Sacred Heart #19

At night, in my dream, I stoutly climbed a mountain
Going out alone with my staff of holly wood.
A thousand crags, a hundred hundred valleys –
In my dream-journey none were unexplored
And all the while my feet never grew tired
And my step was a strong as in my young days.
Can it be that when the mind travels backward
The body also returns to its old state?
And can it be, as between body and soul
That the body may languish, while the soul is still strong
Soul and body -both are vanities.
Dreaming and waking – both alike unreal.
In the day my feet are palsied and tottering;
In the night my steps go striding over the hills.
As day and night are divided in equal parts –
Between the two, I get as much as I lose.

Po Chu-I (772 – 846) was a poet and government official during the Tang dynasty in China. His poetry has an easy retiring quality but was often critical of social problems. One of his legs was paralyzed at the end of his life.

I, too, have difficulty walking in my old age but every once in a while I find myself dreaming that my legs are strong and steady and I am young again. In my dream I run t through fields and leap across streams effortlessly. A feeling of freedom and euphoria arises. When I wake, distant glimmers of my night races are remembered and a slight sadness arises.

Po Chu-I asks if the mind goes back in time, does the body goes with it and regain its prowess also. Is the soul stronger than the body? He says that both our waking state and our sleeping state are unreal – a premise supported by many mystics. What is gained in one realm is lost in another. We are more than the body in which our spirits dwell and one day the limitations of both worlds will be loosened.