Birth, old age, Sickness, and death:

From the beginning this is the way things have always been.

Any thought of release from this life will wrap you only more tightly in its snares.

The sleeping person looks for a Buddha, The troubled person turns toward meditation.

But the one who knows that there’s nothing to seek, knows too that there’s nothing to say.

She keeps her mouth closed.

Ly Ngoc Kieu, 1041 – 1113, Vietnamese zen Buddhist nun.

Translation Thich Nhat Hahn and Jane Hirshfield