Book 11 (Pologue) - The Fool ; The Universe ; Repeat. Dao.

Eventually, I started to observe them.

Those on earth who resembled the Enlightened, Sages, Dark Shadows and Immortals of Tiphoon.

Carefree, living their lives leisurely.

And amongst them I noticed something weird.

Those who seemed more free and hedonistic, were those who less did things of their own volition.

Some sort of Force started to guide their paths as they managed to attain higher and higher levels of calmness of their hearts.

It was bizarre at the time, to see the difference between two spirits doing the same thing.

One was a crazed spirit, its emotions in upheaval, destroying everything around itself.

The other was a Sage spirit, its emotions totally indifferent to anything, also destroying everything.

The crazed spirit would lose power, have everything taken from it, and then suffer.

The Sage would also lose power, but then, it would just carry on. It didn’t desire to do what it was doing in the first place. Nor it had lack of desire. It truly didn’t care about doing or doing not ; feeling or feeling not ; moving or moving not ; thinking or thinking not.

And then, by not acting or stopping itself from acting, it would drift along existence as if there was a Road, a Path it was walking - even if there were no walking at all - no beginning and no destination.

A mysterious force.

Above all, its Heart would remain forever calm and tranquil, for it didn’t care at all. So, all Qi and all Magic were at its disposal.

Between the Crazed Spirit and the Sage Spirit, myriad other spirits would do myriad other things, having many degrees of suffering, desire and action between themselves.

Still, Sages ruled the world and seemed to be true immortals.

Living their lives and following their carefreeness, they had all power at their hands, and so one of them dying was something no one saw.

At first a religious feeling started to well up inside of me. I observed those spirits and followed them. I practiced what they said for me to practice. I tried hard to be like them.

Still…

I wondered if they really could never be destroyed, if following such a path would allow them to reach true immortality.

The basis of their lives was to follow what they had the intuition to do. To quit desiring to do something or not to do something. They could tell a lie and don’t care at all.

All those promises of eternal life, of eternal power, even if I don’t see them dying, couldn’t they be false?

And so they were, for once I saw one I called the Greater Sage die, its True Heart pierced by another Sages’ higher skill and then destroyed.

The remnants of such Sage slowly melted and then took form as an ignorant True Heart - one which didn’t even knew the concept of life and death. One just like those the crazed spirits would become, if dead.

I am me. Right here and now. What happens in the future matters not to me, because it isn’t me there.

Isn’t that the conclusion I reached?

Shouldn’t I look at the fate of the Sage and say “that doesn’t matter, look how carefree and happy he was while he lived! He faced death many times, but still he didn’t suffer! He was in a state of constant bliss! We should do that as well, even if that doesn’t give us immortality in the end!”.

Haha.

Still, despair almost took me.

I searched deeply inside my soul, but could not find the source of my fear of dying. Of quitting “being”.

How ironic, seeing as “I” don’t exist outside of “now”.

Some sort of illusion remained. Some sort of convoluted mind trick which made me think of “me” as something besides this collection of things I am now.

Maybe because this conclusion was reached so long ago, and since them I have always connected that “me” from that time to “me” of now.

Some parts of me just want to give up and become nothing. To quit “being” already.

But then again, isn’t the old Sage the most perfect example of that itself?

Of someone who stopped “being” in the sense of not being in the past, in the future… or even now, in the present?

The secret isn’t to Be in the Ever Now.

The secret is not to Be.

Isn’t it?

With time, I started to attune myself to such thing.

It took me much effort, since I desired a lot of things.

I desired to do a lot of things, I desired for some to be done to me…. And I desired not to do, and above all, not to be made to do, a lot of things as well. That not to mention the things I desired weren’t done to me.

But, after a while…

I started to just not be.

In time…

In time, the path of the Enlightened, Sages, Angels, Shadows and Immortals, which I so much despised in my previous life, even thinking that their enlightenment came from knowing I existed and had an objective…came to be even in my thinking.

And so I was finally calm and well.

“I” think no more.

Thoughts cross my head, fear crosses my heart, still, it’s all just part of the Path.

Path is Dao. Dao is Path. And still, the Path is not the Dao, for the Dao is unspeakabable.

Dao.