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

-->

形容已憔悴

Words from the Heart (by Qi Ji)

This morning I translated this lovely poem by the Buddhist monk Qi Ji who lived in the waning years of the Tang Dynasty, a time of considerable social unrest.  It made me think of Anthony Bourdain and so I want to dedicate this translation to Bourdain and his final journey to parts unknown.  Many of us have been shaken by his suicide, even those who only infrequently watched his show.  There is something so deeply discordant between Bourdain's evident gusto for life and experience, his deep and broad engagement with the world, and his sudden lonely demise in a hotel room.  How can we hope to make sense of such peripeteias?

If poetry were to falter

The pain of aging and sickness

Would double in depth

The best doctors in the world

Would be no help no matter

How much gold was spent

What’s left of life should

Not be frittered away

Not dead yet there’s no harm in

More joyful chanting and singing

Water flows without

Return or rest so it goes

With each breath

White clouds leave no trace

For anyone to chase after

In idleness the body rests

By idleness possessed

To vanish in place amidst

The yellowing leaves

And a cool breeze

A cicada in the woods

  

遣懷

齊己

詩病相兼老病深

世醫徒更費千金

餘生豈必處拋扔

未死何妨樂詠吟

流水不迴休歎息

白雲無跡莫追尋

閑身自有閑消處

黃業清風蟬一林

An Inscription on Buddha's Shadow (by Hui Yuan - part 3)

Now we're getting a bit closer to the heart of the matter - entering into the inner recesses of the cave where Hui Yuan sits and contemplates the painting of Buddha's shadow hanging on the wall.  This is part three of the inscription that Hui Yuan composed; you can read the first two parts on the immediately preceding blog posts.   But whatever has come before somehow hasn't quite prepared Hui Yuan (or us for that matter) for the sudden tremor and gust of insight that intrudes upon his quiet contemplation:

In an instant

To lose one’s grip

Devoid of thought

Devoid of knowing

Sun moon and stars

Stripped of their light

All ten thousand things

Become the same color

Entering the courtyard

Of the cosmos

Delving into obscurity

Hidden yet welcoming

Where measure is none

I become aware

Of stillness and quiet

And then feel

A forceful tremor

A gust of insight

Coming from a distance

Compounded of dust

This news from afar

Unable to see into

The mysterious depths

Who or what it is

That stirs me

From this extremity

旋踵忘敬

罔慮罔識

三光掩暉

萬象一色

庭宇幽藹

歸塗莫測

悟之以靜

震之以力

慧風雖遐

維塵攸息

匪伊玄覽

孰扇其極