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you must appreciate that a secret’s value is not in what you know, but in what you do.”
“Use whatever knowledge you have but see its limitations. Knowledge alone does not suffice; it has no heart. No amount of knowledge will nourish or sustain your spirit; it can never bring you ultimate happiness or peace. Life requires more than knowledge; it requires intense feeling and constant energy. Life demands right action if knowledge is to come alive.”
poked me in the ribs, then poked me again and again, saying, “The warrior acts... ” “Damn it, stop that!” I yelled. “You’re getting on my nerves!” “... and the fool only reacts.”
“Your feelings and reactions, Dan, are automatic and predictable; mine are not. I create my life spontaneously; yours is determined by your thoughts, your emotions, your past.”
“You had better reconsider your ‘importances’ if you are to have even a chance of becoming a warrior. Right now, you have the intelligence of a jackass; your spirit is mush. You do have a great deal of important work to do but in a different classroom than you now imagine.”
“Socrates, you’ve told me to listen to my own body intuition and not depend upon what I read or what people tell me. Why, then, should I sit quietly and listen to what you tell me?”
“There is an equally good answer. First of all, I speak to you from my own experience; I am not relating abstract theories I read in a book or heard secondhand from an expert. I am one who truly knows his own body and mind, and therefore knows others’ as well. Besides,” he smiled, “how do you know that I’m not your own intuition, speaking to you now?”
“Socrates, where is all this leading?” “To see where something leads, it’s best to wait until you reach the end,”
“‘Only the supremely wise and the ignorant do not alter.’”
“So what are the positive uses of the mind?” He looked up from his plate. “There aren’t any.”
“Fear and sorrow inhibit action; anger generates it. When you learn to make proper use of your anger, you can change fear and sorrow to anger, then turn anger to action. That’s the body’s secret of internal alchemy.”
“How can I control my habits if I can’t even seem to control my emotions?” “You don’t need to control emotion,” he said. “Emotions are natural, like passing weather. Sometimes it’s fear, sometimes sorrow or anger. Emotions are not the problem. The key is to transform the energy of emotion into constructive action.”
