The Mountain Poems of Stonehouse

pass your days in freedom

Parched wheat and pine pollen make a fine meal vine flowers and salted bamboo make a tasty dish when I’m exhausted I think of nothing else let others become buddhas or immortals

What’s gone is already gone and what hasn’t come needs no thought right now I’m writing a right-now line plums are ripe and gardenias in bloom

Rain soaks my hut then the sun shines weather can change in the blink of an eye but not as fast as the breath of existence at dusk it’s hard to hear the morning bell

I make a path for the moonlight

After meditation I chant a Cold Mountain poem after dinner I brew grain-rain tea and when some feeling lingers I can’t express I take a basket across the ridge and gather vine flowers

I built a thatch hut beneath tall pines windows open on every side all day I sit facing mountains nothing else comes to mind

How could someone who practices not become a buddha if water drips long enough even rocks wear through it’s not true a thick skull can’t be pierced a person just needs a hard enough mind Note: In “Choosing a Friend,” the T’ang poet Meng Chiao wrote, “To be like the immortals / you need a mind as hard as iron.”

People say everyday mind isn’t our buddha nature I say our buddha nature is simply everyday mind afraid no one will do any work they teach grinding iron rods to make needles