In the passage of time everybody is constantly
looking for a Lost One. The Lover is in search of
his Sweetheart, the Heart looks for its Wishes, the
Conqueror for New Lands, the Archaeologist for
a Rotting Bracelet, the Poet for his Vision,and the
Devil in quest of All.
I too for a lifetime have been lookin for my Lost One
Everyone I have asked has given me some little clue-a clue based on the model of his own Lost One.
Someone would say "He was a tall, thin boy with hollow cheeks, who would sit at the door of a log-cabin and tell stories to little children."
a gravedigger said: "He was a coffin-maker. He built the coffin in which his mother was buried. He himself had dug the grave. Many a day, after his work was done, he would lie on the grave with his cheek on the wet soil, quietly talking to his Lost One. It was as if he were making a vow of some sort".
One neighbor, a midwife, told me that the boy was born under an unlucky star. He brought ill luck to others. The night I cut off his
umbilical cord, the Great Master died. He sure was an ill-starred boy.
A forester said: "He was a true son of the woods. He cut down tall trees with a few powerful strokes of his axe. Giant trees fell before him, but he never struck a blow at young saplings."
An old gardener said to me: "He was an apprentice of mine."
He loved grafting trees and rose bushes. He would water even the lowliest thorn bushes. Once I pulled out a bush. He looked at me with accusing, sad eyes. I told him thorns sucked in precious water, weakened the soil, without producing anything. He said, "Yes, but if you take the trouble to graft them, they bring forth the most beautiful flowers". He actually had made several grafts on the thorn-bushes with amazing results. The flowers he developed from his experiments turned out to be some of the most beautiful gems I ever saw. He was in love with all sorts of creepers. He would be terrible upset, although quietly so, if he ever caught me uprooting creepers. He would say large trees, with intertwined branches, were the true offenders. These were the bullies, he said, which absorbed all the sunlight, letting the young saplings starve in the dark. These giants, he would point out, sucked up all the water in the ground, all the food provided by Nature within the soil. They were so greedy that, they would not let a drop of water reach the smaller, weaker plants. In this, the tall young man said, gardeners helped the bullies, fed their egos and made it possible for them to go on robbing the young trees from sustenance. Little by little, the saplings lost their strength, they underwent a complete transformation and became creepers; gradually they started winding around the huge trees, going up, up, up until they found light-, life-giving sunlight.
“He felt sorry for trees shaded by tall walls and always ministered to them. These, he said, were the orphans of the garden.
“The thorns, he claimed, were the flowers of unfulfilled wishes, the blooms unreached by rain, the buds of the gardener`s wrath. They strove ever so hard to bring forth flowers, to bloom, to make Nature the more beautiful for their existence-but in vain. They rebelled, they became bitter. That is why they sting anybody rash enough to approach them or step on them. They consider men unjust gardeners.”
In the passage of time everybody is constantly
Looking for a lost One: the Creeper is in search of
Sunlight, the Flower for the fall, the Spider for
The Fly and the Devil in quest of all.
I too for a lifetime have been looking for my Lost One
A farmer told me, "He used to be my farmhand. He ploughed the field with very deep furrows; he sowed, but so very carefully, so conscientiously. He believed that if a farmer gave thanks to the Lord for his blessings he would reap a thousand grains for each seed he showed. He worked on my farm for a while and during this time my crops flourished and my bread tasted better than ever. He believed arid lands cursed the heavens by night and men by day. Once I walked through a saline stretch with him. He told me saline land was made by the tears of slaves."
A grocer said, “He was one of us. He always tinkered with our scales to see that they were accurate and that people got their money`s worth.”
Widows recalled that when they went to buy tobacco, the tall young man would take infinite pains to see that the tobacco was measured exactly to the specified amount.
Attendants of book stores called him exasperating He would buy a book, they said, and return it the next day for another book. Thus, with the price of one, he read a whole library of books. However, they all agreed, when he returned a book, it was as good as new, as if no human hands had touched it. He knew the kind of book he wanted and warned book stores against selling books of the Devil`s authorship.
He believed that Satan found his way into man`s thoughts through liquor, through thought into the pen and through the pen into the soul of man.
He maintained that Satan had chosen this way in order to undermine and disrupt God`s works.
One day he bought a book and the next day he burned it. When asked why he destroyed it, he replied: “It was poisonous.” He believed every man first became a slave in his own mind and then he was shackled. He was asked once whether he had written anything. "I am illiterate", he replied. However, between the leaves of a book, a beautiful, unfinished piece of poetry was found, proving his literary talent.
I talked to a number of blacksmiths. They said he was a very good customer. He would buy a new axe once in a short while. But he would admonish them against making chains. These he hated more than anything else. Whoever makes chains, prison bars, shackles, fetters, handcuffs,” he would say, "is God`s enemy; He won`t be forgiven."
He ordered his axes of the purest, the hardest steel, and then he himself would sharpen and hone them. He loved the axe and hated the chain.
