17 Ford Prefect
One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about human beings was their habit of continually stating and repeating the obvious, as in “It’s a nice day,” or “You’re very tall,” or “Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you alright?” At first Ford had formed a theory to account for this strange behaviour. If human beings don’t keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months’ consideration and observation he abandoned this theory in favour of a new one. If they don’t keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working. After a while he abandoned this one as well as being obstructively cynical and decided he quite liked human beings after all, but he always remained desperately worried about the terrible number of things they didn’t know about.
16 A-B-S-T-R-A-C-T
It ceases when you open your mouth to speak.
It ceases when you begin to type to explain it.
It ceases when you think about it.
When you don’t think, you cease to exist.
That’s when you know.
That’s when you know what it means to exist.
That’s when you liveNdie [live and die - a metaphysical state]
How many roots do you have?
How many branches exist on the moon?
Are single trains slid into hell?
Does the ant murder poetry?
Did that puzzle your mind? Did it make you think in overdrive? Did it make you stop thinking?
Koans are such questions which have no answer and their only intention is to stop the mind since theres no way you can begin to answer such questions.
The more the mind gets to stop, the more it WAKES up.
Wake Up.