A
Parable
He
went to the mountains to get away from the talkers, the screamers
whose recorded voices chattered continuously and everywhere as from
the sky. Did they know everything about living well, as they claimed?
Were they all-seeing or merely all-seen? With these question in his
heart he went into the mountains away from the giant faces hovering
above the city.
In
the quietness in the valley among the snowy peaks he silently waged
war in his mind and his heart. Old books were his companions. He read
the Eight Ancient Sages: Chuang Tzu, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Plato,
Aristotle, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Matthew. When he was done reading he
sat and thought for a very long time. He returned to the city years
later, light of step and enlightened.
He
saw the world with new eyes.
The
giant faces of the city were simply fame-seekers and money-seekers.
Everything they said and did was filled with hooks to gain themselves
followers and money. Nothing was pure of the poison of ambition.
People had too long forgotten what a sage was. And he cried to the
charlatans,
“Every
word uttered with a thought of reward is worthless. If the temptation
is too great, seek rather poverty and humility than fame, and your
example will shine for ages.”
They
ignored him, for their lies had infected even their own hearts so
that they believed that fame and money were the only ways of
spreading truth.
“Do
you believe that you see what is true? If you do, live that truth.
Hold to the quiet center of your knowledge and do not waver. Perhaps
once you found a little truth, and your followers called you
enlightened, and in the lust kindled by praise and for praise your
little truth fled and your heart forgot. You did not hold to your
quiet center.”
But
he was a man from the mountains and his words were bitter, and none
of the teachers listened for long, and went on with their chattering
and yelling.
“Who
will teach these teachers?” he asked himself. “My voice is too
weak for the task, and I don’t like to scream from the sky as they
do.” And he left them.
Ignoring
the big faces he began to notice all the advocates. Some advocated
tradition, some advocated progress. Most advocates argued and fought
bitterly all day, on the steps of the city hall and in the darkest
corner of the poorest tavern. They argued and fought without hope of
ultimately victory, though they all dreamed of fixing the world.
“You
put your hope in government,” he told the advocates in the tavern.
“But when has your government ever hoped? When will you stop trying
to govern the government and start trying to govern yourselves?”
“That’s
exactly what we want to do!” they protested. “That’s why we
need to change the government!”
“You
want to change the government because you believe you are smarter
than the government. But if you are smarter than the government why
do you need a government? If the government believes you are not
having enough children it will tax the childless. If the government
believes you are too stupid they will pay people to educate you. But
all of this shows the government’s stupidity because some need more
children and some need less. Some need more education and some need
less. Why don’t you decide for yourself?”
“Are
you saying we need no government?” they said. “We already have a
name for that. It is called anarchy.”
“No,
I am saying you need wisdom and self-knowledge. Anarchy is your name
for the opposite, for stupidity. I am not an anarchist but a sage.”
They
nodded but their eyes revealed their thoughts: You will never
overthrow they government, it doesn’t matter if you are an
anarchist or a sage.
The
sage stood and raised his voice and preached to the tavern: “The
true rebel has a soul and everything he does is for his soul. The
true rebel gives all he has to his children and his animals and his
plants and his friends.”
But
none listened. They glanced at him but turned back to the windows to
see the chattering faces in the sky.
He
said: “You have hungry hearts that do not give. Your hungry hearts
eat too much and rip everything to shreds. Your hearts are so hungry
they pay blood for sand until they are empty tattered sacks filled
with sand and no blood. Sand is too heavy to pump. And that is why
your souls are dead.”
Some
of them enjoyed his poetry and listened for a time. And word spread
through the city of a great poet who traveled from tavern to tavern
and from great hall to great hall preaching the death of the soul.
And the book-makers came to the sage and offered him wagons of gold
to write his poetry in books and have his poetry told by the
chatterers in the sky. They said his name would be on the lips of
every educated man and woman and he would live in a mansion with a
hundred servants. He would never have to worry again and all day and
night he could write his beautiful poetry.
