Bhagavad Gita · Chapter 8: The Imperishable Absolute

Bhagavad Gita 8.18

avyaktādvyaktayaḥ sarvāḥ prabhavantyaharāgame | rātryāgame pralīyante tatraivāvyaktasaṃjñake ||

At the coming of the day, all manifest things emerge from the unmanifest. At the coming of the night, they dissolve into that same unmanifest.

Modern context

The universe breathes. At the dawn of Brahma's day, everything emerges from the unmanifest; at nightfall, everything returns into it. Creation is not a single event but a rhythm, like waking and sleeping or the tides. The same pattern is visible in a single life: projects, relationships and moods appear, flourish and fade back into the stillness from which new ones will come. Seeing the rhythm makes endings less frightening.