"He wandered absent-minded, dreaming through the undergrowth and maze of briars, and suddenly found himself next to a huge old olive tree which he had never noticed before... The next thing he knew he was leaning back into the tree, standing on its gnarled roots his head popped against the branches...
An old sensation came over him so that he was fixed on the spot, breathless, his heart pounding. It was as though he were extended into another life, along time before, and that everything that had ever been lived or loved or suffered here was coming to him, storming him, demanding to live again in him... 'Time' ceased to exist; there was no distinction between what once was and now had come back, and the dark formless present. The entire atmosphere seemed animated unearthly to him, thrusting in on him incessantly. And yet this unknown life was close to him somehow; he had to take part in it."
(The poet Rainer-Maria Rilke, in the book, ZEN POEMS OF CHINA AND JAPAN, The Crane's Bill, 1973, GROVE PRESS, New York)
