# Quote — Ursula K. Le Guin, The Telling

> On Aka, god is a word without referent. No capital letters. No creator, only creation. No eternal father to reward and punish, justify injustice, ordain cruelty, offer salvation. Eternity not an endpoint but a continuity. Primal division of being into material and spiritual only as two-as-one, or one in two aspects. [...] The Akan system is a spiritual discipline with spiritual goals, but they're exactly the same goals it seeks for bodily and ethical well-being. Right action is its own reward. Dharma without karma.

- Author: [Ursula K. Le Guin](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin.md)
- Book: [The Telling](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/the-telling.md)
- Page: 94
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin#The_Telling_(2000)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/the-telling/on-aka-god

## More from this book

> She had come to Aka to learn how to sing this world's tune, to dance its dance; and at last, she thought, away from the city's endless noise, she was beginning to hear the music and to learn how to move to it.

p. 91 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/the-telling/she-had-come.md)

> She was not so naive as to think there was any necessary relation between religion and morality, or that if there was a relation it was likely to be a benevolent one.

p. 109 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/the-telling/she-was-not.md)

> Most civilisations, perhaps, look shinier in general terms and from several light-years away.

p. 32 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ursula-k-le-guin/the-telling/most-civilisations-perhaps.md)