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Wednesday, May 30, 2018

An Inscription on Buddha's Shadow (by Hui Yuan) - part 2

This is a continuation of a poem I began translating yesterday by the monk Hui Yuan in 4th century China.  It was composed originally as an inscription for a painting of the Buddha's shadow that Hui had commissioned to hang in a meditation cave near by his monastery.  (You can read the first part of my translation as well as a bit more background about the painting and the poem here.) 

These verses strike me as a powerful endorsement for abstract art of all kinds - an explanation of how certain spiritual matters only become clear to us through an internal process rather than through explicit depiction or expression.  The fact that the poem was written in the 4th century about a painting of Buddha's shadow should not obscure us from appreciating its more general significance in terms of contemporary abstract art.



Boundless and untended is the cosmos
So profligate in its promptings and rewards
But speaking of emptiness or trying to contain it in words
Or finessing it too finely with a brush to pass it on
Makes it seems overly concrete and diminished

Yet diluted and infused by water
The natural beauty of emptiness
Can be rendered far more clearly
By a brush with only the lightest touch
Of its fine white strands that thus
Bring nothingness gloriously to life
Dim and murky as the night but
What resides within remains clear and bright
To feel thus deeply infused by inner accord

To be fixed in sincerity
So it reverberates outwardly
An echo that lingers
And reaches to the highest peaks
To comprehend what crosses over
In the dim and dark bestowal of gifts
Consoled by possessing your own balance
And finding merit not simply
By following what came before





茫茫荒宇
靡勸靡奬
談虚寫容
拂空傳像
相具體微

沖姿自朗
白毫吐曜
昏夜中爽
感徹乃應

扣誠發響
留音停岫
津悟冥賞
撫之有會
功弗由曩
   

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