This installment isn’t really about Zen; just I liked that catch phrase for a title.
Sengai (1750-1837), Circle, Triangle, Square (before 1819). Idemitsu Art Museum, Tokyo. The inscription reads: 扶桑最初禪窟 (Fusō saisho zenkutsu), "Japan First Zen Cave"; that is 聖福寺 Shōfuku-ji, in Fukuoka, the first Zen temple established in Japan, where Sendai spent the second half of his life in seclusion.
On Monday at our local library book sale (eight customers at a time, masks required), I found a copy of a 2001 translation of the Dao De Jing, the canonical Taoist text attributed to the ancient Chinese sage, Lao-zi. While I learned a few new things about ancient history from the Introduction, I was somewhat disappointed by the translation itself. But it put me in mind of another translation of the same 81 verses that I’ve had for a long time by Witter Bynner from 1944, entitled The Way of Life according to Laotzu. (You will notice that Chinese words are transliterated, or romanized, in all different sorts of ways, the current official one—Pinyin—providing precious little intuitive guidance to correct pronunciation for the English speaker, but we will pass over that for now.)
Bynner’s Way of Life was given to me by a Quaker college friend Anne Thomforde in 1972, when I had been dismissed from college after three semesters and, having lost my student deferment, was enlisting in the Army. (My draft lottery was #1, and while opposed to the war in Vietnam, I could not in good conscience call myself a conscientious objector, and so enlisted to avoid the draft. At that time you could choose your military occupational specialty if you enlisted for three years, so I chose to study Chinese-Mandarin at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, eventually becoming a Chinese linguist.) Looking back, I realize this book had a big impact on me, proving to be a real solace during a low ebb in my life, and really my first adult bit of philosophy. Witter Bynner was not a Chinese scholar, but a poet who also did some interesting translations of Chinese poetry. I have vivid recollections of reading his book on the train going down from college.
Thinking about translating from the Chinese put me in mind of the other most important ancient Taoist text, the Zhuangzi. Incredibly fun to read, Chuang Tzu is the other great Taoist sage, along with Lao Tzu. Some years ago, I tried my hand at an illustrated translation of the opening verses of his book. So, experiencing a momentary lull in bodgering, I thought I’d take the chance to reproduce my rendition for you as an online flip book. Since the free flip book host has page limitations, I have divided the thing into two files (click on the thumbnails below to open them individually in your browser):
Band One:
Band Two:
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