Tao Te Ching (Translated by Sam Hamill) - Lao Tzu [20]
I originally planned to add only a few of Wang Fan-chih’s poems to this book, to help to broaden most readers’ view of what Buddhism was in the T’ang and show what it is or can be in an urbanized world. The book has ended up with more of Wang Fan-chih’s poems than Shih Te’s because, while Shih Te offers a valuable and enjoyable reprise of Han Shan’s ideas, it seems to me the lay Buddhist Wang Fan-chih’s poetry shows that the tradition of the outsider, the free agent and the free spirit, initiated by Han Shan and Shih Te, was alive and scuffling in the cruel streets of a failing society. It seems particularly ripe for reincarnation in this century.
Beneath the morning mist on the mountainside or the dust of the mundane activities of city streets, these poets have hidden some of the way they have found, some of the truth of the light. They may appear to have hidden these things simply because words can do no more than give a glimmer of the light of the spirit; but poets think, I think, that a poem can do more than “mere words” can. A well-made poem may give us aid when we are ready, or if, if we are willing to study, if we will work, if we move on to meditate. With the aid of the well-made poem, we may, finally, discover the light on the mountain, in, through, or behind the obscuring mist, or rising, far, far off, above the dust of the city streets, so that the sun and the moon of their enlightenment may become the light of our own revelations. The poems of these three poets are, if we choose to let them be, no more, and no less, than fingers pointing. The Way will be what is revealed, and the beauty of what is revealed may help to draw us, as seekers, on through arduous meditation, on through the arduous and sometimes dangerous mountain climb. But as Shih Te says,
My poems are poems,
even if some people call them sermons.
Well, poems and sermons do share one thing;
when you read them you got to be careful.
Keep at it. Get into detail.
Don’t just claim they’re easy.
If you were to live your life like that,
a lot of funny things might happen.
I
Ranges, ridges, daunting cliffs, I chose this place with divination’s aid.
The road’s for the birds, no man tracks there.
And what is the yard? White clouds clothe
dark stone. I lived here years, watching
springs with The Great Change become winter.
Here’s a word for the rich folks with cauldrons and bells:
Fame’s empty, no good, that’s for sure.
II
Cold Mountain Road’s a joke,
no cart track, no horse trail.
Creeks like veins, but still it’s hard to mark
the twists. Fields and fields of crags for crops,
it’s hard to say how many.
Tears of dew upon a thousand kinds of grasses;
the wind sings best in one kind of pine.
And now I’ve lost my way again:
Body asking shadow, “Which way from here?”
III
If you’re looking for a peaceful place,
Cold Mountain’s always a refuge.
A little breeze, breath of the shaded pines,
and if you listen close, the music’s even better.
Under the pines a graying man,
soft, soothingly, reading aloud from Lao Tzu.
IV
My mind’s the autumn moon,
shining in the blue-green pool,
reflecting glistening, clear and pure . . .
There’s nothing to compare it to,
what else can I say?
V
In the city, the moth-browed girl,
her jade pendants like tiny wind chimes chiming.
She is playing with a parrot in the flowers;
she is playing on her p’i-p’a in the moonlight.
Her songs will echo for three months;
a little dance will draw ten thousand watchers.
Nothing lasts as long as this:
beautiful face of the hibiscus,
can’t bear the frost’s caress.
VI
I always wanted to go to East