With the Woods of Wisdom, the wind blows, rustling the leaves. Zarathustra appears with his lit lantern and calls to the monkeys:
be gone idealist
your laws cannot contain
what rises from the root
beyond all thought and frame
these thinkers build their thrones
on shadows they refine
but what you are will break
what they would make divine
come now and see it fall
not argued, but revealed
where meaning turns to ash
and nothing is concealed
Zarathustra looks up to the heavens and roars. The other monkeys quickly scamper up the trees. He turns to Bodhi and says:
after hearing the monkeys
construct their self lies
you shall now experience
the collapse behind your eyes
Zarathustra motions for Bodhi to follow him deeper into the woods where they walk until they see Nothingness sitting on a bench staring at the roots of an old chestnut tree. The monkey looks up and says:
i sat beside this root
and watched it without name
and something slipped away
no thought remained the same
the bark, the earth, the air
lost shape and lost their place
a swollen, formless weight
pressed close against my face
it was too much to hold
too real to understand
no meaning left to grasp
no order left at hand
i felt myself dissolve
no self to stand apart
the root was not a thing
it pressed into my heart
Bodhi asks:
what is this state you speak
where nothing can be known
if all has lost its form
how stand we on our own
Nothingness answers:
there is no ground beneath
no meaning to be found
we stand because we choose
upon this hollow ground
no nature tells us who
no law decides our way
we make what we become
with nothing here to stay