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whole sky is theirs! Man also should be as free as a cloud. Why should there be any boundaries? Why should there be any divisions between humanity? Why should a nation become a prison?
Rather than giving freedom, the nation makes you a slave. You don't feel it because the prison is big; you will feel it only when you want to cross the boundaries. Immediately you will be stopped: "Where is your permission? Where are you going?"
The cloud does not believe in any boundaries; it is a pure symbol of freedom.
UNFETTERED AT LAST, A TRAVELING MONK,
I PASS THE OLD ZEN BARRIER.
Even Zen finally has to be transcended. Finally you have to become so meditative that you don't need to meditate any more -- meditation becomes your very being. That is what is called "the old Zen barrier." The day your very existence becomes meditative, when you don't have to sit down at a certain hour to meditate in a certain way; the day when whatever you do, you do it meditatively -- you sleep in meditation and you wake up in meditation -- you have passed the old Zen barrier.
MINE IS A TRACELESS STREAM-AND-CLOUD LIFE.
OF THOSE MOUNTAINS, WHICH SHALL BE MY HOME?
The cloud is going towards the mountains, towards the unknown, untraveled heights. Far away -- farther than the reach of ordinary mortal human beings.
Saisho, another poet:
EARTH, MOUNTAINS RIVERS --
HIDDEN IN THIS NOTHINGNESS.
IN THIS NOTHINGNESS --
EARTH, MOUNTAINS, RIVERS REVEALED.
SPRING FLOWERS, WINTER SNOWS:
THERE'S NO BEING NOR NOT-BEING,
NOR DENIAL ITSELF.
In this silence you can understand this purity of transcendence -- neither life nor death, but pure eternity.
Kukoku has written:
RIDING BACKWARDS THIS WOODEN HORSE,
I'M ABOUT TO GALLOP THROUGH THE VOID.
WOULD YOU SEEK TO TRACE ME?
HA! TRY CATCHING THE TEMPEST IN A NET.
A man of meditation certainly becomes so free that trying to catch him is like trying to catch a tempest in a net. All organizations are nets, and all nationalities and races are nothing but nets. They are all trying to catch you in different boundaries,
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