Wild Waters and the Tao
This is the complete text of Wild Waters and the Tao, an exploration of the roles of water and wild nature in ancient Taoist poetry. It is illustrated with dozens of Roderick MacIver ink and watercolor paintings. The voices here — Han Shan, Robinson Jeffers, Tu Fu, Li Po, Lao-tsu, Jim Harrison, Meng Hao-jan, Deng Ming-Dao and many others explore the watercourse way — surrender, the softest elements of the universe — water and wind — wear down the hardest immovable objects — rock, mountain and mighty oak.
All of the written content of the book can be read below. If you’d like a PDF that includes all of the art in the book — fifty-seven paintings, you can order that here. The physical copies of the book sold out shortly after publication in 2013. A new edition in journal format that includes room for your own journal notes will shortly be available.
Wild Waters and the Tao
by
Roderick W. MacIver
Spring water is pure in an emerald stream
moonlight is white on Cold Mountain
silence thoughts and the spirit becomes clear
focus on emptiness and the world grows still
- Han Shan (aka Cold Mountain), 9th Century T'ang Dynasty, as interpreted by Red Pine, The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain
. . . . .
Silence thoughts, invite emptiness
The universe beckons.
- Journal Poem
Introduction
This work is inspired by the poetry of ancient Zen and Taoist hermits, many of them monks, who lived hundreds and thousands of years ago in remote mountains in China. They wrote about acceptance, silence, solitude and living close to the beauty and mystery of nature. They tried to put into words that which can't be put into words. They wrote about "soundless music."
Within the tradition of ancient Chinese hermit poetry there exists a genre of "harmony poems," or poems inspired by the work of earlier poets. Wild Waters and the Tao is a derivative work – my poems are reflections on selected ancient works. Harmonies tend to follow in the same structural format and meter as the original, admired poems, but my work in this book only loosely adheres to that principle. I've taken this liberty after noticing that different translators have interpreted the same work in dramatically different ways, including meter and format. I've approached this as creative work, more like jazz than classical music.
Heron Dance has been a fringe endeavor from the start. It has existed, sometimes thrived, sometimes struggled, on the edges of different realities, between realities – wild nature and modern culture to name two. It has existed, deliberately, outside the traditional sources of support for artistic and literary efforts – academia, book publishers, art dealers and institutions of all types. I've looked at our culture, at the assumptions on which we base our lives without the compromises and politics that institutional financial support might require.
It is appropriate that the Heron Dance journey ends at the edge of territory where time touches beyond time, where words touch beyond words.
- Journal Note
In the Night We Changed Too
At night the river flows
Between, around our homes
Forests and pastures
Rivers of life, rivers of time
The past now lives only in memory
The future only in imagination.
The river, in the night rises, falls
At dawn birds that weren't here yesterday
And flowers, fish born, others gone
Osprey, merganser, kingfisher and barred owl.
We changed too in the night
Moment by moment, like the river.
- Journal Poem
. . . . .
Erase the lines: I pray you not to love classifications:
The thing is like a river, from source to sea-mouth
One flowing life.
- Robinson Jeffers, from the poem "Monument"
In Sync with the River
Good to be on the river again
Alone, floating backward
Watching pebbles, shades of red, brown and white
Slip by underneath
Birds staking out territory, singing along the banks
Bird drama, like a Verdi opera
The struggle for territory in which to create new life
Good territory attracts a mate.
A heron I didn't notice
Lifted off the left bank and flew downriver
Then a hawk, an immature red-tail
Landing in a tree at a bend in the river
Where it could watch me until I got too close, then
Shrieking, it too flew off down the river.
Ice water cold, clear
The banks of the river still lined with snow
Fingers freezing despite neoprene gloves
Every few minutes I stop to rest them on my black spray skirt
And warm the numbness off.
An early April day, the sun not yet able to chase the cold off
But almost, soon.
Clumsily paddling between rocks in the rapids
Hitting some I shouldn't hit
I tell myself, "I'll get better as things warm up
I'll get in better sync with the river
Soon."
- Journal Poem
South Wind
The days grow long, the mountains
Beautiful. The south wind blows
Over blossoming meadows.
Newly arrived swallows dart
Over the steaming marshes.
Ducks in pairs drowse on the warm sand.
- Tu Fu, as interpreted by Kenneth Rexroth, One Hundred Poems From The Chinese
Tu Fu (713-770) was a scholar in the court of Hsuan Tsung, or Ming Huang, "the Bright Emperor." He criticized the morals and foreign policy of the court and was banished, and spent much of the rest of his life wandering up and down the Hsiang and Yangtze Rivers. He died an unknown poet living on a houseboat.
Shortly before his death at the age of 59 he wrote of disillusionment and failure.
Heading South
Spring returns to Peach Blossom River
and my sail is a cloud through maple forests.
Exiled, I lived for years in secret, moving on
farther from home with tear-stains on my sleeves.
Now old and sick, at last I'm headed south.
Remembering old friends, I look back north a final time.
A hundred years I sang my bitter song,
but not a soul remembers those old rhymes.
- Tu Fu, as interpreted by Sam Hamill, Crossing the Yellow River: Three Hundred Poems from the Chinese
Now many consider Tu Fu the greatest poet in Chinese history, perhaps because of the emotion – both joy and sorrow – that his poems capture.
Spring Travel
Keeping on and on,
a traveler gets farther, farther away; dust without cease
follows a horse through the world.
A traveler's feelings
after the sun's rays slant -- colors of spring
in the morning mist.
