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'Why think the cage your whole self, O bird?
When did you forget your wings, and flight?
Are you content to live, singing for seeds
within the confines of the bars?

The door is open, O foolish bird!
(Indeed, it cannot close)
The sky above is your real home,
not here.

Perhaps, up there, you will forget captivity-
just as completely as you seem now to have forgotten flight...?'


Shahab ad-Din Suhrawardi (translated by Kemlyn Munn)
 

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My name is Mauricio.
I come from a country a long way from yours, where the customs and language are very different,
but where men's hearts are essentially the same.

I was born into a family that could be considered poor, or even rich- all depending on your own experiences and point of view.
We never starved, but we constantly struggled.
In that, we were in the same position as the vast majority of humanity, throughout the greater part of its history.

Praise be, I was alive.
My country had been free from war for many years, and as long as one stayed away from the policed zones, was a place where one could explore the limits of possibility, be creative and change the small world around oneself.

As you can imagine, a young boy of the type I was soon bored with all this, and desired to find greater challenges 'outside'.
Of these, I had many over the years- and indeed our purpose here is to discuss one or two of them.
But for now, I'm getting ahead of myself (I always have been impatient and of short attention span!).


I need to explain something of my family.
We were members of the once powerful, but still influential priest class.
Although my family had degraded, with its fair share of vagabonds, alcholics and madmen (and women!), some of the ancient teachings still pervaded our thoughts, habits and modes of speech (something which I have found of great benefit on no few occasions).

A central part of our heritage was as teachers, both of the wealthy ruling classes, and of select members from the workers' ranks.
We taught the usual stuff (no need to go over too much here), with varied success as always,
very little of which ever interested me.
Apart from, that is, the Sacred War Dance.

At one time, this was a method of training for combat- and could even descend into combat itself,
but it had long since been just a ritual, a motif; a way of expressing the Multiverse symbolically, a moving, physical philosophy...





 Many still believed, however, that it was a valid fighting system.
This they could, because so few of us had lived through real war and violence.

It came as a sudden shock to me, when thrown in the deep end of fists and feet, that our old system wouldn't even allow me to float- let alone swim!