Some of his townsfolk told me he had been a mailman. An old man said he would always carry the mail in his hat – why? Nobody seemed to know. A minister said he did that probably because he thought of letters as living things, made up of people`s hopes, wishes, tears, moments of expectation, sorrows, heartbeats, nervous tensions, the souls `whispers. He probably could not bear to imprison in a mailbag a mother`s heart, a child`s look, a bride`s joy…he always carried the mail on foot. One last Sunday evening, however, his townsfolk saw him riding a horse, carrying in his hand a long roll of paper. That was the last they saw of him.
A coppersmith told me my Lost One would go to his shop in the evening and sits by the fire and read until very late at night. Sometimes he would talk and praise the work of the coppersmith, but he spoke bitterly of the blacksmiths und their chains, fetters and shackles, of the tanners… with their lashes and whips.
One day I saw a big, heavily-built man riding in a gilt coach. I stopped the carriage and asked him about my Lost One. He stared at me angrily. "No use looking for him," he said, "You will never find him!" I was about to tear him to pieces, when his coachman bent down and whispered in my ear: "Be careful, don`t fight him. He is a voodoo charmer. He can put a spell over you, just as he did on the man you are looking for. I`m in his power, too."
I knew that my Lost One had once been a lawyer. I thought I would go and see some members of that profession. When I entered the courtroom I found bedlam. A slave was on trial for having blinded himself in one eye. The present owner had sued the former for damages.
He had documents to show the court that the former owner had guaranteed to take the slave back by making complete refund of the price, minus one dollar, if the slave suffered any bodily harm or disability within a year after the transaction was made. The present owner had paid 23 dollars for the slave. The former owner was prosecuting the slave for having disabled himself, intentionally, with criminal intent.
I listened for a while and then boldly interrupted the proceedings.
I approached the judge and asked him for my Lost One. He frowned, looked at me severely and said in a cold voice: “Many years ago we had somebody of that description among us. He was an attorney, an autocratic one, a trouble maker. Whenever he came to court, he committed all sorts of improprieties. He insulted the court, the law and whatever stands for justice. He would look at the Angel of Justice, holding the sword and the balance. He would accuse the Angel of being blind to real Justice; he would touch her sword and point out that only one edge of the sword was sharp, the other edge was blunt and ineffective.
In the passage of time everybody is constantly
Looking for a Lost One: The Judge for his Conscience
The Etcher for Ivory, Solomon for his Ring, the Dove
For its Cage, the Drunk for the Marshal, the Devil
In quest of All
I too for a lifetime have been looking for my Lost One
My Lost One was a Gypsy. I thought I would look for him among that tribe.
An old Gypsy said, "Oh, yes. He was a cousin of ours. His mother`s mother ran away and was led by the Devil to some large city. She was a simple-hearted woman, like all Gypsies. We never found out what became of her. We only learned some time later, that her daughter had given birth to a son, a child – we were told – who brought ill lock to everything he touched. He visited us for a while.
He was a real Gypsy, always true to Romany ways, never assuming alien manners, never getting intoxicated by the opium of so-called "civilization." The day he was visiting with us, we saw him softly cry as he watched a young calf die."
I approached an old Gypsy woman, who was mending her tent while her kettle was boiling on the fire.
"Yes, yes, I remember him,” she said." One day he let me look at his palm – a very strange palm. It palm was cut in two by two curved lines. I couldn`t make out what they were or what they represented.
I asked my Old Master; he too, was baffled. I knew he was in love, but I never could find out the name of his sweetheart. His eyes were deep like the ocean, full of tribulations of sadness and other emotions.
He breathed like a baby; he was tall and straight like a reed.
On his forehead his sparse hair fell in the shape of a cross. He looked as if he carried the burden of Man`s sorrow upon his powerful shoulders.
His hands were calloused and so were his heels. O insisted upon tying an amulet on his powerful biceps. He quietly smiled and let me. I also saw a mole upon the corner of his mouth.
My Lost One was basically an ascetic. I thought I would find traces of him among the Indian fakirs After a long search, I found a Grand Old Man who was pointed out to me as the prophet of prophets among the holy men of India. He told me, however, that my Lost One had been his own Great Master. "He was the Real Fakir", he said, "We worldly desires. But he tortured himself to awaken, to revive the soul of man. We could never find out his secret. We are submitting to pain and bodily hardship for complete obliteration, for death. He underwent his hardship to end death and suffering a true Buddha. But he was not a Prince. He was born in a log-cabin, not a palace. He was born on a mat, not on a feather bed. His first sight of the world was the sour frown of the midwife, not the smile of an overjoyed, proud father.
"We accept to our circle only those who belong to us, the initiated."
He destroyed circles, conventions, barriers. He wanted all to belong to the same circle, all to be safe guarders of the same Secret – the eternal Secret of Life.
"He believed Life was a gift of God." Whoever, under any pretext rebelled against Life, wasted it. Whoever despised Life or hated it was Love and breaking hearts was a great Sin. He believed Life was beautiful and ugliness only in the imagination of Man. Yea he was in love with life, but never its slave. (And only God cans love life without being its slave.)
"Now, if you want to find him you must get admittance to the presence of the Buddha."
"If you so strongly believe in the doctrine of my Lost One,” I asked, “why don`t you follow his ways?"
"One of us has been able to do so and has made great progress toward perfection. He always followed the Master, kissed his hand and listened to his counsel. Hi is a freed slave. We too are trying to achieve this former slave`s stage of perfection."
