Category Archives: Daoist poetry

Master Nan discusses a Daoist poem

Posted on July 21, 2016 by Xiaoyao Xingzhe

Nan Huaijin

Nan Huaijin (Nan Huai-Chin), who passed away not long ago, was a recognised vajra master in Buddhism, but was unusual in that he was also thoroughly schooled in Confucianism and Daoism.

This poem from Zhang Bo-Duan (author of the Wu Zhen Pian: Understanding Reality, one of the most famous classics of Daoist alchemy) was explained by Master Nan during a seven day Zen retreat held in China.

Mater Nan led into the discussion by comparing modern physical science and Buddhist sciences:

“Studying Buddhism is a science of life. It is different to natural science in that it does not use the physical things of the external world, but instead uses the functions of one’s own body, the five sense organs, and the biggest organ, that of the brain. But it is using the brain to turn around and investigate itself, the mind to turn around and look for one’s own mind within.

There is a Daoist, one of the patriarchs of the Southern school, Zhang Zi-Yang (Zhang Boduan). A Daoist, yet he was also thoroughly versed in Buddhism, especially Chan in which he was a high illuminate. This True Man, Zhang Ziyang, wrote a truly excellent poem about the experience of quiet sitting in Chan.

心内观心觅本心

xīn neì guān xīn mì běn xīn

Observe the mind within the mind to search for the root mind.

This is what we were just speaking about: turning around to look for one’s own mind; interior observation of one’s heart, the effects of our thoughts and feelings. This is mind, the function of heart/mind.

When I say “heart” I do not mean the physical heart, it refers to what we now call the brain, the feelings, knowledge, sensations … all these caught up together is what we are calling heart/mind, this basic function.

Before we were born of our father and mother, before we had become a foetus, did this mind exist? This is what we are looking for, not what Western philosophy talks about as mind. What Western philosophy means by ‘mind’ is what is known in Buddhism as the function of the sixth consciousness: the thinking mind, the thoughts in the mind, that is the sixth consciousness.

It is not mind as a whole.

We are talking about mind as a whole.

心内观心觅本心

xīn neì guān xīn mì běn xīn

Observe the mind within the mind to search for the root mind.

Where is that original mind? What is the origin of the origin? Without my brain, without my body, where after all is that heart/mind?

Here is the second sentence:

心心俱绝见真心

xīn xīn jù jué jiàn zhēn xīn

Cutting off thought after thought, you will see the true mind

All the thoughts and feelings inside you, all that is happening, all come to rest, all quiet and still. Slowly, slowly, they all cease; totally and absolutely still and quiet, all errant thoughts stopping. Feelings, knowledge, everything, all rests.

“Perceiving the true heart/mind” (见真心jiàn zhēn xīn) – you can then observe your own true and proper fundamental origin (真正根源 zhēn zhèng gēn yuán), the function of the root mind.

Nan Huaichin

The third sentence:

真心明徹通三界

Zhēn xīn míng chè tōng sān jiè

The true mind penetrates with clarity throughout the three realms 

If you can find the foundation of the root mind, the root essence (本性běn xìng), if you understand it, realise it, and truly verify it—not theoretically, mind you, but throwing your whole body and mind into this search to verify it—then one can transcend this material world, leap beyond the “three realms” (of desire, of form, and of formlessness). Hence “The true mind penetrates with clarity throughout the three realms. ” Then, he concludes:

外道邪魔不敢侵

waì daò xié mó bù gǎn qīn

Heretics and evil spirits dare not encroach.

Ghosts, devils, spirits, none of them dare to molest you. Zhang Zi-Yang was very well-known, an accomplished expert in both Buddhism and Daoism, in what they call the Southern School of Daoism. He was one of the patriarchs of this Southern School.

 

Observe the mind within the mind to search for the root mind.

Cutting off thought after thought, you will see the true mind.

The true mind penetrates with clarity throughout the three realms.

Heretic and evil spirits dare not encroach.

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Ma Danyang’s teacher leaves a poem

Posted on June 8, 2016 by Xiaoyao Xingzhe

IMG_8174師言：祖師嘗到登州時，頂笠懸鶉 ，執一節、攜一鐵觀，狀貌奇古，乞於市肆，登州人皆不識。夜歸觀，書一絕於壁：

一別終南水竹村，
家無兄女亦無孫。
數千里外尋知友，
引入長生不死門。

明旦拂衣束邁。後數日，郡守紇石烈邈詣觀，觀其題詩，欽歎不已。乃依韻和曰：

迴首三年別故村，
都忘庭竹長兒孫。
他時拂袖尋君去，
應許安閑一叩門。

Our teacher Ma Danyang told us:

The founding teacher Wang Chongyang once went to Dengzhou¹ wearing a large bamboo hat and a patched cloak, with a bamboo staff in one hand and an iron bowl in the other. He looked like something from an old legend. He went begging in the market, and no one in Dengzhou recognized him. In the evening he returned to the monastery and wrote a poem on the wall:

I left at last
The mountains of Zhongnan²
And my village of bamboo and water
Where no family remained —
Not brother nor daughter —

To search everywhere
For a knowing friend
That I may lead him
Or her³ to the gate
Of long life without death.

