I am not a scholar but an acquirer of wisdom. I got it the hard way. I found my way to a teacher of the “Tough Stuff” school and immediately got roughed up by him. He beat me around the ears, metaphorically speaking. He removed the pillows from my head so I could hear him yell, “You don’t exist!”

He did not want me to take this personally, so he didn’t talk to students. As he said, “I have come to deliver the message, not discuss it.” I didn’t know this, but this knocks the intellectual outlook into a cocked hat. It’s good to feel the breeze on your noggin as the teacher screams into your heart, “Look up, look up.”

In another talk he said that there is no teacher and no student. That one day he would disappear. And disappear he did. That leaves me wanting more….

And so I traipse along trailing words not mine, revealing secrets yelled out loud by a disappearing teacher who manages to keep me in line. “Stop!” I can hear him say. “Let them feel the silence.” And so I do.