Post by donq on Dec 13, 2023 14:04:08 GMT
[I'd like to share some Chinese (prose) poetry here, by Su Tung-P’o (Su Shih, 1037-1101)]
The turning year
Nightfall. Clouds scatter and vanish.
The sky is pure and cold.
Silently the River of Heaven turns in the Jade Vault.
If tonight I do not enjoy life to the full,
Next month, next year, who knows where I will be?
I asked, “Do you know how it is with the water and the moon ? ‘The water flows on and on like this,’ but somehow it never flows away. The moon waxes and wanes, and yet in the end it’s the same moon. If we look at things through the eyes of change, then there’s not an instant of stillness in all creation. But if we observe the changelessness of things, then we and all beings alike have no end. What is there to be envious about?...
“Moreover, everything in the world has its owner, and if a thing doesn’t belong to us, we don’t dare take a hair of it. Only the clear breeze over the river, or the bright moon between the hills, which our ears hear as music, our eyes see beauty in—these we may take without prohibition, these we may make free with and they will never be used up. These are the endless treasures of the Creator, here for you and me to enjoy together!”
The turning year
Nightfall. Clouds scatter and vanish.
The sky is pure and cold.
Silently the River of Heaven turns in the Jade Vault.
If tonight I do not enjoy life to the full,
Next month, next year, who knows where I will be?
I asked, “Do you know how it is with the water and the moon ? ‘The water flows on and on like this,’ but somehow it never flows away. The moon waxes and wanes, and yet in the end it’s the same moon. If we look at things through the eyes of change, then there’s not an instant of stillness in all creation. But if we observe the changelessness of things, then we and all beings alike have no end. What is there to be envious about?...
“Moreover, everything in the world has its owner, and if a thing doesn’t belong to us, we don’t dare take a hair of it. Only the clear breeze over the river, or the bright moon between the hills, which our ears hear as music, our eyes see beauty in—these we may take without prohibition, these we may make free with and they will never be used up. These are the endless treasures of the Creator, here for you and me to enjoy together!”
