.  ON BECOMING A MONK  No one behind. No one ahead.  Just this place and point.  All escape routes end here  and the maps proved useless long ago.  The thousand disguises are in tatters  along the road behind.  Out here, vast emptiness -   the life-cries of the world's lost billions.  Just these guides  in the containing silence:  a thrush at dusk, a star at dawn.  Who puts his foot down again in the dust?  Whose foot again and again, ceaselessly?  