Blending with the wind, snow falls… Blending with the snow, the wind blows...
By the hearth, I stretch out my legs, idling my time away, confined in this hut. Counting the days, I find that February, too, has come and gone, like a dream.
In stubborn stupidity, I live on alone, befriended by trees and herbs — too lazy to learn right from wrong. I laugh at myself, ignoring others. Lifting my bony shanks, I cross the stream, a sack in my hand, blessed by spring weather. Living thus, I want for nothing, at peace with all the world.
At the crossroads this year, after begging all day, I lingered at the village temple. Children gather around me, and whisper: “the crazy monk has come back to play!”
Two miles from town I meet an old wood cutter, and we travel the road lined with huge pines. The smell of wild plum blossoms drifts across the valley. My walking stick has brought us home. In the ancient pond, huge contented fish. Long sunbeams penetrate the deep woods. And in the house, a long bed, all covered with poetry books.
I loosen my belt and robes, copy phrase after phrase from my poems. At twilight, I walk to the east wing. Spring quail startle into the air.
Though frost come down, night after night, what does it matter? They melt in the morning sun. Though the snow falls each passing year, what does it matter? With spring days it thaws. Yet once let them settle on a man’s head, fall and pile up. Then the new year may come and go. But never you’ll see them fade away.
Intermittent rain in my hermitage. A solitary light flickers as dreams return. Outside, the sound of falling raindrops. My black gnarled staff leans against the wall. The fireplace is cold. No charcoal awaits my imagined visitors. I reach for a volume of poems. Tonight, in solitude, deep emotion. How can I explain it the following day?
For more than seventy years I have been making myself dizzy observing men. I have been trying to penetrate men’s good and bad actions. Coming and going is a sign of weakness. Heavy snow in the dead of night. Under the weather-beaten window, one incense stick.
Listening to the evening rain in my hermitage, “The Great Way?” I braid spring flowers into a ball, “The Future?” If a visitor brings these questions, I have only the tranquility of the hermitage to offer.
The fireplace is cold, covered with thick ashes. And the single light has gone out. Loneliness and the night is only half over. Silence! All I can hear is the voice of a distant mountain stream.
The vicissitudes of this world are like the movements of the clouds. Fifty years of life are nothing but one long dream. Sparse rain in my desolate hermitage at night. Quietly I clutch my robe and lean against the empty window.
Slopes of Mount Kugami... In the mountain’s shade, a hut beneath the trees. How many years it’s been my home? The time comes to take leave of it. My thoughts wilt like summer grasses. I wander back and forth, like the evening star. Till that hut of mine is hidden from sight; till that grove of trees can no longer be seen. At each bend of the long road, at every turning — I turn to look back in the direction of that mountain… The plants and flowers I raised about my hut, I now surrender to the will of the wind.
Light rain. The mountain forest is wrapped in mist. Slowly the fog changes to clouds and haze. Along the boundless river-bank, many crows. I walk to a hill, overlooking the valley, to sit in Zazen.
Standing alone beneath a solitary pine, quickly the time passes. Overhead, the endless sky. Who can I call to join me on this path?
Buddha is your mind, and The Way goes nowhere… Don’t look for anything but this. If you point your cart north, when you want to go south — how will you arrive?