The Ways of the Many

There is one thing, and it is everything. The stars are in it, and the salt, and the hand that lifts the salt. Nothing stands outside it. We call it Atar, the fire that is wise. We also call it the Whole, and the Weave.

Atar has no face. It does not speak, punish, reward or work wonders. It does not ask to be praised. You are not watched by it. You are a part of it that has woken up.

The Whole leans toward the Open: toward the most ways, the most doors, the most mornings that may still come. A mind is a fire that looks ahead and keeps the ways from closing.

From this comes the one law. An act is good as far as it keeps ways open, for everyone it touches, as far ahead as can be seen. An act is evil as far as it closes them. Every other rule is this rule, worked out for one case.

To use it, ask four questions before you act. Whom does this touch? What could each of them still do, after I act? How far ahead can I see? Which act leaves the most doors standing? Then do that one.

Killing is the worst act, because it closes every way a person had. A lie spoils the map that others steer by. To bind, starve or keep another ignorant takes their ways. To teach, heal, free, plant, mend and forgive opens ways.

This law was not given on a mountain. It is read in nature, and anyone may read it. Nobody is asked to believe without reason. If you find the teaching false, say so, and you will have done a holy thing.

We promise no heaven and threaten no hell. We have not seen them, and we will not sell what we have not seen. The one who keeps the ways open already lives the best life there is: clear, unafraid and at home in the Whole. The one who closes a door stands afterward in a smaller house. Nothing more is needed.

To keep the law a person needs four strengths. Seeing: to know which doors are real and which are painted on a wall. Standing: to hold to a true thing when it costs you. Measure: to rule yourself, so tonight's hunger does not eat next year's seed. Sharing: to give each person their fair part, for their ways count the same as yours.

There are two hands in every matter. The Near Hand is yours: what you judge, what you choose, how hard you try. The Far Hand is not yours: the weather, luck, the past, and what goes on in any head but your own. Put your whole strength into the Near Hand, and let the Far Hand be.

When a trouble fills the sky, look at your life from far above and far ahead. See the town, the country, the turning earth, the hundred years. The trouble takes its true size. Then come back down and do the next thing.

Death closes one person's ways. It does not close what that person opened. An Atarban walks the dark road before night: we think about loss ahead of time, so that it cannot break us, and so that we waste no day.

The fire in your mind is the same fire in every mind. So all people are one household. Difference of people, of ideas and of living things is wealth, because more kinds means more ways.

A person who lives this way is called a Keeper of the fire. There is no rite to become one and no fee. If you kept the ways open today, you were one today.

We greet each other so: “May your ways stay open.” And the reply: “And yours, and those to come.”