“With no surroundings there can be no path, and with no path one cannot become free.”

“Clambering up the Cold Mountain path,The Cold Mountain trail goes on and on:The long gorge choked with scree and boulders,The wide creek, the mist-blurred grass.The moss is slippery, though there's been no rainThe pine sings, but there's no wind.Who can leap the world's tiesAnd sit with me among the white clouds?”

“The Buddha taught that all life is suffering. We might also say that life, being both attractive and constantly dangerous, is intoxicating and ultimately toxic. 'Toxic' comes from toxicon, Pendell tells us, with a root meaning of 'a poisoned arrow.' All organic life is struck by the arrows of real and psychic poisons. This is understood by any true, that is to say, not self-deluding, spiritual path.”

“Will be but corpses dressed in frocks, who cannot speak to birds or rocks.”

“Being the StreamMeditation is not just a rest or retreat from the turmoil of thestream or the impurity of the world. It is a way of being the stream,so that one can be at home in both the white water and the eddies.Meditation may take one out of the world, but it also puts one totallyinto it.”

“But if you do know what is taught by plants and weather, you are in on the gossip and can feel truly at home. The sum of a field's forces [become] what we call very loosely the 'spirit of the place.' To know the spirit of a place is to realize that you are a part of a part and that the whole is made or parts, each of which in a whole. You start with the part you are whole in.”

“All those years and their moments—Crackling bacon, slamming car doors,Poems tried out on friends,Will be one more archive,One more shaky text.”