"Tell me his name!"
"The Disgraced One of India."
I set out to find Buddha. As I was passing by a maharaja`s palace, I heard a commotion and the wail of a young voice.
I soon found a group of people following a young girl who was being dragged by the hair by a pair of terrible-looking executioners to let her go, without heeding the lashing that was inflicted on her by a eunuch. I soon found out she had been a new addition to the maharaja`s harem and bad tried to escape when asked to submit to the ultimate desire of the king. "Let her go, let her go," wailed the mother. “She is only a child; she fled only because she was scared!”
I followed them from a distance until we came to the huge gates of an ancient palace. An armed guard in a splendid uniform stopped me. I told him I was looking for a Lost One and described him the best I could. Hi listened very carefully and then seemed to remember something. "Oh, yes," he said, "I think I know whom you mean. Many years ago we had a man like that who caused us a lot of trouble.
He would come by night and walk around the palace walls. He was a suspicious character. He probably had a sister in the maharaja´s harem and was trying to help her escape. The chief of the guard does not like suspicious characters. The prowler was thrown into the Send."
In the passage of time everybody is constantly
Looking for a Lost One: The Gypsy for his Star,
the Fakir for Extinction, the Lips for a Kiss, the
Kiss for the Harem, the Preacher for the Bier, the
Devil in quest of All.
I continued my search. I walked, I rode and I sailed until at last I found myself in the presence of the Great Buddha. I threw myself at his feet, I kissed his hand, I begged, I implored and I could retain myself no longer – I broke down and wept like a child. Between sobs I managed to tell him of my mission. I said, "In your creed there is no sin greater than breaking a heart…"
"Get up my son, said the Buddha in a calm, penetrating voice."
"I know what you are looking for. He is a Secret that is hidden in my Silence. He is a Melody that can only be found in the strings of my Harp. You can only find him of you can become quicker than the Breeze, more versatile than Thought and deeper than Silence. He bent down and wrote with his finger in the soft sand: “He is Eternity."
Even the wildlife in the forest came to know of my search for the Lost One. One day I overheard a pair of pheasants talking to each other. It went something like this:
"Do you know whom he is looking for?"
"No how should I know?"
"No wonder, you were a little baby then. He is looking for one of our pupils. He was a child then. We taught him how to fly. Sometimes we had little fights and quarrels. But he always mended the quarrel with a sweet smile and gathered the most delicious seeds for us."
I came upon a group of hares. They recalled that he always shared his food with them and sometimes he went hungry to make sure they had plenty to eat.
A quilt-maker told me he had sold a quilt to my Lost One on credit.
"Our agreement was for him to pay for the quilt after death, in Heaven. However, he came and paid his debt in a short while right in this world."
An eviction agent said he had known my Lost One. "He was the poorest man I ever knew. Once I served him an eviction order.
His wife was about to deliver a child. He had no money to call a midwife. They had no food, nothing. Just then a man came with a bagful of double eagles for a retainer. He glanced at the legal folder and send the man away, refusing the gold – gold that would have solved all his problems and probably saved the life of his wife and the yet unborn babe. It seemed a group of slave merchants, knowing of his plight had tried to tease him by offering him a case.
His wife scolded him. If he didn´t think of her, at least he should think of the baby, she said. This sort of thing happened many times and his answer to his
"Your children and mine are God´s lambs; He will care for them."
An old shepherd told me he had known my Lost One. "He was a poet, always thinking, always brooding. He would come to us and sit by the spring, compose verse and music and caress little lambs.
"I would play his music on my reed. It was magic. Sheep would dance with joy and lick their young ones. Other shepherds lear ed his songs and as they played his tunes, they noticed a marked increase in their milk production and the lambs grew and fattened very rapidly."
My search took me to the graveyard. Suddenly I found His Name on a tombstone – it belonged to an unfortunate girl.
I trembled like a leaf. I fell down in tears. I heard a soft, tortured voice. It was the girl`s.
looking for a Lost One. The Lover is in search of
his Sweetheart, the Heart looks for its Wishes, the
Conqueror for New Lands, the Archaeologist for
a Rotting Bracelet, the Poet for his Vision,and the
Devil in quest of All.
I too for a lifetime have been lookin for my Lost One
Everyone I have asked has given me some little clue-a clue based on the model of his own Lost One.
Someone would say "He was a tall, thin boy with hollow cheeks, who would sit at the door of a log-cabin and tell stories to little children."
a gravedigger said: "He was a coffin-maker. He built the coffin in which his mother was buried. He himself had dug the grave. Many a day, after his work was done, he would lie on the grave with his cheek on the wet soil, quietly talking to his Lost One. It was as if he were making a vow of some sort".
One neighbor, a midwife, told me that the boy was born under an unlucky star. He brought ill luck to others. The night I cut off his
umbilical cord, the Great Master died. He sure was an ill-starred boy.
A forester said: "He was a true son of the woods. He cut down tall trees with a few powerful strokes of his axe. Giant trees fell before him, but he never struck a blow at young saplings."
An old gardener said to me: "He was an apprentice of mine."
