Zen 96
Page 7
knowledge,
But do not follow the proper course of life,
The whole world is thrown into great disorder.
The knowledge shown in the making
Of all modern tools and devices is great,
But the environment is troubled by them,
From above and below, and in all respects.
The knowledge shown in their inventions is great,
But resources are mercilessly exploited by them;
The knowledge shown in the arrangements
For the new methods of management is great,
But men in the lower regions are disturbed by them.
So, the versatility shown in the artful deceptions,
Becoming more and more pernicious
In ingenious discussions as to what is global
And therefore capital-intensive warming
And political cooling, and what is easy to lose
And hard to prevent, and what is black and white
In useless argument, and in attempt to disperse the dust
And reconcile different views are great indeed,
But people are perplexed by all the sophistry.
Truly, as is said, 'The greatest art of politics
Sounds reliable to the deceived ears.'
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Doomed HD & Hi-Fi
As they fairly say,
An extraordinary power of vision
Leads to the confusion
Of all colours and therefore
An excessive use of ornament.
Its possessor, in the resplendence
Of one's red and yellow,
White and black, blue and green
Will not stop till he has become
A pheasant with its colourful plumage.
An extraordinary power of hearing
Leads to a confusion of all notes
And an excessive use of the accords.
Its possessor, in bringing out the tones
From the instrument made of metal,
Stone, silk, skin, wood and bamboo
Aided by the tuning fork, will not stop
Till one has become a nightingale of May.
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Letting Go
A high achiever is he
Who can present in his body
The appearance of being agitated,
But in his mind he is conscious of no loss.
Even the loss of life to him
Is like the exiting from his home
In the early morn, and no more ill reality.
In this way, he is more awake than others are
To reboot himself and start a day from the right end.
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Opening and Closing
Every man may well proceed on one's mission;
But let me repeat to you what I have heard
From sagely people. 'Skilful wrestlers,' they say,
'Begin with open trials of strength, but always
End with masked attempts to gain a victory;
As their excitement grows excessive,
They display much wonderful dexterity.'
Parties drinking at first observe an order,
But always end with complete disarray;
As their excitement grows excessive,
Their fun becomes uproarious and erratic.
In all things it is so. People are at first sincere,
But always end with becoming rude; as a rule,
At first things are treated as trivial, but as the end
Draws near, they assume great proportions, for sure.
The breath comes angrily, as when a beast
Driven to death, wildly bellows forth its rage.
On this animosities arise on both sides.
Hasty examination of the case eagerly proceeds,
And revengeful thoughts arise in their minds,
But they do not know how. Since they do not know
How such thoughts arise, who knows how they will end?
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Words
Words are like the waves
Acted on by the onshore wind
When the real point of the case,
Which is a match for the sea itself,
Discussed by them is lost.
The wind and waves
Are easily set in motion;
Success of a sailing is failed
Once the port of destination is lost,
Putting the vessel in peril
Of the deep blue whirl.
This is the reason why
Quarrels are occasioned
By nothing so much
As by the artful words
And one-sided speeches.
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The Human Nature
The centuries-old question
Of the men's primordial nature,
Whether it is good or ill,
May be reduced to the following 'ifs.'
If you make for men a device
To measure their wares,
Even by means of that device,
Whether you like it or not,
You thus teach them to steal
From their neighbours;
If you make for them weights
And steelyards to weigh their goods,
Even by means of those tools
You teach them to steal from their clients.
If you make for men tallies and seals
To secure their good faith,
Even by means of those things
You teach them to steal
From their counterparties;
If you make for them the fair system
Of punishment and pardon
In order to make their doings right,
Even by means of this you teach them
The way to steal from those
Who are in the lower regions. . .
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What If. . .
As it runs, "The greatest art looks like stupidity."
What if all sophisticated schemes of governing
Were to be seized and thrown aside--
The virtue of all mankind would begin to display
The men's mysterious excellence. What if the men
Have possessed and employed their power of vision--
There would never be distortion in the world.
What if the men have possessed and employed
Their natural power of hearing--there would be
No distraction at all. What if all the kind men
Have possessed and employed their natural faculty of wisdom--
There would be no delusions around. What if the men
Have possessed and employed their good qualities in full--
There would be no depravity in the entire world.
What if all the artful men would display their skills
And tricks of the trade outwardly, setting the world
In a blaze of admiration and confound it entirely
By praising this with the formal term 'globalizing'
That requires the informal worldwide government,
The final countdown, a method of deadlock,
Has been brought into operation once and for all
Without any conjectural questioning 'What if. . .'
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The Old Hand at Governing
I have heard of letting the world be so
And exercising forbearance,
But I have never heard of the way
Of ruling people and governing the state
By virtue of someone's full authority.
The notion of 'letting be' comes out
From the fear that the people,
Once interfered with, will carry their nature
Beyond all norms and regulations;
The 'exercising forbearance' comes out
From the fear that the people,
Once not so dealt with, will alter specifics
Of their human habits from bad to worse.
