Contents -- Part I -- Buddha Reveals the Apocalypse to the Cowboy -- Evening Lounge -- The Path -- The Ten Thousand -- A Dream of Emptiness -- Tsunami -- Leaves -- Walking with Snakes -- A Monk's Ode to Guan Yin -- Guan Yin's Treatise on Compassion -- Part II -- Damascus -- Flying -- If You Tell -- The Ancestors Speak to the Cowboy -- Interpretation of Tongues -- The Ancestors Explain How Envy Grew -- Scapegoat -- Elegy for the Appaloosa's Mother -- Against Forgiveness -- The Government of Nature -- Part III -- For James -- The Pantry -- Germany, in the Fifties -- In the Park with My Grandchildren -- Remember -- At Lake Montebello with James -- Scrapple -- When My Heart Failed -- In Raleigh's Brownstone Hotel -- On Hearing Beethoven's Moonlight -- Looking Up from the Naked Bed -- The Touched -- The Untouched -- In Good Samaritan Hospital -- Driving South from Salem -- With My Family at Dinner on Easter Sunday -- Evensong at Christ Church -- Washing the Car with My Father -- Petunias -- Cold Mountain -- Part IV -- Passing through Indian Territory -- Predators -- Weeping Willow -- 1963 -- Drowning -- A Nightmare -- To Those Who Would Awaken -- The One Song of He Nan Monastery -- Notes -- Acknowledgments.