A Pebble Said to Me

A pebble said to me one day, when I trod upon it without taking any account of it:

"You there — you are treading on a neglected, unknown thing,
a thing of no value and no weight,
and you forget that it is a thing of life,
a thing that surpasses you in greatness if you contemplate it closely,
if you could only see — truly see — its greatness...
Are you not a creature that feels pain as it feels pleasure?
Pleasure lies in one pan of the scale, and in the other pan lie pain and aches!
As for me, my greatness rests upon not feeling: I pursue no pleasure, I flee no pains, and I live in this existence in a bliss that has no end and no term!
Are you not a god who is born in torment and dies in it?
Your godhead has its price, which is inevitable annihilation;
but as for me, I am neither born nor do I die.
Even if the world passed away, and all beings ceased, and existence grew dark, I should remain a pebble, unchanging, unperishing, rolling in tranquility and play, from here to there, from valley to valley.
You are a human being who rises until you butt the very stars, then sinks to the depths of hell,
so that it is as though you had neither risen nor sunk — nay, would that you had neither risen nor sunk.
You take in coin and you pay out coin, and the result is that you are eternally bankrupt, for you are never sated with paying nor sated with taking.
As for me, I am an inanimate thing with such power over you that if it strikes you on the head it kills you, if it strikes you in the eyes it blinds you, and if it strikes you in the legs it leaves you a cripple.
You believe, O man, that you are a god; and I believe that I am a god of another kind."

Thus spoke a pebble to me — and never had a pebble spoken to a man before me,
nor convinced a man before me.
So I came to believe that existence is something of me, and that I am something of existence,
and that the neglected pebble on the side of a deserted valley has a station that may equal my station and surpass it.
And so I resolved:
to respect everything as I respect myself — nay, I resolved to respect the pebble more than myself at times, for it has virtues without having vices...
So give ear, O people, to the pebble's speech whenever you tread a deserted valley...