The lecture had been wonderful. The Elder, as we affectionately called the oldest monk in the Order, had a way of presenting his ideas with extreme clarity. Topics considered difficult became easy to understand. That’s how the wise operate. When the explanation is vague, it means that the idea has not yet matured in the one presenting it. However, in the classes of the good monk, despite the clear and objective reasoning, by the end we always felt that he left some subliminal reflections, like unwritten words of a book, yet fundamental for a broader and deeper understanding of the story. That afternoon, he spoke about a delicate subject, the meaning of life. Many theses have been developed on the topic, all of great value. In his way of helping us comprehend complex issues, he tended to simplify the idea into a single word. This was the central point from which thought would expand. An efficient method. As if the knowledge about the village in which one resides were the primordial movement for the individual to understand the world. And it is. There were topics I had always found complicated to understand. Karma was one of them. I had read several explanations on the subject; I had heard many people discourse on the complexity of the theme, often repeating phrases that seemed more to hide than to reveal. I remember when the Elder started the class on the subject in the following way: “Karma is learning. Everything else is commentary on this important issue.” About an hour later, I finally understood clearly what no one, for years, had been able to explain to me when they used enigmatic phrases.
That afternoon was no different. The good monk began the lecture in his style: “The meaning of life is to evolve. Simply and solely.” He paused before adding: “However, understanding evolution, in order to live it, is an endless exercise.” He was giving us the good seed to help us nurture the tree. As it grew within us, we understood its utility and beauty. That’s how the much-talked-about, and not always understood, expansion of consciousness works. The Elder explained that among the various things that hinder the evolutionary process, the fact that we lose or distort the meaning of words was one of the most common and unnoticed aspects. According to him, intentionally so. The fact that a single word can have multiple meanings, like soul, for example, was proof of this delay. We were interrupted by the monastery bell calling us to lunch.
We were very excited, as we always are when an idea awakens something important that we had not noticed until then. Seeing what we had never seen is like a cure for the blindness of consciousness. The sensation of discovery is wonderful and essential for the subsequent stages of encounters and achievements. Sitting at the long communal tables in the canteen, we talked about the interrupted lecture. We tried not only to decode the subtext of the content provided but also to approach the missing part. The Elder sat close to where I was.
At one point, Guilherme, one of the monks nearby, commented that he would be taking a trip to spend some time at a well-known ashram in India, believing that the ancient practices of meditation practiced there would help him understand what he had never been able to grasp within himself. This way, he would have a better reading of all the people around him. Another monk, Renê, a close friend of Guilherme, congratulated him and said he felt a little bit of “good envy” of his friend. At that moment, the Elder’s gaze became attentive to our conversation. He furrowed his brow and, without saying a word, returned to his meal. We noticed and fell silent. Renê asked if he had said something inappropriate. The good monk explained: “Not by chance, this was the theme of today’s lecture.” He paused before explaining: “There is no such thing as good envy. Even if the word is used in ways that seem affectionate. Like all shadows, envy needs light to avoid causing suffering.” Renê argued that all things have negative and positive polarities. Shadows were no different. The Elder elaborated: “The positive polarity of shadows consists of awakening a virtue to replace it in your consciousness and choices. Envy is feeling discomfort at another person’s achievements. This is the genuine meaning of the word. I don’t think such an emotion is healthy. Everything else is distortions of escape.”
Renê sought to clarify that his feeling was different from that definition. In truth, he admired Guilherme’s spiritual pursuit and was happy for the fact that his friend was about to experience another important stage in his life. He confessed that one day he would like to do the same. The Elder smiled and reassured him: “I know your good heart is incapable of trying to take something that does not rightfully belong to you. In this case, I have no doubt that you are happy for the opportunity granted to Guilherme. Even though you also want to live a similar experience, you feel no discomfort about it. This is not envy, but joy and admiration.” He took a sip of water and continued: “Within all of us dwell sublime feelings, as well as nebulous emotions. Accepting this reality protects us from ourselves. The importance of the exact meaning of all things, words among them, lies in not allowing ourselves to be deceived when genuine envy arises. There will be no risk of being tempted to believe that this emotion is the supposed good envy. For if it happens, we will let it live freely within us. Soon we will have serious problems; without realizing it, the shadows take control of our consciousness. The greatest trick of evil is to convince us that it does not exist within us.”
