The Sun Is Roaring, It Fills To

If We Were Doomed To Live Forever, We Would Scarcely Be Aware Of The Beauty Around Us.

When I'm In The Field, When I'm Working, I Keep Very Careful Notes. I Wear Big Shirts With Big Breast Pockets, And I Carry In Them Two Little Spiral Notebooks.

I Meditate For The Last Time On This Mountain That Is Bare, Though Others All Around Are White With Snow. Like The Bare Peak Of The Koan, This One Is Not Different From Myself. I Know This Mountain Because I Am This Mountain, I Can Feel It Breathing At This Moment, As Its Grass Tops Stray Against The Snows. If The Snow Leopard Should Leap From The Rock Above And Manifest Itself Before Me - S-a-a-o! - Then In That Moment Of Pure Fright, Out Of My Wits, I Might Truly Perceive It, And Be Free.

Amazingly, We Take For Granted That Instinct For Survival, Fear Of Death, Must Separate Us From The Happiness Of Pure And Uninterpreted Experience, In Which Body, Mind, And Nature Are The Same. This Retreat From Wonder, The Backing Away Like Lobsters Into Safe Crannies, The Desperate Instinct That Our Life Passes Unlived, Is Reflected In Proliferation Without Joy, Corrosive Money Rot, The Gross Befouling Of The Earth And Air And Water From Which We Came.

Simultaneously I Am Myself, The Child I Was, The Old Man I Will Be.