The river's flow heard
at the empty inn -- flowers just blooming at the old palace.
I think of home
a thousand li away; green-willow wind stirs on the pond.
- Han-shan Te-ch'ing (1546-1623), as interpreted by Red Pine, The Clouds Should Know Me By Now, Buddhist Poet Monks of China
. . . . .
I think of home
A thousand miles away
A horse, a river's flow, an empty inn
Flowers bloom
I go on, but still think of home.
- Journal Poem
At Night, Dreams of Rivers
Ospreys shrieking through early morning mist
Loons on wilderness lakes at sunset
Wild rivers, wild waters inhabit dreamworlds
Lakes that empty into rivers that empty into other rivers
That empty into lakes.
Camped by a river, canoe pulled up
Turned over and tied to a tree
Sitting on shore, sipping tea, listening to loons
Peace sneaks up and enters your heart
And at night, dreams of rivers.
Grasses on the river bottom
Sway gently in the current, pointing downstream
Easy to get lost on this river
A maze of marshes, beaver ponds and islands
Between rapids
Only river grasses point the way.
My travels down this river take me on a linear path
Surrounded though, and aware of the cycles around me
Cycles of wind and rain and sun
Cycles of birth, life, and death.
I'm just passing through
Only temporarily a part of this wild world
An imposter in a sense, here for a vacation
Life out here is too hard for full-time
It's either too hot, too cold, or bugs, or bears
Trying to eat your stuff.
Water, substance of mystery
Wild water especially so
Life nurturing, it attracts life
Wild rivers carry you along through their world.
A sensory smorgasbord
Sight – colors of blue, green, white
Sound – bird songs, and the roar of rapids ahead
Smells – wildflowers, new life, decaying life
Touch – the cold water, the wind,
The spray (or crashing waves) of rapids.
The water in us
Connects with the river, its wilder cousin.
Capable of great force
Capable of gentleness, softness.
Agents of change
Rivers were here before us, and will be long after us.
Rivers on a journey
In search of the sea, the great waters beyond
Like all life, but you can't take them for granted
Conduits of energy
They take the over-confident, careless river traveler down
Even the wary, experienced river paddler
Sometimes meets misfortune on the river
Unpredictable and overwhelming in its force.
A world of contrasts, of boundaries
The river surface a separation between the underwater world
And us, our world
Rivers are easy to ignore as they travel through the peripheries of our lives, unobtrusive
But if you embrace them, they open themselves to you
And bring peace.
- Journal Poem
Rivers, Places of Sacred Beauty
The woods changing, early spring sun
Robins hunt for worms between patches of snow
Red-winged blackbirds soon but not yet
One more winter storm first.
The rivers swollen
Big chunks of ice plunge over waterfalls.
Soon, very soon, the ice will be gone
I can drift down, backward, forward
And reintroduce myself to that quiet place
The sweet-smelling river
And listen to birds sing of winter survived
And of new life to come
Sing to that place of sacred beauty.
- Journal Poem
Zazen on Ching-t'ing Mountain
The birds have vanished down the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.
- Li Po (701-762), as interpreted by Sam Hamill, Crossing the Yellow River: Three Hundred Poems from the Chinese
The Great Masters of Ancient Times
The great masters of ancient times
Focused on the indiscernible
and penetrated the dark
you would never know them
and because you wouldn't know them
I describe them with reluctance
they were careful as if crossing a river in winter
cautious as if worried about neighbors
reserved like a guest
ephemeral like melting ice
simple like uncarved wood
open like a valley
and murky like a puddle
but those who can be like a puddle
become clear when they're still
and those who can be at rest
become alive when they're roused
those who treasure this Way
don't try to be seen
not trying to be seen
they can hide and stay hidden
Ts'ao Tao-Ch'ung (Taoist nun, Sung Dynasty, 960-1278) comments:
Although the ancient masters lived in the world, no one thought they were special.
- Chapter 15 from Lao-tsu's Taoteching, Red Pine translation
. . . . .
Them that knows, doesn't tell
Them that tells, doesn't know
What they know they know from years of solitude, of quiet
It can't be put into words.
No attachment to being perceived as enlightened
No attachment to being perceived as a Zen or Taoist master.
- Journal Poem
Cabin Poem
I've decided to make up my mind
about nothing, to assume the water mask,
to finish my life disguised as a creek, an
eddy, joining at night the full, sweet
flow, to absorb the sky,
to swallow the heat and cold, the moon
and the stars, to swallow myself
in ceaseless flow.
- Jim Harrison, excerpt from "Cabin Poem" from the book The Shape of the Journey, New and Collected Poems
. . . . .
The ceaseless flow of the water mask
Swallow the heat, the cold, the moon, the stars
Some days I'm right there
My mind has no words, aware without words
Sometimes I'm there in the ceaseless flow
And sometimes it eludes me
I live in what I want, want to avoid
What I'm afraid of.
But some days, on the river
The ceaseless flow
I feel it welcoming me.
- Journal Poem
A Farewell for Tu Huang
Water weaving Ch'u and Wu into a single home village, you
set out on a spring river. It's all so vast and vague,
and your sails: when night falls, they'll rest at anchor
along the edge of heaven, that slice through the heart.
- Meng Hao-jan, as interpreted by David Hinton, The Mountain Poems of Meng Hao-jan
. . . . .
There is a place on the river
Where the water splits in two around an island
And then in two again around another island
Between the two islands, rapids
A big standing wave
Which you can avoid if that's what you'd really like to do
But on a hot day, it's like taking a two-second swim
As long as you stay upright.