He loved grafting trees and rose bushes. He would water even the lowliest thorn bushes. Once I pulled out a bush. He looked at me with accusing, sad eyes. I told him thorns sucked in precious water, weakened the soil, without producing anything. He said, "Yes, but if you take the trouble to graft them, they bring forth the most beautiful flowers". He actually had made several grafts on the thorn-bushes with amazing results. The flowers he developed from his experiments turned out to be some of the most beautiful gems I ever saw. He was in love with all sorts of creepers. He would be terrible upset, although quietly so, if he ever caught me uprooting creepers. He would say large trees, with intertwined branches, were the true offenders. These were the bullies, he said, which absorbed all the sunlight, letting the young saplings starve in the dark. These giants, he would point out, sucked up all the water in the ground, all the food provided by Nature within the soil. They were so greedy that, they would not let a drop of water reach the smaller, weaker plants. In this, the tall young man said, gardeners helped the bullies, fed their egos and made it possible for them to go on robbing the young trees from sustenance. Little by little, the saplings lost their strength, they underwent a complete transformation and became creepers; gradually they started winding around the huge trees, going up, up, up until they found light-, life-giving sunlight.
“He felt sorry for trees shaded by tall walls and always ministered to them. These, he said, were the orphans of the garden.
“The thorns, he claimed, were the flowers of unfulfilled wishes, the blooms unreached by rain, the buds of the gardener`s wrath. They strove ever so hard to bring forth flowers, to bloom, to make Nature the more beautiful for their existence-but in vain. They rebelled, they became bitter. That is why they sting anybody rash enough to approach them or step on them. They consider men unjust gardeners.”
In the passage of time everybody is constantly
Looking for a lost One: the Creeper is in search of
Sunlight, the Flower for the fall, the Spider for
The Fly and the Devil in quest of all.
I too for a lifetime have been looking for my Lost One
A farmer told me, "He used to be my farmhand. He ploughed the field with very deep furrows; he sowed, but so very carefully, so conscientiously. He believed that if a farmer gave thanks to the Lord for his blessings he would reap a thousand grains for each seed he showed. He worked on my farm for a while and during this time my crops flourished and my bread tasted better than ever. He believed arid lands cursed the heavens by night and men by day. Once I walked through a saline stretch with him. He told me saline land was made by the tears of slaves."
A grocer said, “He was one of us. He always tinkered with our scales to see that they were accurate and that people got their money`s worth.”
Widows recalled that when they went to buy tobacco, the tall young man would take infinite pains to see that the tobacco was measured exactly to the specified amount.
Attendants of book stores called him exasperating He would buy a book, they said, and return it the next day for another book. Thus, with the price of one, he read a whole library of books. However, they all agreed, when he returned a book, it was as good as new, as if no human hands had touched it. He knew the kind of book he wanted and warned book stores against selling books of the Devil`s authorship.
He believed that Satan found his way into man`s thoughts through liquor, through thought into the pen and through the pen into the soul of man.
He maintained that Satan had chosen this way in order to undermine and disrupt God`s works.
One day he bought a book and the next day he burned it. When asked why he destroyed it, he replied: “It was poisonous.” He believed every man first became a slave in his own mind and then he was shackled. He was asked once whether he had written anything. "I am illiterate", he replied. However, between the leaves of a book, a beautiful, unfinished piece of poetry was found, proving his literary talent.
I talked to a number of blacksmiths. They said he was a very good customer. He would buy a new axe once in a short while. But he would admonish them against making chains. These he hated more than anything else. Whoever makes chains, prison bars, shackles, fetters, handcuffs,” he would say, "is God`s enemy; He won`t be forgiven."
He ordered his axes of the purest, the hardest steel, and then he himself would sharpen and hone them. He loved the axe and hated the chain.
Some of his townsfolk told me he had been a mailman. An old man said he would always carry the mail in his hat – why? Nobody seemed to know. A minister said he did that probably because he thought of letters as living things, made up of people`s hopes, wishes, tears, moments of expectation, sorrows, heartbeats, nervous tensions, the souls `whispers. He probably could not bear to imprison in a mailbag a mother`s heart, a child`s look, a bride`s joy…he always carried the mail on foot. One last Sunday evening, however, his townsfolk saw him riding a horse, carrying in his hand a long roll of paper. That was the last they saw of him.
A coppersmith told me my Lost One would go to his shop in the evening and sits by the fire and read until very late at night. Sometimes he would talk and praise the work of the coppersmith, but he spoke bitterly of the blacksmiths und their chains, fetters and shackles, of the tanners… with their lashes and whips.
One day I saw a big, heavily-built man riding in a gilt coach. I stopped the carriage and asked him about my Lost One. He stared at me angrily. "No use looking for him," he said, "You will never find him!" I was about to tear him to pieces, when his coachman bent down and whispered in my ear: "Be careful, don`t fight him. He is a voodoo charmer. He can put a spell over you, just as he did on the man you are looking for. I`m in his power, too."
I knew that my Lost One had once been a lawyer. I thought I would go and see some members of that profession. When I entered the courtroom I found bedlam. A slave was on trial for having blinded himself in one eye. The present owner had sued the former for damages.