He
told these book-makers that they were soulless devils. The
book-makers clapped him on the back and smiled with pleasure. They
gave him an automobile and a house on the beach with a hundred reams
of paper and promised him women. He waited for the book-makers to
drive away satisfied and he wandered down the beach to a sea-side
town. He gave the keys of his new mansion to a beggar. A woman
passing by marveled and took photographs. He turned to her and said,
“Here
is what it means to have a giving heart. A giving heart asks for
nothing. If a giving heart has only three pearls in the world, it
tosses them before swine. If you give what is most valuable freely,
you buy your soul from God.”
“By
giving your house away you win your soul?” she said.
“No,
by giving you my honest words.” And he wandered from town to town
until he found a place where none recognized him. By this time he had
very long hair and a long beard and he was very hungry.
He
found an orchard where masked men were spraying poison on an orchard.
“Stop
this!” he told them. “You use masks because you do not want to be
with your trees and your animals. If you spend your days with your
trees and animals and love them with presence, that presence will
grow and your gardens will overflow with life. You will not need
poison.” They smiled vacantly at this advice and offered him fruit
of every variety. He ignored the gnawing in his belly and wandered
away without eating.
He
came upon a great mystery, a vast roofless hall with velvet carpets
and a throne, and upon the throne a small boy with a crown. People
came from far away to see this child and hail his genius and hear him
speak. The child did not meet anyone’s eyes but only stared at the
moon. He preached to the crowd saying, “Stop learning and start
creating.” And before their eyes he numbered the craters on the
dark side of the moon and told them the number of galaxies in the
universe. And he told them a lengthy story about a naked princess
from Venus and a blood-thirsty warrior from Mars.
I
must be in a dream, he thought. The boy started screaming, an inhuman
wail as from a beast. His mother quickly pulled a piece of meat out
of her purse and tossed it before him. He pounced and gnawed it like
a beast and was calm.
The
sage gathered his courage and pressed through the suffocating crowd
to the throne. The mother blocked his way and said, “You cannot
understand that boy’s mind. He is a world-genius of the first
rank!” He took her purse and dumped out the bits of meat and
trampled them underfoot. The boy began his wail. The sage gripped his
staff firmly and gave him a blow on the rear. The boy’s wail grew
louder. He struck him again. The boy’s wail grew so loud and
bestial that the crowd dispersed and the mother collapsed in shock.
“Silence!” commanded the sage. After the third blow the boy fell
to silent weeping.
“Send
this boy to work in the gardens and tend the animals and build
sheds!” But the mother did not know what these things were and only
wept. Neither her nor her son would budge from their throne. The
crowd returned and called the sage an enemy of children and exiled
him.
“Better
that you execute me,” said the sage, “because that would show
genuine love. If love never overflows into anger it is not love.”
“Peace
and not violence is care,” they said.
“You
do not care. Do you not care what your children will become? Do you
not care what your village will become?” But they would hear no
more and he moved on.
He
wandered from town to town, hungry almost to the point of starvation.
He was very thin and ragged. In one big city he sat on a bench as the
sun set. A guardian of the city told him that no homeless people
could sit there after dark.
“Nature
is my home,” said the sage.
“This
isn’t nature. It’s the city. Do you have a job?”
“I’m
a sage.”
“The
sages meet over there.” He pointed to a tower four hundred stories
high.
Inside
there were ten billion books. On the first floor, hundreds of people
were arguing loudly.
He
grabbed the shoulder of a woman. “What are you arguing about?”
“Dr.
Jones has argued that Dr. Smith’s views are intolerant. Dr. Smith
is protesting that he is merely telling the truth and giving no
interpretation. What do you believe is more important, truth or
tolerance?”
“I
believe that goodness is better than importance. The sages of old
didn’t worry about being tolerant or right or important, only about
being virtuous and good. You need to end this silly argument and
leave this tower and live with virtue.”
“But
we haven’t yet decided who is right,” she said.
