Seeking Self Knowledge (by Jiao Ran)

One of the joys of Chinese culture is the vast opportunity it presents for continued learning and discovery -- 浩浩, as a Tang poet would say.  There's really no limit given the enormity of China's literary heritage.  Another day another great new voice is waiting to be discovered.

Yesterday I started reading and translating a cache of poems by a Tang Buddhist monk named Jiao Ran.  Wikipedia lists his dates as 730-799 which places him in what is considered the Middle Tang period.  More of a committed monastic than either Wang Wei or Bai Juyi (who only turned to asceticism in their later years, after extensive careers in government service), Jiao Ran's poetry strikes me as even more deeply infused with the Chan spirit, and also a bit more difficult to penetrate.

Here is my translation of one of his wonderful poems about self-discovery.

Seeking Self-Knowledge

As if you could summon forth

Some memory from the cave  

Or courtyard of youth

You climb up to find yourself

In idleness surrounded

Your body shrouded in mist

White clouds without limit

Encircle the mountain

No matter how hard you try

To buy it outright

Not knowing the mountain’s worth

Nor if it will ever come forth

For any man

  

投知己

 皎然

若为令忆洞庭春

上有闲云可隐身

无限白云山要买

不知山价出何人

*  *  *  *

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At the risk of spoiling some of the magic of this poem, I want to briefly comment on the puzzling association, very much evident in the last two stanzas, between money and self-discovery.  What is it that brother Jiao Ran is trying to tell us when he cautions us about the difficulty of buying access to the mountain within?  How I wish I could join him on the mountaintop and ask him for a few further words of explanation.

I'll be publishing translations of a few more of Jiao Ran's poems in the next issue of the Tang Spirit Newsletter.  Click here to sign up for your free copy if you're not already a subscriber.   

In Memory of Lucille

Not for a great poet but for a neighbor no less dear

The Creek froze last night as life let loose its grip

And the mercury dropped in the mouth of the dying year

Not that man or beast could walk upon the thin ice sheet

Which had heaved up along the margins of the shoreline

Less than an inch thick, fresh and opaque enough

To track the chill waters coursing underneath

But the cars gathered in my neighbor’s driveway

Announced her crossing had just begun

As her breath must have guttered in her sleep

And now her spirit is bourn in a stilled passage 

Over the frozen waters of Weesuck Creek

For Love of Singing Poems (by Bai Juyi)

Here's another poem about poetry from Bai Juyi. As with many other Tang poets, Bai Juyi served for many years as a government minister, and his early poems address a broad range of personal and social themes.  But in his later years, after retiring form government service, he was drawn increasingly towards spiritual practice and his poems became far more explicit in identifying the inspiration for his poetry as being deeply connected to the Buddhist faith.

Reciting prose and poems

Through thousands of quatrains

My heart journeyed long 

Until it found refuge

In the Buddhist faith

Now resting on a hempen bed

Idly reading to myself

I ponder upon a prior lifetime

Being both a poet and monk

爱咏诗

白居易

辞章讽咏成千首

心行归依向一乘

坐倚绳床闲自念

前生应是一诗僧

A Solution Through Poetry

A clean sheet of paper

Every day made whole

Not for the love of fame

But only so old words may be

Continuously transformed

There’s no harm thus done

In pleasing one’s nature

Keeping watch over the countryside

Or unconsciously remounting

The city’s walls

Merely to undertake

These imagined journeys

Upon rivers and lakes   

Chanting in rhythm on
Our passage through life

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

诗解

白居易

新篇日日成      不是爱声名

旧句时时改     无妨悦性情
但令长守郡     不觉却归城

只拟江湖上     吟哦过一生

How often do we question why it is we write our poems?  Here is an answer from the great Tang poet Bai Juyi, all the more remarkable in its clarity because it was written more than 1300 years ago. This poem is a beautiful testament to the Dao of Poetry - providing a solution to our constant questioning that enables us to feel restored in the power of our songs.   

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