The next morning he shook out his sleeves and strode away.

A few days later, the local magistrate He Shilie arrived at the monastery from afar and saw the poem on the wall. He sighed, lost in admiration. Then he composed a matching poem, keeping to the same rhyme scheme:

You look back three years
When you left your hamlet
And your house, its courtyard
of bamboo, leaving your sons
and their sons.
But a time will come when I, too
Shaking out my sleeves, will search for you.
And will you, then, give leave for me
To cast off cares and knock at your gate?

from the Discourses of Ma Danyang

  1. On the coast of Shandong.
  2. As well as the place where Wang Chongyang founded the Complete Perfection school of Daoism, the Zhongnan mountains were the location of Louguantai  (楼观台), where Laozi traditionally was held to have transmitted the Dao De Jing to Yin Xi.
  3. This is not just modern political correctness. One of Wang Chongyang’s most famous disciples was Sun Bu-er–Sun the Inimitable–who was, as it happens, the wife of Ma Danyang.

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Three poems by Ma Danyang 馬丹陽 (1123-1184) for the instruction of his students

Posted on May 22, 2016 by Xiaoyao Xingzhe

示门人三首

一思一虑觉分神，怎敢留心惹绊尘。

断制万缘混是假，修完一性泱全真。

Every thought and each worry can be felt dividing the spirit
Letting the mind adhere to them risks being bound by the world.
Assay the true, distinguish from the false amongst confused conditions
And refine to completion the single essence: great complete perfection.

 

人我关头生死关，劝人推倒我人山，

人我既除心性善，自然跳出死生圈。

The issue of self is the gate of life and death
The personal self is a mountain I urge you to beat down
The real self is nothing but eliminating mind to expose the essence of goodness
The leap beyond the circle of life and death then occurs naturally.

 

欲要元初一点明，须教猿马两停停。

心清意净三丹结，虎绕龙蟠四象成。

To ignite the primal light
Teach both monkey and horse to stop
Clear the mind, settle thought, and link all three elixirs.
Then tiger circles the twisting dragon,
And all the elements unite.

 

Ma Danyang taught that avoiding leakage was a key technique, even just for basic health:

Wasted jing, extinguished spirit — these simply lead to premature death. Those who would aspire to the Dao must avoid excess in this regard.

Others, of less intelligence, quip that the span of their life is set by fate, why not enjoy it?

But the old saying warns: when the oil dries up, the lamp goes out; when the marrow is exhausted, a person dies. You must know that jing/essence is the root and basis of your body — how long does a tree last when its root is cut away?

To nourish life, first treasure the jing/essence. When the jing/essence is full, qi will flourish, and then the spirit will be hearty, the body healthy, with few illnesses. The organs inside will function perfectly, the skin outside will glow, your visage will be bright, your eyes and ears and brain sharp! And all of this from reducing the wastage of jing/essence in your youth. If you have done this, and on top of this can reduce desire altogether, you will live a good long life.

But Ma was also a healer. The Grand Compendium of Acupuncture (Zhen Jiu Da Cheng (針灸大成) by Yang Jizhou records a collection of Ma Danyang’s acupuncture methods in a section called “The Poem of Ma Dangyang’s Twelve Heavenly Star Points for The Treatment of Miscellaneous Diseases”(馬丹陽天星十二穴治雜病歌).

The poem outlines a simple method of choosing 12 points from the upper and lower limbs to treat diseases of the whole body. The 12 points are :

ST-36 Zusanli (足三里); ST-44 Neiting (內庭); L.I.-11 Quchi (曲池);

LI.-4 Hegu (合谷); BL-40 Weizhong (委中); BL-57 Chengshan (承山);

LIV-3 Taichong (太沖); BL-60 Kunlun (崑崙); GB-30 Huantiao (環跳);

GB-34; Yanglingquan (陽陵泉); HE-5 Tongli (通里); LU-7 Lieque (列缺).

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Coming home a stranger

Posted on May 1, 2016 by Xiaoyao Xingzhe

Hezhizhangpic

少小離家老大回，    

鄉音無改鬢毛衰。

兒童相見不相識，    

笑問客從何處來。

 

Young, so young, when I left home

Now, so old, I return.

The lilt in their language

Has not changed;

It’s my beard that’s gone grey.

A man I knew when a child

Now smiles, and says :

‘Where are you from,

Stranger?’

 

The poet who wrote this, He Zhi-Zhang, lived from 659 to 744 in Zhejiang province. He was already famous in his youth for his poems and his big-hearted, broad-minded manner. He drank, joked and disputed with poets of the calibre of Li Bai and Du Fu.

He Zhi-Zhang’s easy-going manner while inebriated was portrayed in Du Fu’s poem entitled Song of the Eight Immortals at Drink.

He Zhi-Zhang was a Taoist and later disappeared into the countryside.

