lon li lon pona. anu pona li lon ala lon lon.

These are the words as recovered from the awoken well:

jan Ikemute li utala e jan Sipi en jan sona Mutemu.
one li toki e ni tawa jan tu:

o toki pona tawa mi e ni: lon li seme?

jan Sipi li toki e ni: lon li telo. jan Mutemu li toki tawa jan Ikemute kepeken nimi mute. jan Mutemu li jan wawa lon utala tawa jan Ikemute. ona li toki e jan Mutemu: o toki kin tawa mi. jan Sipi li pana e pona tawa jan Ikemute. ona li tawa. tenpo suno kama la, jan Ikemute en jan sona Mutemu li moli lon ma pi telo ala tan moku telo ala.

Here follows a relaxed translation:

Ikemute challenges Tipi and guru Mutemu. He asks them: “Explain to me the essence of being.” Tipi says: “The essence is water.” Then, Mutemu explains to Ikemute in many words. Ikemute declares Mutemu the winner. He says to Mutemu: “Tell me more, master!” Tipi wishes Ikemute much luck and then he leaves. The next day, Ikemute and Mutemu are found dead from thirst in the desert.

Associative musings:

Tutorialism is the state of mind that expects to find a tutorial, user’s manual, step by step solution or ready for consumption answer to anything that pops up in the mind. It is not so strange that this occurs so often with somany people. The internet is one big step by step guide, tutorial movie and question & answer database. With our smartphones they are a simple grab away. As an alternative, we still have printed media or televised broadcasts, not to mention educational material of most primary and secondary schools.

As with all things, there is nothing inherently wrong with this. But if you’ve ever felt the anxiety of not being able to look something up because your phone is not in your pocket then you know there is something altogether not in balance. But then try to dig deeper. Is it that when you wonder about something you rather look something up than to explore it yourself? Do you dare do soemthing new without looking up how others do it, what the best way to do it is according to others? If so, you might grow a dependence on distractable information. Why distractable? Well, you will soon find out that if you are dealing with a serious question you are not content with the first answer you find, or you might want to know other alternatives. You may think the answer you found was to theoretical and not practical enough or you want to know even more about the theory, and before you know it you are reading book after book without working on the actual question yourself. In the end you cannot solve any issue passively, meaning by ingesting the knowledge of others. You will mostly find that the content of others is even targeted to ingest more of it and in combination with your tendency to like being distracted, because the issue at hand is of course much less appealing to deal with than well-crafted content, you are screwed.

Read a newer koan (You can only speak with one mouth.)

Read an older koan (He who has everything and he who has nothing can live in the present. The middle class lives to gain and fears to lose.)