Yuan Dao

"It is as if there was something one was yearning after.

Vaguely they feel as if something is missing,
Or as if pining after something lost.
Why is this?
Because not looking for the inward to please the external,
They were pleasing the inward with the external.
When the music starts, they feel happy,
But when the performance is over, they are sad.
With happiness and sadness giving rise alternatively to one another,
The spirit is thrown into turmoil
And cannot find a moment's peace.
If we seek for the cause behind this, we cannot get a hold of it,
Yet this is doing injury daily to one's vitality,
And failing to secure what is to be got.

Hence, failing to find it within oneself, one takes some external thing and uses it for ornament...

What issues forth from inside
Will not prevail unless there is response from the outside."

--Written 139 B.C.