Narrow, Deep Way

....He [ODB] left us two lessons.
     The first I never want anyone to forget: When you enter the path of wisdom, of knowledge, of life — don’t turn off the road.
    Jesus said, “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it.” The wide road — that’s all around you, it’s easy to take, and many people will drag you down it. But find that narrow road, stay on it. For ODB to say in his last moment “I don’t understand” — that makes me say I don’t ever want to feel that, I want to always understand. I always want to have faith. But faith can leave you if you don’t practice it, don’t exercise it — if you let it die inside you. Practice your faith.
     The second lesson ODB left us with is just as important. It’s about freedom and your cipher — your circle, your family, the people you love.
     Death has many causes — violence, scheming, abuse — but a major one we overlook is neglect. We say, “Oh, he’s a grown man. He can drink what he wants to drink, smoke what he wants, say what he wants to say.” But Martin Luther King said that freedom has its own laws; it’s not without its own principles.
— The RZA, The Tao of Wu, p. 168.

     It’s like they said in the Civil Rights movement, if one man is lynching a man in front of twenty men — all twenty men are guilty. They’re allowing it. They’re guilty of a negligence of righteousness. You have to care for others. There’s always someone among you who has to teach those that don’t — even if just by example.
     There’s a statement on a piece of paper that I’d give my girl or my students, a piece of paper I’ve had since I was fourteen years old. It’s titled “Maturity,” which it defines as “the ability to change what must be changed, to accept what can’t be changed, and to know the difference between the two.” That same idea comes up in different sources. It’s even in a Mother Goose rhyme: “For every ailment under the sun,/ There is a remedy, or there is none;/ If there be one, try to find it:/ If there be none, never mind it.”
     It’s also in something called the Serenity Prayer, ascribed to St. Francis of Assissi*: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can’t change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom” — the wise-dome — “to know the difference.” Again, knowledge means knowing, but wisdom means acting — acting on what you know, seeing the person who’s drowning right the fuck in front of you, and stepping in.
— The RZA, The Tao of Wu, pp. 170-171.
* The Serenity Prayer was actually written by Reinhold Niebuhr in 1943 (JRH).

     You don’t have to die to go to Heaven. Heaven is on earth. If you’re fucked up, shit is floating by you, if poverty and self-hatred are breaking you down — you’re in Hell. Set yourself in Heaven at once. When Jesus said the Temple of God is in you, he wasn’t speaking metaphorically. He said, “Thy Kingdom come on Earth as it is in Heaven.” Many people misinterpret that. The true meaning of that prayer is the same as the Buddhists’ idea of Zen, of finding Nirvana and enlightenment right now. The key is true consciousness, in the present, in this moment, right now, where you’re at. Don’t wait for it. Set yourself in Heaven at once.
     Strive for the super-consciousness that comes at the end of life — strive through meditation, through love, through building, through creation. Ignore the forces of darkness, separation, and death. Tune out the voices that don’t want you to grow, to change, to resurrect yourself. Ignore forces pulling you back into the past.
— The RZA, The Tao of Wu, p. 198.