How often have you felt that your days go by traceless, useless, meaningless? You act, but you do not see the result. You see the cause, but you do not see the effect. Or you see the effect, but you do not understand the cause. It is as if you saw a footprint in the sand on the seashore, and then a wave rushed in, sifted the grains of sand anew and wiped away the traces. Time is a great lord, though it is said that the passing of time can be conquered – but only the great are capable of that. Could moral purity be the conqueror of time? For the most part the reverse happens: it is pitiless time that conquers people. And tracelessness remains…
An autumn afternoon, still warm. Wandering in the woods, the babble of a stream, sunlight glancing only now and then into the thicket. Out at the edge of the wood the sun's warmth is still strong, but in the thick of the trees coolness and damp hold sway. You have to cross a barely trickling stream, where even the smaller stones stand clear of the water; a step on a branch or a tuft of grass is enough, and there you are on the other side. A fork of several paths: to the right the ridge, a good two hours' walk away, behind you the steep slope, before you the valley, to the left the streambed. That will be the way.
The stream swells. The bed is wider, the water deeper, the bank higher. The ribbon of the path follows this water's course through a veritable gully. It too winds, sometimes coming right down to the water, at other times climbing up and drawing away from the stream. Not only branches have fallen to the ground, but tall trees, too, lie crosswise, now over the path, now over the stream. In one place the tips of two trees fallen from the far bank, stripped of their crowns, embrace each other on the near bank. If you stand in the embrace, the dead trunks reach across to the far bank in a V – could this be life transmuted? You need only go a little further, and there is the next cascade. The water plunges from two massive rounded boulders, wetting everything. Here you have to climb down, even though just at this point the path runs high. The rounded boulders are the keystones of a sandstone crag lying crosswise, and from beneath the steep rock shelf that breaks out of the earth the softer soil has been washed away: a real cave. A hermitage? A roof, running water – but now and then visitors, too.
In the babble of the water tumbling over the rounded boulders, human speech is lost. The water flows round your feet, just as it flows round the altar stone set here by the angels of heaven or the fairies of the forest. Lamp, flame, glow, incense – soundlessly the smoke of the offering curls up towards heaven. It carries with it the dream, the thought, the prayer – whatever each one sends.
The magic fades, the feet set off, the hands take hold. The embers of the incense can no longer be seen, but its scent is still here. The silence is deeper, the thought fuller, the step slower. The streambed bends, and with it the path, and with it the wanderer. The embers gone, the scent still here… Stumbling among the branches of a tree fallen across the path, you make your way over, the scent still here – though the embers are gone. Even slow steps go far – perhaps the scent of the incense has soaked into your clothes? For the embers are gone… No, surely the scent's faint presence has clung to your hands…
Steps, thoughts, steps, scent, thoughts. Steps, scent – thoughts. Thoughts – where does the scent come from? How does it accompany you for long minutes? What carries the smell of the magic with it? The path winds, and the bed, and the gully – and delicately but unmistakably, the scent is there. For a thousand steps the consequence of the offering comes with you. Scent, steps, thoughts: perhaps not every deed is traceless after all? The little stream valley opens into a wider canyon, over a bridge, across the water, but the scent comes with you too. Like a snake the invisible scent-trace winds along with you: something happened here. This prayer rose to heaven. This offering was recorded in the chronicle of the universe. Nothing passes without a trace. The embers are gone – but the scent is still here…