Meditation

On the gleaming flank of an age-old rock,
lying like the eggs of some green insect,
fresh green moss is growing.

Is it just an effect of the springtime rain
that germinates the grain?
Or is it a return of infancy
in this centuries-old stone?

Here and now is an inevitable condition
where flowers, fruit,
and leaves too, are useless,
neither winds and rain,
nor thunder and lightning
are heard,
without distinction of day and night,
and knowing nothing of stench and perfume,
no separation of past, and real,
and dream.

Within the rock, no flow of filth, but
the brightness of a paper window in the morning sunlight!
In its communion with heaven's vastness,
accepting all the chaos of this world's variety-show,
by simply sitting there in silent meditiation
it stills the ocean's tumult.

"But I am no Aladin's lamp!"

Ah, moss so prudently clinging
to the indifferent rock!
True image of Meditation!