Category Archives: Buddhism

BOOKS: “The Life of Hiuen-Tsiang” by Hui-li [trans. by Samuel Beal]

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The Life of Hiuen-TsiangThe Life of Hiuen-Tsiang by Hui-li
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Available free online through the Indian Gov’t

Those familiar with Chinese Literature (or smash-hit video games) will be acquainted with the tale of Sun Wu Kong, the Monkey King. The central event of the novel Journey to the West is a Chinese Buddhist monk traveling to India to gather a complete set of the Buddhist canon. In the novel (and video game, Black Myth: WuKong,) the monk’s name is Tang Sanzang (in translations – and movie / television – he’s sometimes called Tripitaka, which is actually the name of the Pali Canon — the original Buddhist books, themselves.) In real life there was also such a monk, and his name was Xuanzang (玄奘, Romanized as Hiuen-Tsiang in an earlier system,) and this book describes his travels to, through, and back from India.

It turns out the monk was not escorted by a god-tier mythical creature and his two superpowered compatriots (i.e. Pigsy and Sandy.) For this reason, the actual Xuanzang occasionally got threatened, robbed, and was once almost killed by riverine pirates. This book is a travelogue of Xuanzang’s journeys through China, Central Asia, [present-day] Afghanistan and Pakistan, and throughout India.

Needless to say, this book isn’t as taut and thrilling as the fictional account with its gods and monsters, but – for those with historical and geographic interests – it’s not without appeal. It does have extensive description of Xuanzang’s visits with various monks and royalty that is dry reading as well as discussions of where Xuanzang’s collection stood at any given point, but there are a few intense events and harrowing moments.

If you’re interested in Buddhist history, you may want to give this book a look.

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“Illusion” by Amy Lowell [w/ Audio]

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   Walking beside the tree-peonies,
 I saw a beetle
 Whose wings were of black lacquer spotted with milk.
 I would have caught it,
 But it ran from me swiftly
 And hid under the stone lotus
 Which supports the Statue of Buddha.

PROMPT: Tattoo

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Daily writing prompt
What tattoo do you want and where would you put it?
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I have no use for any tattoo, anywhere, thank you very much.

I’ll leave it to the teens and twenty-somethings to believe there is some image or phrase that will always and forever capture their essence. I’ve been through too many versions of myself and came out accepting the Buddhist / Taoist notion that everything, everywhere [even the self — if there even is such a thing] is in constant flux.

“Circular Portrait” by Ikkyū [w/ Audio]

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The monk’s entire body is present
     in this great circle.
 Xutang’s true face and eye 
     emerge from it.
 The blind singer’s love song delights
     flowers for ten thousand springs.

Translation by Kazuaki Tanahashi and David Schneider in Essential Zen (1994) HarperSanFrancisco.

PROMPT: For a Day

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Daily writing prompt
If you could be someone else for a day, who would you be, and why?
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A Buddha / Bodhisattva (if there’s one about these days.) Why? To feel how his (or her) subjective experience compares to my own.

“The great road has no gate” by Tiāntóng Rújìng [w/ Audio]

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The great road has no gate.
 It leaps out from the heads of all of you.
 The sky has no road.
 It enters into my nostrils.
 In this way we meet as Gautama's bandits,
   or Linji's troublemakers. Ha!
 Great houses tumble down and spring wind swirls.
 Astonished, apricot blossoms fly and scatter -- red.

Translated by Mel Weitsman and Kazuaki Tanahashi; printed in: Essential Zen. 1994. HarperSanFrancisco, p. 136.

Note: While Rujing was Chinese he was teacher to the prominent Japanese Zen Teacher, Dōgen Zenji, the latter published this and other poems, hence the dual categorization of it as Chinese and Japanese Literature.

Picture Horse [Lyric Poem]

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Stacks and stacks
   of wooden plaques:
 Prayers on front,
 Art on the back.

Each a wish
   and a dream?
 More an expression,
   or so it seems.

Whatever prayer
   may be writ,
 There’s always 
   something
 more to it.

A need to show
   one’s unique soul:
 To tell the world
   that one is whole.

A life reduced 
   to a shingle:
 Multitudes,
   to a single.

DAILY PHOTO: Scenes from Xieng Khuan [Buddha Park]

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“Ox” by Ikkyū [w/ Audio]

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Among other creatures this is what I was.
 Abilities depend on the realm;
      realm also depends on abilities.
 At birth I forgot completely by which path 
      I came.
 I don't know, these years, which school
      of monk I am.

Translation by Kazuaki Tanahashi and David Schneider in Essential Zen. 1994. HarperSanFrancisco.

DAILY PHOTO: Guardian Serpents of Luang Prabang

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