A favorite place on the river
Once I saw an osprey there
It flew off as I paddled by.
Entering the space between the islands
Is like entering a universe of its own, primal
Open your heart to it,
And it gives your heart life.
- Journal Poem
Wandering at Oblique Creek
This new year makes it fifty suddenly
gone. Thinking of life's steady return
to rest cuts deep, driving me to spend
all morning wandering. Skies clear,
air's breath fresh, I sit with friends
beside this stream flowing far away.
Striped bream weave gentle currents;
calling gulls drift above idle valleys.
Eyes roaming distant waters, I find
ridge above ridge: it's nothing like
majestic nine-fold immortality peaks,
but to reverent eyes it's incomparable.
Taking the winejar, I pour a round, and
we start offering brimful toasts:
who knows where today might lead
or if all this will ever come true again.
After a few cups, my heart's far away,
and I forget thousand-year sorrows:
ranging to the limit of this morning's
joy, it isn't tomorrow I'm looking for.
- T'ao Ch'ien (365-427) Mountain Home: The Wilderness Poetry of Ancient China as interpreted by David Hinton
. . . . .
Fifty-six years gone, I spend the morning wandering
It isn't tomorrow I'm looking for
To reverent eyes the mountains are incomparable
I sit with friends by a stream flowing far away
Drink wine, and imagine distant waters.
- Journal Poem
Nothing in the World Is Weaker Than Water
Nothing in the world is weaker than water
but against the hard and the strong nothing outdoes it
for nothing can change it
the soft overcomes the hard
the weak overcomes the strong
this is something everyone knows
but no one is able to practice
thus do sages declare
who accepts a country's disgrace
we call the lord of soil and grain
who accepts a country's misfortune
we call the ruler of all under Heaven
upright words sound upside down.
- Lao-Tzu, The Tao Te Ching, Chapter 78, as interpreted by Red Pine
Hsuan-Tsung (685-762, Chinese emperor, poet and calligrapher, Taoist and Zen scholar) comments:
The nature of water is to stay low, to not struggle, and to take on the shape of its container. Thus, nothing is weaker. Yet despite such weakness it can bore through rocks. Rocks, however, cannot wear down water.
Chu Ti-Huang (1885-1941, Ch'ing Dynasty official and early revolutionary, student of Buddhism and philosophy) comments:
We can alter the course and shape of water, but we can't alter its basic nature to descend, by means of which it overcomes the hardest and strongest things.
Light Cannot Be Seen Without Shade
Light cannot be seen without shade.
Shade cannot be seen without light.
By moonlight, we see in black and white. We cannot see colors. There is something fascinating and valuable about seeing the world that way. We see only what is essential. We see form emerging from a sea of blackness. . . . We can look at the world so familiar by daylight and see it anew in the black and white of moonlight.
You see yin and yang. . . .
The day warms, the night cools. The sun moves over a hill, changing the face from brightness to shadow. Stand in the middle of a forest and watch all the shadows and sunlight shift second by second.
You see yin and yang.
- Deng Ming-Dao, The Lunar Tao, Meditations in Harmony with the Seasons (edited)
. . . . .
River shadows shift
Boundaries in the water world
Water, air, trees, earth
Yin and yang shadows meet
Light and dark merge then separate
Off river bottoms
Mingling with the sky's reflection
There on the water looking
Looking for whatever you want
You find peace.
- Journal Poem
Encounters with Chinese Hermits
Bill Porter, who sometimes writes under the pen name Red Pine, interviewed Master Hsieh, a Taoist monk, living on China's Huashan Mountain.
Hsieh: Lao-tzu said to cultivate tranquility and detachment. To be natural. To be natural means not to force things. When you act natural, you get what you need. But to know what's natural, you have to cultivate tranquility. Huashan has long been famous as a center of Taoism because it's quiet. There used to be a lot of hermits here. But now the mountain has been developed for tourism. The tranquility is gone, and so are the hermits.
Porter: Aren't they interested in teaching others?
Hsieh: Yes. But before you can teach others, you have to cultivate yourself. You have to know something before you can teach something. You can't explain inner cultivation just because you know words in books. You have to discover what they mean first.
Porter: If people can't learn Taoism from hermits, can they learn from monks in temples?
Hsieh: You can't learn just by visiting a temple. You have to live there for at least three years and help with the daily work. If you can stand the hardship and privation, after three years you can ask one of the monks to be your teacher. It's not easy. You have to have a clear head and a quiet mind. As I said before, it takes at least three years of physical training before your mind is quiet enough to understand the Tao.
- from the book Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits, by Bill Porter
. . . . .
The Tao offers contradictory, elusive truths
That make no sense to the busy, distracted mind.
Monks in search of the Tao
Retreat to quiet mountains to let their minds settle
Understanding cultivated in tranquility.
- Journal Poem
The Second Book of the Tao
Ch'ing the master woodworker carved a bell stand so intricately graceful that all who saw it were astonished. They thought that a god must have made it.
The Marquis of Lu asked, "How did your art achieve something of such unearthly beauty?"
"My Lord," Ch'ing said, "I'm just a simple woodworker — I don't know anything about art. But here's what I can tell you. Whenever I begin to carve a bell stand, I concentrate my mind. After three days of meditating, I no longer have any thoughts of praise or blame. After five days, I no longer have any thoughts of success or failure. After seven days, I'm not identified with a body. All my power is focused on my task; there are no distractions. At that point, I enter the mountain forest. I examine the trees until exactly the right one appears. If I can see a bell stand inside it, the real work is done, and all I have to do is get started. Thus I harmonize inner and outer. That's why people think that my work must be superhuman."
