The traveler stood within the depths of rising sandstone walls, their reddish glow reflected in sunset upon the mirror-layered stream near which he stood, bare feet relishing the dry sand-dust soil of earth below. The pleasant mid-warmth of perfect day suffused him, as the welcome warmth of fire in pleasant times, heightened by an occasional light breeze of air just slightly less warm than the stillness. The single bead of sweat on his left brow, a friend, moved slowly towards the pull of the earth’s center. Before him stood a tree of mesquite, rarer here than elsewhere, and though small as trees go, much larger than its brothers to east and west, perhaps in part due to lack of companionship. Beneath the tree sat one of the ancients of this land, with roots his own, deep roots not seen, far into the earth on which he sat. Theron the traveler squatted down before the elder, placing his elbows on his knees. Clouds moved across the sky by a swift, unfelt force high above, their shadows slipping up and down the canyon walls in slow, hypnotic movements.
“Greetings Nodin” said Theron.
The elder one inclined his head a moment, blinked once at Theron, and then let the sky enter his eyes once more.
“You wander the earth in pain” said Nodin. “Why do you come to me now, Theron, while your burdens yet forbid you? Would you give your soul to the fire just to seek the death-solace?”
“What you call burden I call enlightenment” replied Theron.
“An identity” said the ancient one. “Such a naming does not diminish glory, but sometimes truth is dry as dust, heavy as granite.”
Theron bowed his head in acknowledgement. Such a thing he could accept even by his own principles, though he did not consider himself willfully aesthetic.
He searched himself, for he did not know fully the answer to the question, and to be here brought fear, hope, and consternation together, an intersection with a sharp point.
“I am in…confusion,” said Theron. “Though I am forbidden to seek you, yet I feel the confusion gives me the permission, though I couch this in silent words from the beyond to give my courage strength.”
“Your god is the pain of wandering this earth, your pain is ignoble, and you suffer and seek meaning, finding something and nothing, unsure of illusion or substance. You seek truth, yet constrain yourself for fear of fire. You seek to avoid the brutality of breathing mud, living in pain deeper than meaning, despair beyond hope. Yet all that you avoid comes upon you, and this too you see as a two-sided coin,” said Nodin.
“It is true,” said Theron. He considered the pain in his thighs, wondering of the greater good of exercise of strength, surrender to pain, or to sit in some semblance of faith or worldliness. The rule of inertia prevailed for the time, and he thought briefly on the implications, that perhaps inertia stems merely from confusion, a lacking in will to stop or go due to insufficient or too much insight. Theron did not sit or stand.
“My heart is many colored and I cannot know it. I have found insight upon insight, and when one light shines upon another, I only stumble further into darkness,” said Theron. “I wander in pain, a swinging pendulum. I seek to stand upon bedrock, yet the wind whispers to me. I call out, and my voice comes back to me, warm and silent. I do not know what to say. My feet led me here.
“I seek an end to suffering. My first thoughts were to seek to escape.”
“Life is suffering. There is no escape but death,” replied Nodin simply.
“This too I came to realize, and so I tried surrender. I no longer called out for release, embraced my suffering, yet the pain remained.”
“Reality is will, will is illusion. We walk in a dream. To release the will is to awake,” said Nodin.
“I seek belief. I have sought it through will and un-will. It has been strong and weak, and I consider the small strength of it which I possess and am afraid,” said the wanderer.
“To consider belief is to destroy it. To ignore it is to walk in shadow. To lie to yourself about the strength of your belief brings only an empty wind.”
“And yet to ask for it is to consider, and what of the recipient of belief. Is not the object of importance?” asked Theron.
“If I say the object is the burden, and there are those who say I am but a whispering on the wind, to carry you to the flames, then why do you ask me these things?” said Nodin.
“I still wonder if I am ensnared or set free. I seek truth.”
“And in so doing your belief and its object waver like a candle in the wind. You are caught in a whirlwind of paradox. You do not seek truth, you seek home,” said the ancient one.
A single tear fell from the eye of the traveler and was swallowed by the dust. “Is the seeking the source of pain, or the lack of finding, or the success of finding?” he asked.
“What does it matter? The suffering is there, and through seeking to surrender to it, you are unable to do so. You are caught in the war between will and un-will. You seek to choose rather than die. Choose death – choose life. These choosings cannot be caught in the war of will, for this too is illusion,” said Nodin.
“Truly I am caught in the whirlwind. I seek peace - this is truth. I seek truth – this is a lie, for all things are paradox in the great unknowable – all things both truth and untruth. I am bound by fear which is unconquerable; it drives me from place to place across the earth. I do not know if understanding or wisdom brings release or springs the trap. The illusion of words and the world is upon me, and I am a dreamer, whom knowing he dreams, cannot wake. I walk the world with the mark upon me. I am not even given the comfort of despair, for I can find no comfort in it.” The traveler sighed.
“The deeper the man dives, the darker becomes the water” said Nodin. “Yet there is a depth, and an end to depth, and who can say what lies there, save the diving man who surrenders to the gravity, falling into the great pit of night, pain, fear, death. The obstacle cannot be overcome unless you turn and walk away. Think on this – if you step towards the wall, you must come to the half-way point, and you will do this infinitely, thus never reaching your goal. Only the irrational makes this possible.”
“Then all of life is absurdity, and the rational and the irrational are like twins with the same face,” said the Traveler.
“I cannot unspeak these things. You have come to the beginning of unknowable, that some have called wisdom. Yet at some point you must dive into the darkness, fall into the illusion of choice without choosing, surrender without will. Only then will your pain begin, and there is no ending without a beginning, although these too are illusion.”
“Then life is impossible” said the traveler.
“This too, is truth” said the ancient one. “Life is impossible, and thus the rational becomes irrational, and with this knowledge the dreamer becomes lucid.”
The traveler bowed his head and sat down upon the earth, listening to the wind. It blew about him, yet he understood it not.
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