Текст книги "Послания любви. 365 писем Ошо"

Автор книги: Бхагаван Шри Раджниш

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but at this the master said again:

If you want to see, see, right at once,

because when you begin to think

you miss the point altogether.

308. Love.

Meditate, pray and wait.

Do not will anything,

for in you there is strength

greater than any strength of your own.

But it works only when your will is at rest.

309. Love.

Be free at the center;

let the center relax and die:

be only a circumference –

and this is the only renunciation I know.

No man is free until he is free at the center.

When he lets go then he is really free –

and then life is not anguish

and then life is not agony

because no hell can exist without the self, the center.

310. Love.

Do you hear me?

Do you see me?

I stand at the door and knock,

and I knock because of a promise made

in another life and another age.

311. Love.

Be in the crowd as if you are alone

and vice versa.

Receive a guest with the same attitude

you have when alone,

and when alone

maintain the same attitude you have in receiving guests.

In this way the drop drops into the ocean.

On retiring, sleep as if you have entered your last sleep,

and upon awakening be reborn again.

In this way the ocean drops into the drop.

312. Love.

Emptiness is not really emptiness:

rather, it is the all.

It is not negative:

rather, it is positivity itself.

It is out of it that everything is born

and to it everything returns.

It is the source and ground of all existence.

So whenever I say emptiness

I never mean just emptiness!

To me emptiness is not the absence of anything

but the presence of emptiness itself.

And now you can understand it

because you yourself are in it,

and it is in you.

Once a student asked Joshu: Sir, you teach that

we must empty our minds,

but I have nothing in my mind;

now what shall I do?

The old master laughed and said:

Throw it out!

But I have nothing. How can I throw it out?

If you can’t throw it out, carry it out!

Drive it out!

Empty it out!

But don’t stand there in front of me with nothing

in your mind!

313. Love.

Come here whenever it is possible.

You will always be welcomed.

And stay with me a little longer,

and let me help.

It will be difficult for you

because you will have to let go of yourself completely.

But it is not impossible –

and for you especially

because I have seen in you the great potential

that is awaiting its opportunity.

With you much that is impossible is possible.

There is a seed which is longing to explode.

Its very longing is the source of your search,

its longing is the tension that you are today

and its longing will be the freedom

that you will be tomorrow.

The essence is there and

the existence will follow if you so wish.

Please follow its call to the conclusion.

Go on doing meditation.

Do not seek results,

they will come by themselves when the time is ripe.

And the time is ripe

but you still are not.

Let meditation ripen you.

314. Love.

Life is non-fragmentary,

but mind makes it appear fragmentary;

and this fragmentation creates all the problems.

Beware of fragments

and always look beyond them

and below them

and through them –

then you will be able to see the ocean

in spite of all the waves.

The waves are in the ocean

but the waves are not the ocean.

The ocean can be without the waves

but the waves cannot be without the ocean.

315. Love.

Mind means duality

and meditation, oneness.

In Zen they call it – The One Sword.

Kusunoki Masashige came to a Zen monastery

when he was about to meet the oncoming army

of Ashikaga Takanji, and asked the master:

When a man is at the parting of the ways

between life and death, how should he behave?

The master answered: Cut off your dualism

and let the one sword stand serenely by itself

against the sky!

316. Love.

The real thing is

not to fight with your thoughts or desires or instincts

because that is negative

and the negative cannot help.

The real thing is

to grow in awareness, in meditation,

because then one wins without any fight whatsoever.

And to win through conflict is not a real victory

because that which has been suppressed

will have to be suppressed again and again.

Through conflict there is no end to conflict

and through fight only more fight is born.

But there is a victory

without any conflict, fight or suppression.

That victory comes through positive growth in awareness.

Do not fight with yourself

but grow in awareness and understanding and silence,

and all that is negative and diseased

will have withered away by itself.

Suzuki tells a story:

Chi Hsing Tzu was raising a fighting cock for his lord.

Ten days passed and the lord asked:

Is he ready? Chi answered:

No sir, he is not ready.

He is still vain and flushed with rage.

Another ten days passed and the prince asked

about the cock.

Chi said: Not yet, sir.

He is on the alert whenever he sees the shadow

of another cock

or hears its crowing.

Still another ten days passed

and when the inquiry came from the prince, Chi replied:

Not quite yet, sir.

