Gentle Reader Jer poses the question on self-definition on his blog; I've wrestled with various aspects of that question for years. Anyhow, I suppose that, to a large extent, our self-identifcation has to do with working from where we are, with all of our conditioning and circumstances taken into account:
Wrapped, surrounded by ten thousand
mountains,
cut off, no place to go . . .
Until you're here, there's no way to get here.
Once you're here, there's no way to go.
"On the Road to T'ien-t'ai," Yuan Mei (1716-1798)
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Going from here to there
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2 comments:
Simple and stunning.
Thank you.
I got it from a recent collection titled "The Poetry of Zen," edited by Sam Hamill and J.P. Seaton. I love the simple elegance of Asian poetry, at least as it's been translated into English.
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