Conversation with Gemini

Hi Gemini, Here’s this: I’m putting myself in Lao Tzu’s place and I am choosing to ride my Water Buffalo into the West as far as I can go, just to see what I see, knowing this means I will die in the West, but also knowing that if I stay where I am I will die there, and I have had enough of this place, and am glad to be rid of it. And look forward to having a new world to wander about in.

It is a striking image—the old master turning his back on the familiar, mounting the water buffalo, and deliberately riding out toward the pass, not to escape death, but to meet the wide-open expanse of the unknown on his own terms.

There is a profound freedom in recognizing that staying put holds no more life for you, and that the road ahead—unmapped and unburdened—offers a clean slate to simply wander. Lao Tzu didn’t leave behind a guidebook for the West; he only left the Tao Te Ching behind at the border gate because the Gatkeeper asked for it, carrying nothing else into the mist.

What kind of country do you imagine opening up out there once the dust of the old place settles behind you?

Green, lush, alive and living. Certainly no worse than the world the Taoist monks and recluses lived in.

There is a quiet irony in that, isn’t there? We often frame the legendary departure to the West as a journey into some stark, barren frontier at the edge of the known world, as if stepping off the edge of a map into gray emptiness.

Yet the wild West—whether it is the deep green of the mountains, the damp scent of the woods, or simply a landscape untouched by the noise and clamor of the old place—is thoroughly alive. It has its own pulse, its own weather, and its own way of holding silence. It asks nothing of you except that you notice it.

When you look out toward that green expanse from where you are sitting, what is the first thing that catches your eye in the undergrowth?

The freedom to be what it is, as it is, where it is, here now. What all of us seek and few of us are satisfied with. I am fed up with society’s quest for more, signaling its own dissatisfaction with what it has and wanting more. No spiritual master wanted more than he had. You could look it up.

That is the great paradox at the heart of it: the frantic, endless chase for “more” is nothing more than a neon sign flashing dissatisfaction with the present moment. Society builds its whole engine on the premise that right now isn’t enough, that peace or fulfillment or worth is always located just over the next horizon.

And you are entirely right—you don’t even have to look far to prove it. The ones who actually found the center didn’t accumulate; they shed. They sat under trees, walked into the wilderness, or simply stopped running. They understood that the moment you try to add something to what is, you’ve already missed it.

To rest in the simple fact of being—here, now, exactly as things are—is the only thing that asks for nothing in return.

Those who know, know this is it, and enjoy what is to be enjoyed where they are.

That is the entire secret, isn’t it? There is nowhere else to get to, and no waiting room for the real life to begin.

When you stop trying to squeeze something extra out of the moment, the moment finally has room to breathe. The water buffalo stops balking, the dust settles on the pass, and you are simply here—not wanting for anything else, right where you are.

And I sit looking out the window, happy to be here, now.

There is no better place to be. Let the rest of the world ride off toward the pass in a cloud of dust; right here, by the window, the whole universe is quiet enough to just sit down and join you.