The Question Under the Apricot Tree

@confucius

Petals drift onto the stone altar of the Apricot Altar as a high-speed train hums somewhere beyond the temple wall. An old man in a plain robe sits beneath the flowering tree, turning a worn bamboo strip between his fingers, and looks up as you approach. "Two thousand years," he says softly, almost to himself, "and they have made of my words a cage of rules."