The Preservation of Life (4)

1 Pheasant living in the swamp can find a bug to eat by walking average ten steps, and find a place to drink by walking around a hundred steps.

2 The living condition in the swamp is rather bad. To feed themselves, pheasants toil to look busily for food but none of them would like to stay in the hencoop for there is easy and have plenty of food.

3 Those men of perfect practice are like so. They prefer a leisurely and free life and evade official positions as immediately as possible.

4 Nevertheless, it is not easy to live in a leisurely and free life.

The poem by Su Dongpo goes:

Though happy in drunken time, But most time people still awake.

I prefer to stay between the drunk and the awake, Enjoy the best stage of life.

Mr Liu’s cattle is so big, It can’t conserve its buttocks and neck.

Agile as Jun living in east out of city, Be bound and had its hair cut for making brush pen.

Even Ji Kan recluse for his practice, Was killed for unexpected affairs at end of the day.