In a quiet valley where the roses swayed, I met a man on a dusty road. Though the man was old, his eyes were bright. I asked him to walk with me and tell me what he knew.
This is what he said:
“From the nothing we arrive. To the nothing we return. In between, the nothing teaches us, and we become, if we work, the shining forms of its potential.”
“Once I woke up with a rose in my heart. I have never been so happy as I was that day. This rose is a great privilege. As it bloomed it burned away everything that kept me from seeing clearly.”
“In that clarity trees laugh. Clouds sigh, and mountains breathe. Air is the only thing that does not divide.”
“What we call the world is actually quite small. It is able to fit entirely into a human head.”
“Things are distractions until you learn how to use them. Until that moment, they are using you.”
“Life is supremely valuable, but only if you know what it’s for.”
“Fear is the greatest enemy. Division is it’s way.”
“To be alone is to be happy with whatever lives inside you.”
“To be lonely is to be anxious about whatever lives inside you.”
“This world is a story written by those who have forgotten their origins. Underneath their dead words is a truth so radiant no one who experiences it is ever the same.”
“Nothing isolates like the judgement that the gap between you and those around you is real.”
“If you wish to understand yourself, pass through your fears and unsatisfied desires until you reach the other side. Those fears will appear to you as a monster that pours out of your chest. If you are able to stand the sight of it without losing your mind, you will eventually be able to see what can be known, though this wisdom will not come without the help of the higher ones.”
“As you pass through this mirror of yourself the terror will be more than you can imagine. Stay with it. Do not succumb. In the end its whispers will fade into nothing. Your mind will be lucid, supple and clean.”
“To survive in the space beyond the monster is not easy, but it is work that humanizes whoever takes it on. There, one must become responsible for one’s own equilibrium.”