When all the people do not carry their nat
ure
Beyond the norms and regulations,
Nor alter dramatically their human features,
A good governing is firmly secured
For long-lasting job and common goodness.
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Rewards and Punishments
If now the modern world
Were taken to reward the good,
It would not suffice
Nor would it be possible with it
To punish the evil so far.
This world, great as it is,
Not sufficing for rewards,
As well as for punishments.
From the time of old
There has been nothing else
But bustle and excitement,
And that's the whole issue.
Always occupied with rewards
And punishments, what leisure
Have men had to rest in the instincts
Of their nature with which
They are endowed so richly?
But when men begin to honour them
And long for them with partiality,
How great is the deception
Practised on the worldly conditions
By dividing them into the ends of Extremity!
And not only when a performance of them
Is once and suddenly over,
Do they not have done with them,
But they prepare themselves
As with fasting to describe them,
They seem to kneel reverently
When men bring them forward
And they go through them
With excitement of a musical show. . .
And what can be done then
To remedy the evil
Within the human deportment?
73
The Human Mind
If not to govern the world,
How can we make
Men's demeanour good?
The human mind,
If pushed about, gets depressed;
If helped along, it gets exalted.
Now exalted and now depressed,
Here it appears as a prisoner
And there as a wrathful fury.
At one time it becomes pliable and soft,
Yielding to what is hard and strong;
At another, it is keen as the sharpest blade,
Fit to carve or chisel the hardest stone.
Now it is hot as a scorching fire,
And anon it is cold as the icy water.
It is so swift that while one is bending down
And lifting up one's hands
In propping the Buddha's feet,
It shall twice have put forth
A soothing thought beyond the four oceans.
Resting, it is still as a deep abyss;
Moving, it is like one of the shooting stars;
In its resolute haughtiness,
It refuses to be bound --
Such is the human mind!
It is the beauty of the skin
Of tiger and leopard
Which makes men hunt them;
The agility of a monkey
And sagacity of a dog
Which strangles bears
Make men lead them on a leash.
But can one similarly endowed be matched
To the sagely man? Does the human nature
Permit it without demur? . .
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Phrases and Faces
Words cannot express in full
The true meaning of things;
Speech does not convey
The spirit of the transcendental.
Swayed by words
One becomes frustrated and lost;
Blocked by cliches
One sees the bewildered look
On one's woody face.
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Trees, Tears, Trees
The Bodhi tree or the Tree of Enlightenment
Is in your pure heart, not in the pericardium--
The storage of ambitious and voluptuous airs;
Hence no one else is able to dig down its root
Which cannot ever be rotten or vermiculated.
Once turning from the juicy fruits of peaches
Grown in the low-lying vale, you are doomed
All your life to pick the harsh and sour plums
Raised on steep slopes of the wind-blown hills.
Hence, think twice before you tell your boss,
A true woodworm, where to get off and for all.
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A Bear's Affection
Formerly I frequently strolled
A decade or two of miles
Through the deepest snow
In the wind-blown bottomland
To keep an appointment
With an elm or a white birch,
Or with an old acquaintance
Among the wild plum trees.
Today I sit alone on a high cliff
Surrounded by my only intimates--
The cypress trees and red pines.
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Heaven's Layout
Mountains and streams,
Midwood and wasteland
In the clear vision
Of a poet and writer
Are the junctions of Eternity
Skilfully mapped out
In accord with the starry pattern
Which is answered in Earth's soul
As the blueprint for fertile going on.
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The Sabbath
Some keep the Sabbath
Going to a synagogue
That is Beit-Knesset
In the Hebrew tongue;
I keep it staying
In my backyard instead
With an oriole for a cantor
And the olive tree shade
For my 'kipa,' my skullcap.
As for the candle light,
It is all the way in my mind.
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High Peaks
I admire high peaks
Because they seem
More selfless to me
And more resigned
In the way they are,
Going thru the cold
Of a long night and
Midday heat ahead
Than all the other
Low-lying entities
Whose fat lots flow
In their due security.
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The Bamboo Grove
From time immemorial
The bamboo groves
Were еhe cradle
And sanctuary and then
The mass grave
For all the sagely minded
Hermits, secret societies,
Rebels, decadents
And poets in exile.
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Still Stands Up and How!
Each one is a bunch of wars
And truces, from time to time
Waged reasonably and without
Any good reason but flamed up
In one's bursting mind, like a flint.
Like a knotty and contorted
In the gusty wind cypress trees,
With their blown out bare roots,
Each of us clings to the rocky
And jaggy cliffs of today's conditions
To be on duly reproduction
Of a plenty of cones.
What compels each one,
Whose living conditions
Are so severe, to propagate well
And be remarkable for longevity
If not that gusty wind above all things!
