Now I knew what those who spend their lives searching are looking for. They must have seen the emptiness, and for the rest of their lives they had been struggling to repeat that experience. Now I understood why Jesus found it necessary to contradict himself every third sentence, and why Buddha had to resort to miracles, and Mohammed needed to intimidate and Meister Eckhart to insist that his own personal isolation should become common to us all. All of them had beheld the emptiness and longed to return to it.
The great systems which inform the world about truth and life invariably claim to be absolutely truthful and well balanced. In reality they are quaking bridges built out of yearning. All this I saw and it made me pure and clear as quartz.
Peter Høeg, “Reflection of a Young Man in Balance,” Tales of the Night.
