Illness of a Different Kind
“The Partial within the True:
The blue sky clears and the River of Stars’ cold flood dries up.
At midnight the wooden boy pounds on the moon’s door.
In darkness the jade woman is startled from her sleep.
The True within the Partial:
Ocean and clouds rendezvous at the top of the spirit mountain.
The old woman returns with hair hanging down like white silk
And shyly faces the mirror coldly reflecting her image.”
- Zen Master Hongzhi, Cultivating the Empty Field
“Getting rid of things and clinging to emptiness
Is an illness of the same kind;
It is just like throwing oneself into a fire
To avoid being drowned.”
- Yungchia, Zen and Zen Classics, R. H. Blyth, Volume One, p. 63