“A Wind-Blown Fire Needs Little Effort” originates from The Expanded Book of Wise Sayings (《增广贤文》, Zengguang Xianwen)ⁱ, but it first appeared as a Zen (禅, Chan) verse in The Jingde Record of the Transmission of the Lamp (《景德传灯录》, Jingde Chuandeng Lu)ⁱⁱ. Many Zen sayings and phrases work between the surface of language and its inner transmission, arriving at a kind of paradoxical narrative intention. On the surface, they teach you how to harness elements of the natural world to achieve a desired end result. At root, however, Zen conveys a particular mode of temporal experience.