Meng Hao-jan: Master I's Chamber in the Ta-yu Temple
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Photo: Manchu Bride Peking, Penchilie Province, China; c.1867.
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I-Kung's place to practice Ch'an:
a hut in an empty grove.
Outside the door, a single pretty peak.
Before the stair, deep valleys.
Sunset confused in footprints of the rain.
Blue of the void in the shade of the court.
Look, and see the lotus blossom's purity:
know then that nothing taints this heart.
(Meng Hao-jan)
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Recommended Reading:
'The Mountain Poems of Meng Hao-Jan'
By Meng Hao-jan (Author), David Hinton (Author)
Purchase Book:
Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk
Description:
The first full flowering of Chinese poetry occurred in the illustrious T’ang Dynasty, and at the beginning of this renaissance stands Meng Hao-jan (689-740 c.e.), esteemed elder to a long line of China’s greatest poets. Deeply influenced by Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism, Meng was the first to make poetry from the Ch’an insight that deep understanding lies beyond words. The result was a strikingly distilled language that opened new inner depths, non-verbal insights, and outright enigma. This made Meng Hao-jan China’s first master of the short imagistic landscape poem that came to typify ancient Chinese poetry. And as a lifelong intimacy with mountains dominates Meng’s work, such innovative poetics made him a preeminent figure in the wilderness (literally rivers-and-mountains) tradition, and that tradition is the very heart of Chinese poetry.
'The Mountain Poems of Meng Hao-Jan'
By Meng Hao-jan (Author), David Hinton (Author)
Purchase Book:
Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk
Description:
The first full flowering of Chinese poetry occurred in the illustrious T’ang Dynasty, and at the beginning of this renaissance stands Meng Hao-jan (689-740 c.e.), esteemed elder to a long line of China’s greatest poets. Deeply influenced by Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism, Meng was the first to make poetry from the Ch’an insight that deep understanding lies beyond words. The result was a strikingly distilled language that opened new inner depths, non-verbal insights, and outright enigma. This made Meng Hao-jan China’s first master of the short imagistic landscape poem that came to typify ancient Chinese poetry. And as a lifelong intimacy with mountains dominates Meng’s work, such innovative poetics made him a preeminent figure in the wilderness (literally rivers-and-mountains) tradition, and that tradition is the very heart of Chinese poetry.
This is the first English translation devoted to the work of Meng Hao-jan. Meng’s poetic descendants revered the wisdom he cultivated as a mountain recluse, and now we too can witness the sagacity they considered almost indistinguishable from that of rivers and mountains themselves.
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