Shadow Hunter (Darth Maul, #2)

by Michael Reaves

There is no emotion; there is peace. There is no ignorance; there is knowledge. There is no passion; there is serenity. There is no death; there is the Force. The Jedi Code was one of the first things Darsha Assant had learned in the Jedi Temple. As a child, she would sit cross-legged on the cold floor for hours at a time, repeating the words over and over, meditating on their meaning, letting that meaning seep into her bones. There is no emotion; there is peace. Master Bondara had taught her that this did not mean one should repress one’s emotions. “One of the few things that all intelligent species in the galaxy share is the ability to have feelings. We are creatures of emotion, and to deny those emotions is profoundly unhealthy. But one can feel anger, for example, without being controlled by it. One can grieve without being crippled by grief. The peace of the Force is the foundation upon which the structures of our feelings are built.” There is no ignorance; there is knowledge. “Chance,” the Twi’lek Jedi had told her, “favors the prepared mind.” Certainly the Jedi were among the most prepared in the galaxy as far as that went. She had never seen anyone as awesomely well-educated as Masters Windu, Bondara, Yoda, Jinn, and the many others she had studied under or otherwise come in contact with. She had doubted her ability to hold her own in conversations with them, or even with her fellow Padawans like Obi-Wan and Bant. So she had studied assiduously, almost obsessively,...

The Jedi Code