The venerated Chinese teacher Lin-chi, who died in the year 866, once interrupted the silence with a shout that was said to have nearly cracked the universe.... Breaking the silence can sometimes be a shortcut to cracking open the myteries of the universe. But for now, I'm quite content to sit here quietly. There is only the infrequent shout of a distant ocean wave to rise abo ve the regulated whisper of my own breathing. Soon, even these sounds fade.
More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs — all this resinous, unretractable earth.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs — all this resinous, unretractable earth.