He had documents to show the court that the former owner had guaranteed to take the slave back by making complete refund of the price, minus one dollar, if the slave suffered any bodily harm or disability within a year after the transaction was made. The present owner had paid 23 dollars for the slave. The former owner was prosecuting the slave for having disabled himself, intentionally, with criminal intent.
I listened for a while and then boldly interrupted the proceedings.
I approached the judge and asked him for my Lost One. He frowned, looked at me severely and said in a cold voice: “Many years ago we had somebody of that description among us. He was an attorney, an autocratic one, a trouble maker. Whenever he came to court, he committed all sorts of improprieties. He insulted the court, the law and whatever stands for justice. He would look at the Angel of Justice, holding the sword and the balance. He would accuse the Angel of being blind to real Justice; he would touch her sword and point out that only one edge of the sword was sharp, the other edge was blunt and ineffective.
In the passage of time everybody is constantly
Looking for a Lost One: The Judge for his Conscience
The Etcher for Ivory, Solomon for his Ring, the Dove
For its Cage, the Drunk for the Marshal, the Devil
In quest of All
I too for a lifetime have been looking for my Lost One
My Lost One was a Gypsy. I thought I would look for him among that tribe.
An old Gypsy said, "Oh, yes. He was a cousin of ours. His mother`s mother ran away and was led by the Devil to some large city. She was a simple-hearted woman, like all Gypsies. We never found out what became of her. We only learned some time later, that her daughter had given birth to a son, a child – we were told – who brought ill lock to everything he touched. He visited us for a while.
He was a real Gypsy, always true to Romany ways, never assuming alien manners, never getting intoxicated by the opium of so-called "civilization." The day he was visiting with us, we saw him softly cry as he watched a young calf die."
I approached an old Gypsy woman, who was mending her tent while her kettle was boiling on the fire.
"Yes, yes, I remember him,” she said." One day he let me look at his palm – a very strange palm. It palm was cut in two by two curved lines. I couldn`t make out what they were or what they represented.
I asked my Old Master; he too, was baffled. I knew he was in love, but I never could find out the name of his sweetheart. His eyes were deep like the ocean, full of tribulations of sadness and other emotions.
He breathed like a baby; he was tall and straight like a reed.
On his forehead his sparse hair fell in the shape of a cross. He looked as if he carried the burden of Man`s sorrow upon his powerful shoulders.
His hands were calloused and so were his heels. O insisted upon tying an amulet on his powerful biceps. He quietly smiled and let me. I also saw a mole upon the corner of his mouth.
My Lost One was basically an ascetic. I thought I would find traces of him among the Indian fakirs After a long search, I found a Grand Old Man who was pointed out to me as the prophet of prophets among the holy men of India. He told me, however, that my Lost One had been his own Great Master. "He was the Real Fakir", he said, "We worldly desires. But he tortured himself to awaken, to revive the soul of man. We could never find out his secret. We are submitting to pain and bodily hardship for complete obliteration, for death. He underwent his hardship to end death and suffering a true Buddha. But he was not a Prince. He was born in a log-cabin, not a palace. He was born on a mat, not on a feather bed. His first sight of the world was the sour frown of the midwife, not the smile of an overjoyed, proud father.
"We accept to our circle only those who belong to us, the initiated."
He destroyed circles, conventions, barriers. He wanted all to belong to the same circle, all to be safe guarders of the same Secret – the eternal Secret of Life.
"He believed Life was a gift of God." Whoever, under any pretext rebelled against Life, wasted it. Whoever despised Life or hated it was Love and breaking hearts was a great Sin. He believed Life was beautiful and ugliness only in the imagination of Man. Yea he was in love with life, but never its slave. (And only God cans love life without being its slave.)
"Now, if you want to find him you must get admittance to the presence of the Buddha."
"If you so strongly believe in the doctrine of my Lost One,” I asked, “why don`t you follow his ways?"
"One of us has been able to do so and has made great progress toward perfection. He always followed the Master, kissed his hand and listened to his counsel. Hi is a freed slave. We too are trying to achieve this former slave`s stage of perfection."
"Tell me his name!"
"The Disgraced One of India."
I set out to find Buddha. As I was passing by a maharaja`s palace, I heard a commotion and the wail of a young voice.
I soon found a group of people following a young girl who was being dragged by the hair by a pair of terrible-looking executioners to let her go, without heeding the lashing that was inflicted on her by a eunuch. I soon found out she had been a new addition to the maharaja`s harem and bad tried to escape when asked to submit to the ultimate desire of the king. "Let her go, let her go," wailed the mother. “She is only a child; she fled only because she was scared!”
I followed them from a distance until we came to the huge gates of an ancient palace. An armed guard in a splendid uniform stopped me. I told him I was looking for a Lost One and described him the best I could. Hi listened very carefully and then seemed to remember something. "Oh, yes," he said, "I think I know whom you mean. Many years ago we had a man like that who caused us a lot of trouble.
He would come by night and walk around the palace walls. He was a suspicious character. He probably had a sister in the maharaja´s harem and was trying to help her escape. The chief of the guard does not like suspicious characters. The prowler was thrown into the Send."
In the passage of time everybody is constantly
Looking for a Lost One: The Gypsy for his Star,
the Fakir for Extinction, the Lips for a Kiss, the
Kiss for the Harem, the Preacher for the Bier, the
Devil in quest of All.
