While on top of the plateau with Justice, the Chariot arrived, carrying a woman who was tied up and blindfolded. The chariot driver brought the woman to the middle of the plateau and stuck eight swords around her like a cage. The woman seemed calm and didn’t struggle with her restraints.
Justice, who was also blindfolded, walked over to the woman and started putting little pebbles on the scale. Some went on one side and some went on the other side. After Justice was done, the scales were balanced. She sighed and walked to the edge of the sword cage.
You keep fighting life, Justice said. You are throwing your shoulder at a locked door and finding that you don’t have the strength to batter it down, yet just down the hall from where you struggle, a door is ajar. But you choose to ignore it.
Do you think you know more than the whole universe what is good for you? Justice asked. The ego! The contempt for powers much greater than you! You think that if you keep trying the same thing over and over, you will get a different result.
Fighting is inevitable in life, but fight when there is a fight, do not fight the flow of life itself. The salmon must fight the current to spawn, but the trout does not. It just stays in the coolness under the rocks, Justice concluded.
The woman wept. The Fool felt a melancholy tug at his heartstrings. The woman knew that she was guilty. The sad part was that the scale was ever so slightly in favor of one side. The Fool couldn’t help but see the gleam of Justice’s axe. Was it an executable act to be willful?
It isn’t about being willful, Justice said, as if reading the Fool’s mind. It is the ego. Fear is what makes us act this way. We lose faith in the way things will be, and we think we can change the universe’s plans, all to protect what we have or what we want.
Can’t we change the universe? the Fool asked. Doesn’t the Universe listen?
It either doesn’t because it can’t, Justice said, or it does but it doesn’t care. If anything, it is we who must listen to the Universe.
That really made the Fool feel dark. The woman sobbed. He didn’t know what she had done, but he felt that putting her on trial wasn’t the right thing. Then again, he also knew he didn’t know much.
The charioteer walked over, removed the swords, untied the woman, lifted the blindfold off her face, and escorted her back to the Chariot. The ostrich and the peacock went left and right, but the Chariot went straight into the air and shot over the horizon, leaving the Fool, Justice, and a flock of condors alone in the evening sun.