Muso Soseki's "Withered Zen"

It seems like at some point every day lately I get the idea that I should just give up. To just stop . . . what? Trying? I don't mean not going to work or not even to keep trying to do better at my work or to write better. Or no longer trying to be a good husband or son. Maybe giving up thinking that I need to get certain outcomes? Or maybe to seek the outcomes but to know that the outcomes aren't crucial? Like needing the Mueller Report to conclude X instead of Y or Z. I don't know. When I get the idea I get a good feeling. I know I'm getting close to something, but it's just over there on the other side of the mist. At any rate, I just now took the Muso Soseki collection* Sun at Midnight off my shelf, flipped around inside, and ended up here.

Withered Zen

Both sacred wisdom
   and ordinary feeling
      have completely fallen away
no craving
   for success and fame
      rises in my mind
Don't tell me I've fallen
   into the cave
      on Stone Frost Mountain
Inside my heart
    I keep three thousand
      prancing chestnut horses

* Wow, I just noticed that Sun at Midnight was co-translated by W.S. Merwin, who, we have noted, left town for good a few weeks ago.