British Intelligence, London, August 1945. Small room with dark cherry walls and no windows. Eight Navy officers are sitting at a big table and looking down at the world map. Their faces seem tired, for they’ve spent all their stressful day here. The chief is walking around the table.
“… just one more minute, gentlemen, and I’ll let you go…”
The Buddha’s Second Noble Truth pins the responsibility for our suffering squarely on our own shoulders: “Our suffering is caused by our cravings.” — The Buddha.
We all have desires, and that’s perfectly natural and healthy. But there are certain desires we cling to with a white-knuckle grip. These are the ones we just won’t let go of. And it’s our relentless attachment to these cravings that causes the suffering we all experience.
I remember well the first time life taught me this truth…
One morning, the boy Solomon saw the goldsmith who works for King David’s Palace walk out of the palace very desperate and sad. Salomon asked the goldsmith with curiosity, what makes you feel so sad and desperate? The goldsmith answered, I have to provide a solution to the King within seven days. If not I will be taken out of my job. I am really confused because there is no solution for what the King has asked.
A certain man believed that the ordinary waking life, as people know it, could not possibly be complete. He sought the real Teacher of the Age. He read many books and joined many circles, and he heard the words and witnessed the deeds of one master after another. He carried out the commands and spiritual exercises which seemed to him to be most attractive.
He became elated with some of his experiences. At other times he was confused; and he had no idea at all of what his stage was…
There once was a man with a water pump. To a friend he said, “This water pump will provide you with all the water you need. Here, it is yours.” The friend was delighted to receive it, since he was thirsty as well as needing water for his dying garden.
The next day the man came by again. His friend accused him, “This pump does not supply any water. You lied to me.”
The man asked, “Did you plug the pump into power?”
Truth is the source of all power. It is the foundation from which all exist. Since lies are the absence of truth, power does not exist, without the presence of truth.
How do leaders who do evil stay in power. The people, being evil themselves, choose their leaders after their own image and being apathetic to their lies and afraid of change, they continue with them.
But there are those, who have the power to change evil in this world.
Our story begins, in the sleepy land of Chattatook.
Once, in a time that was not, there was a castle of the mind, a good castle in medieval times, which was a time that followed after the least of evil times, which came after the void of evil times, when there was no evil at all. But evil was very present in this time and it was difficult to find anyone who had virtue.
The Good Castle of Medulla Oblongata was a refuge for the spiritual and the creative. The castle protected those souls from the empty, vacant spirit, which lay in wait outside.
