In Place 27

 27

Winds from the river by day
winds from mountains at night
sing to cottonwood branches:
cottonwood branches clack back






Though the old woman has a cot in the hut and naps there often, she has seldom slept in it overnight. But she does lie long abed in the afternoons, attending the rustling leaves or rattling twigs.


The dharma does not rise up alone—it can’t emerge without reliance on the world. If I take up the challenge of speaking I must surely borrow the light and the dark, the form and the emptiness of the mountains and hills and the great earth, the call of the magpies and the cries of the crows. The water flows and the flowers blossom, brilliantly preaching without ceasing. In this way there is no restraint.
— Ziyong Chengru in The Hidden Lamp: Stories from Twenty-Five Centuries of Awakened Women, Caplow and Moon, 241