Like Duke Huan's wheelwright and Price Wen-hui's cook, Ch'ing had learned to follow the Tao, which goes beyond all art. Without the distraction of past or future, his mind was free, moment by moment, to move toward its own delight. Concentration, he found, was not a matter of applying effort; it was a way of eliminating the unnecessary. After a while, concepts such as good and evil, success and failure, flitted off into the unreal like ghosts that have lost their mission. What remained was the silence, a deep slow-flowing river in which he stood up to his hips, attentive to every ripple and splash, knowing that there was a hidden life beneath the surface and that if only he was patient enough, it would yield itself to him in its time. Nothing happened for days, and again nothing, and more nothing, and he was unaware of how tenuous the separation between him and the world had become.
By the time he entered the forest, he was a tree among trees. Coming upon the right one was like seeing himself in a mirror. Suddenly it was there, he was there, and the bell stand fully articulated within him.
- both excerpts from Stephen Mitchell's The Second Book of the Tao
. . . . .
The master woodworker humbly seeks collaboration
With tree and god to create a transcendent work
A sacred journey that first requires a sacrifice
The sacrifice of meditation, of silence.
I too seek collaboration
With the river gods
I offer a sacrifice – time in silence
And I offer my willingness to listen, to see.
I float backward trying to absorb
To absorb your beauty, your peace, your birdsong
Your life-sustaining gentleness, your fierceness.
- Journal Poem
Climbing Green-Cliff Mountain in Yung-Chia
Taking a little food, a light walking stick, I
wander up from my home in quiet mystery,
the path along streams winding far away
onto ridgetops, no end to this wonder at
slow waters silent in their frozen beauty
and bamboo glistening at heart with frost,
cascades scattering a confusion of spray
and broad forests crowding distant cliffs.
Thinking it's moonrise I see in the west
and sunset I'm watching blaze in the east,
I hike on until dark, then linger out night
sheltered away in deep expanses of shadow.
Immune to high importance: that's renown.
Walk humbly and it's all promise in beauty,
for in quiet mystery the way runs smooth,
ascending remote heights beyond compare.
Utter tranquility, the distinction between
yes this and no that lost, I embrace primal
unity, thought and silence woven together,
that deep healing where we venture forth.
- Hsieh Ling-yun (385-433), as interpreted by David Hinton, The Mountain Poems of Hsieh Ling-yun
. . . . .
A walk up a mountain towards home
Adjusting to the quiet tranquility
Unity, thought and silence woven together
Makes for deep healing.
- Journal Poem
The Lunar Tao
Each pilgrimage is a circle
we travel to return transformed.
The key to pilgrimage is to embark on the trip with a heightened intention. We are not just tourists. We're going to honor someone or something. By honoring what is sacred to us, we make it more real in our lives.
Inevitably, we return from pilgrimage, and this is an essential part of the meaning as well. We're supposed to return to our normal lives, except that we return transformed, carrying the experience with us forever, having touched the reality of what we love. . . .
- Deng Ming-Dao, The Lunar Tao, Meditations in Harmony with the Seasons
. . . . .
What is life really about?
I used to go on journeys to find out
Pilgrimages to places free from artificial constraints
Free from self-imposed limitations.
We go on pilgrimages to the edges of our lives
To see what life is like on the other side.
I used to go on pilgrimages to live with Indians in the bush
They accepted me, but reluctantly
I was not of their world.
The circles of my journeys are smaller now
I paddle the sacred river
To submerge myself in that watery world
To make it more real in my life
To touch what is sacred inside
And then return transformed,
With birdsong in my heart.
- Journal Poem
Basho's Ghost
Basho walks across the plain where a great battle once raged. Only empty fields remain. The landscape reminds him of a poem by Tu Fu (712-720), in which the T'ang poet surveyed a similar scene and wrote,
The whole country devastated,
only mountains and rivers remain. In
springtime, at the ruined castle, the grass is always green.
For Basho, the grass blowing in the breeze seems especially poignant, so much so that his eyes well into tears. If Tu Fu, both as a poet and as a man, is a fit model – to be emulated rather than copied – Basho is reminded of how little we have learned from all our interminable warfare and bloodshed. The wind blows. The grasses bend. Basho moistens his brush months later and writes, remembering,
Summer grasses – after great soldiers' imperial dreams.
- Sam Hamill, Basho's Ghost
. . . . .
The blood of great soldiers, shed and then forgotten
All that's left now is the green grass where they fell
Around the ruined castle.
We are on this old rock together,
revolving around the sun, hurdling through space.
A marvelous rock, full of diversity, and cycles and mystery.
We visit here but for a short time.
Acts of kindness, enjoyment of our time here, adventure — these things actually matter.
In the end, and there very likely will be an end, perhaps ignominious
Perhaps brought about by the abuse we keep heaping on this beautiful place
Our striving, our power-seeking, all our pride in our possessions and fear
of losing them won't matter (we were just passing through).
The suffering we inflicted on each other over centuries of wars.
Wars over the differences between us -- religious differences, ethnicity, principles
and ideals and ideas.
They seemed important at the time.
The further back in history, the clearer those wars are now
Fought over illusions.
