The Harmony of Difference & Unity: Pt. III

The Harmony of Difference & Equality

Fire burns, wind moves and shakes,

Water moistens, earth solidifies.

Eyes ─ forms, ears ─ sounds,

Nose ─ odors, tongue ─ salt and sour.

In accordance with each dharma,

The root gives rise to separate leaves.

Roots and branches must return to basic principle;

"Honorable" and "lowly" are merely words.

In the midst of brightness there is darkness;

Do not take darkness as darkness.

In the midst of darkness there is brightness;

Do not take brightness as brightness.

Trans: Ming Yee Wang & Pei-gwang Dowiat

Fire heats, wind moves,

Water wets, earth is solid.

Eye and form, ear and sound;

Nose and smell, tongue and taste -

Thus in all things

The leaves spread from the root;

The whole process must return to the source;

Right in light there is darkness, but don't confront it as darkness;

Right in darkness there is light, but don't see it as light.

Trans: Thomas Cleary

The heat of the fire; the waving of the wind;

the wet of the water; the solidity of the earth.

The colors of the eye; the sounds of the ear;

the fragrances of the nose; the salt and sour of the tongue.

This is the way with each and every thing;

according to the roots the leaves separate and spread out.

Roots and branches necessarily return to the ancestral origin;

venerated and vulgar, these are used in speech.

Right in the middle of the light there is dark;

don’t use the mutuality of darkness to meet it.

Right in the middle of the dark there is light;

don’t use the mutuality of the light to see it.

Trans: Gregory Wonderwheel

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By Shitou 'Slippery Path' Xiqian

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Wonderwheel steps out of ahead and his word-for-word translation approach,

Considering the other translations are generally represented as more 'literary/poetic'--the fact that we are lacking not only the fixed-form poetic style of the original but the complete omission of the entirety of the wordplay that makes a careful reading so delightful.

Here's a different approach:

Right in the middle of clarity there is obscurity;

don’t use the mutuality of ignorance to meet it.

Right in the middle of the obscurity there is clarity;

don’t use the mutuality of the knowledge to see it.

How will you attest to this clarity and obscurity?

Submitted September 27, 2020 at 08:43PM by ThatKir https://ift.tt/36b9Sk5