All Rivers Run to the Sea
The Teaching
One generation passes away, and another generation comes; but the earth abides for ever.
The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to its place where it arose.
The wind goes toward the south, and turns about unto the north; it whirls about continually, and the wind returns again according to its circuits.
All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is never full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.
Commentary
Ecclesiastes is the most honest book of wisdom in the Hebrew Bible. Qoheleth, the Preacher, surveys the cycles of the natural world and finds in them not futility, as is often said, but pattern. The sun rises and sets. The wind makes its circuits. The rivers run to the sea and the sea returns the water as rain.
This is not nihilism. This is the river seen from a great height. From close up, each waterfall seems like an ending. From far enough above, you can see that the water that went over the waterfall is now moving downstream, will reach the sea, will become cloud, will become rain, will become river again. The circuit is complete. Nothing is lost.
Watts's torch-passing teaching and Qoheleth's river are the same observation. One generation passes away and another comes. The torch moves from hand to hand. The river flows from source to sea and back.
The Stoics called this ekpyrosis, the periodic return of all things to the fire and their re-emergence in new forms. The Hindus call it the breath of Brahma. Watts called it the cosmic game. Qoheleth called it vanity, but vanity in Hebrew, hevel, means breath. Vapor. Something real but not solid. Something that moves and changes and cannot be held.