The first goal is to see the thing itself
in and for itself, to see it simply and clearly
for what it is.
No symbolism, please.

The second goal is to see each individual thing
as unified, as one, with all the other
ten thousand things.
In this regard, a little wine helps a lot.

The third goal is to grasp the first and the second goals,
to see the universal and the particular,
simultaneously.
Regarding this one, call me when you get it.

by David Budbill

Wow, what a clear setting out of the human endeavour to live wisely! So simply and concisely stated – and yet as the last sentence indicates, anything but straightforward and worth knowing about when it’s achieved. I loved the combination of sage instruction with the down-to-earth commentary, the dry humour and the teacher-student familiarity I felt in it. This was not an aloof wise one diseminating wisdom – here is an friendly and encouraging fellow human who knows his way around the great endeavours and their challenge.

As so often happens, reading this poem made me curious about the person who the words travelled through, and the life that led to this expression. It came from one of the eight books of poetry written by David Budbill (1940-2016) with a title that intrigued me: ‘Moment to Moment: Poems of a Mountain Recluse’. His life was summarised on his website as ‘humble, engaged, and passionate’, and he brought his poetry into the world with others in musical collaborations reaching diverse audiences. Diving a bit more into the traces he’s left on the great web made me feel this almost childlike excitement: the world is full with wonderful people living what Lama Yeshe would call a ‘joyful and useful’ life, I only know of such a small fraction of them and yet they’re everywhere and here is another one!