People ask for the road to Cold Mountain,
but no road reaches Cold Mountain.
Summer sky -- still ice won't melt.
The sun comes out but gets obscured by mist.
Imitating me, where does that get you?
My mind isn't like yours.
When your mind is like mine
You can enter here.
Translated by Kazuaki Tanahashi & David Schneider in Essential Zen (1994) SanFransisco: HarperCollins, p. 2
Waking to a world in which
Space & Time misbehave:
Shapes slump,
Even melting into pools,
Oozing to flatness, then
Over the edge and
Into nowhere.
Time moves in riverine fashion:
Rushing in the chokepoints
And lazing in the wide plains.
Though still flowing
Inexorably and unidirectionally.
The illusion tries
To reveal itself,
But who can understand...
Inspiration enters at the border between hard work and laziness.
Lu juren in “Poets’ jade splinters” [Trans. by Barnstone and Ping in The ART Of Writing]
I will not own anything that will one day be a valuable antique.
Miyamoto musashi in “My way of walking alone” [Dokkōdō] (Trans. by Teruo machida)
A house full of gold and jade can’t be guarded.
Laozi in the DAo De jing [Ch. 9]
Writing is a struggle between presence and absence.
Lu ji in The ART of Writing [Trans. by Barnstone and ping]
The best leaders remain unknown; the next best are praised; the next best are feared, and the worst are mocked.
Laozi in dAo de Jing [Ch.17]
Tai-Chi Chuan in Theory and Practice by Kuo Lien-Ying
How they are provided for upon the earth,
(appearing at intervals;)
How dear and dreadful they are to the earth;
How they inure to themselves as much as to
any -- What a paradox appears their age;
How people respond to them, yet know them not;
How there is something relentless in their fate,
all times;
How all times mischoose the objects of their
adulation and reward,
And how the same inexorable price must still
be paid for the same great purchase.
Taoism: An Essential Guide by Eva WongWhat are you most proud of in your life?
Keeping going.
But if pride goeth before the fall…
Still will I harvest beauty where it grows:
In coloured fungus and the spotted fog
Surprised on foods forgotten; in ditch and bog
Filmed brilliant with irregular rainbows
Of rust and oil, where half a city throws
Its empty tins; and in some spongy log
Whence headlong leaps the oozy emerald frog...
And a black pupil in the green scum shows.
Her the inhabiter of divers places
Surmising at all doors, I push them all.
Oh, you that fearful of a creaking hinge
Turn back forevermore with craven faces,
I tell you Beauty bears an ultra fringe
Unguessed of you upon her gossamer shawl!
The Art of Writing: Teachings of the Chinese Masters by Tony Barnstone
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow --
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand --
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep -- while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
Tiger Riding for Beginners 