I continued my search. I walked, I rode and I sailed until at last I found myself in the presence of the Great Buddha. I threw myself at his feet, I kissed his hand, I begged, I implored and I could retain myself no longer – I broke down and wept like a child. Between sobs I managed to tell him of my mission. I said, "In your creed there is no sin greater than breaking a heart…"
"Get up my son, said the Buddha in a calm, penetrating voice."
"I know what you are looking for. He is a Secret that is hidden in my Silence. He is a Melody that can only be found in the strings of my Harp. You can only find him of you can become quicker than the Breeze, more versatile than Thought and deeper than Silence. He bent down and wrote with his finger in the soft sand: “He is Eternity."
Even the wildlife in the forest came to know of my search for the Lost One. One day I overheard a pair of pheasants talking to each other. It went something like this:
"Do you know whom he is looking for?"
"No how should I know?"
"No wonder, you were a little baby then. He is looking for one of our pupils. He was a child then. We taught him how to fly. Sometimes we had little fights and quarrels. But he always mended the quarrel with a sweet smile and gathered the most delicious seeds for us."
I came upon a group of hares. They recalled that he always shared his food with them and sometimes he went hungry to make sure they had plenty to eat.
A quilt-maker told me he had sold a quilt to my Lost One on credit.
"Our agreement was for him to pay for the quilt after death, in Heaven. However, he came and paid his debt in a short while right in this world."
An eviction agent said he had known my Lost One. "He was the poorest man I ever knew. Once I served him an eviction order.
His wife was about to deliver a child. He had no money to call a midwife. They had no food, nothing. Just then a man came with a bagful of double eagles for a retainer. He glanced at the legal folder and send the man away, refusing the gold – gold that would have solved all his problems and probably saved the life of his wife and the yet unborn babe. It seemed a group of slave merchants, knowing of his plight had tried to tease him by offering him a case.
His wife scolded him. If he didn´t think of her, at least he should think of the baby, she said. This sort of thing happened many times and his answer to his
"Your children and mine are God´s lambs; He will care for them."
An old shepherd told me he had known my Lost One. "He was a poet, always thinking, always brooding. He would come to us and sit by the spring, compose verse and music and caress little lambs.
"I would play his music on my reed. It was magic. Sheep would dance with joy and lick their young ones. Other shepherds lear ed his songs and as they played his tunes, they noticed a marked increase in their milk production and the lambs grew and fattened very rapidly."
My search took me to the graveyard. Suddenly I found His Name on a tombstone – it belonged to an unfortunate girl.
I trembled like a leaf. I fell down in tears. I heard a soft, tortured voice. It was the girl`s.
I too am looking for him, even through the
grave. He is my Idol. If you ever find him, kiss the print of my lips upon his
forehead.
On it I found the warmth of compassion; in his eyes the glow of virtue; in his heart the melody of peace and serenity; and in his silence the Glory of God.”
I have looked everywhere, have left no stone unturned. My trail criss - crosses the entire globe. Following a long caravan, I arrived at Samarkand one day; the day when they held their weekly fair. There was a lot of yelling, shouting laughing, haggling, quarrelling. The noise was terrific. The clang of chains, the jingle of gold coins, the wail of the slave girls, the monotonous drone of middlemen, the crash of the whip…
One night, after a hard climb, i reached the top of Mount Qaf and was treated as a quest by Anga, the Benevolent Lord of all Birds.
He knew what I was looking for. He looked at me with his piercing eyes of fire and said:
"The One you are seeking was my brother, but he was much stronger though, and flew much higher. I take pride in the fact that I never hurt any living creature, but he went much further than that. He brought the bullies and their victims together, taught them not to hurt and not to get hurt, but live in peace and harmony, help one another and make life pleasant for all."
Once my Lost One had been a caravan leader; he led the caravan of Love and Friendship. He had been a merchant; he dealt in Compassion and Hope.
I went to visit the various warring tribes I had heard of, the Yellow-Robe, the Black-Robe, the Red-Robe and the White-Robe. They had all seen him and each claimed he had arisen from their tribe.
The Great Chieftain of the Whit-Robe stood up and angrily shouted, "No, he was definitely one of us!"
The Leader of the Red-Robe said: "He grew up among us. We all loved him dearly. The night he was born our Wise Man dreamed that the Sun rose at midnight and lighted the entire world. He said this was the sign of Mankind`s salvation. We tired to keep the boy with us so that the Sun would not go away. The White-Robe wouldn`t let us. They took him away from us."
The Chief of the Black-Robe began to speak; "He made the most beautiful mirrors, reflecting clear, sharp images, but colorless. We brought him over to make us a big mirror. He came and did as we begged him The White-Robe were jealous; they broke his mirror.
"He was a dyer. He took yarn of a thousand colors and put them all in his dying vat and made them all the same color. In his mirror all colors looked alike.
"Most of our boys are named after him and most of our girls after his mother.
"Our women put their babies to sleep singing his melodies as lullabies. On the arms of our young men and on the breasts of our girls we tattoo his symbol and eternal reminder – an axe;-exactly on the spot where previously they branded us for slaves.
