The Clouds Pass, and the Sky Remains

answered by A Zen verse

중세 선종 전승(게송)

🎬 TODAY'S FILM — IT ASKS THIS

My Life as a Dog (1985)

dir. Lasse Hallström · Sweden

A boy separated from his ailing mother and sent to unfamiliar relatives endures a loss too hard to bear in his own childlike way. In the effort to hold sorrow at a distance by recalling those still less fortunate, the child grows little by little. How does a young heart endure a grief it cannot fully carry?

THE QUESTION THE FILM ASKS

Before a loss too hard to bear, do I forget that the grief is not all of me but a passing cloud?

THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER · ORIGINAL

雲過而天不動

📜 THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER

The clouds pass, yet the sky does not move. Sorrow drifts by, but the sky that is me remains.

💡 TL;DR

The Zen verse said the clouds pass yet the sky stays.

📝The Classic Answers

The Zen verse said the clouds pass yet the sky stays. When a child undergoes a parting and loss too hard to bear, the grief feels like a dark cloud covering the whole world. Yet however thick the cloud, the sky itself does not vanish. A child separated from an ailing mother and sent to a strange place learns, while sinking into that sorrow, also to go on living. Before a great loss I fear the grief will become all of me. Yet emotion is passing weather, and the sky that is me remains beneath it. Rather than forcing the sorrow away, I choose to know it as a cloud that will pass, and to remain as the sky.

— ONGO · Curator

🌱Apply It Today

Name one feeling weighing on you now "a passing cloud," and picture the you that remains beneath it.

📖 Classic Source: A Zen verse. Ancient text in the public domain; rendered and interpreted independently by ONGO.
The film is honored as an equal questioner; its plot is rendered only as a universal dilemma. The classic source is an ancient text (Public Domain), and the reflection is 100% original ONGO content.