A student asked the master, “Where does Beauty live? Some say that it lies in a distant realm unreachable by us, and that we may only ever glimpse shadows of it in this world; others say that it does not exist at all, that it is only ever an illusion, an enchanting glamor, cast by the condition of the flesh.”The master lit a small fire, and asked the student, "Do you think there is beauty in this fire?""In its way, yes, I suppose there is," replied the student, "The appearance of the flame is mesmerizing. With it we may cook our food. It gives us heat and light.""Where then in this fire is its beauty located?" The master inquired.“I am unsure... is it in the wood?” asked the student.“No. The wood is merely the substrate of the flame.”“In the flame then?”“Take the flame in your hand.”The student reached out and drew back in pain.The master said, “You cannot hold it, yet it warms you. You cannot keep it still, yet it changes what surrounds it. It has no body of its own, yet without bodies it cannot exist.”The student asked, “Then is the fire unreal?”The master fed it another branch.“Our hunger is real,” he said. “Our fear of the cold and the dark is real. Our road is real; must the destination already exist for us to walk it?”For some time, the student watched the flame consume the wood, and then, at last, he said, “So the ideal is what burns through us?”The master shook his head.“It does not exist without us; it burns only because we keep feeding it.”“And if we stop?”"Then it dies, leaving behind only ashes, and it is, for all intents and purposes, as if it never existed at all.”The student was troubled. “Then nothing is eternal, and nothing is promised.”The master smiled: “That is why you must tend the fire.”
What's up with the recent trend of brownoids coming here to post their AI slop? Can the mods make that a permanently bannable offense?
