a short history of the shadow

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Here is the story of Hsuan Tsang.

A Buddhist monk, he went from Xian to southern India

And back - on horseback, on camel-back, on elephant-back, and on 
                                                                foot.
Ten thousand miles it took him, from 629 to 645, 
Mountains and deserts, 
In search of the Truth

                    the heart of the heart of Reality,

The Law that would help him escape it,
And all its attendant and inescapable suffering.
                                             And he found it.

Wang Wei, on the other hand, 
Before he was 30 years old bought his famous estate on the Wang River 
Just east of the east end of the Southern Mountains,
                                                     and lived there,
Off and on, for the rest of his life.
He never travelled the landscape, but stayed inside it,
A part of nature himself, he thought.
And who would say no
To someone so bound up in solitude,
                           in failure, he thought, and suffering.
 

—Charles Wright
A Short History of the Shadow
from Body and Soul II
whiskeyriver

  

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