His sense of fighting is still smoldering within him

ready to be awakened.

When another ten days elapsed

Chi replied in response to the inquiry:

He is almost ready.

Even when he hears another crowing he shows

no excitement.

He has now become positive.

He has grown in subtle inner awareness.

Now he resembles one made of wood,

he is so quiet and silent.

His qualities are integrated.

No cock is his match

and to win he will not have to fight

because other cocks will run away from him immediately.

They cannot face him now.

And really it proved so.

He won fights without fighting at all.

And I say that you can do likewise with yourself:

learn the secret from Chi Hsing Tzu’s cock!

317. Love.

Everything has happened as it should happen.

And l was surprised not because you ran away from here

but because I never thought you could be

so predictable!

It is not from here that you have escaped,

it is only a vain effort to escape from yourself –

which is impossible.

How can one escape from oneself?

But in meditation a moment comes,

necessarily comes, when the mind tries the impossible –

for the mind this is the last defensive act.

Meditation is ultimately suicidal to the mind.

And of course the mind must be given a chance –

and you have given it!

Meditation is encountering yourself

directly and in your total nakedness.

This creates fear and the futile effort to escape.

The effort is futile because

whatsoever is known once is known forever

and you cannot be the old ignorant person again.

There is no way to go back

and there is no bridge.

This escape will make you more mature too

and you will come back strengthened

through it and because of it.

Now relax there under the sky and beside the sea

and I will be there.

Whenever you are relaxed you will feel my presence.

And when you feel like coming, come back –

and soon you will feel this.

I will be waiting here for you as ever.

Come and continue the arduous journey

towards your self.

318. Love.

I know that the apprenticeship

is very hard but worth it.

So keep on. It is arduous,

but one has to pay for everything,

and in no other way can you get to the great treasure.

You have longed for it for lives and lives

and now when the time is ripe

and the key is being given to you

do not lose courage.

Access to the treasure is difficult

because it is hidden

in our own unconscious layers of the mind.

It will be easy if you approach that threshold

when the diurnal tide is favorable,

that is when you are passing from sleep to waking

or from waking to sleep.

So evening and morning

are probably the best times for meditation.

You might have noticed that when the mind

is recovering from sleep it takes at least fifteen minutes

to close one aperture and fully open the other.

That is why dreams

cannot last longer than that

in your memory after waking.

When the mind is approaching sleep

it again passes the same threshold.

Be aware of this threshold

because it is very significant

for those who are in search of the inner treasure.

This threshold is the gate to the unknown.

This threshold,

this gap between waking and sleep,

must be used for meditation.

Be aware of the gap,

be a witness of the interval,

and you will be transformed.

319. Love.

I know what is happening to you –

nothingness is descending, emptiness is increasing.

Welcome it, and rejoice in its coming.

Dance in ecstasy because

there is no other way to welcome it.

And the more you dance, the more you will die.

And when you are completely dead you will be reborn.

And the moment is near, very near – just by the corner.

You have passed through the entrance-explosion and now

be ready for the ultimate.

Look at yourself once more

as the river looks at itself before falling into the ocean,

because after falling into the ocean

there will be no one to look, and no one to be looked at!

320. Love.

What is meditation?

Hsu Yun says: Meditation lies in laying down.

But laying down what?

Laying down yourself – because nothing less will do.

Have you ever been at the bedside of a dead man?

If you try to scold him he will not be excited,

and even if you hit him with a staff he will not hit back.

He also indulged once in the same things everyone indulges in.

He also longed for reputation and wealth.

But now he is without any longing whatsoever.

Now he does not make any distinctions

and lays down everything.

If you can be in this laying down state – alive,

you are in meditation.

321. Love.

Leave the grasping of things and thoughts.

Open your fist completely

because grasping is suffering.

Stop! cries Buddha.

But the mad mind does not stop.

If it stops, it is Enlightenment!

322. Love.

Love to be alone.

Solitude is the temple of the divine,

and remember that there is no other temple.

323. Love.

Do not be closed to the universe.

Open all your doors and windows

and let everything pass freely in and out, out and in,

because only then will you be able to receive the truth.

324. Love.

Ego plays a subtle role everywhere –

not only in men but in mice also!

An arrogant elephant

looked down contemptuously at a mouse

and said: You are just about

the skinniest little creature I have ever seen.

