The Lantern

I stumbled in the dark and there before me was a lantern shining. Beheld, it illuminated the world and I came to know myself as I had not. As it cast its rays about, everything seemed set on fire; I too burnt with a glow unearthly. So it passed that I laid the lantern aside and walked in a dream of living light.

North I traveled and found shape; to the South, I found color. Sound and smell arose in the East and West respectively. All the world I traveled and every manner of sense and form did arise.

So vast and varied was it all that in time one thing washed into another. Sound was just sound. Color was just color. And further, as time passed, scent confused itself with shape. Travelling and travelling, sense became sense and nothing more.

Yet light burned within me still, and though the world had become a blur of nothing, all things still shone in the mind. In thought light prevailed.

In large things, I discovered patterns; in the small, discernment. Process and parts became clear in time and space imagined. Each direction my mind traveled and found there new thoughts.

So many thoughts came and went that eventually one thing washed into another. Concepts were just concepts, patterns were just patterns. And further on, process seemed the same as discernment. Thinking and thinking, all thought became thought and nothing more.

Thus the world was blur of nothingness and the mind a vacant chaos. All before and behind me was a darkness.

Then I stumbled in the dark and found a lantern there shining.