The Eternal Present

Taoism and Judaism tell us that when the first day was created, the eternal became elusive. As the story of Adam and Eve attests, we humans have always been on a quest to find it.

The day is the foundational unit of time in the Book of Genesis. Creation takes place over six days, and the Creator rests on the seventh. The boundaries around the unit are evening and morning, representing the prinicple of Yin Yang, or the balance of oppositional forces:

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. - Genesis 1:5 (KJV)

But before the first day was created, what was the universe like? There were no oppositional forces, only oneness. It is hard to imagine, but a helpful description of this eternal present can be found in Chapter 14 of the Tao Te Ching:

Look, and it can't be seen.
Listen, and it can't be heard.
Reach, and it can't be grasped.

Above, it isn't bright.
Below, it isn't dark.
Seamless, unnamable,
it returns to the realm of nothing.
Form that includes all forms,
image without an image,
subtle, beyond all conception.

Approach it and there is no beginning;
follow it and there is no end.
You can't know it, but you can be it,
at ease in your own life.
Just realize where you come from:
this is the essence of wisdom.

This description fits well with the primordial as described in the beginning of the Book of Genesis,

"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." 1:2 (KJV)

A more interesting exercise, though, is to read the Tao Te Ching passage alongside the Gospel of Thomas. According to the Gospel of Thomas, a non-canonical Christian text dating to 50 C.E. (earlier than the canonical gospels) the eternal present, called the Kingdom of God, is within the self.

Thich Nhat Hanh quotes from the Gospel of Thomas in his wonderful book, Living Buddha, Living Christ:

Jesus said, "If those who lead you say, 'See, the Kingdom is
in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they
say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you.
Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you.
When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and
you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living
Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty
and it is you who are that poverty."

The imagery of the birds of the sky and the fish of the waters call to mind the first week of creation, but this story from the Gospel of Thomas moves in the opposite direction of the Genesis version, backward from the creation to the eternal. The geography of creation includes the sky and the sea, but the geography of the eternal is the unity of the life that is within us with the rest of the universe.

According to the Gospel of Thomas and the Tao Te Ching, the eternal is elusive only when we engage in self-denial. We have to return to ourselves in order to begin to understand it, and reap the benefits of that understanding.

From the Tao Te Ching, Chapter 13:
See the world as your self.
Have faith in the way things are.
Love the world as your self;
then you can care for all things.