I am not always like this, squeaked the mouse.

I’ve been sick!

325. Love.

The whole of Yoga has gone dead because of imitation.

One cannot imitate anything that is real.

The real is always spontaneous:

one can jump into it but one cannot practice it.

Any practice is of the mind and by the mind –

and the mind is the past, the dead.

The mind is the thing one has to jump out of.

Out of the mind is the explosion,

so be aware of the mind and its tricks!

Mamiya went to a great teacher to learn meditation.

The teacher told him to concentrate on the famous koan:

What is the sound of one hand?

Mamiya went away

and came back a week later shaking his head.

He could not get it.

Get out! said the master. You are not trying hard enough.

You still think of money and food and pleasure.

It would be better if you died,

then you might learn the answer.

The next week Mamiya came back again.

When the master asked him:

Well, what is the sound of one hand? –

he clutched at his heart, groaned

and fell down as if dead.

Well, you have taken my advice and died,

said the master,

but what about the sound?

Mamiya opened one eye:

I have not solved that yet, he said.

Dead men don’t speak, said the master.

Get up and get out!

326. Love.

We settle down where no settling is possible.

We make homes

whilst homelessness is the very nature

of our consciousness.

We go on doing things which are impossible

and then suffer!

But no one else is responsible.

We fight with the void and are then defeated –

not because the void is stronger than us

but because it is not.

Now stand up

and fight with the empty space of the room

so that you can know and taste

the whole stupidity of the human mind.

And then sit down and laugh at yourself,

and as the laughter dies down

be silent and search within,

and then you will come to know a deep mystery:

the mystery that the void is not only without

but within also!

327. Love.

Death is everywhere

but everyone deceives himself that it is not for him.

This is the greatest

and the deepest deception the human mind is capable of,

and unless one is constantly aware of this fact

one is bound to be a victim of this deception –

because the mind goes on giving

very beautiful and logical rationalizations

up to the very end.

I have heard about a ninety-year-old man

who got into a bitter argument with his shoemaker

as to how a pair of shoes should be made.

See here, said the shoemaker,

What’s the idea of doing so much yapping?

You are past ninety

and there is little chance of your living long enough

to wear these shoes out.

The old fellow looked sternly at the shoemaker

and said: Apparently you are not aware

that statistics prove that very few people

die after ninety years of age!

328. Love.

Information is not knowledge

because information is not transformation

and can never be –

and knowledge comes only through transformation.

Information is adding something to the same old mind.

It is quantitative;

there is no qualitative change

because the mind behind it remains the same.

That is why all that is called education

just proves to be superficial.

Mind must go through a qualitative change,

otherwise there is no wisdom;

and to go on adding information to ignorance is fatal.

I call meditation

the method for mind’s total mutation.

First let there be a transformation

of the very quality of the mind

and only then education can be educative.

In ancient times

the king of a certain country was concerned

because his son was something of a fool.

The king’s counselors urged that the son be sent away

to a great university in another land

in the hope that the boy

would acquire learning and wisdom.

The king agreed.

The son studied hard for several years

then wrote to his father that he had learned

just about everything possible

and pleaded to be allowed to return home.

The king assented.

When the son arrived at the palace

the king was overjoyed.

A great feast was prepared

and all the great men of the kingdom were invited.

At the end of the festivities

one of the sages present asked the son

what he had learned.

The young man ticked off the university’s curriculum

that he had gone through. While the lad was talking

the sage slipped a ring off his finger,

closed his hand over it,

held up his hand and asked: What do I hold in my hand?

The son thought for a moment and said:

It is a round object with a hole in the center.

The sage was astonished at such wisdom.

Maybe the lad had become a great mind.

Will you now name the object? asked the sage.

The king’s son pondered for a few moments, then said:

The sciences that I studied do not help me

in answering your question,

but my own commonsense tells me that it is a cartwheel.

The sage concluded to himself

that you can educate a fool

but you cannot make him think.

329. Love.

Yes, there is a way,

but in many the will is lacking to find it.

And it is not far away,

it is just by the corner, so to speak.

Knowingly or unknowingly all men long for it.

Really, the whole of life is a longing for it

because without it

there is no reaching, no flowering, no fulfillment.

But few men seek it

and still fewer seek it rightly

and still fewer find it –

and all of those who find it do not enter.

Only a few enter

and still fewer progressively follow it.

