What Notes are We?

I have been reading David Hinton’s masterly translations of Ch'an Buddhist and Taoist classics, sometimes character and ideogram by character. and ideogram. He roots Ch'an (which later became Zen in Japan) in Taoist philosophy and the result is magical, and for me clarifying. The most complex and muddled ideas are becoming clear to me in Hinton’s work, but not in a way I can express well, and if you read his translations of Lao Tzu, Chuangzu, and others, you will understand why. Nevertheless, I'm human, so I want to try. The same people who said it was impossible resorted to poetry to capture feeling and essence rather than explanation or description. So I am doing that too for me. I find that the effort is emotional and seems to inhabit me. Don’t worry if it doesn’t make sense. I think it’s more about how it feels and how confused it makes you.

What if I could see what I call “me” as all the winds of the universe

blowing across the strings of a thing I call my heart, and that thing I call me

is just a cloud moving fast? What if this song I sense is playing

moment by moment over the whole universe? Each note following on  

another and all—uncountable—playing at once in harmony and also cacophony.

Why do I think I have any right, any ability, any place to stand, to choose

to believe that or not? Even to name it? But if I don’t give words to

that felt sense, then let me ask you: how can I write this, and you,

read it? What notes are we?