And when we disappear and our hydro-electric dams turn to silt,
And skyscrapers to dust,
All that will have mattered will be the time some of us spent loving this magnificent place.
Loving each other. Loving life.
- Journal Poem
The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches
What is important is to keep our mind high in the world of true understanding, and returning to the world of our daily experience to seek therein the truth of beauty. No matter what we may be doing at a given moment, we must not forget it has a bearing upon our everlasting self which is poetry.
- Basho
What must be borne in mind in reading the travel sketches by Basho is that travels in his day had to be made under very precarious conditions, and that few people, if any, thought of taking to the road merely for pleasure or pastime. Furthermore, Basho had been going through agonizing stages of self-scrutiny in the years immediately preceding the travels, so that it was quite certain that, when he left his house, he thought there was no other alternative before him. To put it more precisely, Basho had been casting away his earthly attachments, one by one, in the years preceding the journey, and now he had nothing else to cast away but his own self which was in him as well as around him. He had to cast this self away, for otherwise he was not able to restore his true identity (what he calls 'the everlasting self of poetry' in the passage above). He saw a tenuous chance of achieving his final goal in traveling, and he left his house 'caring naught for his provisions in the state of sheer ecstasy'.
- Nobuyuki Yuasa, from the Introduction, Matsuo Basho: The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches
. . . . .
He had nothing left to cast away
But his own self
Which he did to restore his true identity
His everlasting self
Which is poetry.
- Journal Poem
I've Put in Gardens South of the Fields, Opened Up a Stream and Planted Trees
Woodcutter and recluse – they inhabit
these mountains for different reasons,
and there are other forms of difference.
You can heal here among these gardens,
sheltered from rank vapors of turmoil,
wilderness clarity calling distant winds.
I ch'i-sited my house on a northern hill,
doors opening out onto a southern river,
ended trips to the well with a new stream
and planted hibiscus in terraced banks.
Now there are flocks of trees at my door
and crowds of mountains at my window,
and I wander thin trails down to fields or
gaze into a distance of towering peaks,
wanting little, never wearing myself out. It's
rare luck to make yourself such a life,
though like ancient recluse paths, mine
bring longing for the footsteps of friends:
how could I forget them in this exquisite
adoration kindred spirits alone can share?
- Hsieh Ling-yun (385-433), as interpreted by David Hinton, Mountain Home: The Wilderness Poetry of Ancient China
. . . . .
Lament of the mountain recluse:
Streams and mountains protect me from human affairs,
Surrounded by mountains, I want little
I don't wear myself out, healing
It's rare luck to make yourself such a life,
Still I long for the footsteps of friends
Still I long.
- Journal Poem
The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain
The layered bloom of hills and streams
kingfisher shades beneath rose-colored clouds
mountain mist soaks my cotton bandana
dew penetrates my palm-bark coat
on my feet are traveling shoes
my hand holds an old vine staff
again I gaze beyond the dusty world
what more could I want in that land of dreams
- Han Shan (aka Cold Mountain), 9th Century T'ang Dynasty
Translator notes:
The fibrous bark of the coir-palm is still worn as raingear by the poorer farmers of South China. During the T'ang dynasty, most people wore wooden clogs around their yards (similar to those still worn in Japan) and shoes made of hemp when walking long distances. I'm not sure what sort of vine Cold Mountain used, but in negotiating slippery slopes in the coastal regions of South China, I have found the light weight and tensile strength of a banyan's aerial root especially useful as well as widely available. In Buddhist parlance, "dust" refers to sensation and "dreams" to delusions, both of which are obstacles to enlightenment.
- Red Pine, The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain
. . . . .
The layered bloom of mountain rivers,
kingfishers and mountain mist
penetrate my heart.
I live in the sensations of dreams
Delusions and sensations
And thus, in Buddhist parlance,
Cannot attain enlightenment
Which is fine because the river flows
And kingfishers and mountain mist
Penetrate my heart.
- Journal Poem
Looking for Yung, the Recluse Master
Emerald peaks polish heaven, I wander,
forgetting the years, sweep clouds away
in search of the ancient Way. Resting
against a tree, I listen to streamwater,
black ox dozing among warm blossoms,
white crane asleep in towering pines.
A voice calls through river-tinted dusk,
but I've descended into cool mist alone.
- Li Po (701-762), as interpreted by David Hinton, Mountain Home, The Wilderness Poetry of Ancient China
. . . . .
In search of the ancient Way
I listen to streamwater
and descend into solitary cool mist.
- Journal Poem
Clear Creek Chant
It renders the mind clear — Clear Creek,
its water unrivaled for such pure color.
I can gaze into the bottom of its always
fresh repose. Is there anything like this
brilliant mirror in which people walk?
It's a wind-painting birds cross through,
and at nightfall, shrieking monkeys leave
all lament over distant wandering empty.
- Li Po (701-762), as interpreted by David Hinton, Mountain Home: The Wilderness Poetry of Ancient China
. . . . .
The quiet pools of wild rivers
Render the mind clear
You can see the bottom
Shifting shapes of rock, sand and fish.
Yes, out here wandering
Distant from home and bed
Life is often uncomfortable
But complaints are empty
And peace deep.
- Journal Poem
Rejection of Logic
The South has no limit yet does have a limit.
