The four Gospels say who he was. This book says how we live.
1.1Practice is not belief. Practice is habit.
1.2Whoever can recite all four books and has not altered a single day because of it has not practised.
1.3The habit of the Axiom of Observation is called the daily question.
1.4Each day take one thing you firmly believe and have never questioned, and ask three times: How do I know? What would follow if it were false? Who taught me this?
1.5Whoever cannot say where a belief came from does not own that belief. Someone else left it with them.
1.6Superstition is not a matter of what is believed. It is a matter of what may not be asked.
1.7The first habit of the Axiom of Dispersal is called setting down.
1.8Each season take the one thing you would least like to lose, and be parted from it seven days.
1.9This is not mortification. This is a test of who is master and who is slave.
1.10If after seven days you still want it, use it without guilt. If you could not be parted from it for seven days, you are not its master.
1.11The habit of the Axiom of One Source is called finding.
1.12You do not need many. Two are enough for a forest to begin.
1.13The second habit of the Axiom of Dispersal is called keeping the record of dispersal.
1.14Each year write down one thing that has dispersed and cannot be recovered. Do not weep for it. Only note whether it dispersed beautifully.
1.15And there is one thing beyond the four axioms: some matters have no right and wrong. They have only a price.
1.16When "is this right?" yields no answer, change the question to: what does this cost, and who pays it?