96fall

Racing Against Weeds

By Shih Te Yu and Shih Te Mao
Translated by Jo Chen

For a certain period of time,
the other three nuns and I had to cultivate about three hectares of land,
planting it with peanuts and weeding three times a season,
yet the tiny little sprouts always grew slower than the flourishing wild plants.

We had hardly removed them all before new ones grew in.
We had a carpenter make a plow so that we could turn over the soil
by pulling the plow ourselves.

One line at a time,
we could barely beat the weeds down.

(Master Teh Tzu cannot help but talk about the old days whenever she takes a look at the waving weeds in the cornfield at the Abode of Still Thoughts.)