*image by Ben Harubin

There was once a squirrel who thought he could learn to fly.
In fact, not just "thought," but was convinced that he could.
But it never came to pass, which eventually gave him pause
to sit on a branch and ponder whether there was something
physically lacking about him that made flying impossible, or
else something about thinking that made everything seem possible.

...(He keep dat up and he run de risk of becomin' a hooman.)

Without thought, things that are so and things that are not so are both the same -- they're so,
but with thought, things that are so and things that are not so both become not so.
This is why what the awakened see is so far removed from what the ordinary do,
and also why it remains so close.

Just as you can't hide how old you are,
neither can you hide how dumb you are...except from yourself.

The mind insists it exists based on the fact that via thought
it continually produces the illusion that it does.
You will never convince a ghost that there are no such things as ghosts.

Men, even of the most civilized and genteel sort, enjoy seeing fights,
not for the reasons normally proposed, but because it gives them an
opportunity to witness in the external world a physical representation
of what in the main constitutes their inner one.

One man looked to the sky and said to life,
"I do not like how things are going."
And just as he feared, life said nothing in response.

(Sometimes after episodes like these the man would return home
and say to his dog that a direct understanding of life seemed an
impossibility for man...a comment to which the canine never responded.)