“Will
you ever decide?”
She
laughed. “I don’t know.” She went back to arguing, and the sage
went to the second floor of the tower.
There
he found men and women sitting around a table drafting a very thick
book.
“What
is your book about?” he asked them.
A
man spoke: “We are drafting a philosophy on the question of whether
it should be legal for a dog to marry a cat, or a mouse a bluejay, or
a hawk an elephant. Where should we draw the line?”
A
woman said, “Or should there even be a line!”
And
the people broke down into argument and he saw that they had only
completed the first page of the book and most was crossed out.
“Fools!”
yelled the sage. They all looked at him. “Your countrymen are
starving, both for food and for wisdom. Your institutions are on the
brink of collapse. All is affluent vice. Can you not write a book
about this?”
“But
books have already been written about those things.” And they
pointed to all the millions of volumes on the shelves.
“If
you had read them and understood them,” replied the sage, “you
would not be here.”
They
stared blankly. “We don’t have time, we’re behind on our book.
The book-makers need this finished.”
Growling
with rage he went on to the third floor. It was as crowded as the
first, but even louder, because everyone was screaming angrily. The
sage swung his staff and tripped someone and knelt on his chest.
“What
do you want?” said the man, who looked more afraid now than angry.
The
sage leaned down so his voice could be heard. “Why are you all so
angry?”
“I’m
angry because ... because ...”
“Yes?”
“Promise
not to hit me again.”
“I
promise,” said the sage.
“I’m
angry because people who believe in God are violent. They cause the
suffering in this world. They need to be reasonable and tolerant.”
“You
thought I would hit you because you thought I believe in God. But you
are wrong. I do not believe in what you would call ‘God,’ though
I do believe in the divine. And I do not believe that tolerance is
more important than the divine.” And he wanted to strike the man
for his stupidity but he had promised that he would not. “And what
about everyone else? Why are they angry?”
“Some
believe that disbelievers in God have caused all the problems, and
that we need to start believing in the Bible again.”
“The
Bible?” said the sage and he began swinging his staff this way and
that, knocking people down until finally they were all looking at
him. “I’ve been told,” he shouted, “that someone here has
read the Bible!”
They
all stared at this skinny long-bearded Moses and shook their heads.
“No more than a few pages,” said one man. The rest remained
silent.
“Idiots!”
he said. “You are so lustful to prove the Bible true or false that
you do not read it!” And he left the tower and wandered far from
the city and its false sages.
On
a distant mountaintop he found people living in tents and gazing at
the sky. “We believe in your teachings, Sage!” they said. They
gave him food and he accepted it because these people loved nature
and grew wholesome food. “This world is a failure,” said these
sky-gazers. “We wait for the extraterrestrials to land and take us
to a better place!” The sage was filled with wonder and curiosity
and asked them many questions about their space-faring friends. For
three days and nights they spoke to him of outer space and its
aliens. At the end of the third day he asked them, “Have these
extraterrestrials taught you the meanings of wisdom?” And they
began to describe the structure of reality. According to the aliens
it is layered like the Tower of Sages in the city, and you start at
the first level and as you learn more and more you move to the higher
levels, to better and better planets.
“And
what is the final level of enlightenment like?” he asked the sky
gazers.
“We
do not know. But perhaps you can ask our neighbors in that grove of
trees. They are known as the silent and they have found perfect inner
peace.”
He
entered the grove and found people of every age and race sitting
quietly in the perfect pose of the lotus.
“I
hear you have wisdom!” said the sage.
One
man opened one eye, and closed it.
“I
hear you have wisdom!”
All
remained perfectly still.
He
struck the man with his staff. His eyes opened wide.
“I
hear you have wisdom!”
“Perfect
wisdom is perfect stillness,” said the man, cowering. “Please
join us in our enlightenment or leave us alone!”
“Enlightened?
Shall I call you the enlightened? No! I shall call you The Dumb,
because you do not use God’s gift of speech that makes us humans
and not animals!”
