I settled at Cold Mountain long ago — Hanshan

"I love the joy of mountains Wandering free with no concerns Every day I find food for this old body Theres leisure for thinking, nothing to do Often I carry an ancient book Sometimes I climb a rock pavilion To look down a thousand foot precipice Overhead are swirling clouds A cold moon chilly cold My body feels like a flying crane"

"Tier on tier of beautiful mountains and streams Blue green vistas locked in white clouds The mist makes my bandana wet Dew coats my grass cape My feet climb in straw sandals My hand holds an old wooden stick When I gaze down again on the dusty world It has become a land of phantoms and dreams to me"

"Once, my back wedded to the solid cliff, I sat silently, bathed in the full moons light. I counted there ten thousand shapes, None with substance save the moons own glow. The pristine mind is empty as the moon, I thought, and like the moon, freely shines. By what I knew of moon I knew the mind, Each mirror to each, profound as stone."

"How wonderful is Cold Mountain Climbers are all afraid The moon shines on clear water twinkle twinkle Wind rustles the tall grass Plum trees flower in the snow Bare twisted trees have clouds for foliage A touch of rain brings it all alive Unless you see clearly do not approach"

"Climb the steep Cold Mountain way Roads to Cold Mountain are many and never ending The valleys are long and deep, the peaks piled high The streams are wide, the grass is thick The moss is slippery though there is no rain The pines sigh though there is no wind Who can escape the snares of the world And come to sit with me among the white clouds?"

"Do you have the poems of Han-shan in your house? Theyre better for you than sutra reading! Write them out and paste them on a screen Where you can glance over them from time to time"

"Now Art, used collectively for painting, sculpture, architecture and music, is the mediatress between, and reconciler of, nature and man. It is, therefore, the power of humanizing nature, of infusing the thoughts and passions of man into everything which is the object of his contemplation."

"The Good consists in the congruity of a thing with the laws of the reason and the nature of the will, and in its fitness to determine the latter to actualize the former: and it is always discursive. The Beautiful arises from the perceived harmony of an object, whether sight or sound, with the inborn and constitutive rules of the judgment and imagination: and it is always intuitive."

"I believe that the unity of man as opposed to other living things derives from the fact that man is the conscious life of himself. Man is conscious of himself, of his future, which is death, of his smallness, of his impotence; he is aware of others as others; man is in nature, subject to its laws even if he transcends it with his thought."

"Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flower Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet? God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations, Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God! God! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice! Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds! And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow, And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!"

"All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair — The bees are stirring — birds are on the wing — And Winter slumbering in the open air, Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring! And I the while, the sole unbusy thing, Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing."

"Taste is the intermediate faculty which connects the active with the passive powers of our nature, the intellect with the senses; and its appointed function is to elevate the images of the latter, while it realizes the ideas of the former."