A couple of years ago I chanced upon a translation of the Cold Mountain poems of the semi-mythical Han Shan. These poems where only rediscovered in a monastery in the 20th Century, having laid unseen for almost a thousand years. Han Shan might best be described as an eccentric Buddhist recluse, one leaning towards a more Zen form of the discipline, a kind that emphasizes meditation over book learning. 

Han Shan is likely a composite of many writers who adopted this form of Buddhism, one which was also happy to borrow from Daoism. For these men a lifestyle situated on remote T'ien T'ai Mountain meant considerable physical hardship, one that was likely made possible only by long periods of meditation. The poems that they wrote were often found displayed on rocks and trees and may have been collected by a temple for teaching purposes. Who knows, it was a long time ago.

Anyway, yesterday I came upon another translation, by J.P. Seaton, and this poem, #68, if from that collection.

Living on Cold Mountain, I got free of the world,
Not even a mantra hung on my heart,
Maybe a line of a poem might get scribbled on a
rock wall,
Me, drifting home, like the unmoored boat.