Yes, there is bitterness in the world. I am not one who pretends that optimism cures either pessimism or realistic assessment. We are, in America, under the reign of a foolish depravity and roiling madness that 34% of the voting population considers quaint and desirable.
The path to the meditation hall
Is steep and perilous;
I look back to view
The upper watershed.
A woodcutter’s trail links
All the peaks;
A boulder-choked creek
Flows through bamboo.
In deep woods,
Snow still lingers;
In foothills,
Gibbons have not yet cried.
Desiring to part from
The bitterness in the world,
I seek some words
From the Master.
Chia Tao (779-843)
Chia Tao (779–843)
Translations by Mike O'Connor
In: The Clouds Should Know Me By Now: Buddhist Poet Monks of China
Wisdom Publications, 1998, pp. 11-42.
INTRODUCTION
CHIA TAO WAS A BUDDHIST POET of the Middle T'ang dynasty. Born into an impoverished family near today's Beijing, he became a Ch'an (Zen) monk early in his youth, with the religious name Wupen. While scant biographical detail of his monastic days exists, his official biography does note that upon arriving at the Eastern Capital, Lo-yang, Chia Tao wrote a poem protesting a curfew forbidding monks to go out after noon.The poem caught the sympathetic eye of the eminent Confucian poet Han Yu (768–824) and led to the latter becoming Chia Tao's poetry mentor.
A more famous account—a literary anecdote—describes the meeting of the poets this way: Chia Tao, while riding a donkey on the way to the marketplace, was deeply absorbed in trying to choose between two words, push (t'ui) and knock (ch'iao) in the line “Under the moon, a monk [knocks at, or pushes] the gate.” Reciting the line over and over, Chia Tao became oblivious of his surroundings and collided with a sedan chair carrying HanYu. Han Yu, waving off apologies from Chia Tao, became interested in his poetic impasse, and immediately opted for the word “knock.”The compound “push-knock (t'ui-ch'iao)” thereafter became the traditional term to describe, not only Chia Tao's assiduousness of craft, but any poet's exacting labor to find the mot juste, or to make careful stylistic distinctions.
What is known factually is that Chia Tao, at about age thirty-one, abandoned monasticism to devote himself to a secular life of poetry, supported by subsistence civil service. He was encouraged in this by a circle of prominent poets, including Han Yu, Meng Chiao (751–814) and Chang Chi (ca. 776–ca. 829).The group was based in the political and literary capital Ch'ang-an, modern Xi'an, the largest city in the world at the time and Chia Tao's principal home until his “banishment” late in life to provincial posts—an apparent victim of slander. https://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/JiaDao.html
Maybe poets can wrestle reality into a coherent line. Maybe departing from the bitterness is a journey begun by finding the right words to encompass/distinguish reality from delusion and trickery on the part of nefarious imposters.
Who is the master Chia Tao seeks for their wise counsel? Who and where do we seek?
Poets do not fire guns into the heads of insane poseurs and request a clear statement of intentions and executive orders aiming to obliterate decent interactions with local neighbors and neighboring countries.
For us the mot juste remains obscured by our oblivious calculation that the brigand in DC is merely a comical celebrity acting the fool for our entertainment.
He is a far more dangerous lack-of-character.
Look for good poets.
Look for your own words.
Wrestle with them. Pronounce them. Try to figure what fits.
This is no time for a distracted and conically dunce aphasia.
