Xiao, I hear, I see, I touch. For thousands of lives I have been here; father sky above my solitary self, I stand, mother earth beneath. The sound of bamboo speaks of what I know and feel. It can be direct, clear, dark, soft or faint, revealing my being brave, at leisure, sorrowed, at ease or lost.
Wild grass is thou humble bamboo, grew on poor soil, happened to be carved into a xiao; straight and empty as thou were, with nodes and root; soul infused, thence is a grass no more.
Thou sound the way thou were, only that it has been heard by no one. Thy utterances are all poetry, which entail hardship and endurance.
Thou teach without preach, from heart to heart, not a word. Nurtured, xiao literati are plain, humble, elegant, warm-hearted, straight, true, merciful and all-embracing. Heavenly, tranquil and yet immensely dramatic is thy voice, as Master Tam Po-shek taught us in his "Xiao Insights in Sixteen Chinese Characters", an easy mind encompasses the whole universe where human spirit is poured into a single focused stream of air.
I make xiao, so I know how to live; I play xiao, which tells my stories; I listen to xiao, then I know one's heart; I treasure xiao, and my soul becomes rich.
Heavenly bodies scattered across infinite space and time, we were and still are specks of dust, sparkling within. This is it. With true hearts, xiao literati learn from thou soulful bamboo, Xiao the master, who knows the Way.
All from one, one suffices all.
一本萬殊 寡而為足
We are all human, yet different. And it is good to be different.
包容 : 我們都有不同的品質，這樣很好。
HIGH and LOW are relative terms, while INSIDE and OUTSIDE are absolute. It makes no sense to say that things go up or go down when you are travelling in space. We are all space-time travellers, you and me, from the very beginning. There is more truth in saying that water goes IN than water goes DOWN. Water trys every narrow winding path to go to the very heart of the Earth, to get WITHIN from WITHOUT. Be water, my friend. Go IN.
Do little things finest.
Xiao, a flute that tells you every worldly story.
洞簫說人生
Xiao the Way