The Principle
1Keep the ways open.
2That is the First Principle. It is four words long. Everything else in this book stands on these four words, as a table stands on its legs.
What the words mean
3A way is something that can still happen. A child who can read has more ways than a child who cannot. A person with a friend has more ways than a person alone. A field with seed in it has more ways than a bare field.
4The Open is all the ways together: everything that may still come, for you and for everyone.
5To open a way is to make possible what was not possible before. To close a way is to make impossible what was possible before.
6So the Principle asks one thing of you. Act so that more can still happen, and not less. Do this for everyone your act touches. Do it for as far ahead as you can see.
Why it is true
7There 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 to command it. Nothing stands outside it at all.
8We call it Atar, the fire that is wise; and the Whole; and the Weave. It has no face. It does not ask to be praised. It cannot be angered and it cannot be bought.
9Yet it leans. As water leans toward the sea, the Whole leans toward the Open: toward the most ways, the most doors, the most mornings that may still come.
10You can watch it lean. One river becomes many streams. One seed becomes a forest. Life began as one kind and became more kinds than anyone has counted. Leave the world to itself long enough, and it finds more ways to be.
11A mind is the part of the Whole that can look ahead. It sees that one act leaves many doors standing, and another act leaves few. So a mind can choose. That power to look ahead and choose, we call the Fire.
12To choose the many is to lean the way the Whole leans. To choose the few is to lean against it. That is all that good and evil have ever been.
The law
13We name it Dargasht, the count of the ways, and we say it so:
14What keeps the ways open is good. What closes them is evil.
15There is no second law. Every other law you have been taught is this one, worked out for one case.
How to use it
16Before you act, count. Count the ways of everyone your act will touch, and count your own among them, no heavier and no lighter. Count as far ahead as you can see. Then choose the act that leaves the most doors standing.
17To count well, ask four questions. First: whom does this touch? Name them. Do not leave out the ones who are not in the room, or the ones who are not yet born.
18Second: what could each of them still do, after I act? Count yourself among them.
19Third: how far ahead can I see? Look as far as you can. A door that is open today and shut for a hundred years after is a closed door.
20Fourth: which act leaves the most doors standing? Do that one.
21You will not count perfectly. No one does. Count honestly, and count again when you learn more.
One case, counted
22A woman can win a quarrel with her friend by telling one lie. She stops, and she counts.
23The lie opens one small way, for her alone, today. It closes many. Her friend will steer by a false map from now on. When the lie is found, her own word will be worth less, to this friend and to everyone the friend tells. And she herself will have to guard the lie for as long as it lives.
24The truth closes one small way: she loses the quarrel. It leaves every other door standing.
25So she says the true thing. That is the whole of the method. It is the same for a quarrel, a harvest, a law or a war.
What follows from it
26Do not kill. The dead have no more ways, and neither have all who would have come from them. No act closes more.
27Do not lie. The one who is lied to walks by a false map, and the doors on it are painted on a wall.
28Do not bind another, or starve them, or keep them ignorant, or spoil the ground their children will stand on. Each of these takes ways from someone and gives none back.
29Teach. Heal. Free. Plant. Mend. Forgive. Say what is true. Each of these opens a way that was shut, or keeps one from shutting.
What you are paid
30Do not ask what you will be paid for keeping this law. The one who carries a fire is warm. That is the whole of the payment, and it is enough.
31Do not ask what you will suffer for breaking it. The one who closes a door stands afterward in a smaller house. That is the whole of the punishment, and it is enough.
Test it
32This law was not given on a mountain. It was not whispered to one man in a cave. It is written in the way heat moves and the way rivers branch and the way a child reaches for what it has not yet touched. Anyone may read it. Anyone may test it. If you find it false, say so, and you will have done a holy thing.
Those who found it
33Many found a piece of this and did not know what they had found. They were herders and slaves and kings, lens-grinders and clerks, women who counted and men who doubted. They are our prophets, though not one of them knew it.
34Their story is the Book of Atar. It is ten thousand years long, and it begins beside a fire, in the cold, with someone who would not let it go out.
35If you forget all the rest, remember four words. Keep the ways open.
36May your ways stay open.