Through the Torii/Chapter 32
Truth is often insignificant, like a feather on a pigeon’s back and sometimes solemn, important, heavy, like a cloud-scorning mountain of the North (North whence cold winter of wisdom comes); but truth is truth, not less, not more, under any circumstances. It is like a moon under a veil of mist, when you see it rather obscure and less impressive; it always exists full and round; it has no ebb nor flow.
It became more a habit of human nature, I dare say, than necessity, to seek truth; in fact, we need so often no-truth to get fire and power and adjust ourselves, just as we go straight to hatred for love. I even think it was started from human weakness; but it has grown a strength in general consent because it protects you. Therefore it was regarded as the most worthy object of life and the world from time immemorial; and I find already in the very old age quite a number of people who left their own record of sad failure in truth-seeking. It is strange enough we mistook it for success; the writing is at best merely an apology. I have ample proof, however, to believe that the ancient people got more truth than we, because they were more quiet, not talking so much about this truth as we do. And it is our saddest hearts of modern age to discuss all days and nights on it and rarely agree with the others; we have found it so difficult to seek it. There will be no more talking about it when we have it right before us; indeed, what necessity have we then to talk about it, when we see it clear like the big sun of summer day?
We see many a one hurrying the East to look after truth; another to the West for the same purpose. One stops in one place; the other journeys far and distant. It is a pity to laugh over their restlessness with good intention; but restlessness is always a tax that fools have to pay. I will say to them: “Be composed and cool, my friends, and leam that descending is only the way of ascension. Not to seek truth is the shortest cut to get it. And if you want it you can find it anywhere in the world, even in the dusts of a street. You may ask me, then, how and where to find it. But to tell it to you does no good at all; it is you are the person that wants it, not I; and I am not you. You must find your own salvation. It is not necessary to drink all the water; just a drop of it tells you the taste and mystery of the whole ocean. Let the infinite song of the forests and hills wander through the four seasons; you will find that song in the shiver of a leaf, in the beckoning of a grass, that lies before you at your feet. And when you forget the question of truth is when you perfectly understand it; as the real mountaineer does not see the mountain, the true seeker of truth never sees truth, because he is truth itself.”