jan pi jo ala en jan pi jo ale li ken lon pona.
jan ante li wile jo li ken weka mute.

These are the words as recovered from the awoken well:

jan Jalila li kama lon tomo pi jan lawa.
ona li toki e ni:

jan sewi o!
mi pilin ike tan tenpo pini pi jan lili mi.

jan lawa li toki e ni: mi wile pali e seme tawa sina?
jan Jalila li toki e ni: ken la, sina pana e mani tawa mi.
jan lawa li toki e ni:

ala. ken la, mi moli e jan lili sina.
tan la, sina wile ala pilin ike tan tenpo pini pi jan lili sina.

jan Sipi li tawa kin.
ona li toki e ni tawa jan Jalila:

mani li lukin e kasi lili tan wile ona.
mani li toki ala tawa kasi lili e ni:

• o pana moku tawa mi.

Here follows a relaxed translation:

Jalila enters the room of the king. She asks: “Oh exalted one. I worry about the future of my children.” The king asks: “What do you want from me? Jalila says: “Maybe I could get a bit of money.” The kings says: “No. But I could kill your children so you don’t have to worry anymore.” Tipi steps in and advices Jalila. He says: “The cow looks for grass, because it needs it. It does not ask the grass to feed him.”

Associative musings:

Balance can be thought of as a static state or situation. On a scale when the two sides are in balance there is no motion, because if either side was moving it would accelerate until one side was all the way down the scale. When you put two equal masses on a scale, it will wobble at first due to the timing of placing the two masses. In the end, the steady final state the scale is at rest.

This is not balance in the wider understanding of the word. In balancing work and personal life it means that the amount of time or energy spent on work and personal things balances out over the time of a day or a week. Some balances are self-correcting or stable. Most of those kind of balances occur in our body to keep us at a constant temperature and in good health. That is why we are rather robust entitites. We can eat a lot of junk food before we fall apart. Most other balances are unstable ones. This means that any external push brings us out of balance and we need to spend a lot of active energy to pull ourselves back into the balance. Both thses balances are not static then, except one is automatically dynamic and the other requires a lot of our active awareness. The latter is much harder to attain especially if we think that the balance should be static. We would then try really hard to minimze any swing out of balance. But we must realize that seeking out more extreme values might also be a healthy part of a dynamic balanced system.

Read a newer koan (There is truth is in simplicity, but simplicity does not exists in existence. Truth can be found in simple things, but truth is not in itself simple.)

Read an older koan (For a child, any small problem can become a trauma.)