Observations placeholder
Po Chu-I - At home giving up home
Identifier
015043
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
AT HOME GIVING UP HOME
There’s plenty of food and clothes. My children are married.
Now that I’m free and clear of all those duties to the family,
I fall asleep at night with the body of a bird reaching forests
and eat at dawn with the mind of a monk who begs for meals.
A scatter of crystalline voices calls: cranes beneath pines,
A single fleck of cold light burns: a lamp in among bamboo.
On a sitting cushion, I’m all ch'an stillness deep in the night.
A daughter calls, a wife hoots: no answer, no answer at all.