Song of the Peach Tree Spring

[tariki]

One of my many Blooks is "Song of the Peach Tree Spring" by Wang Wei (8th century) A very enigmatic poem that can have multiple meanings.

A fisherman sails up a river, wandering, and sees a few huts amid the cherry blossoms on the river bank, very secluded. It turns out that this is a little village of people who have dropped out of time, secluded from the world. A small paradise. The fisherman is greeted well but finally must leave. He seeks to leave a trail as he retraces his steps but after returning home and telling of his find neither he nor any other is able to find the way back. Yet a touch of hope at the end, with the suggestion that perhaps any river will take us back, who knows which one.

My blook includes two translations as poetry, one prose version, some analysis and a few biographical details of Wang Wei.

Here is the poem, which I find engrossing. Not least because written first in Chinese pictograms, leaving each translator with the experience of their own mind/heart in order to give birth to new words. I wonder what I would make of it if I learnt the pictograms and how understanding would morph and evolve with increasing knowledge/experience. The Word as text, and the Living Word

This translation is by G. W. Robinson and Arthur Cooper, and is found in one of Penguin's little black books, "Three Tang Dynasty Poets".


A fisherman sailed up a river
he loved spring in the hills

On both banks peach blossom
closed over the farther reaches

He sat and looked at the red trees
not knowing how far he was

And he neared the head of the green stream
seeing no one

A gap in the hills, a way through
twists and turns at first

Then hills gave on to a vastness
of level land all round

From far away all seemed
trees up to the clouds

He approached, and there were many houses
among flowers and bamboos

Foresters meeting would exchange
names from Han times

And the people had not altered
the Ch’in style of their clothes

They had all lived near
the head of Wuling River

And now cultivated their rice and gardens
out of the world

Bright moon and under the pines
outside their windows peace

Sun up and among the clouds
fowls and dogs call

Amazed to hear of the world’s intruder
all vied to see him

And take him home and ask him
about his country and place

At first light in the alleys
they swept the flowers from their gates

At dusk fishermen and woodmen
came in on the stream

They had first come here
for refuge from the world

And then had become immortals
and never returned.

Who, clasped there in the hills,
would know of the world of men?

And whoever might gaze from the world
would make out only clouds and hills

The fisherman did not suspect
that paradise is hard to find

And his earthy spirit lived on
and he thought of his own country

So he left that seclusion not reckoning
the barriers of mountain and stream

To take leave at home and then return
for as long as it might please him.

He was sure of his way there
could never go wrong

How should he know that peaks and valleys
can so soon change?

When the time came he simply remembered
having gone deep into the hills

But how many green streams
lead into cloud-high woods –

When spring comes, everywhere
there are peach blossom streams

No one can tell which may be
the spring of paradise.

 

 

A few photos of my Blook, front and back cover and a few pages. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Edited April 24, 2023 by tariki

[tariki]

Given my own way of seeing things, the poem suggests the way of "no-calculation", where things are "made to become so of themselves", this founded upon the pure faith that the Cosmos, Reality-as-is, is healing. The fisherman is simply proceeding without specific direction or even intent - and in so doing finds paradise. 

Once again, being me, this suggests the words of Thomas Merton when writing about the way of Chuang Tzu:-

For Chuang Tzu, as for the Gospel, to lose one’s life is to save it, and to seek to save it for one’s own sake is to lose it. There is an affirmation of the world that is nothing but ruin and loss. There is a renunciation of the world that finds and saves man in his own home, which is God’s world. In any event, the “way” of Chuang Tzu is mysterious because it is so simple that it can get along without being a way at all. Least of all is it a "way out". Chuang Tzu would have agreed with St. John of the Cross, that you enter upon this kind of way when you leave all ways and, in some sense, get lost.

Merton also speaks of there being "no door", and further, that we should never presume to have the key, even if we thought that there was a door. Obviously, not advice for any who like certainties, or those who insist that they have "found" and that all others must find just as they have!

The idea of "no way", of getting lost, rears its head again at the end of the poem, when the fisherman lays a trail on his way out. Alas, no matter how carefully laid, no one can follow it, and all get lost as they try to follow the trail. Another form of getting lost! Seeking to follow a formulae, a creed, the Word as Text, feeling "justified" in having "fulfilled" the demands of the formula, the words, dividing ourselves from those who have failed, or who follow another set of instructions. What price Mercy and Grace?

But there is the hope, born of faith, that simply anything, any "river" will bring us to paradise, if even just for a moment.To be surprised by joy, when there comes such beauty and wonder, such a transformation of what we know ourselves to be at another level, that our faith in the natural healing power of Reality is vindicated. If not of "ourselves" then of what?

As Eckhart has said:- If the only prayer we ever say is "Thank You" it is enough. 

[PaulS]

I like the poem, and what you have to say, Tariki.  Thanks.