The Elder added: “Another common danger is established sayings, yet incomplete in their understanding. For example, we often say that we learn through love or pain. In truth, pain teaches nothing; it merely serves to awaken the love that has been asleep due to the internal pressure it exerts. Otherwise, it will have no utility.” The good monk had all our attention. He continued: “When suffering manages to achieve its only usefulness, it makes love wake up startled, like someone who has overslept for work. However, it can finally show all its power and light. Only by enveloping the situation in love can we find the solution we have never seen, since the passage was in a dark corner of consciousness that until then we had no access to or believed ourselves incapable of reaching. Only love grants the strength and balance necessary to overcome the inherent difficulties of life. Otherwise, if we remain resistant to love, we will succumb to suffering until the endless day. This is a common reality in the lives of many people. As long as they feed on their own pain, on a restrictive diet, they will learn nothing.”
Intelligent, Renê argued that this idea did not apply in all cases. He then articulated: “Fear is at the root of all shadows. A destructive and limiting feeling. At first, something that needs to be eradicated. However, fear can be useful in saving us from dangers and disasters.” The Elder shook his head and presented another angle of the same idea: “Fear weakens and disturbs. It convinces us that we will never succeed. It limits, coerces, and oppresses. What saves us from dangers and disasters is knowledge, sensibility, keen perception, refined sensitivity, caution, and also courage. These virtues remind us that we need to be careful, attentive, to assess when to go and when to stay; however, they warn us that we cannot remain stagnant. Nor can we flee from life by denying the risks of encountering the unknown, which is essential for the expansion of life. Under the pretext of peaceful days, fear advises us to hide from who we are. Fear terrifies, tells us we will fail, and screams to never go, for many have already stumbled. In short, it is a cruel prison built on the pillars of misguided mental creations. To evolve, fear needs deconstruction, like a building that, besides occupying too much space, will never be a good place to live. Fear diminishes us, little by little, until it completely nullifies us.”
The Elder then raised a rhetorical question, citing the wise Zalu and his well-known, uncomfortable inquiries: “Is never trying better than making mistakes?” Without evading the dilemma, he offered his perspective: “There is no greater danger than a life wasted due to lack of attempts. There is no greater risk than refusing to learn from one’s own mistakes; they are excellent teachers, provided they are well utilized. Fear is the route of all escapes.” He made a gesture with his hand to mark the conclusion of his reasoning and said, “Where there is fear, there is no Path.”
The young monk did not seem willing to abandon his arguments and pondered: “Fear is fundamental to the survival of humanity. Without it, we would be an extinct species.” The Elder tried to demonstrate the fallacy of that idea: “In truth, love is fundamental to life. I can live without fear, but never without love.”
At the end of the afternoon, next to Marcel, another monk from the Order, we were enjoying cups of coffee while having a conversation on the pleasant balcony of the monastery. We talked about the lecture, as well as the additional idea presented by the Elder during lunch, when he appeared in search of Marcel. He brought good news. A prestigious French university, with restricted access, had accepted his son’s application. Emotional, Marcel revealed how proud he was of the young man. The Elder was keen to show the applicability of the lecture’s theme in our daily lives: “Do you believe your son is above average compared to other young people his age?” Marcel shook his head with one hand and clarified that he did not mean to say his son was better than the other boys. He expressed his joy that his son was dedicated, studious, and caring, in addition to having a good heart. However, he asserted that this was nothing that any young person could not become, should they be willing. The good monk pressed Marcel’s reasoning: “So you speak of joy, satisfaction, and even your self-esteem as a result of having participated in his education.” He paused to add, “Pride is a shadow that convinces us of an absurd moral, intellectual, or social superiority, whose aim is to hide the weaknesses we refuse to acknowledge. Ultimately, it’s believing we are better than others to avoid dealing with the difficulties we don’t want to face.”
He clarified: “When a single word has opposing meanings, it reveals that we have created an escape route in an attempt to avoid the inevitable confrontation. The one that everyone will one day have with their own truth.”
