‘Communing with the source, travel the pathways, embrace the territory and treasure the road. ‘ (Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi)

This couplet has been on my mind recently – perhaps because of all the travel I have been doing. It is, of course, not really about geography, any more than Dogen’s ‘why leave behind the seat in your own home to wander in vain through the dusty realms of other lands?’ from the Fukanzazengi. As with the rest of Dongshan’s poem, it is holding the absolute and the relative in equal proportion.