Well, got to say it is nice to see you back again. Hope you are in good spirits. Hope all is well with your family. That is one way of looking at the world. It exist when you are born. But, I think it existed before that and will exist long after I am gone.

For fun – Percival and the Scholar of Appearances
One morning, Percival the Wanderer, and some called fool, found a scholar sitting beside a well, staring into the water as if waiting for something to rise.

“What do you see?” Percival asked.

“I am studying the world,” the scholar replied. “I am trying to understand what is real before thought names it.”

Percival nodded. “Ah. I lost my names years ago. They kept falling out of my pockets.”

The scholar frowned. “Without names, how do you know what anything is?”

Percival picked up a stone and held it to his ear. “It tells me,” he said.

The scholar sighed. “Fool, Stones do not speak.”

“Only to those who insist on listening,” Percival said.

The scholar leaned closer. “Tell me when you stop thinking, does the world disappear?”

Percival laughed. “No, friend. Only your version of it disappears.”

The scholar stiffened. “My version? Are you saying the world I have spent my life studying is nothing but a mistake?”

Percival shook his head gently. “Not a mistake. A story. A beautiful one, even. But still a story.”

The scholar’s jaw tightened. “If the world is only a story, then what remains when the story ends?”

Percival pointed to the well. “Look.”

The scholar looked. He saw water. He saw his reflection. He saw the sky trembling on the surface.

“I see… everything,” he whispered.

Percival nodded. “Yes. Everything that was hidden behind your explanations.”

The scholar turned to him. “So the world is real?”

Percival shrugged. “As real as your breath. But the story you tell about it, that one comes and goes.”

The scholar closed his eyes, seeing… “Is this prayer?”

Percival smiled. “When the heart looks at the world the way you just looked into the well, without naming, without grasping, without fear. Just seeing, yes”

“And contemplation?” the scholar asked.

“That,” Percival said, “is when the well looks back.”

The scholar opened his eyes. “And you, Fool, what are you?”

Percival bowed. “I am the space between your thoughts where the world slips in.” And with that, he wandered off, pockets empty, heart full.

When surrender is total, the duality between “me” and “world” collapses. Even the idea of enlightenment collapses. What remains cannot be named… even silence surrenders.

Yet both of us speak and undo ourselves…

James, what strikes me in this exchange is the way language keeps pulling us back in, even when we’re both pointing beyond it. The moment we speak of the “unspeakable ground,” we’ve already stepped into the very movement we’re trying to dissolve. Such is the suchness of dialogue.

My own approach, and what I felt you point to, is exposing experience itself, as a construct. Trusting that when the scaffolding of interpretation is seen for what it is, it loosens. And when it loosens, every construct, including my words, even yours, dissolves. What remains is not a metaphysical claim but a kind of seeing: the world as a mirror without a face, transparent to what is transcendent.

In that sense, I’m not trying to name the ground or deny it. I’m simply watching how the naming happens, how the world‑as‑told arises, and how it falls away. Where your language points to the source before all stories; mine points to the unraveling of the story itself. Even that one… Different gestures, both moving toward the same vanishing point.

And then, because life is never finished with us… as if from the far edge of the road, Lao tzu wanders by to remind us of the gravity of things. He taps his staff on the earth and murmurs: “Heavy is the root of light. Still is the master of moving”. – Tao Te Ching 26

He speaks of wise souls who travel with the “heavy” wagon, who return each night to the solid, quiet house, who do not let themselves grow lighter than the world they inhabit. For lightness loses its foundation, and movement loses its mastery.

And suddenly the whole conversation, the unmaking of self, the dissolving of constructs, the unspeakable ground settles into something simple: A body standing on the earth. A breath rising and falling. A life that must still sweep the floor, fold the sheets, carry out the trash… to vanish into the nameless and still walk steadily through the named world, rooted, present, unhurried, as if carrying a quiet house within.

Hi James,

Maybe… there is that hollow between breaths, when rising has ended and returning has not begun… a space not held, not owned, simply suspended, weightless, known without a knower.

At times it feels like dissolving into the canvas, the surface still blank though it carries every painting that has ever appeared and every painting still waiting to be born. Sometimes I notice yin and yang dancing across that emptiness‑that‑is‑fullness, and sometimes, rarely, I find myself in that instant before the brush descends, when “I” am and am not the canvas, or the paint… Then the Hermit taps his staff in the dark: no further.

It’s a slipping out of the frame, a pause where the familiar “me” does not gather itself… and yet walking continues, breathing continues, the world continues. A quiet shift rather than a dramatic disappearance — a vanishing that erases nothing, only the one who imagines he is the painter of the scene.

“Between rising and falling, the breath disappears. Who notices the disappearance?

Here. Before thought. Before the painter. Before the painting.

James said, “You learned your birth, birth took place. you learned your body, counrty, family, religion, ethnics, then they all took place.”

From that sentence, I conclude you are saying that one is separate from the body. You learn your birth, you learn your body. Sounds like being separate from the body to learn of it. Where as I believe that one does not become aware until the body exist and the mind grows into the body. If the mind was separate from the body then alcohol would have no effect on the state of mind. But, it does. So, you are not separate from your body. You can not find anything inside of you that is other than this body. Though parts of you may be discard such as an appendix. One can not discard the brain. It holds the thoughts and memories of the person. Take it out and throw it away and the person no longer lives. What is left after your body dies? Only what was there before your birth. And that is where you shall return.

If you believe in God and his angels and prophets then you long to belong to a group of believers who have faith that God does exist. Whether God exist or not is immaterial when it comes to watching your enemies kill your loved ones. If God exist then why would he allow for the horrors that have gone on during the World Wars? No, God is for those who have faith and trust in God. Those who would endure the bitterness of life in the belief there is something after this life. IDK, And I do not judge. But, I am a practical man.