📜 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.

⸻

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.

⸻

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.

⸻

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.

⸻

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.

⸻

Shared with reverence as cultural remembrance—

an inner rite of release, not instruction in practice.

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📜 SCROLL IV - ONLY THE GODS COULD HAVE BUILT THIS

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📜 SCROLL II - THE UNKNOWN GATEKEEPERS OF THE HIMALAYAS