📜 SCROLL III - THE SKY WILL TAKE WHAT THE EARTH NO LONGER NEEDS
I. THE HIGH PLATFORM
There is a place above the last green slopes
where the wind never rests.
Here, stones keep the memory of hands;
flags whisper a thousand names.
On this platform, the living climb
to kneel beside the still.
If there is weeping, it soon yields
to the hush of prayer wheels
and the slow spiral of shadows above.
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II. THE SKY-FEEDERS
From the horizon they come—
broad wings drawing the sun in their wake.
The Himalayan griffon does not ask;
It fulfills an order older than speech—
keeper of the threshold,
messenger of impermanence.
In Tibet, this rite is called jhator (བྱ་གཏོར་)—
“alms to the birds”:
the body not hidden, but offered,
a final act of generosity
so that life continues as flight.
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III. IMPERMANENCE IS NOT LOSS
Elsewhere, death is sealed behind doors.
Here, it is set upon stone
and entrusted to the open sky.
The griffon does not mourn what ends;
it completes what begins again.
From flesh, it makes lift.
From silence, motion.
From ending, continuation.
What is given is never lost—
it changes form; it takes flight.
So too with you:
what you release becomes
what carries you forward.
Impermanence is not erasure—
it is release.
This rite belongs to the Himalayas,
but its lesson belongs to you.
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IV. THE INITIATE’S TASK
If you seek the Peak,
you must pass this place.
Carry the old self—
the one weighed with doubt, fear,
and borrowed names—
and lay it on the stone.
You will not take it further.
Let the griffon claim
what you no longer need.
Rise lighter.
Rise truer.
Rise ready.
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V. THE VOW
Those who walk from the platform
walk differently.
They have faced their death without dying
and learned the last lesson before the climb:
Nothing is ever owned—
not the body,
not the name,
not the breath.
Only the path—
and what you surrender to it—
remains.
When you are ready, speak it aloud:
I give what I do not need.
I keep only the vow.
I begin the ritual.
I enter the Unknown.
To adapt.
To overcome.
To transcend.
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Shared with reverence as cultural remembrance—
an inner rite of release, not instruction in practice.