the world will laugh at you, just as a carpenter would if you
seemed shocked at finding sawdust in his workshop, or a
shoemaker at scraps of leather left over from work.
Of course, they have a place to dispose of these; nature has
no door to sweep things out of. But the wonderful thing about
its workmanship is how, faced with that limitation, it takes
everything within it that seems broken, old and useless,
transforms it into itself, and makes new things from it. So that
it doesn’t need material from any outside source, or
anywhere to dispose of what’s left over. It relies on itself for
all it needs: space, material, and labor.
- No carelessness in your actions. No confusion in your
words. No imprecision in your thoughts. No retreating into
your own soul, or trying to escape it. No overactivity.
They kill you, cut you with knives, shower you with
curses. And that somehow cuts your mind off from clearness,
and sanity, and self-control, and justice?
A man standing by a spring of clear, sweet water and
cursing it. While the fresh water keeps on bubbling up. He
can shovel mud into it, or dung, and the stream will carry it
away, wash itself clean, remain unstained.
To have that. Not a cistern but a perpetual spring.