Thanks Fifi!
***
I asked the boy beneath the pines.
He said, "The master's gone alone
Herb-picking somewhere on the mount,
Cloud-hidden, whereabouts
unknown."
Chia Tao
(777-841)
Trans. Lin Yutang
***
Alan Watts, Episcopal
priest turned Zen philosopher, took this beautifully mysterious phrase for the
title of one of his many books. As
someone raised to worry -- who gravitates mentally to horrible outcomes with lightning
speed and vivid imagery -- I must, each time, put aside dire thoughts of the
master, lost in the clouds, perishing of hypothermia, to be found next day
clutching a few herbs in his old gnarled hand.
What is he doing, going up the mount alone?
But when I do put such
fearful thoughts aside, this lovely poem rewards me amply. Cloud-hidden from the clanging, yapping world
-- oh bliss, delight, oh peace! With
only nature and God for company, what thoughts might I think? What truths might I see, what ecstasies
experience, what songs create and dances perform for God who is at last
omnipresent, just as I'd always heard?
Perhaps I would haul
up supplications from my well, so pure and clear that they'd exist before I
could even grab the overflowing bucket and pour. A gazillion light-years beyond my usual
"please God don't make me go to that boring meeting/job/Christmas
party/doctor's appointment; please God cure me, I hate diabetes/don't want to
get old/lose my looks/die" -- so far above I'd blush to think of my
banality. What to do but laugh at myself
and the whole silly world; hahahahahaaaaa echoing up the mountains and gently
drifting back from the sky.
Down the mountain,
into town, and maybe enlightenment would last more than a few minutes. I could
be of some good, perhaps, to fellow humans, before getting sucked back into biz
as usual.
Alan Watts, you
mischievous spirit, you.
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