man born in tao

Fishes are born in water

Man is born in Tao.

If fishes, born in water,

Seek the deep shadow

Of pond and pool,

All their needs 

Are satisfied.

If man, born in Tao,

Sinks into the deep shadow

Of non-action

To forget aggression and concern,

He lacks nothing

His life is secure.

Moral: "All the fish needs

Is to get lost in water.

All man needs is to get lost

In Tao."

~ Chuang Tzu

translation by Thomas Merton

art by Bada Shanren 
who lived during the beginning of the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911)

winter dreams and butterflys

Winter

Evening. A fire

in the grate and a fire

outside, where a robin

is burning. How they both

sing, offering a friendship

unacceptable to the hand

that is as vulnerable to the one

as it is treacherous to the other.

Ah, time, enemy of their music,

reducing fuel to feathers, feathers

to ash, it was, but a moment ago,

spring in this tinder: flames

in flower that are now embers

on song's hearth.

The leaves fall

from a dark tree, brimming

with shadow, fall on one who,

as Borges suggested,

is no more perhaps than the dream God

in his loneliness is dreaming.

~ R. S. Thomas

from  Mass for Hard Times

You have wakened not out of sleep, 

but into a prior dream, 

and that dream lies within another, and so on, 

to infinity, which is the number of grains of sand. 

The path that you are to take is endless, 

and you will die before you have truly awakened.

~ Jorge Luis Borges

Once Chuang Tzu dreamt  he was a butterfly, 

a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, 

happy with himself and doing as he pleased. 

 He didn't know he was Chuang Tzu. 

 Suddenly he woke up and there he was, 

solid and unmistakable Chuang Tzu. 

 But he didn't know if he was Chuang Tzu who had dreamt he was a butterfly, 

or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Tzu.

~ Chuang Tzu

from The Complete Chuang Tzu

translated by Burton Watson

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As regards the quietude of the sage, he is not

quiet because quietness is said to be good.  He

is quiet because the multitude of things cannot

disturb his quietude.  When water is still, one's

beard and eyebrows are reflected in it.  A skilled

carpenter uses it in a level to obtain measurement.

If still water is so clear, how much more are the

mental faculties!  The mind of a sage is the mirror

of heaven and earth in which all things are reflected.

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~ Chuang-Tzu

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