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