Austin .... I am with you and the Monk.
To spend the nano-second of time allocated to us in this dim universe in an endless search for a cause and effect, never to take time out, is possibly the ultimate sin.
Apart from which, answers are not always found where you look.
A certain Australian, whom I won't name, had a recurring dream, of a street corner in an unknown city which he could not identify. On this street corner, the dream foretold, an unbelievable treasure awaited could the Ozzie but locate the corner.
So saying goodbye to friends and family, and amidst great lamentation, this young Ozzie set off on a journey, more an aimless march, which took five years. Late one night in the year 1977 in a city called Baghdad, unable to find accomodation and very sick with malaria (truly) desperate and exhausted he laid down on a corner at the junction of two dark alleys, and finally fell asleep. But not for long. He was very roughly awoken by a police patrol, and dragged back to a watch house, were he was beaten severely with a bastinado (a cane stick).
The beating came first, then the questioning. Unable to provide coherent answers due to the malaria, exhaustion and the first beating, further beatings followed until the poor young ozzie blurted out all about his dream and the treasure.
This provided much amusement to the guards and their chief and they laughed loud and long. To the delusional ozzie it appeared as tho he was in hell. The chief manhandled the ozzie to his desk and told him he was a fool. The chief went on to say that he himself had had similar dreams involving a garden and a certain tree which bore peculiar fruit. He described the tree in detail, underneath this tree was a fantastic treasure but he had never been so foolish as to risk all to follow a dream.
The ozzie, sick and sore, was sent on his way and told not to sleep on street corners again. He was told to keep going. This he did, he kept going and going and he went with a will and he never stopped until he arrived back home.
Ignoring the cries of joy and excitement at his arrival after five years, he brushed past his family and went out the back into his mother's garden, in the middle of which was a certain mango tree, just as the Chief of the Bagdad Patrol had described it. The rest, of course, is history.
But the moral .... well .... A man travels the whole world over in search of what he needs, and returns home to find it.
greg
(Aresteh .... my apologys to Al-Nasafi for the adaptation, certain modern aspects of this story are mine and not his)
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