The city is a recklessly embellished stretch of wilderness, in the end I will bid it farewell. I want to find that which is original, that which is real and true. This naive longing is like a rousing anthem that lures me onward. The sound of the city is like the tide, inundating all. I want to drift out on it and catch a glimpse of the wild plain, the mountain ranges; to cast my eyes over the forest and its curtain of green. I searched and I saw, but I returned with only endless, silent thoughts. There is the vast earth, and around its boundaries is the ocean. Infinite life forms bound and leap, multiply, and grow luxuriantly. The rising sun shines on them day in, day out. ...At any given moment, if I open my eyes wide, I notice immediately that all before me has changed into something brand new. It startles, moves and awes me. It is like being born anew and discovering for the first time that marvels are arrayed all around.

I desperately want to grasp that "momentary sensation" when the heart is filled to overflowing with wave after wave of mad joy. In the midst of all this I come to the realization: the myriad living things are all in a furious cycle of endless birth and extinction; eternal and ephemeral are only relative terms; but in the midst of the confusion and disorder there is something which is truly eternal. I grasp and pursue it, but it absolutely can never belong to me. This is a tragedy, and at the same time a comedy. For the moment I hold back my urbanite's sentiments and face the broad wilderness to ask: Why is this so? Where do all of these things come from after all? That which already exists is so perfect; so perfect that one can hardly imagine it. It is also deficient, so deficient that it makes one suffer great pain. That sense of tragedy or comedy originally all comes from a kind of apathy, for what we face is not only a world with which we are familiar, but also a world which is entirely foreign.

My heart strings are pulled tight as I forcefully suppress an infinity of emotions. As always, life surges toward me, unsettling me with every wave. In my dreams I always see that kind of tree which clings so tenaciously to its patch of earth. I refuse a life which is rootless and inconstant. What I want to pursue is no more than the simple, the authentic, the established. But this must forever rest in the realm of desire. Finding a place to go has become a major problem. Comforting this adult heart of mine has also become a major problem. Suffering setbacks in silence, a person always first learns how to tolerate, then finds ways of refusing. Tolerating, always tolerating--- tolerating the vileness which one's self-respect has no manner of accommodating. Yet it is also in the midst of this uncertainty that genuine refusal begins.

This long road is like nothing so much as the long night. In the boundless night who is constantly sunk in thought? Who is lamenting the state of the world and mankind? Who is probing their hearts and their fate? The realm of the mind does not easily admit the clamour. Thus it transforms into the darkness of night just on the verge of the ears. In the lightless and colourless interior the eyes cannot see, but one need only extend a hand to feel. Here conventional knowing and seeing have lost their original meaning. But the night air has been rubbed scalding hot by the footsteps of imaginings. With all my heart and mind I want to continue pursuing them. Tolerating, accepting, enduring---Can an individual truly endure? Sometimes I reply that he can, and other times I reply that he cannot. In the end after all, one cannot. Thus I am finally left with only refusal.