Here

                         Sickness and medicine heal each other. The whole world is medicine. What am I?                           Blue Cliff Record , Case 87 I come from a place of creeks and rivers, and subtropical downpours that feed them. Here, even though rivers run out of the wet forest across the valley, this side is already in the rainshadow of ranges to the west and there’s not much running water – farms rely on dams, and pump through the summer to fill troughs and keep crops growing. When I first arrived I was always listening for water, always looking for its signs. The first few years I was here seemed parched to me. I remember lying awake, sick with longing for the smell of rain, for the sound of it on the roof. Feeling that if it came, softening the air and the ground, it would answer me as well, like a promise that my life too could mollify and ...

                        A monk asked Dongshan, “When cold and heat come, how can we avoid them?”                         Dongshan said, “Why not go where there is no cold or heat?”                         The monk asked, “Where is the place without cold or heat?”                         Dongshan said, “When it is cold, the cold kills you. When it is hot, the heat kills you.”                                                                                                             ...