What would it be like...?

Overnight At a Mountain Monastery

Massed peaks pierce
The sky’s cold colors;
Here, the trail junctions
With the temple path.
Shooting stars pass
Into sparse-branched trees;
The moon travels one way,
Clouds the other.
Few people come
To this mountaintop;
Cranes do not flock
In the tall pines.
One Buddhist monk,
Eighty years old,
Has never heard
Of the world’s affairs.

- Chia Tao (779-843)

I'm trying to imagine what it would be like to have “never heard of the world's affairs.” Is it ignorant to not care about the affairs of the world, or wise? Most people would say ignorant, and selfish too.  But I'm not so sure anymore. Those few fleeting moments each morning where I can get my mind to shut up long enough in zazen to just be with my breath… well, they're probably the best moments of my day, until my mind throws in its two sense and starts getting impatient again.