“Treading along in this dreamlike, illusory world,
Without looking for the traces I may have left;
A cuckoo's song beckons me to return home -
Hearing this, I tilt my head to see
Who has told me to run backwards;
But do not ask me where I am heading,
As I travel in this limitless world
Where every step I take is my home."

Dogen

“Again when a bird flies in the sky, beasts do not even dream of finding it or following its trace. As they do not know there is such a thing, they cannot even imagine this. However, a bird can see traces of hundreds and thousands of small birds having passed in flocks, or traces of so many lines of large birds having flown south or north. These traces may even be more evident than the carriage tracks left on a road, or the hoof prints of a horse in the grass. In this way, a bird sees birds' traces."

Dogen

“I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines."

Henry David Thoreau

“In a snowfall that covers the winter grass a white heron uses his own whiteness to disappear.” 

Dogen

“Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep."

“Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening", Robert Frosr 

“Stand still.
The trees ahead and the bushes beside you Are not lost.
Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.

No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still.
The forest knows Where you are.
You must let it find you."

“Lost", David Whyte

 “The countenance of the mountains is completely different when we are in the world gazing off at the mountains and when we are in the mountains meeting the mountains.” 

Dogen 

“Swim as they may, fish find no end to the sea; fly as they may, birds find no end to the sky."

Dogen

“Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay. Want more of everything made. Be afraid to know your neighbors and to die. And you will have a window in your head. Not even your future will be a mystery any more. Your mind will be punched in a card and shut away in a little drawer. When they want you to buy something they will call you. When they want you to die for profit they will let you know. So, friends, every day do something that won't compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it. Denounce the government and embrace the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands. Give your approval to all you cannot understand. Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed. Ask the questions that have no answers. Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest. Say that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into the mold. Call that profit. Prophesy such returns. Put your faith in the two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years. Listen to carrion--put your ear close, and hear the faint chattering of the songs that are to come. Expect the end of the world. Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts. So long as women do not go cheap for power, please women more than men. Ask yourself: Will this satisfy a woman satisfied to bear a child? Will this disturb the sleep of a woman near to giving birth? Go with your love to the fields. Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head in her lap. Swear allegiance to what is nighest your thoughts. As soon as the generals and politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn't go. Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection." “Manifesto: Mad Farmer Liberation Front", Wendell Berry

“Today I am pulling on a green wool sweater

and walking across the park in a dusky snowfall.

The trees stand like twenty-seven prophets in a field,

each a station in a pilgrimage — silent, pondering.

Blue flakes of light falling across their bodies 

are the ciphers of a secret, an occultation.

I will examine their leaves as pages in a text

and consider the bookish pigeons, students of winter.

I will kneel on the track of a vanquished squirrel

and stare into a blank pond for the figure of Sophia.

I shall begin scouring the sky for signs 

as if my whole future were constellated upon it.

I will walk home alone with the deep alone,

a disciple of shadows, in praise of the mysteries."

“Today I'm Going To Start Living Like a Mystic", Edward Hirsch

“Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-- the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?"

“The Summer Day", Mary Oliver

“I drove down the Freeway
And turned off at an exit
And went along a highway
Til it came to a sideroad
Drove up the sideroad
Til it turned to a dirt road
Full of bumps, and stopped.
Walked up a trail
But the trail got rough
And it faded away—
Out in the open,
Everywhere to go."

“The Trail is Not a Trail", Gary Snyder

“The pilgrim route is a very good thing, but it is narrow. For the road which leads us to life is narrow; on the other hand, the road which leads to death is broad and spacious. The pilgrim route is for those who are good: it is the lack of vices, the thwarting of the body, the increase of virtues, pardon for sins, sorrow for the penitent, the road of the righteous, love of the saints, faith in the resurrection and the reward of the blessed, a separation from hell, the protection of the heavens. It takes us away from luscious foods, it makes gluttonous fatness vanish, it restrains voluptuousness, constrains the appetites of the flesh which attack the fortress of the soul, cleanses the spirit, leads us to contemplation, humbles the haughty, raises up the lowly, loves poverty. It hates the reproach of those fuelled by greed. It loves, on the other hand, the person who gives to the poor. It rewards those who live simply and do good works; And, on the other hand, it does not pluck those who are stingy and wicked from the claws of sin."

Codex Calixtinus (12th Century)

“Give me my scallop-shell of quiet,
    My staff of faith to walk upon,
My scrip of joy, immortal diet,
    My bottle of salvation,
My gown of glory, hope's true gage ;
And thus I'll take my pilgrimage."

“The Passionate Man's Pilgrimage", Sir Walter Raleigh

“On a dirt road lies a dead beetle.

Three little pairs of legs carefully folded on his belly.

Instead of death's chaos—neatness and order.

The horror of this sight is mitigated,

the range strictly local, from witchgrass to spearmint.

Sadness is not contagious.

The sky is blue.

For our peace of mind, their death seemingly shallower,

animals do not pass away, but simply die,

losing—we wish to believe—less of awareness and the world,

leaving—it seems to us—a stage less tragic.

Their humble little souls do not haunt our dreams,

they keep their distance,

know their place.

So here lies the dead beetle on the road,

glistens unlamented when the sun hits.

A glance at him is as good as a thought:

he looks as though nothing important had befallen him.

What's important is valid supposedly for us.

For just our life, for just our death,

a death that enjoys an extorted primacy."

"Seen From Above", Wislawa Szymborska