Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner. BENEDICK Fair Beatrice, I thank you for your pains. BEATRICE I took no more pains for those thanks than you take pains to thank me: if it had been painful, I would not have come. BENEDICK You take pleasure then in the message? BEATRICE Yea, just so much as you may take upon a knife's point ... You have no stomach, signior: fare you well. Exit BENEDICK Ha! 'Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner;' there's a double meaning in that... (Much Ado About Nothing)
The Godhead is never an object of its own knowledge. Just as a knife doesn't cut itself, fire doesn't burn itself, light doesn't illuminate itself. It's always an endless mystery to itself.
Once I went professionally to an archaeological expedition-and I learnt something there. In the course of an excavation, when something comes up out of the ground, everything is cleared away very carefully all around it. You take away the loose earth, and you scrape here and there with a knife until finally your object is there, all alone, ready to be drawn and photographed with no extraneous matter confusing it. That is what I have been seeking to do-clear away the extraneous matter so that we can see the truth-the naked shining truth.
Having abandoned the taking of life, refraining from killing, we dwell without violence, with the knife laid down, scrupulous, full of mercy, trembling with compassion for all sentient beings.
The Godhead is never an object of its own knowledge. Just as a knife doesn't cut itself, fire doesn't burn itself, light doesn't illuminate itself. It's always an endless mystery to itself.