"The best is emptiness," said the Grand Master. "You must strive to be empty. Learn longevity, yes. But don't try to be immortal. Even gods die. Live long enough to fulfill your destiny."
"How does one do that?"
"By having a goal in live. Have a purpose and your life will be purposeful. Have a meaning, and your life will be meaningful. Make a decision and stick to it, not dogmatically or rigidly. Persevere and be flexible. Once a goal has been selected, nothing else must interfere. Cut all that is ordinarily considered essential in order to find meaning. If one has a powerful motivation for living, then choices are clear-cut. With discipline, sacrifices are made for a higher goal, and one acts with confidence and directness..."
----
He vacillate on the cusp of this understanding. There was still a glimmer of mind, a faint breath of a human being left to contemplate its inherent nonreality. So many times his masters had told him, "The world is an illusion." Not wanting to unbalance him, they had waited this long to let him no realize, "I am an illusion."
I was made up. I was a by-product of the binding together of consciousness and matter. I was the microscopic fragment of some cosmic thought that itself was a fluke, a random occurrence, a mere ripple among an infinite number of never-conceivable universes.
----
"Why be complicated?" asked the Grand Master. "Yin and yang and the ten thousand things mean separation. Separation means discrimination. Discrimination means discord. You must not cling only to the positive. In life you must also accept the negative. Those who do not accept both sides are the ones who become angry. Life is an oscillation between good and evil. Let it oscillate. There is creation and destruction, good and bad. Life will proceed on its own. Try to blend with it. Remain simple."
----
Never in the ring, or in the gym, did he ever question this will. But outside - away from the blood, and the sweat, the bitter cries with spit welling in the throat and hurt burning between the ribs - he sometimes questioned this powerful force that brought him through the rounds. It was precisely this will that barred his way to spiritual fulfillment. As long as he depended on this self, knew that emptiness could not be realized without totally plumbing the depths of a self that was a phantom in ordinary circumstances. Fight on, he decided. He would not be able to transcend anything until he reached his limits. And boxing brought him brutally, harshly, and undeniably to his limits.
----
The first moment of the universe, when time and energy and matter were all set into motion, was believed to have been triggered by thought.
