The Toki Ponist on the Mountain main page

lon li ike sama lon.

The truth is as ugly as it is. — Toki Ponist Pu

July 2021

These are the words as recovered from the awoken well:
jan Koko li toki tawa jan Sipi e ni:
  • tenpo li lon ala lon?
    kiwen li lon ala lon?
    ale li lon ala lon?
  • jan Sipi li toki ala.
    jan Koko li toki e ni: taso lon wan li lon, anu seme?
    jan Sipi li weka e pan ko tan kute ona.
    ona li toki e ni:
  • sina lukin pona e ijo la, ijo li ijo lon ala tan ni:
    • sina ken lukin ala e tan.
    sina lukin ala e ijo la, ijo li lon ala.
    sina lukin e poki pi ijo mute la, sina ken toki e ni:
    • ni li ijo!
  • Here follows a relaxed translation:

    Koko runs into Tipi. “Is time an illusion?” Tipi remains silent. “Is matter an illusion? Is everything we see an illusion?” Tipi remains silent. “Surely, only the one wholeness, the isness truly exists?” Tipi removes the balls of cheese from his ears. “If you see something well, it is like an illusion, because you can’t see its origin. If you don’t see it, there is nothing to be an illusion. If you see a box of it, you say, it is not an illusion, because there it is!”

    Associative musings:

    In the process of what some like to call awakening, they fall into states that make the physical world drop away like an illusion. When they return from the state, they proudly exclaim that they have found the truth: that everything is an illusion. In the world they experience absolute truth they cannot express this. And in the world where they can express this, everything is not an illusion.

    In the scientific inquiry of understanding the world, some run into the same confusion. At the subatomic level, color does not exist, and going deeper mass does not exist nor do photons experience time. Time and matter are illusion, we can exclaim. But we can only do that if we try to find out where time comes from. At the level where it is useful, we experience time and it is not an illusion. If we look closely, it disappears but then it is no longer part of our experience and no longer an illusion. The property of emergence is understandably mystically magical, but it needs to be neither.

    Read a newer koan (If you refuse to play a forced game, you play a higher game instead.)

    Read an older koan (Depression is not in your head, but a problem of and within society.)