Winds from the river by day
winds from mountains at night
sing to cottonwood branches:
cottonwood branches clack back
Though
the old woman has a cot in the hut and naps there often, she has seldom
slept in it overnight. But she does lie long abed in the afternoons,
attending the rustling leaves or rattling twigs.
The
dharma does not rise up alone—it can’t emerge without reliance on the
world. If I take up the challenge of speaking I must surely borrow the
light and the dark, the form and the emptiness of the mountains and
hills and the great earth, the call of the magpies and the cries of the
crows. The water flows and the flowers blossom, brilliantly preaching
without ceasing. In this way there is no restraint.
— Ziyong Chengru in The Hidden Lamp: Stories from Twenty-Five Centuries of Awakened Women, Caplow and Moon, 241
Web site of part-time Soto Zen hermitary in Eugene, Oregon
