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like Hegel, Kant; he is not a systematizer -- just oracular maxims. Each fragment is complete in itself, just like a diamond; each cut to its perfection in itself, no need to be related to another. He has spoken in an oracular way.
The whole method of the oracular maxim has disappeared from the West. Only Nietzsche wrote in the same way again: his book, Thus Spake Zarathustra consists of oracular maxims -- but since Heraclitus, only Nietzsche. In the East, everybody who has been enlightened has written in that way. That is the way of the Upanishads, the Vedas, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Basho: just maxims. They are so small that you have to penetrate them, and just by trying to understand them you will change and your intellect cannot cope with them. Says Basho in a small haiku:
Old pond frog jump
in water
sound
Finished! He has said everything. Pictorial: you can see an ancient pond, a frog sitting on the bank, and... the jump of the frog. You can see the splash, and the sound of water. And, says Basho, everything has been said. This is all life is: An ancient pond... a jump of the frog, the sound of water -- and silence. This is what you are; this is what everything is -- and silence.
The same way Heraclitus talks in his river fragment. First he uses the sounds of a river -- AUTOISI POTAMOISI; before he says something he uses the sounds of the river, and then he gives the maxim: You cannot step twice in the same river. He is a poet, but no ordinary poet -- a poet Hindus have always called a RISHI. There are two types of poets. One who is still dreaming and creating poetry out of his dreams -- a Byron, a Shelley, a Keats. Then there is another type of poet, a rishi, who is no longer dreaming -- he looks at the reality, and out of the reality poetry is born. Heraclitus is a rishi, a poet who is no longer dreaming, who has encountered existence. He is the first existentialist in the West.
Now, try to penetrate his oracular maxims.
THE HIDDEN HARMONY
IS BETTER THAN THE OBVIOUS.
Why? Why is the hidden harmony better than the obvious? -- because the obvious is on the surface, and the surface can
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