And
the silent opened their eyes at this.
“Come,
I am about to tell you what enlightenment is, and I will only say it
once.” And the silent followed the sage out of the grove and onto
the mountaintop with the sky gazers.
“Sky
gazers! Look no more at the sublime empty heavens, but gaze down on
your beautiful world!” And as he said this the sun rose and the
gazers looked down into the valleys. “See the green living things?
See the animals and humans in joy and sorrow, life and death,
sickness and strength? See the prophets and philosophers, conquerors
and saints, lovers and warriors, whores and nuns? Everything is
beautiful, even what is ugly. Everything is horrible, even what is
gorgeous. This is your world. Go unto it. Give up your tireless
watching and tireless ideas. They will be endless. Why do you wish to
go to another world? Will you not just sit on its mountaintop and
watch the sky once more? You don’t even know what highest wisdom
you seek!”
He
turned to the silent. “Are you not on this world to be on this
world? Be here and grow your gardens and trees, and animals and
children. You have learned peace through silence. Be the peacemakers
and teach all to live in peace and harmony. But I give you this
riddle: War breeds Peace. You are the warriors of peace and you must
fight your fight or lose what God you have found in your groves and
on your mountaintops. Did I not descend from my mountaintop? If I had
not descended, would I not have shirked my divine purpose? What use
is learning if you cannot teach? End your silence!”
And
as the sun rose, the sage beheld a nearby mountaintop, filled with
more gazers, but these were the valley gazers and they were looking
down on the world. The sage said to himself: “Perhaps those have
found wisdom like mine and can satisfy my need for friendship.” So
he climbed the other mountain.
On
the other peak he found a mystery. All the valley gazers were old,
and there were no children among them. “Where have your children
gone?” he asked the valley gazers. “Have they abandoned you in
your senile weakness?”
“No
no,” they laughed. “We have never had any children.”
“No
children!” said the sage, and he stood agape. “Do your bodies not
have the God-given lust for procreation, evolved over countless aeons
of life?”
“Well,
some of us do and some of us don’t. But we forgo procreation only
by choice. See the blood and death in the valleys below! Most
children don’t make it in this hard world. There are too many
people, and many people have more than their share of children. The
only responsible thing to do is to bring no more life into this world
of terror, where even the smallest and most innocent can meet a
grotesque fate!”
The
sage sat with the valley gazers for many days in deep thought. He
knew they were wrong but he did not know how to explain himself. The
days stretched to weeks, and the weeks to months as he lived with
these valley gazers. How can you explain what is good in the death of
children?
Finally,
after two years of gazing with them he spoke. “The name Valley
Gazer is too mild for you. I was mistaken because you seemed meek and
natural. You shall now be called Despairers and Wailers! For all you
do your whole lives is wail for the horror of the world. You stand
and gaze at the masses multiplying and striving and starving, but you
refuse to play your part in the epic of life. You produce no children
and no convictions, because you are afraid of failure. You know that
most children and convictions and faiths will die. But do we not all
die? What can we make that can last for a thousand years, let alone
five million years? What difference does it make if I die the day
after birth or a hundred years after birth? One day has an equal part
of eternity as a century. A single blade of grass has an equal share
of infinity as a universe. In this way children are gods too and have
the responsibilities of gods. Do you call this earth a great war?
Then be a warrior. Only by accepting its horror can you find peace.
Defying the horror you will ever remain a Despairer and Wailer. Go
and have as many children as you can bear, and you will be blessed
with many descendents and much life and love and death and beauty!
God and evolution bid you go!” And a few of them listened and
descended with the sage back into the valleys.
And
many of the sky gazers and the silent and the valley gazers followed
him down the mountain. He turned to them and said, “Let me leave
you all with these words, lest you return to the mountains again.
What good is your center and good intent if it evaporates in
non-action? How shall future generations enlighten if the enlightened
desire them not? No, I say desire future generations and suffering
multitudes, and let them forge holy courage and virtue in suffering.”
