“when a daoist has finished his cultivation, he will be a roaming deity or a wandering immortal. there are mountains and waters in the heavens just as here, and he will stay on one such mountain”

“they say that everything in the world is an illusion, that it’s not real. but how’s it an illusion? who’d say those real, material things right there in front of you are fake, right? the form that material things exist in is one way, while the form they manifest in, it turns out, is different. and our eyes have an ability: they can fix the material things in our material dimension so that they appear to be in the state we now see. but actually, that’s not their state. that’s not even their state in our dimension. for example, what does a human being look like under a microscope? his whole body is loose and made up of little molecules, just like grains of sand, and they’re granular and in motion, electrons are orbiting nuclei, the whole body is wriggling and in motion, and the surface of the body isn’t smooth, it’s irregular. the same goes for every material thing in the universe, be it steel, iron, stone, or whatever, all the molecular elements inside them are in motion. you really can’t see the overall form of it, and the truth is, none of those things are static. this table is wriggling too, but your eyes can’t see the reality of it. so this pair of eyes can give you a false image.”

“Green mountains rise to the north;white water rolls past the eastern city.Once it has been uprooted,the tumbleweed travels forever.Drifting clouds like a wanderer's mind;sunset, like the heart of your old friend.We turn, pause, look back and wave,Even our ponies look back and whine.”

“We sit together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains.”

“You ask why I make my home in the mountain forest,and I smile, and am silent,and even my soul remains quiet:it lives in the other worldwhich no one owns.The peach trees blossom,The water flows.”

“The birds have vanished into the sky and now the last cloud drains away. We sit together the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains.”

“To wash and rinse our souls of their age-old sorrows,We drained a hundred jugs of wine.A splendid night it was . . . .In the clear moonlight we were loath to go to bed,But at last drunkenness overtook us;And we laid ourselves down on the empty mountain,The earth for pillow, and the great heaven for coverlet”