Alo and De Hunger #35
(PD) Alo and De Lake on Land.
Copyright ©2018 October 10, 2018
Yan: I was excited... I had never before questioned the thing... to me, the old words seemed to be so rational, so, so, reasonable. I had heard of the story countless times, but I simply did not critique the story... I permitted the words to rest as they were, my accepting the story to be reasonable within the intended message. Yes, I knew that the story was an invention, but the story presents a moral message, one that holds for the purpose of presenting contrasts, ideas that people hearing the story will accept as a measure of their own behavior... to think about the future results of one's behaviors of today... the story has been used by countless people, to be one of the guides of their own lives... but when I began critiquing the story's ideas, I then discovered that there existed a flaw, a very serious flaw, and I was amazed at how so easily I had previously not given mind to what should have been obvious.
Alo: Yes... critiquing, is necessary... but, a man must know what to critique also.
Yan: Agreed... I did not before know of man's ways, so I did not possess the knowledge that was necessary for critiquing... but now, the knowledge is present, and I can no longer find the story to be innocent.
Alo: Also remember, that there will always be knowledge unknown... no critiquing is flawless...
Yan: Agreed... and now, now I can see how easy it is to make a mistake... and how easy it is that mistakes will always be present... never will my mistakes be few.
Alo: 'The cautious seldom err'... it is a common belief...
Yan: Ah, perhaps so, a common belief, but the belief is very wrong. I am aware that you, De, and Jun have discussed similar things before, but it is new to me, and I am so astonished at how little I have given thought to things that should have been obvious. The story, of a rich man without caring for other people, dying, and going to the fiery pit, and the beggar, dying and going to paradise... in the pit, the rich man begged for a drop of water to cool the rich man's tongue... the moral of the story is that one's hunger for material things, and not caring for other people, can cause a man to be sent to the fiery pit, but, look... the rich man was still hungry for self... he had not changed... even when placed into a fiery pit, the callous man still hungered.
Alo: Yes... it is the way of outsiders'... their hunger, is insatiable...
Yan: Insatiable even within the pit! But the thing that most surprised me, was the realization that even those within the story's paradise were also with hunger... hunger for rewards, hunger for comforts, hunger for all things self-satisfying... it was then that I realized that the common way is so selfish, that the common way truly believes that paradise is merely more hunger.
Alo: Their hunger, it burns continuously... the outsiders are not able to satisfy their hunger... the outsiders, they themselves burn continuously... the fire of their hunger, it is, as, if, they live within a fiery pit already, and do not know it... they have never seen a contrast to know how sad their lives are...
Yan: And that deeply troubles me... to us, their way of life is indeed as a fiery pit already... and too, even their paradise is a fiery pit of hunger, only at a different location...
Alo: Compare... which is the place you wish your soul to be? A fiery pit of hunger below, or a fiery pit of hunger above?
Yan: Ha! Neither! My short months of marriage to Jun, I have already found a paradise greater than all written... I would not trade harmony with Jun for anything... no riches, no gods, no paradises, not an eternity of life... nothing.
Alo: De already knows my heart... Jun, now knows yours... Jun's face, turns red, often now...
Yan: Yes, and our eyes, now often water... happiness... it grows daily...
Alo: Chidao... no hunger... no selfishness... no wants... no desires...
Yan: Hunger, burns at the root... outsiders are consumed by their own fire of hunger, and still they cannot see that they are their own fiery pit.
Alo: Few people have experienced deep hunger of the stomach... the hunger is horrible... filling the stomach with food, the hunger remains unsatisfied... the hunger becomes so intense that a person sincerely considers eating their own flesh. The outsiders, they consume their own lives, their own bodies, trying to satisfy their hunger... the hunger cannot be quenched...
Yan: Contrast... Jun said... harmony is not a thing done, nor a thing possessed... harmony is what one is... oh, the little things, now mean so much more to me...
Alo: Nature's way... no boundaries of creativity... no boundaries of harmony... there is, a thing, that I will not speak of, but, when the harmony, attains... it then makes all previous experiences, tiny...
Yan: Interesting, to me, is that any one of us could speak of chidao to the outsiders, but the outsiders would only be able to interpret the words to imply something to be possessed, something to feed their hunger. But you had previously spoken of critiquing all popular ideologies, and found errors... were the errors similar to the story's?
Alo: Yes... man's mistakes are endless... contrasts... to recognize the errors, sometimes needs the contrast of where no error exists... a depth of harmony, carries no hunger... outsiders, will never see the contrast.
Yan: I continue to ask myself... why did the story not present the idea of the rich man repenting, and of learning harmony? No, the story left all of the characters to be hungry, which, to me, appears to infer that the man who wrote the story, perhaps he also did not know that his story was of hunger, and not a story of fair judgement?
Alo: Plausible... if a man does not know that a thing exists, then the man cannot speak of it...
Yan: Cannot imagine a new thing...
Alo: Yes...