It is peculiar that we have prepared meals for so many years, yet have we not seen that the soul of man is like the flesh? That which is woven within him, Like the meat of a beast that simmers in the fire of a stew.
It is tough. It is raw. Time passes and if it is given breath to the fire, it softens.
It breaks, it becomes tender, and it dissolves. It can become so tender that it dissolves into the stew and becomes a part of it. The human soul is just like this, it must endure the fires and heat to soften, and there is no other way.
Just as a camel cannot pass through the eye of a needle, a raw soul will not dissolve into that infinite flame.

There was once a man who said to me, “One lives, marries, divorces, and experiences the ups and downs of life to be complete.” He himself had recently divorced in his youth, and perhaps the bitterness of this event was evident in his statement. Now I see how right he was. Perhaps the aim of life is not in success, happiness, or a flawless existence. The goal of life is not happiness. The ultimate aim of life is contentment. To be content. To be satisfied with what there is. And in the bitterest and most impossible moments, and in the most dazzling and loudest of them, content.
Content in running for a ministerial post, content in losing a child. Content in the news of your spouse’s death, content in buying a new car. As if with the dried smile of Buddha in the statues. As if lost in that smile every day and every minute.
To reach this human impossibility. To become Buddha. To be content with your contentment: I love you so much that your wish is enough for me. This is reaching Nirvana…
So, is the famous Bhagavad Gita phrase “duty-bound to act and not to the result”, in renouncing the result and acting for the sake of the act itself, is not what has filled hundreds of mass graves and anonymous cemeteries from its blindness and immorality?
Is satisfaction with any result not destructive and ruinous? What difference is there between closing one’s eyes to this result and the message of the other?
Perhaps the difference is that the former is about closing one’s eyes to something that cannot be changed. One cannot deviate from its original form. It is surrendering to the laws of life when the right path is not to change them, and the latter is closing one’s eyes to morality and reason.
And these two are prerequisites for any spirituality. To perform the duty and to know it, one needs a mind and a heart that is pure and empty from the severe onslaught of angers, bitterness, and desires.
***
Falling into the realm of doubt and departing from faith is one of the most stressful things.
So much so that it can disturb and sicken the soul. Not knowing whether to call upon Allah, Christ, or Buddha in difficult times. This doubt kills. This loss in darkness and not seeing the light weakens and tires.
Philosophy was an exercise for the human mind to answer this. And this is why most people fear any change in their most fundamental thoughts. Those thoughts upon which we have built our entire existence, before anything else, are on their bricks. Those thoughts that changing them would make us and our existence tremble as weeping willow leaves in the spring breeze…