Hi, Julie. Yeah, Hinton has not been very helpful in that translation. Here's the translation of the same poem by Paul Rouzer, with notes:
Visiting Blue Dragon Monastery on a summer day and paying a call
on Meditation Master Cao
Decrepit, a single old man
With slow steps comes to visit this hall of meditation.
I wish to inquire about the principle of the mind caught in principles,
And gain far-ranging understanding of the emptiness of empty illness.
Hills and rivers lay within the divine eye;
Our world system exists within the dharmakāya.
Do not find it strange that the blazing heat melts away –
For here can be born a breeze for all the earth.
Notes:
Illness: A general comment on śunyatā and more specifically the central situation of the Vimalakīrti Sutra, in which the bodhisattva Vimalkīrti feigns illness as a skillful means to lecture on Emptiness and No-duality.
Dharmakaya: One of the Three Bodies of the Buddha in Mahayana doctrine: the cosmic Buddha, which incorporates all real existence.
Phil, could you comment on a poem by Wang Wei? My understanding falters.
A lone old man bone-tired and dragon slow,
I reach this temple of ch'an stillness asking,
the meaning of mind's meaning -- but soon
far off, know emptiness is an empty disease.
Buddha eyes contain rivers and mountains
and the dharma body holds time and space,
so why wonder at blazing heat easing away?
Ch'an depths open vast landscapes of wind.
Hi, Julie. Yeah, Hinton has not been very helpful in that translation. Here's the translation of the same poem by Paul Rouzer, with notes:
Visiting Blue Dragon Monastery on a summer day and paying a call
on Meditation Master Cao
Decrepit, a single old man
With slow steps comes to visit this hall of meditation.
I wish to inquire about the principle of the mind caught in principles,
And gain far-ranging understanding of the emptiness of empty illness.
Hills and rivers lay within the divine eye;
Our world system exists within the dharmakāya.
Do not find it strange that the blazing heat melts away –
For here can be born a breeze for all the earth.
Notes:
Illness: A general comment on śunyatā and more specifically the central situation of the Vimalakīrti Sutra, in which the bodhisattva Vimalkīrti feigns illness as a skillful means to lecture on Emptiness and No-duality.
Dharmakaya: One of the Three Bodies of the Buddha in Mahayana doctrine: the cosmic Buddha, which incorporates all real existence.