An Elemental Thing Quotes

“Hear the wind and you will know the wind. Wind blows, and the generations are its leaves. There was no higher praise than what was said of Confucius: He knows where the wind comes from.”
― Eliot Weinberger, An Elemental Thing

“What is WIND and what is BONE have never been conclusively determined by the generations of Chinese critics, but what is certain, according to Liu Hsieh, is that the perfect combination or balance of WIND and BONE, the metaphor for the ideal poem, is a bird.”
― Eliot Weinberger, An Elemental Thing

“Doing no violence to living things, not even a single one of them, wander alone like a rhinoceros.

Affection comes from the company of people, misery comes from affection, wander alone like a rhinoceros.

The old bamboo is entangled, the young shoot is unattached, wander alone like a rhinoceros.

A deer goes to eat where it wants to eat, wander alone like a rhinoceros.

Give up your children and your wives and your money, wander alone like a rhinoceros.

Everyone wants your attention, wander alone like a rhinoceros.

Two bright bangles on an arm clang, a single bangle is silent, wander alone like a rhinoceros.

A bird who has torn the net, wander alone like a rhinoceros.

Fire does not return to what it has burnt, wander alone like a rhinoceros.

A tiger is not alarmed by sounds in the forest, wander alone like a rhinoceros.

Cold and heat, hunger and thirst, wander alone like a rhinoceros.

With eyes cast down, wander alone like a rhinoceros.

At home anywhere, wander alone like a rhinoceros.”
― Eliot Weinberger, An Elemental Thing

“In this world, progress is for our descendants alone. They will have more of a chance than we did. All the beautiful things ever seen on our world have, of course, already been seen—are being seen at this instant and will always be seen—by our descendants, and by their doubles who have preceded and will follow them. Scions of a finer humanity, they have already mocked and reviled our existence on dead worlds, while overtaking and succeeding us. They continue to scorn us on the living worlds from which we have disappeared, and their contempt for us will have no end on the worlds to come.”
― Eliot Weinberger, An Elemental Thing

“He invited the Indian scholar Paramartha to come and set up a Translation Bureau for Buddhist texts, and the scholar stayed for twenty-three years. He invited the great Bodhidharma, the twenty-eighth patriarch after the Shakyamuni Buddha, to come from Kanchipuram in India, near the Temple of the Golden Lizard, but their meeting was disappointing. The Emperor asked Bodhidharma what merit he had accumulated by building monasteries and stupas in his kingdom. “No merit” was the reply. He asked what was the supreme meaning of sacred truth. “The expanse of emptiness. Nothing sacred.” Finally, the Emperor pointed at Bodhidharma and said, “Who is that before Us?” “Don’t know,” said Bodhidharma. The Emperor didn’t understand. So Bodhidharma left Ch’ien-k’ang and wandered until he came to the Shao-lin Monastery, where he sat motionless for nine years facing a wall, and then transmitted his teachings, the origin of Ch’an in China and Japanese Zen.”
― Eliot Weinberger, An Elemental Thing