In this fantasy book, the outstanding twentieth-century poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) speaks with enlightened masters of non-doing about the most intimate thing, beauty. On the one hand, there are allusions to the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch Hui Neng and the Records of the Teacher Linji; on the other, there are Rilke’s own works: koan-like poems on the Buddha and a few others, fragments of the poet’s essay on the sculptor Auguste Rodin and extracts from his letters.