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Again, Farewell — a Tang poem by Yu Xuanji

Posted on April 23, 2016 by Xiaoyao Xingzhe

moutains in Taiwan copy

水柔逐器知難定，

雲出無心肯再歸。

惆悵春風楚江暮，

鴛鴦一隻失羣飛。

 

Water, being soft, seeks holding; 

But knows it won’t last.

Clouds disperse, and lack heart to return.

 

The spring day is over now, for this river; 

And the rueful wind goads

A widowed duck, lost amidst the sky.

 

This is the second poem that Yu Xuan-Ji entitled ‘Farewell,’ the first was published in the previous post, where the motif of dispersing clouds also appeared.

This subsequent poem is less intensely personal, and more abstract and philosophical: Yu writing about the same relationship perhaps after the passage of time. ‘Water seeking a vessel’ is a very Daoist image, as the Dao will flow into any receptive container; but the flow of attraction is very similar, and similarly impermanent—unless there is a heart. The clouds which disperse in both poems show Yu’s perception that ‘a lover’ is not just a body, but a total ambient presence of ideas and feelings and fragrances and visuals and more; unless ‘clouds’ can coalesce around a ‘heart’, they must disperse, with no return.

At the ‘turn’ of the poem, where the images change, we get the feeling that Yu is the river here, flowing within the banks of herself; the word chŭ 楚 (translated here as ‘goad’) is usually left out of translations of this poem, as the modern definitions do not seem to fit. But in ancient Chinese 楚 meant ‘thistles’ or ‘a handful of thistles used as a whip’. So while in the first poem her ‘wild moth’ of desire still fluttered dangerously around the lamp of love, even as that lamp faded and failed, here the full painful effect of these feelings torture her, she who is also the lone duck, the bereaved survivor of a pair of mandarin ducks, who in legend mate for life. The spring wind, by the way, is that which breaks up ice, dissolving connections.

(translation and comments by Steve Clavey)

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Farewell — a Tang poem by the Daoist Yu Xuanji

Posted on April 21, 2016 by Xiaoyao Xingzhe

Sunset in Taiwan

送别

秦樓幾夜愜心期，

不料仙郎有別離。

睡覺莫言雲去處，

殘燈一醆野蛾飛。

 

Those nights of pleasure at the pavilion –

 

         I never thought you could leave.

 

But clouds disperse, wordlessly,

 

         And I sleep alone;

 

still, around the wicked lamp, now fading,

 

         a wild moth flutters.

 

Yu Xuan-Ji (魚玄機) defies easy categorization. She was born in the Tang dynasty around 844 and died around 871, at the age of twenty-eight. Those 28 years however were a life lived to the fullest imaginable: she was well-educated, extremely intelligent, and consorted with a number of the famous poets of the Tang dynasty. The second wife of an official, she was driven away by the jealousy of the first wife, and apparently became a courtesan to survive; this in fact exposed her to the widest variety of culture and life. All of this is reflected in her poetry, of which we have 50-some poems still extant, and in which she explored not only a spectrum of metre and style, but what it means to be human. She was erudite yet plain, visual yet thoroughly versed in the language of the heart, and fearless in her political criticism.

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Learning Sword Technique from the Adept Huo Long

Posted on April 10, 2016 by Xiaoyao Xingzhe

“Learning Sword Technique from the Adept Huo Long”

Lü Yan, Complete Tang Poems

《得火龍真人劍法》    呂岩

昔年曾遇火龍君，一劍相傳伴此身。天地山河從結沫，星辰日月任停輪。

須知本性綿多劫，空向人間曆萬春。昨夜鐘離傳一語，六天宮殿欲成塵。

Long ago, meeting the Noble Fire Dragon,

He passed on a sword, my constant companion.

With it, heaven, earth, water and stone evanesce and dissolve;

Sun, moon, stars and planets cease to move.

‘Recognize that essence is stolen continuously. 

Be empty towards the world of men,

And each day will be a springtime.’

But last night, Zhongli passed on this saying

And all the palaces of all the worlds

Fell to dust.

 

 

Lü Yan (,呂岩, 798 – ?, commonly known as Lü Dong-Bin吕洞宾, or Ancestor Lü 呂祖) was a Daoist patriarch in the late Tang dynasty. He was variously known as the “sword immortal”, the “drunken immortal” and the “poet immortal”. Indeed, some 200 of his poems are collected in the Complete Tang Poetry (Quan Tang Shi), and this is one of them, describing his legendary sword.

He learned the art of internal alchemy from Zhongli Quan, and according to the Song Shi (a history of the Song dynasty), Lü lived well past 100 years of age, with the complexion of a child and a light agile step. This was long enough for legends about him to spread widely even during his lifetime. He laughed about one story, and said “People say I have a flying sword to kill people. I can only answer by saying that [everyone knows that] those with compassion are Buddhas. But Daoist immortals are like Buddha too; how could we have swords to take human life? I do have a sword, but it is different to the usual: first it cuts off greed, then it cuts off desire, and finally it cuts off all mental disturbance. That is my triple sword-play.”

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