And
the sage went on by himself and walked among the error-checkers, who
were checking the Histories and the Numbers line-by-line for errors.
They had become old and gray but their pile of books grew ever higher
because the book-makers were ever proliferate. The sage passed these
machine-people silently and ran into a crowd of laughing onlookers,
wearing glasses and dressed in the most fashionable clothes. They
were laughing at the error-checkers and saying to one another, “We
are more clever! By far!”
“How
are you more clever?” asked the sage.
“What
matters but doubt and evidence? Isn’t that the whole of reason? Why
not use reason to fix the whole world, and not just our books?”
“But
if you do not have time to fix all your books how can you hope to fix
the world?” asked the sage. Their foolishness made him weary and
gave him a heavy heart.
“On
the contrary,” they said with confidence. And they stood tall and
pointed to their automobiles and airplanes and computers and
cellphones.
“You
fix the world thus?” cried the sage. “Such things move people and
ideas to and fro! They do not fix them!”
“Our
Reason made the doctors too, and the doctors’ science.”
The
sage laughed and said, “But can your doctors fix our broken
spirits?”
“Our
doctors of psychology can.” So the sage went to the offices of the
psychologists.
Masses
of well-dressed people, bedecked in jewels and fat on constant
feasting were crowded at the doors of the psychologists, jostling to
get in and offering bigger and bigger jewels for the privilege. With
them they brought spoiled children that cried and cried. The sage
climbed in through a window to see what was going on.
He
came upon a circle of people seated in chairs, crying. Only one man
in the circle was not crying, and he took notes on a clipboard. After
listening to them wail for several hours the psychologist finally
spoke. All stopped their tears to see and listen.
“Stop
believing that there is anything wrong with you, and you will be
cured,” he said. “Go to your job and earn your money and you will
be okay.”
“What
about my poor child!” said a woman. “She is too small to stop
believing so easily!”
“Give
her these drugs,” said the psychologist. “And she will be silent
for the teachers who will teach her how to behave in a job some day.”
With
great anger the sage jumped into the circle and grabbed the bottle of
pills. “What is this you are giving your children!” he demanded.
“It
will repair the chemical balance of their brains,” said the
psychologist. “The mind is merely a machine, you know.”
“Merely?
That cannot be! If it is a machine, what person designed it?”
“This
drug helps you move from your bed to your school or job, where you
can do your counting and reading, and then it lets you feel peaceful
at night so you can sleep.”
“No!
This is a monstrous practice, my friends. The purpose of your
mind-machine is to be a soul. Your job is to strive to feed and teach
children, and to raise animals and plants and give harmony to all of
nature and to all people. You are making yourselves into machines so
that you can build more machines and create wealth and luxuries to
weaken our bodies and destroy our souls. You work your so-called jobs
simply to get money and make more men, women, and children into
machines!”
With
a fiery heart he entered the child-prisons called schools and saw the
practice of the toilers called teachers. All day they gave their
students candy and praises for being quiet and sitting still. Some
teachers yelled too, and all teachers taught this strange group
meditation. And sometimes they forced the children to calculate and
read so they could contribute in their jobs some day. A rare few
teachers had souls and the fire of their souls entered their
students, kindling life-sparks. As to bright flowers in the parched
wasteland, these sparks were in each child’s mind, of stark beauty.
But most toiler-teachers had no time to teach about becoming souls,
only machines. The word “soul” had been banned from the schools
long ago when it was seen that the nation needed worker-machines and
not soul-people, and the teachers who taught it were ridiculed and
made to carry heavy burdens. Yet it was these heavy-burdened toilers
who were most cheerful.
