Читать книгу Deshi - John Donohue - Страница 8

PROLOGUE: PATH

Everyone wants something: it’s one of the few points of philosophy my brother Micky and I agree on. Desires shape the arc of life’s trajectories, leading us to unimagined destinations.

The Buddhists say desire creates illusion, which is the source of all suffering. In the Catholic Church I was raised in, desire was equally disparaged. There are few things in life really worth wanting, but we are cursed with an almost limitless capacity for imagination and need. The truly wise know that what we really need are those things that permit our true natures to emerge. We’re born with that knowledge, then quickly forget it and spend a lifetime trying to remember it again.

The path a life takes is the product of that remembering. We wander along in search of the selves we once knew. The way isn’t easy: it’s stony, studded with obstacles. And we’re not alone on the lurching journey: there are forms crumpled in the brambles by the wayside, markers to those who’ve lost their way. And, when the path dips, there are others, still watchers waiting in the dim woods. Ghosts hungry to snatch us. The way winds and dips. There are times when the path is unclear. Faint tracks lead the unwary off to their doom. But, high up ahead, we can all glimpse the hint of something beautiful. It’s faint and hard to see, but it pulls us nonetheless.

A good teacher tells you to keep looking at that gossamer image. I don’t know whether it’s kindness or cruelty. But it keeps the yearning alive; it makes you stay on the right path. And it prevents you from looking down. Because when you do, you see that there is blood on the rocks.