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Among the Thickets
Upon entering into a midwood,
You find yourself surrounded
By the ancient trees
Which are much higher
Than lofty towers and castles
Upon the rocky hills.
Look up to observe the glory
Of their everlasting cooperation
With the blazing sun;
Look down to only imagine
How deep-rooted
Is their system of wrapping around.
Touching the azure sky
With their thickly boughs,
They dip their luxuriant crowns
Into the milkshake of clouds.
They cast their stately shadows
Of the trunks for masts
Across the prominent boulders,
Swampy ponds, bubbled brooks
And sagged down lairs of tigers.
The gloomy silence
Of their shrivelled leaves
Frozen within the twilight mist
And the darkness of hollows--
All those mysterious things
Strike you straight to the marrow
With an obvious presence
Of something spirit-like and
Ghostly vital hidden behind
The palisade of elves and giants.
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Patrimony
What kind of age we live in
When talks of deforestation
And abuse of surroundings
Are almost a taboo subject
Because they imply silence
About so many aberrations
Of the doomed humankind
In full ignorance of Nature!
What times we're going thru
If all talks of water pollution
And need effluent treatment
Are negligently reduced to
Soothing delay "for later,"
As though we hope for
A second lifetime without
Succeeding generations. . .
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Springtime
A saunter around the vernal hills
May teach you more of yourself--
What's wrong and good with you
Than all a big city's practices in
Various groups and societies can.
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Overlapped Manifestations
Holding in your hand
Even a single leaf --
The very last gift
Of outgoing season. . .
You look at it and
What you see is a vision
Of many inherent facets
Of the uncarved
Philosopher's monolith.
In such a way
It is to be manifested
As an overall universal design
Laying out in your palm's lines.
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A Settled Abode
Once on the edge of stress,
Just think of the deep forest:
It lets the birds perch and nest
With no intention to call them
When they come and no longing
For their return when they fly away.
If only men's minds can be like the forest,
They would not swerve from good relations
With their parents, kids, friends and colleagues.
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When It Goes to Imbalance
If we take knowledge as a rootage,
We easily find out that all things
That are destructed are yet
The very cause of generation.
We know subliminally
That to stand up for generation
And ignore destruction
Is to violate the rootage and thus
Spoil the whole superstructure.
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Good Old Times Blossoming
When these wild plum trees just start
To burst their buds, I recall my fellows,
My old brethren in the harsh wilderness:
One was a ferryman, another a woodcutter,
Who once upon a time gave me the saplings.
Whereas the times we used to drink together,
Sitting beneath these blossom trees, are fallen
In oblivion, those years of ten or so springs ago
Are like old snapshots to me, and the wine cups
Of those days I now use as tea-bowls to entertain
Some rare those who stay away from the highway
To be one with themselves, Nature and Providence.
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A Clear View
At an instance I glance
A dry leaf ramified pattern
I see a marvel of the universe
Lied at the very centre of my palm.
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We All Are Like Trees
We all are like the trees that
Use what comes their ways
To provide well themselves.
By means of dipping roots
They reach the azure skies;
By accepting the rains
They strengthen the ground
On which they stand up
In the winds and thunders;
By reaching out to the sun
They perfect the lives
Of all who move around.
All their excellences reduce
To the motto which states:
'Absorb, Refine, Appropriate'
In order to grow greater day
By day, year after year, forever.
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Routine
Our daily life
Lies between
Public haunts
And home rest.
We find benefits
In communion,
But our beatitude
Comprise
Cultivating virtues
While common sense
Gets into our hands
From Mother Nature's
Expedience.
As for our good habits,
We derive them all
At the first light of dawn.
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The Guardians
High mountains serve as temples
For visiting godheads and deities
Who do not approve themselves
In the earthly manifestations but
Who dwell in the fibres of gems
And stones, feeding from jasper
And communicating by virtue of
Opal, ruby and, most of all, jade.
Some are permanently stationed
And known as the kings of cliffs--
The guardians of hallowed places,
The gateways to the parallel worlds.
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The Celestial Office
The terrestrial mapping is design
To present Mother Earth's making
She has done upon celestial patterns.
Only the human beings are able
To look up into heavens and read
Their records in the office upstairs.
Yes, Heaven has the stars, Earth has
The mountains and rivers while Man
Has the steering wheel of his fortune.
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Final Realization
First we see mountains as the mountains;
Then we see them as something different
From mountains, and only after that stage
They are the mountains in our eyes again.
The wonder is that we ultimately see them
And do not wonder any more of their look;
And this is how it works thru contemplation.
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A Song of Contemplation
All this has been experienced
And tasted more than once
To be put to the worse:
The course of years and
Generations of foreign descendants,
Progression, oppression,
Recovery, discovery, and finally
Enduring affection of the polar exile;
A half-yearly chasing of the sun
And wind-break which penetrates at last
Into