The sun at noon is simultaneously declining,
simultaneously with being alive a thing dies
Chuang-tzu is sceptical about the organ with which we think, which, it may be worth repeating, is not the brain but the heart. Why do we continue to trust its thoughts even in old age when it has decayed with the rest of the body? In any case all men have hearts, and if each of them, wise or foolish, takes his own as the final authority, how can they agree? Does the heart reign over the body at all? Isn't it rather that the body is a system within which the organs take turns as ruler and subject? The body does indeed have a 'genuine ruler' which articulates its members, but that is the Way itself, the mysterious order which runs through all things, which we follow spontaneously as soon as we cease to use the heart to analyze alternatives.
. . . at the moment of birth or death a thing is both alive and dead. . . .
Chuang-tzu shares that common and elusive feeling that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, that analysis always leaves something out, that neither side of a dichotomy is wholly true. . . .
The sage, we are told, 'sorts' everything within the cosmos but does not 'assess' it, he 'assesses' the actions of the great men of history but does not engage in disputation about them. . .
'In the case of the sage's stillness, it is not that he is still because he says "It is good to be still"; there is nothing among the myriad things which is sufficient to disturb his heart, that is why he is still.' . . . he mirrors heaven and earth with perfect clarity . . . .
- A. C. Graham, Chuang-tzu, The Inner Chapters. Excerpted and edited from chapter 3, "Rejection of logic"
. . . . .
The mysterious order which runs through all things, the Way
You can sense it, and maybe know it (who knows?), but not describe It.
The stillness, the center of balance and harmony within each of us
To the extent our lives revolve around that, are connected to that soundless music
We have the power that comes from balance and harmony
Our lives function in a state of cohesion.
It's 3 am, I lie in bed in my cabin in the forest listening
To night sounds, to the life of the forest
Unfolding as it should
In harmony with the Way, according to the Way
The forest, in turn, unfolds according to the rhythms of the Universe
The soundless music of the Universe
I too seek a life and death
That unfolds in sync with that harmony, that balance.
- Journal Poem
Dwelling in the Mountains (Verse 29)
Plans beginning to form, I set out,
walking-stick in hand, hiking alone
through gorges and across streams,
into mountains and over ridgelines,
crossing summits without resting,
tracing creeks back without pause.
Combed by wind and rinsed by rain, or
stepping into dew among the stars,
I sifted through our shallow thoughts
and left their tight compass behind.
Without shell or stalk for divination,
I picked out the fine and wondrous,
cut thornwood staffs and blazed trails
in my search for boulders and cliffs.
Here, four mountains circled round,
a pair of streams winding through,
I soon had a library
facing south ridges
and a teaching hall
against north slopes,
a hall for meditation among sheer peaks
and huts for monks along deep streams.
Looking into these towering forests hundreds of years old, I
inhabit the savory fragrance of ten thousand passing ages,
and turning to the fresh springs of all boundless antiquity,
treasure the inexhaustible clarity of their glistening liquid.
Leaving behind the elegant towers that stand outside cities
and the human enterprise bustling inside every village wall,
I delight here in origin's weave, embrace uncarved simplicity,
heaven and earth mingling sweet dew in these fields of Way.
- Hsieh Ling-yun, verse 29 of the poem "Dwelling in the Mountains", as translated by David Hinton, The Mountain Poems of Hsieh Ling-yun
. . . . .
A mountain valley, fields of Way
Having left behind human enterprise, its bustle
And slowly abandoned shallow thoughts.
Combed by wind, rinsed by rain
A recluse submerged, delights in origin's weave, heaven and earth
The quiet of mountain forest, the stars at night.
- Journal Poem
Siddhartha
I do not differentiate very much between thoughts and words. Quite frankly, I do not attach great importance to thoughts either. I attach more importance to things. For example, there was a man at this ferry who was my predecessor and teacher. He was a holy man who for many years believed only in the river and nothing else. He noticed that the river's voice spoke to him. He learned from it; it educated and taught him. The river seemed like a god to him and for many years he did not know that every wind, every cloud, every bird, every beetle is equally divine and knows and can teach just as well as the esteemed river. But when this holy man went off into the woods, he knew everything; he knew more than you and I, without teachers, without books, just because he believed in the river.
- Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
It's not a matter of spending money. You have to spend your life. Not many people are willing to do this. If you're ready to learn, you don't have to look for a teacher. A teacher will find you. Taoism is very deep. There's a great deal to learn, and you can't do it quickly. The Tao isn't something that can be put into words. You have to practice before you can understand. Lao-tzu teaches us to be natural. You can't force things, including practice. Understanding is something that happens naturally. It's different for everyone. The main thing is to reduce your desires and quiet your mind.
- Master Hsueh, as quoted by Bill Porter, Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits
. . . . .
The Way that can be told of is not an Unvarying Way;
The names that can be named are not unvarying names.
It was from the Nameless that Heaven and Earth sprang;
The named is but the mother that rears the ten thousand creatures, each after its kind.
Truly, "Only he that rids himself forever of desire can see the Secret Essences";
He that has never rid himself of desire can see only the Outcomes.
These two things issued from the same mould, but nevertheless are different in name.
This "same mould" we can but call the Mystery,
Or rather the "Darker than any Mystery",
The Doorway whence issued all Secret Essences.
- Lao-Tzu, as interpreted by Arthur Waley, The Tao Te Ching
. . . . .
I dip my hand into the river and pull it out
Water, cool mysterious lovely water slipping between my fingers
The river of a thousand voices offers no words
But it searches for the ocean
And in its birdsong and with wildflowers
The mystery of water, of wild moving water
Life-sustaining water
Without words, it offers peace beyond words.
