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The bus dropped him off at a small village between the steep mountains that demarked the vast plain where this journey had begun. He went to the exit door to board a taxi, holding the paper with the address of his destination.

Judging by the landscape it was easy to tell that he was
not heading to enjoy the beach vacation he had imagined. The uncertainty about the nature of his fate was keeping him busy, trying to guess what it could be. Now he was presuming it would be a leisure resort, possibly a spa. The idea did not bother him at all. The trip was amusing him.

The
idea newly planted in his mind to become a farmer was little by little becoming more interesting because he had come to find that physical work carried along nights of complete relaxation in which he could keep his mind free of the stress that for so many years had been a part of his mood.

He
went to the only taxi at the door of the station and handed the driver the paper with the address of his destination.

The casual and friendly
ways of the people of this region emerged as the man in charge of the vehicle approached him:

“Looking for a little peace
?” he asked with a smile. “I hope you brought your sandals.”

“
Sandals?” the passenger asked.

“
And a tunic,” he added with a laugh.

“I don’t understand.”

“You must keep an eye on your hair while you are there. I have seen more than one coming back with a sleek head.”

Now he was really confused.
He could not figure out in what kind of place might happen things such as the merry fellow in the front seat had predicted.

“
Well, what kind of place is this I am going?”

“
Didn’t they tell you? Better find out by your own,” he ended as he burst out laughing.

The
road they took was narrow. It seemed it had been carved into the slopes full of pines. To one side there was the stunning cliff, increasingly higher. The ascent was continuous in an endless sequence of hairpin turns threatening to get the passenger dizzy and keeping the driver tense enough to finally stop his talk.

In
the sky, as high as them and silhouetted against the clean white of the clouds, a great eagle was gliding, still looking for breakfast while floating in the updraft arisen by midday heat.

The overwhelming view
had made the man on the backseat fall into a sort of trance. He had completely forgotten everything amid the peaceful mood that had filled him. The magnificence of the view and the aromas of the forest had him enthralled.

Nearing the top
of the mountain the car stopped in front of a large wooden door under an overhang of clay tiles supported by the brick columns into which a long stone wall ended; the same wall that had flanked the road for over the last half a mile.

“
We have arrived,” the driver broke the silence.

The passenger simply
gave him the card to charge the trip.

The man behind the wheel
put it for a moment into a slot in the dashboard and immediately returned it.

“There must be a cord somewhere
around to ring the bell,” he said finally. “Good luck.”

Seeing
the car maneuvering to turn around and take the way back made him react. Now he was standing on the pebbles of the short driveway, feeling how the soles of his shoes were slipping on the thin layer of moss that covered them. Judging by the impeccable look of this greenish coating, one could guess that those treading on there could not be more than just a few.

He approached the door trying to loc
ate the loop at the end of the cord passing through the hole in one of the boards. As he saw it he pulled firmly. The distant ringing of a bell let him know that his arrival had been announced to whoever might be inside, and judging by how far it had sounded he knew he would have to wait some time to get an answer, so he armed himself with patience. The mystery behind the door was about to unravel.

A few minutes later the sound of
a heavy door bar as being lifted caught his attention. One of the leaves slowly began to move amid the high pitch squeak of its rusty hinges and soon let see the placid face of a shaved-head man dressing an orange tunic that fell to his sandals.

Now he
had understood the driver’s jokes. He had come to what seemed to be a monastery. He had to admit that the driver had given him keys more than enough to guess the nature of this place, but his training for so many years in a world that had eradicated all kinds of spiritual life had overcome his ability to reason, blocking memories of his early life when monks still existed among that society.

Without changing
his expression, the man who had opened the door folded his hands and bowed slightly to invite him in. The visitor hesitated; then he responded with an awkward bow as his lips let out a barely audible greeting.

He crossed
the doorway. Then he waited until the little man, who was about 50 years old, had finished fixing the thick door bar into place again.

Without having said a word the m
onk began to nimbly climb the long stairway of stone steps that now stretched before them. The visitor followed, luggage in hand, trying to catch up with him.

His
shoes were slipping on the moss that covered the uneven steps. The climb seemed to be endless and his guide had kept going on, taking advantage with every step until he had almost gone out of sight.

When
he finally managed to climb the last step he came up with the monk again, patiently waiting for him, standing on the immaculately kept grass. The aged stone grand building that stood on top of the mountain had a view to the plains at both sides of the ridge.

“
I should have been more specific when I asked for a place to be isolated,” he thought. “I was thinking of a more sophisticated vacation. Anyway, let’s see what this holds for us.”

