I had found a large book probably 30 centimeters tall, very wide and thick. The title of the book was on the front. The book apparently contained a couple epic poems, and the title of one of the poems contained the word "Apollo." Since the book was written in English, it occurred to me that many, epic, English, poems which had been forgotten and which no one read anymore, must exist. The poems had probably been pushed onto the back shelves of the library. I thought I might want to try to uncover some old, epic poems to see whether they contained anything worth reading.

It occurred to me that if one were writing an epic poem, the objective would be to try to express truths. I reflected how difficult it was to find something actually true. I tried to think of examples of truths and I thought something like, "Well it's not true that you shouldn't lie because there are times when a person should lie. It's not true that you shouldn't kill because there are times when you should kill. It's hard to really pinpoint some things that are true."

Nevertheless, I tried to think of something that was true and I began thinking of Buddhism. I thought how Buddha had proclaimed certain truths and I wondered if his truths were really true.

I remembered that one of his truths was that the cause of suffering was desire. It appeared to me that such a statement was probably true and that there were no exceptions to that truth. Anytime someone desired something, the person would automatically suffer.

It seemed that Buddha had developed a method of stopping the suffering, but I could not remember exactly what the method was. I thought, however, that the method involved the extinguishment of the self.