![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
puritybrown.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
50books_poc20: Sleepless Nights: Verses for the Wakeful by Wen Hsiang, translated by Thomas Cleary
One of the terrific things about this challenge is that it's encouraging me to take out old books that I bought years ago and never got around to reading properly. I bought Sleepless Nights, um... 12 years ago *cringe*, while I was going through a Taoist phase, and never did more than skim the odd verse. Now that I've read it through from start to finish, I think I can say for sure that despite the blurb describing Wen Hsiang as a Buddhist poet, there were definite Taoist elements to his thinking; but then, that's not so remarkable given the standard Chinese syncretic attitude to religion. (Chinese religions have tended to be ways of dealing with life rather than claims about absolute truth, so it's totally acceptable, and indeed very common, to pick and mix whatever elements work for you. As the old saying has it, "Confucianism is my cloak, Buddhism is my cane, Taoism is my sandal.")
Wen Hsiang was born in China in 1210, just before the Mongol invasion, but although his poems do reflect the turbulence of the times he lived through (one of the topics he returns to several times is the soldier's wife waiting for his return for years on end), the overwhelming impression I get from them is one of peace: not just the peace of the quiet country retreat, but the peace of the tranquil mind. It's a melancholy kind of peace, to be sure; Wen Hsiang's eye lingers on the leaf that is falling and the waning moon, and on his own grey hairs. This sense of the transience and impermanence of life resonates in every line. In this respect, Wen Hsiang is indeed deeply Buddhist.
Here's one of my favourites: "Cinnamon Feelings"
The cinnamon's not of a kind
with the peach or with the plum;
only when the dew is cold
do its flowers finally burst open.
Its fragrant branches can be taken
to give an appreciated guest;
but the road is far
and no one can come --
I go back and forth
all day and all night.
When the sadness of separating
is felt through things,
a thousand miles
isn't really apart.
One of the terrific things about this challenge is that it's encouraging me to take out old books that I bought years ago and never got around to reading properly. I bought Sleepless Nights, um... 12 years ago *cringe*, while I was going through a Taoist phase, and never did more than skim the odd verse. Now that I've read it through from start to finish, I think I can say for sure that despite the blurb describing Wen Hsiang as a Buddhist poet, there were definite Taoist elements to his thinking; but then, that's not so remarkable given the standard Chinese syncretic attitude to religion. (Chinese religions have tended to be ways of dealing with life rather than claims about absolute truth, so it's totally acceptable, and indeed very common, to pick and mix whatever elements work for you. As the old saying has it, "Confucianism is my cloak, Buddhism is my cane, Taoism is my sandal.")
Wen Hsiang was born in China in 1210, just before the Mongol invasion, but although his poems do reflect the turbulence of the times he lived through (one of the topics he returns to several times is the soldier's wife waiting for his return for years on end), the overwhelming impression I get from them is one of peace: not just the peace of the quiet country retreat, but the peace of the tranquil mind. It's a melancholy kind of peace, to be sure; Wen Hsiang's eye lingers on the leaf that is falling and the waning moon, and on his own grey hairs. This sense of the transience and impermanence of life resonates in every line. In this respect, Wen Hsiang is indeed deeply Buddhist.
Here's one of my favourites: "Cinnamon Feelings"
The cinnamon's not of a kind
with the peach or with the plum;
only when the dew is cold
do its flowers finally burst open.
Its fragrant branches can be taken
to give an appreciated guest;
but the road is far
and no one can come --
I go back and forth
all day and all night.
When the sadness of separating
is felt through things,
a thousand miles
isn't really apart.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}