addiction

The language of Black and White stones in Go is the language of truth.

In our daily behaviour our words and acts are mainly uncertain. We can quite always interprete them as we like, we can change advise, deny, pretend to be misunderstood… we can never be sure about them.

Just take the modern case of trafficlights: you pass with green, he passes with red and you crash. If nobody else is there, it is your word against his word, nothing else than this. If somebody is there, three win against two. The real fact, the truth, has disappeared.

Some people like this uncertainty, they can take any kind of profit from it. For someone else this uncertainty is just painful. For everybody’s soul this lack of truth is a slow poison.

If you consider Go from this viewpoint, you can say that Go is the game of truth. Does not matter what kind of player you are and your skill: when you play truth is there, acting as an antidote against spiritual death.

Now you know why it is so difficult to stop to play…

Tan Gen – the New Moon of November 2006