- Journal Poem
The River Flows, Rages, Swirls
The river flows, rages, swirls
I try to relax
And not let the turbulence disturb my equanimity
Waiting for an opportunity to use the power of the river
To get where I want to go.
Waiting is important
To the river way of life.
Willing to miss some opportunities.
Waiting calm, centered, peaceful within.
And acting with determination when the time is right.
Last night, on Stillness Mountain
The sun disappearing over distant mountain peaks
A few days alone, and silence moves in and takes over
Mind and no-mind, words and no-words, merge in relaxed equilibrium
Until quiet remains.
- Journal Poem
The Way of the Brush
Numerous anecdotes testify to the fact that Chinese painting has long been an art of the studio rather than of the on-the-spot execution—in short, of Wordsworth's "emotion reflected in tranquility," though not at all in a romantic sense. There is one famous story of two painters, Li Ssu-hsun and Wu Tao-tzu, who were commissioned by the emperor to produce paintings showing the thousand miles of the Kialing River. Li worked furiously on sketches and notes while Wu wandered around admiring the beauty and wildness of the country along the great river. Then both artists returned to the capital. Li, the realist, set to work with the help of his sketches to paint the entire length of the river on the palace walls. But Wu haunted the inns, drank wine and enjoyed the singing girls, doing no work at all. Within the palace, the courtiers began to get worried, but outside, Wu was perfectly happy and without a care. There were only one or two days left until the time limit set by the emperor would expire. Li's painting was already taking glorious shape when Wu finally appeared at the palace and started work. With tremendous zest and great sweeping strokes, he began to throw the bristling spirit of the Kialing onto the walls. Mountains soared into the air on the wings of his brush, torrents roared around the bends in the cliffs, and the solitary footsteps of pilgrims clattered hollowly over the fragile bridges. In two days, Wu had conjured up a masterpiece a hundred times worthier than Li's splendid art.
Wu had concentrated not on objective reality, but on the essential nature of things. . .
- Fritz van Briessen, The Way of the Brush: Painting Techniques of China and Japan
. . . . .
Mountains and rivers have a spirit
Difficult to paint
First you need to travel the river
Submerge in its beauty and wildness
And then, before painting, hang out in inns
Drink wine and enjoy the company
Of singing girls
And then, with great sweeping strokes
Keeping in mind the spirit of the wild river
Acknowledging too the role of the wine, the singing girls
The zest, the zeal, for life
Then paint river and mountains.
- Journal Poem
Late in the Day, Gazing Out from a River Pavilion
Water to the horizon veils
the base of clouds;
mountain mist
blurs the far village.
Returning to the nest, birds
make tracks in the sand;
passing on the river, a boat leaves no trace on the waves.
I gaze at the water
and know its gentle nature; watch the mountains
until my spirit tires.
Though not yet ready to
leave off musing, dusk
falls,
and I return by horse.
- Chia Tao (779-843), as interpreted by Mike O'Connor, from The Clouds Should Know Me By Now, Buddhist Poet Monks of China
. . . . .
A boat leaves no trace on the gentle water
Birds make tracks in the sand;
Dusk falls, and I return home
Not yet completely in harmony
With the silence.
- Journal Poem
Drinking Wine
I live here in a village house without all
that racket horses and carts stir up,
and you wonder how that could ever be.
Wherever the mind dwells apart is itself
a distant place. Picking chrysanthemums
at my east fence, I see South Mountain
far off: air lovely at dusk, birds in
flight returning home. All this means
something,
something absolute: whenever I start
to explain it, I forget words altogether.
. . . . .
Color infusing autumn chrysanthemums
exquisite, I pick dew-bathed petals,
float them on that forget-your-cares
stuff. Even my passion for living apart
grows distant. I'm alone here, and still
the winejar soon fills cups without me.
Everything at rest, dusk: a bird calls,
returning to its forest home. Chanting,
I settle into my breath. Somehow, on this
east veranda, I've found my life again.
- T'ao Ch'ien (365-427), as interpreted by David Hinton, Mountain Home: The Wilderness Poetry of Ancient China
. . . . .
To construct around oneself a cocoon
In which the spirit can grow, blossom
A quiet place, without commotion, upheaval
Conflict and competition and striving.
Everything at rest, I settle into my breath
And find life again.
Something absolute, life beyond words
It can't be explained.
- Journal Poem
Don't Ask
Don't ask if I'm out of touch with human affairs:
kings, marquises --- I leave all to them now.
Boorish by nature, no harm if I let it show, the
way I did when I lived in the mountains. In quiet
moments I enter the soundless music, in my
madness reject properly ordered poems.
I act for myself, look after myself,
hoping the man in charge will understand.
- Ch'i-chi (864-937) As interpreted by Burton Watson
"Don't Ask" is one of a series written in the year 921 when the poet was appointed to head a temple called Lung-hsing-ssu in Chinag-ling, Hupei. The appointment was made by Kao Tsung-hui, the military commissioner of the area. In a brief introduction to the series, Ch'i-chi describes his new appointment by saying: "Originally I was a monk of the green mountains, sitting in solitary meditation on a white rock. But now these noblemen have built rooms to house me, provided funds to feed me, and arranged for my complete comfort. Relieved of all the ten thousand concerns, at liberty to roam or rest as I choose, I hence no longer need keep company with the clouds and springs, the wild monkeys and birds. If I can be as carefree as this, what could there be to tie me down?"
- from The Clouds Should Know Me By Now, Buddhist Poet Monks of China, edited by Red Pine and Mike O'Connor
. . . . .
