Bonsai of Thoughts (Translated)

# Thoughts in Bonsai: One Hundred Sixty-Six The mind that seeks to understand everything often understands nothing at all. Like a greedy child who tries to grasp too many toys at once, we lose our hold on the essential truths that slip through our fingers. Perhaps wisdom lies not in the breadth of our knowing, but in the depth of our not-knowing—in cultivating that fertile ignorance where genuine insight can take root and flourish.

1. My fascination with my own writing...
exists only while I write.
Once the writing is done, my fascination shifts
to someone else's words.

2. The wildflower that catches no one's eye—
the sun's first golden light
falls there too.

3. In dark cloud upon cloud,
a hint of crystal;
the earth drinks up
the pristine sky.

4. The moment I sit to pray
a thousand thoughts arrive,
not one of which returns
when prayer is over.

5. Learn
to walk on water
without raising waves...

6. A cockroach flies down and settles
on the dead sage's eyes.
'Remove that!
Let radiance blaze from those eyes!'

7. How can a sleeping person
take in
the word of dharma?

8. In the school of the dead,
the living learn.

9. In the heat of fire
sunlight withers.
What humiliation!

10. Don't seek love, girl!
I'm only seeking you.

11. Don't look at the body that way.
This body belongs entirely
to a lover, not a beggar.

12. When you go away
time won't pass.
When you come near
not even a moment can last!

13. Is winter rain then
the answer to all the wanderer's questions?

14. Cannot be grasped,
cannot be touched...
such joy in seeing—
yet it cannot be spoken!

15. In days of terrible famine
even finding a beggar is hard!

16. A mosquito
inside the net;
all the king's power
now stands questioned.

17. A chicken's egg...
whose future lineage
destroyed on whose plate!

18. Step by step
oil by oil
at death's price
life's graph!
19. The AC's cool breeze
at sweat's steep cost.

20. Dew forms on rose petals
not from mist, but rain!
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