Do not desire what is commonly called fame and glory: because famous people are in a shop window like a pile of cakes and curiosity overwhelms and defiles them like a cloud of flies; fame is not glory, but misery and humiliation. Do not wish for what is usually called eternal fame, immortality: because you gain nothing from it if your memory remains in the memory of future generations after your death, like a withered mummy in a pyramid. What great people call immortality is not eternal life, not even eternal memory, but oblivion postponed until a few hundred or a few thousand years later. Look at those who have fallen into oblivion more slowly: how terrifying their worn, dusty unchangingness is. Theirs is royal silence, gold and silver crypt-silence. It is not their life, but their death that stretches for centuries or decades.
Do not hope for your glory and immortality from your fellow men, because it is in you, or you do not have it. The European man does not want to be big enough to fulfill the full potential of his existence, just like a big lighthouse that disappears in the night. Don't be satisfied with the measurable, just aim for the full size.
He who has principles or talents feels excellent because of them; someone who has scraped together a pile of garbage for himself or who is praised feels excellent. Realize that the eardrum sings well, the dog barks well, the lamb eats the grass well, the man the lamb and the grass the human corpse: everything is in its place, everything dances its dance perfectly and there is no excellence.
The harmony is complete and undisturbed. The many separate ones all have their own needs, which could disturb the harmony: these are brought into harmony by the dance of death. Don't strive for excellence, but try to achieve harmony within yourself, to be free from all independent demands, and then you will be left out of the dance of death.
Those who wish for happiness are always in a rush, and their rush blends into harmony. Those who want harmony are happy.
Do not tolerate any desire to assert yourself. Because as you move forward in life, you slide back in yourself.
Don't strive for excellence. However, this does not mean that you neglect your skills. You will get ahead in yourself if you make your skills fuller and more coherent; it doesn't matter how great your skills are: the main thing is to make the best out of them and through them.
Your skills are the tricks that will take you to the final house; but you can only enter the house if your teeth remain outside. Every ability has a size; and only that which is immeasurable can enter the final gate: the soul itself.
Perfection is both infinitely easy and infinitely difficult to achieve. It is as easy and as difficult as saying these three words without lying or self-deception: "I am completely pure." But there are very few, simple poor people, who possess completeness without striving for it and without knowing it. All their feelings, thoughts, intentions are pure, everything is good for them as it is offered; if they have to lose property, health, a family member, life: they accept that without difficulty. Their life is quiet and cheerful, no one and nothing can disturb their peace. You can't get much from their words, but you can get everything from their being.
These peaceful, happy people will not reach perfection, heaven: they are already there, there is no power that could give them anything or take anything away from them. They live on an infinitely high mountain, from which there is no further.
Man freed from his individuality is one with God. With the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent.
A person freed from his individuality is not so omniscient that he can tell you how much money is in a closed wallet, that he knows tomorrow's newspaper today, and that he can answer any question with certainty. What would appear to people as omniscience: an endless data store; omniscience is not a set, but precisely the knowledge of it, which is even simpler than "one".
He is not omnipotent in the way that he can turn bread into cake; and maybe he can't even lift the sack that a sack-bearer carries easily. What would appear to people as omnipotence: the infinite increase of success in life. He is so omnipotent that while he is doing his everyday work, deep within his being, God is fully functioning without action.
It is not so ubiquitous that if it is present in Nagyfüzes, it is also present in Kisfüzes. What would appear to people as omnipresence: the complete filling of space. It is so omnipresent that it reaches the existent, the dimensionless point that encompasses everything.
Waves are counted by those who listen to the waves in the dark, not by those who see the sea.
It is better to live on the mountain than in the valley. But how rich the valley is, my soul, how rich.
On one occasion, I observed a young cart driver, not with my eyes, but only with my ears, because there was a board wall between us. I had known him for a long time: a sixteen-year-old lad, single-minded, full of the grain-colored glow of the senses, which filled him with some incorruptible joy; what he desired he stole, if he could, without his act being reproached; strict authority did not ask him what he bought from and why, any more than he asked the bird. I watched this rush with my ears; he wanted to talk to his older charioteer companion, he pestered him a lot, but he didn't answer, he just slept. To this the lad sang: “I drink, I always drink; my wife is angry about him..." He didn't have a drink, he didn't have a wife. He only had desire; desire drags you down, says wisdom; yet he was lifted up by desire, since there was no where to pull him down, since he stood on the ground from everything. And his desire took him not only to the drink, not only to the wife, but even far beyond, when they are old quarreling married couples and the woman is struggling for the drink.
An angel cannot fly higher than this male beetle flew from one blade of grass to another.
How perfect and brilliant all the things of life are, only those who no longer desire them really know. A robber-murderer, when he kills his victim mercilessly: he is in such communion with him as he never was even in bed; without knowing it, he kills not his victim, but himself; whoever understands this is not horrified by it, but filled with reverence. Or let's think of the suitcase, who collects money in heaps, as if the accumulated wealth would lead somewhere, somewhere would be enough: he fights the impossible, a little goes against everything. And how beautiful women are, only those who no longer desire them can truly know: just as the beauty and delicate structure of a bone is not seen by the dog that wants to chew it, but by the man who does not want to chew it.
A bright face looks out over the forest-covered valley. The mermaid answers as a woman.
Everyone feeds on hell, even as they grow toward heaven.
"I am a woman," the flower radiates; "I am a flower," the woman beams. "I am a man," radiates the trunk of the creative tree; "I am a trunk of a creative tree," the man beams.
If you want to ask: the rose disappears behind its scent, color and shape; the fruit tree unfolds. If you want to enjoy: the rose opens; the fruit tree disappears behind its fruits.
A single feeling obscures everything. A single voice deafens everything. One word covers everything. Still: the path leads through feeling, hearing, and speech.
The lamp does not see its own light. Honey does not feel its own sweetness.
The rainbow bridge is the only one where angels and devils walk in such a way that you can hardly tell them apart.
Whose name is their clothes, they hide their heads under their wings, they hide back in their dreams.
The whole being: lifeless.
Absolute eternal existence: timeless.
The entire operation: unchanged.
Total power: powerless.
Complete wisdom: thoughtless.
Complete love: emotionless.
Total goodness: directionless.
Complete happiness: joyless.
The full sound: no sound.
There is something that does not change.
The essence of everything is this unchanging.
If I am freed from all eventualities: nothing will remain of me, only the unchanged.
Words are separate and string-like, things are connected and pile-like. That's why words and things just rub against each other.
Thought is complex and can be said, truth is simple and unspeakable. You can only know the truth without speaking, so only from yourself. Make your soul fit to know the truth in it.
What you are reading here is more than a worldview and less than a religion.
It is more than a world view, because with it you do not see things from a certain direction, but you feel them at their common root.
It is less than a religion, because there is no mention of the divine mysteries, which can only be discussed in symbols. There is no mention of Christ, God incarnate, who ceaselessly dies and goes through hell for people.
The purpose of what is said here is not to make you believe them, but to make you aware of your real being, your real world.
Cőnge, 1944-45