Know All Things To Be Like This...

What is this strange world we're living in? Strange, beautiful, bizarre, ordinary, simple, complex?

I've heard the following words of the Buddha before, but never knew where they came from. So, I decided that I had to find it and post it up here. I find it very inspiring. Supposedly, it comes from the Samadhiraja Sutra, which according to wikipedia, was written a few hundred years after the Buddha died. So, I don't know what that says about who the real author is, but who really cares?

Excerpt from The Samadhi Raja Sutra

Know all things to be like this:
A mirage, a cloud castle,
A dream, an apparition,
Without essence but with qualities than can be seen.

Know all things to be like this:
As the moon in a bright sky
In some clear lake reflected
Though to that lake the moon has never moved.

Know all things to be like this:
As people who have gone alone to mountain solitudes,
Or forests hear the echo of laughter, songs and weeping
But see not nor hear a thing.

Know all things to be like this:
As an echo that derives
From music, sounds and weeping,
Yet in that echo is no melody.

Know all things to be like this:
Just as you a dream enjoy
But when you wake see nothing
Only fools will yearn and hanker for this pleasure.

Know all things to be like this:
As a magician makes illusions
Of horses, oxen, carts and other things,
Nothing is as it appears.

Know all things to be like this:
A young woman in a dream
May see her son both born and dead.
Yet when he dies she is sad,
While at his birth she was overjoyed.

Know all things to be like this:
As at midnight the bright moon
Appears in water crystal-clear, yet
There is no moon and grasped it cannot be.

Know all things to be like this:
At noon in midsummer
A man by thirst torment, marching on,
Sees a mirage as a pool of water.

Know all things to be like this:
If in a mirage there's no water
Only fools will want to drink it,
For it can never be drunk.

Know all things to be like this:
If you split weeds to find their marrow,
You will always fail. In the same way
Within and without is nothing.