But those who follow it with their total being

realize that the way is the goal itself!

330. Love.

Mind and meditation are two names

of the same substance,

or the same energy.

Mind is energy flowing in dualisms,

in conflict and dis-ease;

and meditation is non-dual energy,

one with itself and at ease.

Thinking is impossible without dualisms,

that is why meditation asks you to go beyond thinking.

The moment there is no thinking –

or a single ripple of thought –

the energy becomes integrated

and there is a qualitative change.

The no-thinking energy

opens the door of the dimensionless dimension.

So refrain from seeking even

Enlightenment or Buddhahood

because with any seeking whatsoever

the mechanism of thought

begins to operate and create dualisms.

331. Love.

Do not forget the search for the divine

for even a single moment

because the time is always short and the task is great,

and besides, the mind is wavering.

In fact the mind is the wavering.

Remember this, and remain aware of this fact

as much as you can

because the moment one is aware, the wavering stops,

and in the intervals are the glimpses:

glimpses of oneself, glimpses of no-mind.

One has to absolutely transcend the wavering of the mind before one comes to the doors of the beloved.

No-mindedness is the door.

And the door is not far off.

But the seeker is asleep.

Mind is the sleep.

That is why you will have to be attentive and alert

to everything that passes before your consciousness –

even be attentive to the inattentive moments.

Through constant awareness

the spiritual sleep will be broken

and you will he transformed.

This is your potentiality,

this is everyone’s potentiality,

and for you the time is ripe.

But the seed can remain a seed and die.

The opportunity can be lost.

You are free to be that which you are meant to be

or to be that which you are not meant to be.

Man is free to be or not to be –

this is the glory and this is the burden.

Freedom means responsibility,

so be careful.

If you can be that which is your potentiality,

if you can flower in your fullness

then there is bliss

then there is ecstasy, otherwise

ashes are in the hands

and anguish in the heart.

And ultimately everything depends on you:

heaven or hell –

and you and only you will be responsible for it.

So be careful.

My blessings are always with you.

332. Love.

Metaphysics is born out of childish curiosity,

so however sublime, it remains juvenile.

And all the ultimate answers are foolish in a way

because the ultimate is not only unknown,

it is unknowable.

A mature mind is one

who understands the impossibility

of knowing the ultimate,

and with this understanding

there is a new dimension:

the dimension of being.

Knowing is not possible, but being is.

Or in other words:

in relation to the ultimate, only being is knowing.

This dimension is the religious dimension,

and unless one is religious in this sense

one goes on asking absurd questions

and accumulating even more absurd answers.

In a little backwoods school

the teacher was at the blackboard explaining

arithmetic problems.

She was delighted to see her dullest pupil

paying fixed attention,

which was unusual for him.

Her happy thought was that at last

the lanky lad was beginning to understand.

When she finished she said to him:

You were so interested, Cicero,

that I am sure you want to ask some questions.

Yes’m, drawled Cicero, I got one to ask.

Where do those figures go when you rub them off?

333. Love.

Do not cling to anything,

to any idea,

because clinging is the bondage.

Even if one is clinging to the idea of liberation –

moksha or nirvana –

one will be in bondage.

With clinging meditation is impossible

because clinging is mind, the bondage;

and no-clinging is meditation –

the freedom.

In the Book of Amu Daria there is an old Sufi tale:

Once upon a time there was a monkey

who was very fond of cherries.

One day he saw a delicious looking cherry

and came down from his tree to get it,

but the fruit turned out to be in a clear glass bottle,

so he had to put his hand into the bottle to get it out.

As soon as he had done so

he closed his hand over the cherry

but then he found that he could not

withdraw his fist holding the cherry

because it was larger than the bottle’s neck.

Now all this was deliberate

because the cherry in the bottle was a trap laid

by a monkey hunter

who knew how monkeys think.

The hunter, hearing

the monkey’s whimperings, came along.

The monkey tried to run away,

but because his hand was, as he thought,

stuck in the bottle,

he could not move fast enough to escape.

But as he thought he still had hold of the cherry,

he consoled himself.

The hunter picked him up

and tapped the monkey sharply on the elbow

making him suddenly relax his hold on the fruit.

The monkey was now free –

but he was captured.

The hunter had used the cherry and the bottle

and he still had them.

This monkey-way of thinking is the mind-way also!

