hridayaHumans live in blinding dust,
like insects in a bowl.
All day we go around and around
and never get out of the bowl.
But, it's impossible to become
an immortal,
and delusion is endless.
Time flows by like water—
in an instant we are old.
— Cold Mountain (Hanshan)
from "The Complete Cold Mountain", Poems of the Legendary Hermit Hanshan
- Tanahashi & Levitt (trs.)