The Monk
I used to know a monk, a hermit, a saint. He lived on the sweetness of prayer alone,—and as he quaffed it, he knelt so long on the cold floor of the church that his legs below the knee swelled and became like posts. He had no sensation in them, he knelt—and prayed.
I understood him—and, perhaps, I envied him; but let him also understand me and not condemn me—me, to whom his joys are inaccessible.
He strove to annihilate himself, his hated ego; but the fact that I do not pray does not arise from self-conceit.
My ego is, perchance, even more burdensome and repulsive to me than his is to him.
He found a means of forgetting himself … and I find a means to do the same, but not so constantly.
He does not lie … and neither do I lie.
November, 1879.