"His mirror made everyone look beautiful. However, not once did he feel happy looking at his own face in the mirror."
The Chief of the Red-Robe recalled that my Lost One had been a composer of music.
"He composed a thousand beautiful tunes, all in the same key; all different, all fresh, but all blending into one Great Song."
A Yellow – Robe lady summed up the feeling of her tribe by saying, “His voice was that of the Buddha.”
The Wise man of the White-Robe, thinking deeply before speaking, said: "He truly was the Voice of the Church Bell."
I went to Baghdad and approached the Palace of the "Thousand and one Nights." It was shortly before dawn and the guard was asleep. I climbed the high wall, dropped into the garden and located Scheherazade’s chamber. She was telling one of her stories. The Sultan was already nodding. I began to speak; Scheherazade put her finger to her lips, bidding me to keep quiet. The executioner fell finally asleep. The beautiful girl got up and we left together. She was terribly tired. Her eyes were swollen. We sat under a jasmine tree in the garden. Without waiting for me to speak, she said:
"Your Lost One is the ultimate image of the dreams of my tales heroes. I can only show you his picture in dreams, in hopes and in wishes."
She got up and led me to the slave market. "You can find him in the minds of these slaves, these unfortunate human beings.
There I witnessed a scene highly reminiscent of the one I had seen in Samarkand.
Scheherazade led me to a slave girl, who hung her head in shame as the slave merchant displayed her body to all and sundry, inviting them to touch the softness of her skin, to pinch her supple muscles. There was a long procession of lusty men doing just that and then leaving. Nobody seemed to want to buy her.
Large drops of tear fell on the burning sand and rose in vapor. Scheherazade said: "Your Lost One sails on a sea of such tears."
The slave girl looked up for a second with her large eyes and murmured softly: "He is more than that; he is my God."
There, too, a handsome man was eloquently praising the merits of the slaves, just like Junal in Samarkand. Scheherazade pointed him out to me, whispering: "Look at him. He is abud Lama."
She then took me to the land of Pharaohs. We sat by the Blue Nile under the shade of a tree. The sun beat on that land with the intensity of God`s wrath.
Pointing to the waves, Scheherazade said, “This is the bed of your Lost One`s Soul. He walked along these shores by night, finding the Nile a torrent of tears and blood. He told strange tales of the pyramids. It is a pity I can`t use those in my stories for the Sultan. He wants stories about beautiful damsels with ruby lips, ivory skins, large dark eyes, silk hair, marble legs, he wants to hear about a lassoed deer, an agitated heart, a hero lying in blood, a fly in the cobweb, and otherwise he will get bored and kill me.”
She took me to the slave market. The stench was suffocating."I am sure God has the gates of Heaven shut at night to keep this smell away,” she said, sadly smiling. She showed me a platform, where, she said, Joseph had stood on the day he was sold to the Pharaoh`s household.
The King of the storks told me that they had known my Lost One. "At sunset," he said "he would come to us and ask us about our sorrows. We would tell him that sorrows had come to us from generation to generation from our Land of Origin"
"I went to visit museums. They were full of chains, fetters, handcuffs, machines of torture and destruction; but nowhere could I find an axe or a file. Museum attendants, like the woodcutters, had never heard of him. In one museum I found the deed I had seen in the courthouse where the Negro slave was on trial. Now it was nicely framed and hung on the wall. At the top of the document the Lord`s Name was printed in beautiful, large gilt script, as large and as beautiful as God Himself. I counted thirteen seals, each bearing God`s Big Children:
Solomon`s sword, Nero`s tear bottle, Pharaoh`s snuff box, Cleopatra`s vanity case, Alexander`s bier, Genghis Khan`s spurs, all embellished the museum. I begged and implored until the attendant consented to let me take a picture of the framed deed. As I was leaving, he drew me aside and told me I could have the original if I paid him enough money.
On it I found the warmth of compassion; in his eyes the glow of virtue; in his heart the melody of peace and serenity; and in his silence the Glory of God.”
I have looked everywhere, have left no stone unturned. My trail criss - crosses the entire globe. Following a long caravan, I arrived at Samarkand one day; the day when they held their weekly fair. There was a lot of yelling, shouting laughing, haggling, quarrelling. The noise was terrific. The clang of chains, the jingle of gold coins, the wail of the slave girls, the monotonous drone of middlemen, the crash of the whip…
One night, after a hard climb, i reached the top of Mount Qaf and was treated as a quest by Anga, the Benevolent Lord of all Birds.
He knew what I was looking for. He looked at me with his piercing eyes of fire and said:
"The One you are seeking was my brother, but he was much stronger though, and flew much higher. I take pride in the fact that I never hurt any living creature, but he went much further than that. He brought the bullies and their victims together, taught them not to hurt and not to get hurt, but live in peace and harmony, help one another and make life pleasant for all."
Once my Lost One had been a caravan leader; he led the caravan of Love and Friendship. He had been a merchant; he dealt in Compassion and Hope.
I went to visit the various warring tribes I had heard of, the Yellow-Robe, the Black-Robe, the Red-Robe and the White-Robe. They had all seen him and each claimed he had arisen from their tribe.
