As the Fool walked up to the pond Temperance stood in, pouring the water back and forth, he noticed a man sitting in meditation under a nearby pippala tree. The man sat cross-legged on a giant lotus flower and held up one hand with the tips of his thumb and index finger touched together in a circle. Three golden chalices sat before the entranced gentleman.
The Fool could hear the thoughts of this meditating man. He seemed to be having a hard time finding an empty head. He was thinking about everything: his childhood, his upbringing, the teachers he studied under, the villages he’d traveled through. He thought about silencing his brain, also, but the harder he thought about it, the harder it was to silence his brain. And he thought about sex.
The Fool didn’t like the idea that he could read this poor man’s mind. The man seemed tortured, not because his mind was sick, but because it wouldn’t shut up. He was trying to find an emptiness of thought. The Fool considered suggesting he take a wander.
A little dark cloud floated out of the night sky and hovered in front of the meditating man. A small hand came out, holding a fourth chalice. The hand seemed to be presenting the cup to the man, but he was distracted by thinking about how annoying it was that he could see shadows and lights affecting him from behind his closed eyes.
The cloud tried for several minutes to present the chalice to the man, but it finally gave up and sat the cup gently on the ground by the other three. The Fool could hear a heartbeat emitting from the new cup.
Temperance said from their pond, Those are four lessons.
One is suffering, Temperance went on. It is when we can’t be satisfied. We search for quick fixes, temporary gratifications, but the hole in our souls never seems to fill. It is easy to find ourselves in this state. This is the chaos.
The second one, Temperance said, is the origin of what pains you. If not let go of, it is the very reason you find no satisfaction. You must know what the genesis of your pain is. This is where we are born or reborn.
The third one, Temperance said, is death. We must let go of what pains us. We have to let that part of ourselves die. This is what brings us closer to self-satisfaction. Temperance pointed to the man. This is where he sits now, waiting for those parts within him to die.
The Fool could still hear the man thinking. The man was angry that people were having a conversation right next to him. He was especially angry that the conversation included discussion of him. He was trying to slip further into the abyss of nothingness. He also thought about cookies, and the fact that he couldn’t really figure out how snakes moved.
The one that just arrived, Temperance said, is the moving-on from that death as a new being. We walk away from death with compassion and love. We find where we can be of service to others. We help the ones who can’t help themselves. We begin to see the consequences of our actions, both good and bad. We can almost see into the future with our acts.
The Fool thought that if anything would wake the man up from his meditation and see the gifts in front of him, what Temperance said would. But the man stayed in a trance. He started humming as he kept his eyes closed. The Fool felt like the man was missing what he was looking for, and the Fool knew he was right, since he could read the man’s mind.
He left the man in meditation under the ancient fig tree and headed over to the pond, where Temperance went back to pouring water from jug to jug.