Classic Poem

Use the Way to govern mind and spirit
and thoughts remain tranquil all year.
Why then do these bleak bleak moods
sweep down on me with skies of wind and rain?
I've no great yearning for eminence,
no cause to dread hunger or cold.
Why so fretful and morose,
hugging my knees by the guttering lamp?
Form and shadow silently pose the question;
mind, wordless, offers this answer:
Few as my flesh and blood kin are,
they're scattered to the ends of the sky,
older brother sent to Hsü-chou,
younger brother a sojourner in Tung-ch'uan,
north, south, five thousand miles,
I here in the middle!
I long to go to them but sickness won't let me,
want to stay put but my mind won't approve.
I'm a boat bouncing on the waves,
moored to this, tugged away by that.
Six or seven years have passed
since I turned to the Buddhist Way.
I've refined to completion the nondual nature,
wiped out a thousand, ten thousand ties.
Only the fires of love and kinship
still at times set me seething and boiling.
Not that the medicine's ineffective,
but so many ills—it's hard to cure them all!