The man who wrote the following words was either wise or wacko. There’s no middle ground. You must make your choice. Without leaving your home, you can know the whole world. Without looking through the window, you can see the ways of heaven. The further you go, the less you know. Thus, the wise man knows without travelling, sees without looking, works without doing.
The Buddha. Jesus. Ramana Maharshi. Lao Tzu. It is difficult to imagine these eminences running. Two of them favoured donkeys. For reasons more suggestive than explicit, Lao Tzu is depicted sitting backwards on his humble beast. All these sages demonstrated high levels of lowness.
Two of India’s greatest sages, Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta Maharaj, arrived at the same conclusion: Of all of God’s names, “none is indeed so well put as the biblical statement “I am that I am”.” (Exodus 3:14) In the New Testament, we read that Jesus was nearly stoned to death for saying “Very truly I tell you, before Abraham was born, I AM.” (John 8:58)
Spanning the iconography of world religions, angels are often depicted as having feminine forms but masculine names. The sage, wrote Lao Tzu, is two-spirited. He knows the male but keeps to the female.
I am rough and refined, healthy and sick, an old man and a boy, a sage and a fool.
Men's Work 