The soundless music of the mountains
Of life alone in the mountains
The hermit monks went there to find peace
To quiet the voices in their lives
The voices of others, and the internal voices
Voices of conflict, competition, power, prestige.
Lured from the mountains by comfort and security
The hermit monk asks that we not ask.
- Journal Poem
Opposite a Post-Station, the Boat Moonlit Beside a Monastery
My boat mirroring a clear, bright moon
deep in the night, I leave lanterns unlit:
a gold monastery beyond green maples, a
red post-tower here beside white water.
Faint, drifting from a city, a crow's cry
fades. Full of wild grace, egrets sleep.
Hair white, a guest of lakes and rivers, I
tie blinds open and sit alone, sleepless.
- Tu Fu (712-770) as interpreted by David Hinton, Mountain Home: The Wilderness Poetry of Ancient China
. . . . .
A guest of rivers and lakes
Camped beside whitewater
In the night I watch my mind
Reflect on the moon
And wild grace
A crow's cry fades.
- Journal Poem
One Tiny Hut
The shade of noble trees spreads in all directions
below the trees a tiny hut is perfectly secluded
beyond the sound of cart or horse or sign of human tracks
all day behind my door I sit alone cross-legged
Clouds release the hillsides and wake the scenes of spring
where is the plum tree that wafts that subtle scent
I grab my staff intending to search secluded valleys then
find a single branch against my eastern wall
I follow my impulsive feet wherever they might go my
body is a pine tree surrounded by the snow sometimes I
simply stand beside a flowing stream sometimes I
chase a drifting cloud past another peak
Deep among ten thousand peaks I sit alone cross-legged
a solitary thought fills my empty mind
my body is the moon that lights the winter sky
in rivers and in lakes are only its reflections
- Han-shan Te-ch'ing (1546-1623), as interpreted by Red Pine, The Clouds Should Know Me By Now, Buddhist Poet Monks of China
. . . . .
To welcome the solitary thought that fills the empty mind
Meditate alone deep in the woods for a day
Wander the mountains, stand beside a stream
And sit on a mountain peak.
- Journal Poem
Crossing the Lake from South Mountain to North Mountain
I set out from sunlit shores just after dawn
and stopped among shadowy peaks at dusk,
leaving the boat to gaze at far-off islands.
Pausing to rest high among thriving pines
where the pitched trail enters recluse depths
above ringed dragon-jade isles all ashimmer,
I see treetops tangling away into sky below,
hear rivers above flooding the Great Valley.
Streams branch past rocks and flow away.
Forest paths are grown over, tracks gone.
Isn't this how heaven and earth touch us,
this exquisite burgeoning forth of things:
young bamboo still wrapped in green slips
and new rushes fluttering purple flowers,
seagulls frolicking along springtime shores
and pheasants at play among gentle breezes?
Embracing change, the mind never tires, and
gazing deep, our love for things grows.
I have no regrets this far from humankind.
It's true there are no kindred spirits here,
but wandering alone I feel only adoration, and
without it, who plumbs the inner pattern?
- Hsieh Ling-yun, as translated by David Hinton, The Mountain Poems of Hsieh Ling-yun
. . . . .
Far from humankind, no kindred spirits
Wandering over the landscape
Among the big pines, the mountains, the purple flowers
The flowing rivers
Our love for things grows.
- Journal Poem
Dwelling in the Mountains (Verse 12)
Far off to the south are
peaks like Pine-Needle and Nest-Hen, Halcyon-Knoll and Brimmed-Stone,
Harrow and Spire Ridges faced together,
Elder and Eye-Loft cleaving summits.
When you go deep, following a winding river to its source,
you're soon bewildered, wandering a place beyond knowing:
cragged peaks towering above stay lost in confusions of mist,
and depths sunken away far below surge and swell in a blur.
- Verse 12 of the poem "Dwelling in the Mountains," The Mountain Poems of Hsieh Lin-yün, translated by David Hinton
. . . . .
I entrust myself to star-filled skies
And water, whitewater that carries cliffs away
drifting among ghost-eye, flowing deep.
When you follow a winding river to its source,
you're soon bewildered, wandering a place beyond knowing
Here where I live.
- Journal Poem
To Wei Pa, a Retired Scholar
The lives of many men are
Shorter than the years since we have
Seen each other. Aldebaran
And Antares move as we have.
And now, what night is this? We sit
Here together in the candle
Light. How much longer will our prime
Last? Our temples are already
Grey. I visit my old friends.
Half of them have become ghosts. Fear
and sorrow choke me and burn
My bowels. I never dreamed I would
Come this way, after twenty years,
A wayfarer to your parlor.
When we parted years ago,
You were unmarried. Now you have
A row of boys and girls, who smile
And ask me about my travels.
How have I reached this time and place?
Before I can come to the end
Of an endless tale, the children
Have brought out the wine. We go
Out in the night and cut young
Onions in the rainy darkness.
We eat them with hot, steaming,
Yellow millet. You say, "It is
Sad, meeting each other again." We
drink ten toasts rapidly from
The rhinoceros horn cups.
Ten cups, and still we are not drunk.
We still love each other as
We did when we were schoolboys.
Tomorrow morning mountain peaks
Will come between us, and with them
The endless, oblivious
Business of the world.
- Tu Fu, as interpreted by Kenneth Rexroth, One Hundred Poems from the Chinese
. . . . .
Tomorrow morning mountain peaks
Will come between us
And the endless, oblivious
Business of the world.
- Journal Poem
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