And in the end when death, the hunter, comes,

everyone is found caught in his own bottle.

Remember, before the hunter comes

make sure your hand is out of the bottle!

334. Love.

A life without meditation

is like a winter landscape with the sun hidden,

the flowers frozen and the wind whispering

through the withered leaves.

And everyone knows it

because everyone lives it that way,

though no one needs to live it that way.

But why is this so?

This is so because life’s needs require an occupied mind

and meditation means being unoccupied.

We train ourselves to be occupied

and then forget that one needs to be unoccupied sometimes

to know the ecstasy of sheer existence.

One is to be totally vacant inside

because only then is one a host to the divine guest.

335. Love.

Meditation is beyond knowledge.

You can be it but you cannot know it.

All knowledge is superficial.

It is never anything else

but an acquaintance from outside.

It is always about

but never the thing itself;

When the Chinese emperor Wu

came to meet Bodhidharma

he asked the master:

What is the holy, ultimate truth?

Bodhidharma laughed and replied:

Nothing holy, sir,

and it is emptiness itself.

Of course Wu was taken aback, but he asked again:

Then who is the one who at present

stands confronting me?

Bodhidharma simply said:

I don’t know.

Do you see the beauty of it?

And the truth?

And the innocence?

And the holiness?

And the fullness?

And how absolutely ultimate it is?

336. Love.

It is very easy to progress from one illusion to another

because no foundational transformation is needed.

There is no shaking of the foundations

because you remain the same.

So the real problem is not to change the objects of desire

from the worldly to the other-worldly

but to transform oneself;

not to change the seeking

but to change the seeker –

otherwise the problem remains as it is,

it just takes new shapes.

But how to change the seeker?

First find out where it is and what it is,

and then you will come to know a hidden secret:

the seeker exists only while it is not sought,

and when someone goes out to search for it –

it is never found.

It exists only in ignorance and in darkness;

in awareness it is not.

This realization of no-self is the jump.

Jump into the unknown.

Jump into the truth.

337. Love.

Whatever I say is nothing new,

nor is it anything old.

Or it is both –

the oldest and the newest.

And to know it you need not listen to me.

Listen to the birds in the morning

or to the flowers and grass blades in the sun

and you will hear it,

and if you do not know how to listen to them

then you will not know from me either.

So the real thing is not what you listen to

but how you listen,

because the message is everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.

Now I will tell you the art of listening:

walk about until exhausted or dance or

do vigorous breathing

and then, dropping to the ground, listen;

or repeat your own name loudly until exhausted

and then suddenly stop and listen;

or at the point of sleep

when sleep has not yet come

and external wakefulness vanishes,

suddenly be alert and listen.

And then you will hear me.

338. Love.

That which is never lost cannot be found,

and to search for it is absurd.

But the moment this absurdity is understood

all seeking stops by itself

and that which is never lost is found!

That is why I say:

Seek and you will not find,

because the very seeking is the barrier.

The search itself is the hindrance

because it creates the seeker, the ego,

the illusion that I am.

And I am not.

Do not seek and you will find it:

the I-am-not-ness.

This nothingness is the gate.

The Gateless gate.

Riko once asked Nansen

to explain to him the old problem of the goose

in the bottle.

If a man puts a gosling into the bottle, he said,

and feeds the gosling through the bottle’s neck

until it grows and grows and becomes a goose –

and then there is simply no more room inside the bottle,

how can the man get it out without killing the goose

or breaking the bottle?

Riko! shouted Nansen, and gave a great clap

with his hands.

Yes master! said Riko with a start.

See! said Nansen.

The goose is out!

339. Love.

Meditation requires understanding and not effort,

understanding is essential, not effort,

and remember always that you cannot

substitute understanding with any effort whatsoever.

But what do I mean by understanding?

By understanding I mean – living a natural life.

Of course, you cannot try to be natural,

that is self-contradictory!

You can be natural but you cannot try to be natural.

Do you understand this?

Suzuki tells a story:

A monk once asked one of the old Chinese masters:

What is the way?

The master replied: The natural one, the ordinary one,

is the way.

How, continued the monk, am I to be in accord with it?

When you try to be in accord with it, said the master,

then you deviate from it.

Does this mean that one should not try?

No, because that too is a way of trying.

Of course, indirect, but still intentional;

that too will not help.

