We become one,
the mountain and me
Li Bai's Zen Poem: Sitting Alone on Zhao Ting Mountain
In the distance birds fly by
A cloud meanders without purpose
We become one
The mountain and me.
With the passage of time
The mountain remains.
- Li Bai (Li Po, Li Bo) 701-762. This poem is among the most quietly Taoist of Li Bai's works — a still point in which the boundary between self and mountain simply dissolves.
The poem asks nothing of the reader; like the cloud that meanders without purpose, it simply arrives and remains.
According to legend, while drifting on the Yangtze River one evening, Li Bai reached over the side of his boat to embrace the moon. Inebriated, he fell in and drowned. Other, less poetic, descriptions of his passing also exist. Li Bai's poetry embodies the Taoist principle of wu wei—effortless action—and the Zen practice of becoming one with the natural world, as in this meditation on mountain solitude. Heron Dance translation.