The Elder explained why he insisted on the idea developed in the lecture: “The meaning of life is evolution. The world improves through individual betterment. There is no other way.” He gazed at the mountains for a brief moment, as if seeking inspiration, and continued: “However, evolving requires effort. It takes a great deal of work to deconstruct imperfections to make way for a new individual to rise. The human mind is adept at finding winding shortcuts in an attempt to shorten the long, yet essential, path. Like fear, pride is one of the shadows that causes the most suffering, whether through the imbalance it feeds or the fragility of a power that does not exist. Dismantling pride with the light of humility is one of the most challenging and necessary tasks on our journey to the High Lands. Often, it takes centuries of struggle for victory to establish itself within oneself, the most valuable of battlefields.”
He continued: “As I said, shortcuts arise in an attempt to escape hard tasks. It seems easier to create new meanings for the shadows rather than face them one by one. Like a magic performance, with a snap of the magician’s fingers, good envy pops out of the hat, the advantage of feeling fear emerges from the sleeve, and good pride is pulled from the coat pocket. Mere party tricks.”
He gestured with his finger to remind us: “Just to stick with the examples mentioned today. We tend to do the same with other shadows.” He furrowed his brow and warned: “So, when we feel envy, fear, or pride, we attribute the emotions that hinder our journey to being motivated by good reasons. In us, such shadows are good. The bad ones are others.” He looked back at the mountains for a moment; then turned to add: “Those who believe they can evolve without confronting themselves are mistaken. When, instead of evolving, an individual redefines evil, they use a trick that, although it provides a superficial, instant, and apparent gain, brings a deep, prolonged, and true loss. There is no greater deception. Closing our eyes makes evil disappear. Disappearing does not mean ceasing to exist.”
Until then, I had been a privileged spectator of this learning. I decided to enter the scene. I used the dictionary as my argument. When I looked up the word “pride,” the primary definition was a feeling of pleasure, of great satisfaction with one’s own worth, with one’s own honour. The Elder curled his lips in a slight smile, as if he had been expecting this, and wanted to know if there was another definition for the word. There was nothing else, at least in the dictionary I was using as an app on my phone. The good monk shook his head and said in a calm voice: “Look at what we have done to ourselves. We have mixed pride with self-esteem, confused pride with honour, and no longer differentiate it from joy. There is no mention of the harm caused by arrogance, conceit, and the hubris that such a shadow provokes. The unhealthy behaviour of feigned superiority has been erased from our days, not by luminous conquest, but by abusive cunning. As if it had ceased to exist. Soon, there will be a good hatred, the bad will be good, and evil will be a fictional character. With no distinction between the chaff and the wheat, there will be no reason to complain about the sour taste of the bread. We will become perfect without needing to sculpt the unfinished work. For that, it will be enough to redefine all evil.”
I fell silent. There were no more words. The Elder excused himself and left. Alone with Marcel, we admitted we would need to pay attention, or we would fall into the traps of twisted reasoning that deceive us about who we are. The next day, while we waited for the continuation of the lecture, one of the monks showed us on his phone a short video compilation of random scenes featuring disastrous falls. The famous funny videos. We laughed heartily when the Elder entered. He said nothing. When he began, he wanted to know what we thought about sadistic people. Immediately, we all condemned such behaviour. Taking pleasure in the suffering of others was something repulsive, we asserted without any doubt. He asked a simple question: “What were you laughing at?”
Taken aback, we argued that it was not sadism, but rather funny situations. Just that. We meant no harm, we reasoned. The Elder replied: “Most of us would never do evil out of desire. We do so out of ignorance of the authentic meaning of good.”
Without him needing to say another word, we realised that we were still capable of laughing at others’ misfortunes. Which mythological character embodies such a habit? The silence that followed was one of regret. Unlike remorse, a sad emotional prison, regret is characterised by the awareness of a mistake and the desire for transformation. A genuine movement of light. In that moment, as if the silence spoke, each of us with ourselves, we committed to freeing ourselves from the trap that we had not yet noticed but that still bound us. Then, the Elder continued the lecture from the previous day about evolution with the following phrase: “To evolve is also to find the lost meanings. Of people, things, and words.”
Translated by Cazmilian Zórdic.
