Living is Loving (Part 1)
Friend, sit down and listen to my story. Listen with all your heart! If your heart is not open you will only hear the sound of words but will not taste of their flavour.
I was 20 - or 24, or 25, what does it matter! I wanted to live, but did not know how to live or why I was living. I was searching. My search was very painful. I seemed to be walking through a desert full of mirages. I was hungry! My body was hungry. My living flesh was like a thousand gaping mouths, eager to swallow even the tiniest fragments of pleasure found on the way. My spirit was hungry. I fed it with all the words I heard utterd, all the ideas I could find in books and images and pictures of every kind. My head was like a beehive, buzzing with activity but producing no honey. Sometimes, in the darkness of my activity, I was aware of a light shining outside my buzzing head, my body and my soul, a long way ahead of me, somewhere at the end of this world and the beginning of a new universe. But as soon as the light came to me, it was obscured by the clouds. All that was left to me was my dream and that led me on. But dreaming is not really living and the storm soon broke. My dream was shattered and I was left naked on my bed with nothing to protect me. I was like a man burning with love, without a woman to be the object of that love. I was thirsty! my heart was thirsty. Deep within me, in the mysterious depths of my being, far deeper than my flesh and blood, I was thirsty. Trembling and uneasy, I was aware of my infinite thirst and of infinity. Like a fire burning in an unfathomable pit, consuming me and setting light to everything that lived. I went on living, but the question remained: How can I go on if I do not know how to live or why I am living? My life was a great parcel passed from one person to another, too heavy to carry and without an addressed destination, an object used by clowns to make people laugh. No one, least of all I, knew what to do with it.So I went on. I went through many parks and gardens. I walked over the lawns and gathered the flowers of pleasure. But I did not find hapiness. I caught a fleeting glimpse of it once or twice and tasted it for a moment or two, but it was lke a sweet melting on my palate and leaving me still hungry..... We are so made that hunger and thirst are never satisfied. That is our greatness and also our agony. I am quite certain of this. As soon as we think we have satisfied them, they are reborn and live even more vigorously within us. They even go ahead of us, moving so fast that the chase, which we can not give up, exhausts us. But we never catch up with them. We are insatiable hunger and unquenchable thirst. We die when our hunger and thirst die.
I was hungry. I was thirsty. but did not know what food and what drink I needed. Nothing is worse than being hungry and not knowing bread. Nothing is worse than being thirsty and not knowing wine. I wondered who would set me free from my torture. A friend told me: "You will not find your way if you continue to look inside yourself. Go outside yourself! If you stay in the harbour you will never know the infinity of the ocean". Another friend said to read "The Book". I opened the Bible sometimes and found it easy to respect the words in it, because they struck me as beautiful, but their mysterious content escaped me. They were like grains of wheat with such a thick husk that I could not reach the life-giving germ inside. A third friend urged me to find someone who would explain the meaning of words to me: "Someone who has eaten the germ and lives from it may be able to tell about the life those words gibe in the language of today. Then he said: "Go and see The Sage. Every one says he speaks like books and that his words are like seeds in the hearts of those who hear them. In good soil they bear much fruit.
So I decide to go see The Sage.
I will tell you about my search, my doubts and my difficulties. It is a search I have made only with my heart - not with the whole of my life.
I will also tell you what The Sage told me --- his words.