In
the evening the children went home and watched colorful pictures and
rhythmic sounds to put their minds to sleep and prevent the flowering
of their souls. They would go to sleep to their pictures and sounds
and wake up the next morning and repeat. At school when they weren’t
being told to be quiet they were talking loudly about the pictures
and sounds. They also talked about who the most popular children were
and how good their clothes were and how funny the jokes were they
learned from the moving pictures. Sometimes the children would ask
the teachers about the meaning of this mysterious word “soul” but
the teachers were too exhausted to listen and had too many lessons to
teach. So the children decided amongst themselves that having a soul
was the same as being popular. And they showered the unpopular
children with insults and robbed them of any hope of ever having a
soul.
The
sage followed a brother and sister home and scolded their parents at
the door. “How could you sacrifice your children to that machine?
There was a time when education meant growing your children’s souls
and giving them values and manners, and having them read the ancient
sages.”
“What’s
a sage?” asked the father.
“Have
you read the Bible? Have you read Plato?”
“No,”
said the mother. “We thought those were outdated.”
“By
what? Your empty schools and superficial textbooks? Your bankrupt
psychology? Here, please read them.” He took a volume of Plato and
his Bible and handed them to the parents.
“Oh,”
they laughed weakly. “We don’t have time to read those. We didn’t
know you were one of those missionaries.” The slammed the door in
his face. And the sage sat on their steps and wept for these poor
children long into the night. In the morning the parents called
social services and he was taken to the soup kitchen.
He
saw very proud men and women serving food to the poor. He was hungry
because he was far from his farm and had found little that was
suitable to eat. This food was no different. It all came from cans
and on the cans were labels of explanation. It was made by huge
machines that destroyed the soil and destroyed all plants and animals
except a single crop for acres and acres. Reading this explanation on
the label he threw his food on the ground and turned to the poor and
hungry who were eating and cried, “Cast away this food! It is
better that we all starve than to live on the mechanization of life,
the making-machine of all that is green or nimble! For every mouth we
feed here we destroy a million generations of flourishing and
suffering and soul-building and soul-breeding. These are the elements
of life and its meaning, not merely stuffing our faces like swine.”
“But
if these people do not eat,” said a server, “they will die. They
are starving and gaunt, can’t you see? You say let them die rather
than feed them bad food. We say that would be a meaningless death, to
die simply because one is poor.”
The
sage knew this was his most difficult doctrine, the rarest and most
tooth-breaking of pearls, and he grew silent. None waited for his
response. All went on eating. It was likely that they would trample
this pearl underfoot, and turn and gore him.
Nevertheless,
he stood upon a table and gave them this parable:
“Once
there was a powerful and lustful sultan with forty-thousand wives.
Many supplicants came and groveled and cried: ‘Oh Great One, in
your wisdom you have married every woman in the city. We honor your
greatness, but humbly beg of you to have pity, for your subjects are
starved for affection and lonely, and cannot live good lives without
the company of women.’ And the sultan replied, ‘I am not deaf to
your suffering. Every man in the city may come to the palace once a
week and sleep with the Royal Wife of his choosing.’ And the men of
the city rejoiced and this became the new custom.
“Ye
wretches! Do you not see that the men of the city are as guilty as
the sultan? Do you not see that his wives are sorely abused? When you
plow a piece of land and destroy its abundance, you are as the sultan
ravaging a new wife. The hungry are like the men of the city who
cannot find a wife. When beggars complain of their hunger, they
should be sent to cultivate their land, but Behold! there is no good
land left, for the sultans of the world rape it with their machines.
Indeed, when you cultivate a piece of land you marry it and you
should love it and treat it as an equal. The land and its abundance
is part of nature, and it is a commandment to worship nature, for it
is the face of God.
“Do
you not see that by eating this food you are as guilty as the man who
sleeps with a wife of the sultan? It matters not that you have
permission from the sultan! Do you have permission from the wife?
Does nature give you permission to abuse her so?” And he overturned
the tables one by one and spilled the soup. They called the guardians
and he fled into the alleyways of the city and was very hungry. He
had not eaten for several weeks. There was no fat on his body and he
knew he was close to death.
