Zen Pilgrimage

Prayer and Meditation

farewell! Still drunk the sparkling wine! Farewell, dear ones! Must be divorced. Farewell, you mountains, you fatherly house! It drives me powerfully into the distance. The sun does not stand still in the sky, it drives it to go through countries and seas. The wave does not cling to the lonely beach, the storms, they roar with might through the land. With hurrying clouds the bird flies there and sings a homely song in the distance, so it drives the boy through forests and fields, like his mother, the wandering world.

Then the familiar birds greet him over the sea, they fly here from the fields of their homeland; Then the flowers smell confidentially around him, they drift the air from the land. The birds, they know his father's house, the flowers he plants for love in a bouquet, and love that follows him, she goes to his hand: So the farthest country becomes his home.

Down there in the mill I sat in peace and watched the wheel play and watched the water. Looked at the bright saw, it was like a dream to me, cutting long paths in a fir tree. The fir tree was alive, in a mourning melody, trembling through every fiber she sang these words: You step at the right hour, O wanderer!

Here, it's you for whom the wound penetrates my heart. It is you, for him, if you wander briefly, this wood in the bosom of the earth, will be a shrine to long rest. I saw four planks fall, my heart felt heavy, I wanted to babble a little word, and the wheel wouldn't turn anymore.