The small man had started up again, forcing him to interrupt his thoughts to continue in what seemed more like a chase, because now
the monk had sped up his pace forcing him to run to keep him in sight. The hike ended inside a vast room where lots of candles were burning. Some monks were inside, busy in an exercise that resembled a ballet carried out with complete harmony and synchronization, marking the rhythm with the sound of their breathing.

The show lasted a few minutes
; then it suddenly ended. Each participant took a different path, leaving only the oldest of them in the lounge, who headed to the visitor.

“
Welcome. I hope you find here the peace you are seeking.”

“
Thanks, but I did not imagine I would be coming to a monastery.”

“You have been
lucky. We normally do not receive visitors but this time we could not refuse as the powerful man who has asked us is a great benefactor of our house. You can roam freely all over the place, we only expect you to respect our activities and abide our schedules. You can talk to whoever you wish as long as this person is also willing to talk to you.”

“
I understand.”

“Now I will
now show you your room. We will expect you at the dining room when the call of the gong sounds. Just follow one of the monks to find it.”

The old man led the way through the narrow stone corridors until
reaching one with many wooden doors on both sides. He stopped in front of the last one and opened it with a gentle push.

Inside the narrow
stone cell there was a wooden bed just having a straw mat as a mattress, and a table with a half burned candle on top. A chair completed the set.

“
When you need to light your candle you can do it with that at the end of the corridor, which is always burning.”

Th
is was the last instruction he got from the man before leaving him alone after having joined hands and made a slight bow, just as the little monk had greeted him at the front door.

He left his luggage in the room;
then he went out to explore the vast building and its surroundings in an effort to get acquainted with his new environment. Every time that his path crossed with that of one of the many monks wandering around the place, the same greeting was repeated; soon he was answering each time in the same way.

There seemed
not to be a general rule for the physical features of the inhabitants of the place, except for the orange tunics, the shaved heads and the sandals. They were of all ages, from children just five or six years old to elders moving slowly. All colors and shades of skin as well as all sorts of racial types could be found among those people, none predominating over others.

On the other side of the building, covering the surface of the
mountaintop as a colorful rug, a vast field of flowers stretched. One could see some monks laboring amid countless bees flitting everywhere and filling the air with their buzz.

Curio
sity overcame him, so eventually he decided to address the young man now crossing paths with him.

“
Why are there so many bees here?”

The boy stopped to respond with
a calm voice:

“
They come from our apiary. We provide them with flowers; in exchange they give us their honey to eat and their wax to enlighten our nights.

“
I understand. What else you produced here?”

“We grow
most of the vegetables we consume and we sell the flowers to get aliment we cannot grow here, such as rice.”

He thanked
him with the usual reverence, which now had begun to come out more naturally. The boy went on. Actually, this short conversation had been an experiment to find out how difficult it would be to communicate with the monks. Apparently, even though they were hardly seen talking to each other, they would not hesitate to talk to him.

The distant ringing of the gong sounded
telling everybody to suspend activities and go to the dining room. A stream of men dressing orange tunics began to move toward the building. The visitor followed them, as he had been told by the monastery’s master a while before.

The
dining room was no different from any other room of the building, except that it was the largest. The gray stone walls, only interrupted by the small openings that served as windows, absorbed the light and made the place gloomy. Five long wooden tables with benches on both sides stretched one aside the other. As the monks arrived they settled into the next available spot. When all had been seated, at one end of each table were delivered the dishes with food to be passed from hand to hand until reaching the last man still unserved.

This method
proved to be efficient. In less than two minutes everybody had received a deep dish served with cooked rice that could barely be seen under the vegetables covering it. At a signal, all joined hands and bowed. Then they began to eat.

The h
erbs that served as the only condiment to this dish gave it a really special touch of flavor, turning a simple recipe into a delicacy.

The monks
began to stand up as they had finished their servings. Then, after leaving their empty plates on the table especially set for this purpose, they went out one by one to resume their activities. When the guest came to this table to do the same, the master came to his side. He addressed him in a barely audible voice:

“I will wait you this afternoon
under the big tree at the end of the stairway you came in.”

Without even giving him time to respond
he turned on his heel and left the room, leaving him somewhat surprised but at the same time relieved. It seemed that after all, his visit here would have some purpose.

His wait under the leafy tree had lasted almost an hour when the master coming across the meadow took him out of the doldrums in which he had fallen. The light gait of the monk and the swinging of his tunic made him seem
to be rather floating upon the surface, as if his feet were not touching the ground.

He rose from the stone bench where
he was sitting to receive him standing on his feet.

