Lao Cun · Speaking in Dreams

Author: Lao Cun
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: This is a stone monkey at the head of my hometown village. When I was a child, I often played on it. The elders say, nobody knows how many centuries it has been standing there, always talking in dreams. Last year, when I returned home, I saw it still talking in dreams. When I picked up the pen to write something, I kept feeling pain. An indescribable sense of embarrassment overcame me: because you suddenly realize that you are no longer the kind of carefree youth who could pour your heart out onto paper with ease, forgetting yourself in the process! What's on paper is just like ripples on the surface of the water—it is never the deep undercurrents that surge beneath. That undercurrent is the only thing that is true, essential, and powerful, closely intertwined with your life. At three in the night, after finishing meditation, I read the Platform Sutra and found that just a few sentences revealed the essence of family. To stand in life, one only needs the three feet of earth beneath one's feet—why seek more? To seek more leads to madness and chaos, to petty-mindedness, and to falling into great delusion and error.