An online community sharing the study and practice of Chan Buddhism

 

When I consider the brief span of my life absorbed into the eternity which comes before and after - as the remembrance of a guest that tarrieth but a day - the small space I occupy and which I see swallowed up in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I know nothing and which know nothing of me, I take fright and am amazed to see myself here rather than there: there is no reason for me to be here rather than there, now rather than then. Who put me here? By whose command and act were this time and place alloted to me?