T
he elder stopped in front of him. Then, after the pause he used to stare at him, he started the conversation with a question:

“
What is it that does not let you be in peace?”

He had
caught him by surprise. He had not made any comment about the issue, and unless the commander of the Bureau of Intelligence had mentioned it when asking for him to be received at the monastery, which was unlikely, he could not guess what could have lead the monk to ask such an accurate question. However, he felt compelled to answer honestly:

“
The story is a long one but I will try to summarize it. Have you ever heard about the replication of living beings?”

“
I understand what it is.”

'Well
, I have been replicated twice by choice. My current age is 83 even though my body does not look like this. Each time I had to destroy my previous body. I recently defected from the world where I used to live and the people I left behind created a new replica of me to take the place that I left vacant. This replica is alive as we speak, just like me. For many years I let myself be convinced that there is no soul, but now I know that this cannot be true, that I simply deceived myself to make my life easier. I cannot be at peace for one reason; I cannot find my soul. Where is it now? Inside me perhaps? Or did I lose it when I let my first body go? What soul is bearing the replica that now occupies my place, when he really is a duplicate of me that believes to be the original? How original can I be if I am just a replica of a replica?”

The
master looked at him for a moment; then he began to speak:

“
Every living thing has a soul. It cannot be otherwise, since the purpose of life is precisely to fill the soul. Paradoxically, the soul is like a bag that always seems to be full because it has the peculiarity of stretching to hold as much as we put in it, and of shrinking to always feel full when we have not done to put something more inside. Our souls cannot be won or lost because they do not even belong to us. We just share a small part of the great soul of the universe, who will incarnate as many times as necessary to be filled up until not being able to hold more. Only then it will return to join the wholeness. You have a soul. That’s for sure.”

“
And this man who is now a copy of me, who has all my memories and does not even know I exist, what soul is he bearing?”

“He bears his own
. The soul does not get filled with memories or customs, not even with pious deeds or sacrifices; it gets filled with the love it gives. And the more pure this love, the quicker it will fill. Your replica will have to deal with increasing the content of his soul, and you of that of yours, which at once are the same in the wholeness and absolutely different. As both have departed from the same point, imagine that he has received the bag half full you loaded while at the same time you also have kept it. Now his way and yours have split, giving each one the chance to learn to love in his own way.”

“
So, the remembrance of my actions has nothing to do with who I really am?”

“
If you got to lose your memory, would you cease to be yourself? You could possibly forget that you used to love a certain woman, a child or a friend, but the capacity for love that you had developed already would remain in you, helping you to love your neighbor. It is the own capacity to love what truly defines an individual. Everything else is just the scenery in which life occurs. The peace you seek lies in accepting that nothing belongs to you, not even your image or your memories. You must learn to detach from everything and lovingly accept your fate, which ultimately will catch up with you.”

“
I feel confused. I need to meditate on what you have said .”

“Then I will meet you again
in this place tomorrow.”

The
master walked away not saying another word, leaving the student lost in his thoughts. From that moment he would begin to behave like the other monks in this monastery, who seemed continually in introspection.

The next day he went to the stone bench under the tree just
after leaving the dining room. He intended to continue meditating on the words that the old man had given him the previous evening.

He had tried to review his past life from the perspective
of this newly received knowledge, but the deeper he went, the more questions that arose from inside. However, he sensed that the path now in sight could lead him out of the state of uncertainty in which he had fell a couple of days before.

When the
master finally met him they resumed the conversation of the previous day:

“
What do you want to talk about today?” began the elder.

“You have
said that actually I own a unique soul and that it does not care about what happens to me but only about the love I am capable to give. Have I understood correctly?”

“That i
s the general idea.”

“
So what drives me to act?”

“
The spirit.” he answered dryly.

“
What is the difference between soul and spirit?”

“
The spirit that moves us, just like the soul and the body, is a part of the spirit of the wholeness. It is who is responsible for giving us the strength to walk, and is firmly attached to our will. Our will depends on our conscious process, but conviction cannot arise from a simple rational act. The force that makes us fight to keep our actions attached to what we think comes from the spirit, and as this one strengthens from our willpower, our willpower increases as our spirit is exercised. Learning to love cannot be achieved without a strong spirit and a strong will, because loving unconditionally implies to have the ability to ruthlessly discard everything that seems to offend us. Therein lies the key to growth.”

“And w
hat attitude will come from learning to love with a strong spirit and a strong will?”

“
Humility; but you will not achieve true humility if you have not mastered the art of loving.”

The student
took a pause before replying:

“
I would like some time to think about what you have said.”

