You eat to satisfy your hunger
and drink to quench your thirst. You wear clothes
to keep warm and go home to be with your families. You cultivate
the tao to reach the place even the buddhas can’t describe.
And you practice zen to find the place even
the patriarchs can’t enter.
But if you rely on the
doors and walls of others and you listen
to their instruction and accept their drivel,
you’ll never stand on your own. I put it like
this: Good medicine tastes bitter.
True words sound harsh.
Red Pine’s “The Zen Works of Stonehouse”