He
leaned against the hard brick wall and wondered: Was he mad? But the
psychologists had defined madness as being non-machine. So it was
good to be mad in this country. Was there no country where he could
belong? Could he live with the peasants in faraway Bolivia? But he
was not Bolivian and did not belong there. He belonged here and was
raised here. Should he go to his mountain again? But he had no wife
and no legacy to leave, even from the mountain. He would go to die.
Should he find a wife? But brides needed men with machine-jobs. That
was the first requirement in this land. And he was not a machine and
he loved his soul. So he would starve here, alone and sane. And for
amusement he took a pile of napkins and a stray pencil and wrote down
his thoughts and threw them to the wind. His thoughts were angry but
his heart was calm. He cried into the empty alley, “Only that which
is given freely and without expectation of return has any life.” He
thought he would die there with no reward for the pearls he had cast.
He was content.
Some
Christians found him and took him to their beautiful farm and fed him
wholesome food. They understood some things about animals and plants.
They remembered how to work with their hands and educate their own
children.
“You
are building something that might last here!” said the sage with
admiration.
The
Christians were proud and thanked him for the compliment, but told
him that all was not well. “Our children learn many things and
become much wiser than other children, because they don’t go to the
machine-schools. And though they have great success and go on to be
great men and women, most lose God and become atheists and abandon
farming and child-rearing. But what else can we do? You believe in
God and the Bible: maybe you can help us. Our children make great
progress in the Word of God but maybe we can teach them a better way.
Come and see the little ones.”
He
went with them to see their smallest children. The three-year-olds
prayed seventy times a day and memorized an entire book of the Bible
every week. A two-year-old approached him and said, “See our
beautiful gardens that God made. I love God so much! And I love the
Bible. Jesus will save me. I have him in my heart!”
The
sage turned to the parents and said, “Your little ones do not know
what they are saying. You’ve made God part of their grammar. It is
nothing more than a word and piece of information to them. What is
the infinite to someone who cannot count to three? What is the
forgiveness of Jesus to someone who cannot sin? What is the beauty of
the world to someone whose world is a nursery? One teaches like this:
animals, gardens, tools, words, songs, music, stories, poetry,
mathematics, science, philosophy, religion, Jesus, God. You are
teaching your children backwards! No wonder you people are called
backwards even by the idiotic city folk. Your children will never be
able to doubt God this way, and without doubt how can they have
faith? And if there is no genuine faith, how can they go on to teach
future generations the meaning of God?”
The
parents stared at him blankly. They too had been raised in blind
faith and were subject to the pan-generational curse of the
trivialization and idolization of God. Those who fell by the wayside
were cursing God because they didn’t know whom they cursed.
But
the Christians did not expel the sage, and they asked him for more
wisdom. He told them:
“You
must begin by demanding of yourself that you forget all and renounce
all -- even unto atheism -- learn all and remember all, suffer all
and challenge all, die in every way you can die and strive in every
way you can strive: all for the sake of the most sacred of the
sacred, the most divine of that divinity that is beyond explanation
and full comprehension. Such divinity will make you the quietest and
most radical, the broadest-minded and most judgmental, most guilty
and most angry. And only when your soul has been thus broken can it
live and grow into a soul.
“Break
your soul and break the souls of your children and give them
everything of yourself and of the ancients. If a passion for the
wisdom of the ancients is also kindled in their hearts your children
and your children’s children will became holy sage-kings.”
And
the Christians heard this and marveled and a woman among them fell in
love with the sage and they married and moved to his mountain home.
There was a great feast and celebration and they founded a village on
their mountain. Over the centuries it produced many great sages
before it fell into forgetfulness and famine. For a time it lived on
only in song and poetry, yet long after all had forgotten what money
was and schools, what psychologists were and Christians, and what the
one hundred schools of wisdom were the village had produced, the
sagacity of the village passed into the spirit of humanity and made
it richer and strengthened the spirit of nature in the world, if only
by a blade of grass.
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