The only thing that is real is the being in you that is going to die. To arrive at that being is the not-doing of the self.

When every one of us is born we bring with us a little ring of power. That little ring is almost immediately put to use. So every one of us is already hooked from birth and our rings of power are joined to everyone else's. In other words, our rings of power are hooked to the doing of the world in order to make the world.

For instance, our rings of power, yours and mine, are hooked right now to the doing in this room. We are making this room. Our rings of power are spinning this room into being at this very moment.

A man of knowledge develops another ring of power. I would call it the ring of not-doing, because it is hooked to not-doing. With that ring, therefore, he can spin another world.

Your difficulty is that you haven't yet developed your extra ring of power and your body doesn't know not-doing. We all have been taught to agree about doing. You don't have any idea of the power that that agreement brings with it. But, fortunately, not-doing is equally miraculous, and powerful.

There is no way to escape the doing of our world, so what a warrior does is to turn his world into his hunting ground. As a hunter, a warrior knows that the world is made to be used. So he uses every bit of it. A warrior is like a pirate that has no qualms in taking and using anything he wants, except that the warrior doesn't mind or he doesn't feel insulted when he is used and taken himself.

The instant one begins to live like a warrior, one is no longer ordinary. It is meaningless to complain. What's important from this point on is the strategy of your life.

You may go any place you wish, but if you do, you must assume the full responsibility for that act. A warrior lives his life strategically. When he has to act with his fellow men, a warrior follows the doing of strategy, and in that doing there are no victories or defeats. In that doing there are only actions. The doing of strategy entails that one is not at the mercy of people.

There is something you ought to be aware of by now. I call it the cubic centimeter of chance. All of us, whether or not we are warriors, have a cubic centimeter of chance that pops out in front of our eyes from time to time. The difference between an average man and a warrior is that the warrior is aware of this, and one of his tasks is to be alert, deliberately waiting, so that when his cubic centimeter pops out he has the necessary speed, the prowess to pick it up.

Chance, good luck, personal power, or whatever you may call it, is a peculiar state of affairs. It is like a very small stick that comes out in front of us and invites us to pluck it. Usually we are too busy, or too preoccupied, or just too stupid and lazy to realize that that is our cubic centimeter of luck. A warrior, on the other hand, is always alert and tight and has the spring, the gumption necessary to grab it.

You maintain that your insistence on finding explanations for everything is something so deeply ingrained in you that it overrules every other consideration, that it's like a disease. There are no diseases, there is only indulging. And you indulge yourself in trying to explain everything.

We both are beings who are going to die. There is no more time for what we used to do. Now you must employ all the not-doing I have taught you and stop the world.