A disciple and his master were walking in the fields one morning.  The disciple was asking what diet was needed to provide purification.  Although his master had always insisted that all foods were holy, the disciple did not believe it.

"There must be some meal that brings us closer to God," the disciple said.

"Well, perhaps you are right.  Those mushrooms there, for example," said the master.

The disciple was excited, thinking that the mushrooms would provide him with purification and ecstasy.  But as he stooped to pick one he screamed:

"These are poisonous!  If I were to eat even one of them, I would die instantly!" he said, horrified.

"Well, I don't know any other food that would bring you so quickly to God," said the master.

In the winter of 1981, the wanderer is walking with his wife through the streets of Prague, when he sees a boy doing drawings of some neighborhood buildings.

He likes what he sees, and decides to buy one.

When he holds out the money, he notices that the boy has no gloves -and the temperature is in the 20s.  "Why don't you wear gloves?" he asks.

"So that I can hold my pencil."

They talk a bit about Prague.  The boy offers to do a drawing of the wanderer's wife's face, free of charge.

As he waits for the drawing to be completed, the wanderer realizes that something strange had happened: he had conversed for almost five minutes with the boy, and neither spoke the other's language.

They had used only gestures, smiles and facial expressions -- but the will to share something had allowed them to enter into the world of language without words.

A friend took Hassan to the door of a mosque, where a blind man was begging.

"This blind man is the wisest person in our country," said the friend.

"How long have you been blind," Hassan asked the man.

"Since birth," the man answered.

"And how did you become so wise?"

"Since I didn't accept my blindness, I tried to become a
>astronomer," the man answered.  "But, since I couldn't see the heavens, I was forced to imagine the stars, the sun and the galaxies.  And, the closer I came to God's work, the closer I came to His wisdom."

In a bar in a remote village in Spain, close to the city of Olite, there is a sign placed there by the owner.

"Just as I succeeded in finding all the answers, all the questions changed."

The master says:

"We are always concerned with finding answers.  We feel that answers are important to understand what life means.

"It is more important to live fully, and allow time to reveal to us the secrets of our existence.  If we are too concerned with making sense of life, we prevent nature from acting, and we become unable to read God's signs."

There is an Australian legend about a shaman who was walking with his three sisters when they met the most famous warrior of the time.

"I want to marry one of these beautiful girls," the warrior said.

"If one of them marries, the other two will suffer, said the shaman.  "I am looking for a tribe that allow its men to have three wives."

For years, they walked the entire Australian continent without finding such a tribe.

"At least one of us could have been happy," said one of the sisters when they were old, and sick of walking.

"I was wrong," said the shaman.  "But now it's too late."

And he turned the three sisters into blocks of stone, so that all who passed by would understand that one person's happiness does not mean others must be sad.

The journalist, Walter Carelli, went to interview the Argentine writer, Jorge Luis Borges.  When his interview had been completed, they began to talk about the language that exists beyond words, and about the human being's great capacity to understand others.

"I will give you an example," said Borges.

And he began to speak in a strange language.  Then he stopped and asked the journalist what he had been saying.

Before Carelli could respond, the photographer who was with him said: "It's the 'Our Father.'"

"Exactly," sed Borges.  "I was reciting it in Finnish."

An animal trainer with the circus is able to dominate elephants by using a very simple trick: when the animal is still a child, he lashes one of his legs to the trunk of a tree.

No matter how hard he struggles, the young elephant is unable to free himself.  Little by little, he becomes used to the idea that the trunk of the tree is more powerful than he is. 

When he becomes an adult possessing tremendous strength, one has only to tie a string about the elephant's leg, and tie him to a sapling.  He will not attempt to free himself.

As with elephants, our feet are often bound by fragile ties.  But since, as children, we became accustomed to the strength of the tree trunk, we do not dare to struggle.

Without realizing that a simple courageous act is all that is needed to find our freedom.

The master says:

"It avails you nothing to seek explanations about God.  You can listen to beautiful words, but they are basically empty.  Just as you can read an entire encyclopedia about love without knowing how to love.

"No one will ever prove that God exists.  Certain things in life simply have to be experienced -- and never explained.

"Love is such a thing.  God -- who is love -- is also such a thing.  Faith is a childhood experience, in that magical sense that Jesus taught us: 'Children are the kingdom of God.'

"God will never enter your head.  The door that He uses is your heart."

The abbot always said that Abbot Joseph had prayed so much that he no longer had anything to worry about -- his passions had been conquered.

Those words reached the ears of one of the wise men at the monastery of Sceta, who called his novitiates together after their evening meal.

"You have heard it said that Abbot Joseph has no further temptations to overcome," he said.  "The lack of a struggle weakens the soul.  Let us ask that the Lord send down a powerful temptation to Abbot Joseph.  And, if he is able to resist that temptation, let us ask for another and another.
>nd when he is once again struggling to resist temptation, let us pray that he never says: 'Lord, take this devil away.'  Let us pray that instead he asks: 'Lord, give me the strength to win out over evil'"

There is a moment in every day when it is difficult to see clearly: evening time.  Light and darkness blend, and nothing is completely clear nor completely dark.  In most spiritual traditions, this moment is considered holy.

The Catholic tradition teaches us that we should say a Hail Mary at six o'clock in the evening.  In the Quechuan tradition, if we run into a friend in the afternoon and we are still with him at evening time, we must start all over, greeting him again with a "Good evening."

At dusk, the balance between man and the planet is tested.  God mixes shadow and light to see if the Earth has the courage to go on turning.

If the Earth is not frightened by the darkness, night passes -- a new sun shines the next day.