“Then I will
see you tomorrow.”

The following day the bench under the tree had become
already the place where he felt better inside the monastery, so he had spent most of the time on this site expecting his mentor’s visit.

Now he was excited. Gradually
, the old man’s concepts were setting up a new way to appreciate his own existence. He was anxious to get more of what the monk had to give. Unlike the previous day, now he had ceased to analyze his past to instead try to determine how his future should be. He was planning questions following such a line for this afternoon.

As the wise man came his
first question was immediate:

“
What should my goal in this life be?”

“
The only important thing is to walk the path. Your destiny awaits one way or another and you cannot avoid it.”

“If I can
not fail to achieve my destiny, why should I work hard?”

“
Because growth does not depend on what place you get to, but on how you make the road.”

“So, how should I walk
?”

“You should walk as a warrior, w
ith a firm step and armed with humility. Nothing else is important. There is neither victory nor defeat, only the way.”

“
It does not seem hard to do.”

“
It is when you let fear make you drift. Fear is the greatest enemy because it makes you hide from your own self at the slightest provocation, lying to yourself to avoid pain or to ease your way. It takes great courage to remain humble and detached. The only victory that really exists is to conquer humility.”

“
Is it possible to conquer humility?”

“
No, perfection cannot be achieved. As much as we try, sooner or later we will fail; however, the search for perfection is the one thing that can feed the will and thus strengthen the spirit, enabling us to learn to love and therefore to achieve humility. Paradoxically, the pursuit of perfection is the only thing that can lead us to humility, and humility the only thing that can bring us close to perfection. In the end, everything is moving along the same circle, and we will never know which of these things is chasing the other one because both of them run madly without ever getting to touch.”

“I think that’
s enough for today, I need to reflect on what you have said to me.”

“A
few hours ago I received a message telling me that you will be picked up in two days. Tomorrow afternoon will be our last talk. Think carefully what you want it to be about.”

The news fell
on him like a bucket of ice water. He had expected to spend more time receiving knowledge from the monk, but once more the situation was completely out of his control.

He spent t
he following 24 hours even more self-absorbed, to the point of forgetting to go to the dining room to share food with the monks. When the old man got there he took him by surprise.”

“
What do you want to talk about today?”

“
I have given much thought to it but I cannot decide. May I stay permanently in the monastery and become one of you?”

“If this i
s meant for you it will happen by itself. In this world we always receive what is meant for us, no matter what we do to avoid it. You should not worry at this point to make a decision that could be hasty. Take your time, and if you decide so, come back.”

“
I appreciate your invitation. I have something else to ask:”

“
Tell me.”

“
While I have been isolated in this place I have found that exercising my will does not represent a challenge at all. While meditating I have felt how my determination has increased every day. Is it this simple?”

“
Right now you are lying to yourself. You are self-deceiving by thinking that the way will be easy. Here you have not really interacted with anyone besides me. The true exercise comes from colliding against the material world. The real challenge is to maintain integrity and stick to one’s convictions when things do not happen easily, in overcoming obstacles without breaking your own ethic, and to love and forgive those we are against us. The immense effort required to achieve this is the true exercise that will strengthen your will. Only by failing you will get to grow. Most of those who are now in the monastery will go back to the outside world sooner or later to take the opportunity that their seclusion is denying them. They are not in this place hiding from the world. Some of them simply are getting ready, others are trying to heal their wounds, but all of them know they must go back to the road.”

“
How will I know when to fight and when to give up?”

“
There is as much love in forgiving as in punishing, but to decide at some time which one is the right way can be very difficult. You must ask if what you are pretending to do is actually fair, necessary and useful. Whatever does not meet these three conditions is not worth doing.”

“
Why have you cared this much about me when you could just have let me unattended for a few days?”

“This is
my way of showing my love. Besides, what I have received I received without having even asked for it, though it came when I needed it the most. In the same way, I guess now you are getting this in good time, while I am returning a little of the very much I have received. We all win.”

“
This is our last conversation and as I fear not getting to ask so many important things I just don’t know where to continue.”

“
The first thing is to stop fearing. The method is simple but the work may turn out hard. You have the elements already. The solutions will always come to you. It is the nature of the universe. Trust yourself. For every question that we ask, sooner or later there will be an answer.”

After these words
there was a short silence. What the monk had said made sense to him. Suddenly his need to ask had vanished.

“
I see that your time to think has come again,” went on the old man. “I will leave you alone to do so.”

With these words as farewell
, the wise man turned around to go away just as he had arrived a while ago, leaving his student deep in thought.