But just see the dilemma clearly and you are out of it.

Are you not?

340. Love and blessings.

I received your letter.

I was waiting for it daily since you left.

I know that you have gone far away from here

but I also know that now you cannot go away from me –

and that nearness is all that counts.

You have come near me in a non-spatial and

non-temporal sense.

The meeting has taken place in the nowhere

or in the everywhere –

because they mean the same thing.

And the real meeting takes place only in this way.

All else is illusion.

Remember me whenever you need

and you will find me then and there.

Ask anything and wait – and you will be answered.

The barriers have fallen from your mind

and you have entered the meditative state.

Now the doors of the divine are open.

Do not hesitate, and take the plunge.

You are completely ready,

just be courageous enough to enter the uncharted

and the unknown.

The call from beyond has come –

now accept the challenge and be fulfilled.

Now close your eyes

and feel me and see me and let my blessings

be showered on you.

341. Love.

Don’t take life so seriously,

because seriousness is a great dis-ease,

and not only a disease but a suicide also.

Be playful – totally,

because that is the only way to be living.

Life is a play, a leela, and to know it as such is religion,

and to live it as such is sannyas – renunciation.

If you can act and live as if acting and living in a dream

and still be a witness to it

then you will be in the cosmic flow, the tao.

And to be in the cosmic flow is to be free –

free from oneself, the ego.

The ego is the seriousness, the disease,

and the tao, the egoless existence, is the bliss, the ecstasy.

That is why I have given you such an absurd name!

But I have given it to you knowingly.

I have given it to you so that

you may never be identified with it.

The name is so absurd

that you will have to remain nameless

and a nobody behind it.

The name is such that not only others

but you yourself

will be able to laugh at it.

SWAMI KRISHNA CHRIST!

What a name!

But perfectly suitable in a dream drama,

is it not so?

So feel at ease with it,

and laugh with it, and sing and dance with it,

and be Swami Krishna Christ

with all the letters capitalized!

And always remember that you are nobody.

Always be aware that

you are neither a swami nor a Krishna nor a Christ –

that is what is meant by a swami!

And Krishna himself is not a Krishna,

Christ himself is not a Christ,

because they are nameless, absolutely nameless.

They are nobodies – and that is what makes them divine.

The moment one is identified with any name

one is lost to one’s divinity.

Either one can be a name or a reality,

and no one can be both simultaneously.

Really be a name –

and your reality is lost.

Really be a reality –

and your name is just a dream, maya.

And what nonsense to be a swami!

But once one is at ease with the no-sense

one transcends it.

Please! Don’t try to be sensible

otherwise you will never have any sense at all –

because only stupidity tries to be sensible!

The existence is absurd

and meaningless

and irrational –

and that is why it is so beautiful,

and to be in it, such a blessing!

342. Love.

Man is free to decide, but not free not to decide –

because not to decide is to decide,

to waver is to decide,

to postpone and evade decision is to decide.

There is no escape:

one must say yes or no.

And there are a thousand ways of saying no,

only one way of saying yes,

and no way of not saying anything at all.

This is the human situation,

and the seeker of truth must be aware of it,

otherwise life is wasted unnecessarily.

A single moment lost cannot be regained –

and we have wasted so many lives –

so decide to decide,

and decide to transform and transcend.

With the decision comes crystallization,

and then one is ready to take the jump into the unknown.

343. Love.

A traveler stops at an inn:

he passes the night there,

takes his meal,

and as soon as he has done so

he packs and continues his journey again.

As for the host of the inn, he has nowhere to go.

The one who does not stay is the guest,

and the one who stays is the host.

Now who are you –

the guest or the host?

Meditate.

No answer is required,

rather, realize,

because all answers belong to the guest

and realization only to the host.

But do not believe me, I may be just deceiving you.

Go in and find out for yourself!

344. Love.

Meditation is the master key.

It can open the doors of the infinite

and it can unlock the mystery of the unknown.

But just by possessing the key nothing is attained,

unless one uses it.

Idries Shah tells a dervish tale:

There was once a wise and very rich man who had a son.

He said to him:

My son, here is a jeweled ring.

Keep it is a sign that you are my successor,

and pass it down on for posterity.

It is of value, of fine appearance,

and it has the added capacity of opening

a certain door to wealth.

Some years later he had another son.

When the son was old enough