Who was this Master of Five Willows, I wonder—

did he ever plant a single willow with his own hands?

When I was little, in the soft spring drizzle,

I’d snap a willow twig, stick it in the ridge,

and it would grow, just like that.

So I like to think, around Master Five Willows’ home,

he must have stuck dozens of them in the ground,

letting them sway in the wind—

and swaying right along with them.

If Tao Yuanming had never lived,

our lives would be a little less light, a little less joy,

and the Peach Blossom Spring would never have existed at all.

Once I was in Jiujiang,

and someone told me Tao’s tomb was nearby.

But it lay inside a military zone—

I could not go to pay my respects.

Jiujiang had Tao Yuanming.

So it was not only Bai Juyi who

“saw off a guest by the Xunyang River at night.”

Centuries before him, Master Five Willows

never once felt like “a ruined soul stranded at world’s end.”

For that alone, he was far more free-spirited than Bai Juyi.

Many people think that at fifty-five,

Master Five Willows threw aside his official seal

simply because he longed for rural life.

That is utterly, utterly wrong.

How many of those who write books and preach doctrines

ever truly speak from the heart?

Only they themselves know the real taste within.

Master Five Willows never planted willows,

yet for a thousand years he has borne the name

of a hermit who retired to the fields.

Now everyone under heaven knows him—

what kind of hermit is that, really?

Li Bai once said:

“Only drinkers leave their names behind.”

Yet Master Five Willows did not drink.

How, then, did he become so immortal?

Tao Yuanming was no good at officialdom,

no good at teaching his sons either.

But when it came to dreaming?

He was the greatest under heaven.

The people of the Peach Blossom Spring

“knew not of the Han,

let alone the Wei or Jin.”

Now that is true enlightenment.

In this world, all things grow freely.

There were never true borders between lands.

So why do we draw lines on the earth

and lock ourselves inside?

Stick a willow twig in the soil in spring—

gentle wind, fine rain, all things renewed—

how could it not sprout and grow?

Master Five Willows, his mind flowing wild and free,

splashed his ink across cottages and fields,

and into the hearts of scholars and gentlemen through the ages.

But what does that have to do with us?

Yet the greatest progress of humankind

is not civilization, nor is it technology.

It seems to me it is this:

we can dream, we know how to dream,

and what’s more, we love to weave sweet, hazy dreams—

dreams we would not wake from, even after a thousand years.

Very well then.

Let us all dream, whenever we wish.

Just like Master Five Willows—

calm, unhurried, perfectly at peace within ourselves.