云水

鍊得身形似鶴形，千株松下兩函經；

我來問道無餘說，雲在青天水在瓶。　

──唐‧李翱

Like a crane, the body is well trained,

Under thousands of pines, two sutras remained.

I came for the teaching, but not much is explained,

“The sky is where clouds are, the bottle is where the water is contained.”

— Li Ao, Tang Dynasty

Notes:

The poet visits this famous zen master, who train his body like a crane (potentially that’s a reference to yoga asana bakasana where you balance the whole body on two hands), and keeps two envelopes of sutras under the pine trees. However, when the poet asked about the zen, the master said that there isn’t much to say about it. He just pointed to the sky and the water bottle, and only said “the clouds are in the sky and the water is in the bottle”.

There might be many ways to interpret. A few possibilities of what that meant:

the way/truth is in the ordinary things like clouds or water bottles. Just don’t over think. Move on with your ordinary life.

Or, since both clouds and bottled water are made of water, this is just a metaphor of universalness. The same water can be a cloud that is free to form any shape, or be confined into a bottle’s shape when it’s contained in a bottle. There is the notion of constant change, and the notion of adapting to wherever you are. Maybe it ties to the non-self notion of Buddhism: there isn’t a constant identity for anyone (just like the water can be clouds, drinking water, ice, snow, river, etc)

Or, he just meant that zen is just living a simple and healthy life. Don’t forget about hydration. Maintain good physical health by drinking enough water, and maintain good mental health by looking at the clouds to keep perspective of big picture and don’t get attached to worrying about trivial things