The Sutra of Toth - Sharin Tothir (Biography)

You hold in your hands a series of scrolls, lovingly painted with Mirialan caligraphy. The brush work and illumination are painstaking, representing months or even years of work. Within, there seems to be the life and beliefs of a Force Sensitive priest.

Once, there was a boy. He was not born to grandeur, to knowledge. He was born in a desert, where the cold wind stirred pink and green dust and elder priests augured the patterns. When he was born, pink and green blew across one another – their fingers entwining and pulling taught. They knew that he was to be a priest, and so he spent his earliest days at the great academies of Mirial elbow-deep in the ancient sutras of his people.

The sutras opened his eyes, and he began to perceive Fate as only the Readers could. It was the first time he noticed that Fate seemed to settle over the world like a second skin, another more subtle, ineffable space just beyond his vision. He caught the attention of an old knight, distant from his Jedi Order and its Council, returned to study the ways of his people after growing disillusioned during the Mandalorian Wars. He saw that the boy had a clear view of the Force.

The boy began a study under the first, a secondary and deeper study into the ways of the Force. He was told of the Jedi, of the Light and the Dark, of how the Galaxy beyond the deserts of Mirial saw Fate. He studied dutifully, and for the first time he truly knew the meaning of faith. There was one way, one truth – and he would pursue it to the ends of the Galaxy. All that was hidden from him was the light of truth, his master’s lightsaber, refused to him. He wouldn’t make another Exar Kun. The boy would read Fate, he would never seek to cut its strands.

The boy studied without complaint, delving into the deeper mysteries. The One Way, as he had believed, was his to follow. He turned his mind away from its deeper nature, its darker instincts, and focused on channeling the truth. Peace. Serenity. Truth. There was only one path forward, wholeness. The Force is All, the Light is all. Nothing would dissuade him.

Then, he was broken. The Jedi Revanchist crusade against the Mandalorians began. The boy’s teacher, never a great fan of the Jedi Council, believed that it was Fate. The boy refused to see it. He had been forbidden to learn battle, had turned away from the warrior traditions of his people. It was not Peace. They quarreled, and in a rare turn, the student was abandoned by the Master rather than the other way around. Revan would never know how he shattered the boy.

He was not born to grandeur, to knowledge. He was shattered, he was broken. All he had left was Fate. He turned to the teachings of his people, following the way his Master had left. He had never worn the title of Jedi, Padawan, yet still he had held them in his heart and turned his back on them. It was not until the boy was a man, that Fate finally showed him the means of finding wholeness again, showed him a lonely planet within its tides. It showed him Viscara.

                             I. The Force is All Things.

                                 There is One Force

                               It is Life, it is Death

                             It is the Storm, and its Eye

                          It is the Thought, and the Feeling

                             It is the Body, and the Mind

                             It is the Self, and the All

                                 And I am the Force

                               The Force is All Things.

It lies under all forms, all shape, and all matter. It infuses all thought, all being, and all process. The Way gathers and spreads through Life, and forms an ineffable, subtle truth. A reality more real than this one. It is a place of crystalline clarity, a place with separate rules from our own - like Hyperspace, it exists intangibly present next to us. There is no separation within this subtle space, all concepts extend into duality and touch each other - and where they touch, the Force grows. The Force is a thin gray line, where for brief moments the true Way underlying all things briefly becomes apparent. We cannot become distracted with this or that, here or there. There is One Way, and Many Ways.

                        II. And I am the Force

                   The Force is within, and it is without

                    It unfurls itself within each chest

                       It blossoms in each thought

                     A diamond, a ruby, whose clarity

                     Can only be seen by my mind’s eye

                     And whose nature is only revealed

                       In the moment of its arising

                       By my own walking of the Way.

I am the Way. It moves through me, it flows through me. It touches my mind, my thought, and my feelings. It is personal to me, and it cannot belong to another. It sets me into purpose, and I set it to purpose. The Way is symbiotic with me, as it directs my path yet requires my intention. As each moment arises, dependent upon all other moments, there is only me and the Way. It is truth, and consequence. It cannot be escaped, yet I am the creator of my own reality.

                    III. The Force is Present

                    It is not Past, nor Future

                    It is not Here, nor There

           It is all these things, and it is a single moment

              Once present, the Force flows with me

           Once present, the Force does not flow against me

                 Once present, Time ceases to be

                  And all that becomes is Being

                    Once present, I am free.

The past is gone, and the future doesn’t exist. There’s nothing beyond this moment, the Force only exists in this moment. Time is not singular, but ineffable - past, present and future all persist in the same breath, the same unending gaze from left to right. It culminates in the opening of the eye, and ends with its closing. Intent and purpose are distractions once the moment has arisen. All there can be is the Present, and the mind must be Present to truly grasp the Way.

            IIII. Only freed, do I see the ties that bind

                     Each action to each being 

            Only freed, do I see that all beings are One

                    All things arise in dependence

              And all things persist in interdependence

                    The Force binds these things 

                    And is bound to these things 

                I am responsible for all these things

                  And they are responsible for me.

In darkness, visible just beyond the sky, are a thousand-thousand-thousand points of light. The light which reaches my eyes was from long ago, a single strand of being extending through time and space into the infinite distance. These are the same ties that bind all beings across the same scope, pooling in similar points of light which converge and then split apart once more. Follow the lines, trace along the dependent actions, and the truth of the Way becomes obvious. My attachments are the Force.