From Zen Lessons: The Art of Leadership, trans. Thomas Cleary (Boston & London: Shambala Books, 1993), 52-3: Lesson 42.
Huanglong said to the great statesman Wang Anshi:*
Whatever you set your mind to do, you always should make the road before you wide open, so that all people may traverse it. This is the concern of a great man.
If the way is narrow and perilous, so that others cannot go on it, then you yourself will not have any place to set foot either.
* Also considered one of China's great poets, Wang Anshi was a Chan practitioner and an active statesman. At the peak of his career he was highly placed and tried to institute sweeping reforms in government. He met with great resistance from entrenched interests, and was eventually ousted.
-Translator.
The book is called Zen Lessons because Americans would know the word "Zen." Here and throughout, the lessons are actually Chan Buddhist rather than Zen Buddhist, Chan being the Chinese school from which the Japanese derived their own unique method which became famous in the West.
Confer Mt. 7:13-14. It's worth reading with the immediately prior post, as well; the wide road is the humane standard, perhaps the only one the human being can aspire to traverse. Nevertheless, the alternative does come well recommended.
5 comments:
There's a time and a place for everything. The wide road as a general rule for most people is probably the right advice. But there are issues where you cannot share the road- even the wide road isn't wide enough for some loads to traverse it simultaneously. This is largely the problem we run into today with Islam and leftism being incompatible at their core with the liberal values of Western Civilization and even more so with traditional Western Civilization (or what one might call Chrostiandom). Then the only road is the narrow road. Life has it's passes, and they must be defended or the barbarian enters.
Just because you mention Chinese poetry- I don't know a lot of Chinese poetry, but I had to research it one time for a project and found a poem I loved- Moon, Flowers, Man by Su Tung P’o.
https://leonarddurso.com/2014/08/19/moon-flowers-man-by-su-tung-po-2/
I'm not sure I could tell you why, though my ability to be happy alone probably has a lot to do with it.
I think you would enjoy Li Bai's poetry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Bai
- Tom
That would have made a great Merle Haggard song. As an exercise I might see if I can get an AI to make one out of it.
Drinking Alone by Moonlight is a classic. Also love that one. A different translation may work better for prompting a Haggard-esque rendition. For some reason, drinking and being drunk are popular subjects for the classical Chinese poets. I should ask my Uncle (himself a bit of a Chinese poet) about this.
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