same movement that made connection possible. The verse does not instruct or console. It offers orientation. Life appears less as a sequence of acquisitions and forfeitures and more as a series of crossings within a larger flow. Meaning does not vanish under this view but instead shifts location, resting in participation rather than preservation.
The logs do not resist the ocean, nor do they attempt to fix their meeting into permanence. They move within a system that continues regardless of their contact. In that movement, connection and separation no longer appear as opposites. They register as phases of the same passage, carried forward by currents that do not pause and do not erase.
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