The Great Chieftain of the Whit-Robe stood up and angrily shouted, "No, he was definitely one of us!"
The Leader of the Red-Robe said: "He grew up among us. We all loved him dearly. The night he was born our Wise Man dreamed that the Sun rose at midnight and lighted the entire world. He said this was the sign of Mankind`s salvation. We tired to keep the boy with us so that the Sun would not go away. The White-Robe wouldn`t let us. They took him away from us."
The Chief of the Black-Robe began to speak; "He made the most beautiful mirrors, reflecting clear, sharp images, but colorless. We brought him over to make us a big mirror. He came and did as we begged him The White-Robe were jealous; they broke his mirror.
"He was a dyer. He took yarn of a thousand colors and put them all in his dying vat and made them all the same color. In his mirror all colors looked alike.
"Most of our boys are named after him and most of our girls after his mother.
"Our women put their babies to sleep singing his melodies as lullabies. On the arms of our young men and on the breasts of our girls we tattoo his symbol and eternal reminder – an axe;-exactly on the spot where previously they branded us for slaves.
"His mirror made everyone look beautiful. However, not once did he feel happy looking at his own face in the mirror."
The Chief of the Red-Robe recalled that my Lost One had been a composer of music.
"He composed a thousand beautiful tunes, all in the same key; all different, all fresh, but all blending into one Great Song."
A Yellow – Robe lady summed up the feeling of her tribe by saying, “His voice was that of the Buddha.”
The Wise man of the White-Robe, thinking deeply before speaking, said: "He truly was the Voice of the Church Bell."
I went to Baghdad and approached the Palace of the "Thousand and one Nights." It was shortly before dawn and the guard was asleep. I climbed the high wall, dropped into the garden and located Scheherazade’s chamber. She was telling one of her stories. The Sultan was already nodding. I began to speak; Scheherazade put her finger to her lips, bidding me to keep quiet. The executioner fell finally asleep. The beautiful girl got up and we left together. She was terribly tired. Her eyes were swollen. We sat under a jasmine tree in the garden. Without waiting for me to speak, she said:
"Your Lost One is the ultimate image of the dreams of my tales heroes. I can only show you his picture in dreams, in hopes and in wishes."
She got up and led me to the slave market. "You can find him in the minds of these slaves, these unfortunate human beings.
There I witnessed a scene highly reminiscent of the one I had seen in Samarkand.
Scheherazade led me to a slave girl, who hung her head in shame as the slave merchant displayed her body to all and sundry, inviting them to touch the softness of her skin, to pinch her supple muscles. There was a long procession of lusty men doing just that and then leaving. Nobody seemed to want to buy her.
Large drops of tear fell on the burning sand and rose in vapor. Scheherazade said: "Your Lost One sails on a sea of such tears."
The slave girl looked up for a second with her large eyes and murmured softly: "He is more than that; he is my God."
There, too, a handsome man was eloquently praising the merits of the slaves, just like Junal in Samarkand. Scheherazade pointed him out to me, whispering: "Look at him. He is abud Lama."
She then took me to the land of Pharaohs. We sat by the Blue Nile under the shade of a tree. The sun beat on that land with the intensity of God`s wrath.
Pointing to the waves, Scheherazade said, “This is the bed of your Lost One`s Soul. He walked along these shores by night, finding the Nile a torrent of tears and blood. He told strange tales of the pyramids. It is a pity I can`t use those in my stories for the Sultan. He wants stories about beautiful damsels with ruby lips, ivory skins, large dark eyes, silk hair, marble legs, he wants to hear about a lassoed deer, an agitated heart, a hero lying in blood, a fly in the cobweb, and otherwise he will get bored and kill me.”
She took me to the slave market. The stench was suffocating."I am sure God has the gates of Heaven shut at night to keep this smell away,” she said, sadly smiling. She showed me a platform, where, she said, Joseph had stood on the day he was sold to the Pharaoh`s household.
The King of the storks told me that they had known my Lost One. "At sunset," he said "he would come to us and ask us about our sorrows. We would tell him that sorrows had come to us from generation to generation from our Land of Origin"
"I went to visit museums. They were full of chains, fetters, handcuffs, machines of torture and destruction; but nowhere could I find an axe or a file. Museum attendants, like the woodcutters, had never heard of him. In one museum I found the deed I had seen in the courthouse where the Negro slave was on trial. Now it was nicely framed and hung on the wall. At the top of the document the Lord`s Name was printed in beautiful, large gilt script, as large and as beautiful as God Himself. I counted thirteen seals, each bearing God`s Big Children:
Solomon`s sword, Nero`s tear bottle, Pharaoh`s snuff box, Cleopatra`s vanity case, Alexander`s bier, Genghis Khan`s spurs, all embellished the museum. I begged and implored until the attendant consented to let me take a picture of the framed deed. As I was leaving, he drew me aside and told me I could have the original if I paid him enough money.
In the passage of time everybody is
constantly
Looking for a
Lost One: Eyes look for the Mirror,
the Dyer for the
Tint, Scheherazade for the Executioner,
the Executioner
for Sleep, the Stork for Sorrow,
the Museum
Attendant for the Deed, the Devil in quest of All.
FKS
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