The first day of summer. I lazily pull on my robes. By the water’s edge, willows have turned a deep green. On the opposite bank, peach and plum blossoms scatter on the morning breeze…
I amble along, plucking blades of wild grass, and casually knock at a brushwood gate. Butterflies cavort in the garden in the south. Turnip flowers choke the bamboo fence in the east. Here, in an atmosphere of perfect ease, the long summer days stretch endlessly.
So remote a spot is naturally striking. Easily moved by beauty, such is my nature. I take a few phrases, and they just turn into poems. Who says that my poems are poems? My poems aren’t poems at all.. When you understand that my poems really aren’t poems, then we can talk poetry together.
The cicadas buzzing in the treetops; the stream cascading down the ravine; the rain last night that left the air cleansed of every speck of dust… Don’t say my hut has nothing to offer. Come, and I will share with you the cool breeze that fills my window. Green mountains on every side. White clouds to the east and west. Even if a traveller passed right by, he’d never know anyone was here.
Finished begging my food in a ramshackle town, I return to my home among the green hills. The evening sun drops behind the western peaks. A pale moon lights the stream that runs by my door. I wash my feet, climb onto a rock, burn incense and sit in meditation. I am, after all, a Buddhist monk. How can I let the years just drift uselessly by?
Don’t envy me living apart from the world of men. If you’re content, you’ll naturally be at peace. Who can say that amid the green hills are not lurking the wolves and tigers of the mind?
How many years I spent parting the wild grasses to penetrate the inmost depths… Then suddenly, I understood my teacher and came back to my native place. You go there, and come back again. Yet everything remains the same. Clouds covering the mountain summit. Streams flowing by at your feet.
Where did my life come from? Where will it go? Meditating by the window of my tumble-down hut, I search my heart, absorbed in silence. But I search and search and still don’t know where it all began. How will I ever find where it ends? Even the present moment can’t be pinned down. Everything changes. Everything is empty. And in that emptiness, this I exists only for a little while. How can one say anything is, or is not?
Best just to hold to these little thoughts…
Let things simply take their way, and so be natural and at your ease. What was right yesterday is wrong today. How do you know what is right today wasn’t wrong the day before? Right and wrong aren’t something fixed. You can’t tell in advance the pros and cons.
The foolish are stuck on a single note — so wherever they go, they’re out of tune. The wise penetrate to the source of things, and pass their time roaming free and at ease. Forget about knowledge and ignorance both, and you can call yourself one who has The Way.
Yesterday was different from today. Tomorrow morning will be different from this morning. The mind responds according to its past karma. But this changes too, as new things come along. So if you know the problem, better correct it at once. No matter how right it seems, as soon as you attach to something, truth disappears.
Can you wait and watch by the same old stump, till your hair turns white with age?