A Few Buddhist Homilies (by Shide)

Recently I've been searching for material to include in a collection of classical Chinese poems I'm hoping to publish later this year.  The working title of the book is The Poetry of Awakening and the collection will feature spiritually themed poems written in both the Daoist and Buddhist traditions.

One of the things I'm enjoying about this project is that it has given me a chance to hunt around for work by some lesser known poets, in the hope of expanding the range of voices included in the collection beyond the more familiar suspects, such as Wang Wei, Bai Juyi and Han Shan.  This morning I translated a few short poems by Shide - one of Han Shan's lesser known sidekicks, sometimes regarded as a simpleton (as seems to be consistent with his portrait shown on the side) but who was also a poet in his own right.

I'm not sure whether I'll include any translations of Shide's poems in the collection but I thought it would be interesting to publish some of them here on my blog.  They are quite different from Han Shan's poems - less personal and vivid.  In some ways, the sound like short little Buddhist homilies, not at all didactic but much more down to earth.

The many Buddhas

Left us with scriptures

To help humankind

With the difficulties of

The transformational task

Not just for the virtuous

But also for simpletons like me

So each of us can build

A structure that endures

In our heart

   

诸佛留藏经

只为人难化

不唯贤与愚

个个心构架

  

If you want to build

Something grand

As a mountain

How can you 

Be distracted

By worry and fear

You must be able

To focus on a slender thread

Day and night the mind

Works its treachery

造业大如山

岂解怀忧怕

那肯细寻思

--日夜怀奸诈

  

Yesterday was a day for fasting

Today we slaughter animals to feast

Always led along by custom and practice

Not in accord with actual feeling or need

昨日设个斋

今朝宰六畜

都缘业使牵

非干情所欲

For each time we make a paradise

A hundred times we make a hell

Yet if the King of Hell comes after us

The whole household loudly begins to wail

一度造天堂

百度造地狱

阎罗使来追

合家尽啼哭

To be a monk calls for some idleness

But such idleness comes at a price

Just as dust gathers on man’s outside

So too the dust enters within

出家要清闲

清闲即为贵

如何尘外人

却入尘埃里

Bewildered always by the heart’s core

 The end result of serving fortune and fame

No matter what the personal rewards

Soon comes a wan and sallow appearance

一向迷本心

终朝役名利

名利得到身

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