Xem trong Thư phòng    Xem định dạng khác Xem định dạng khác    Xem Mục lục Xem Mục lục 

SÁCH AMAZON


Mua bản sách in

Master Tue Sy's attendant texted me: Master Tue Sy is in Saigon. Please come to Huong Tich to visit. I came. Master Tue Sy was very thin and pale. But cheerful, active, and intelligent as ever! He wrote me a bilingual poetry collection: Dreaming the Mountain translated by Nguyen Ba Chung and Martha Collins (2023), along with the book Pham Cong Thien by Nohira Munehiro (translated by Vo Thi Van Anh) and the latest issue of Buddhist Studies.

As for me, I sent him the manuscript of "One day... reaching the shore" that I had just finished. In it, I wrote: Buddha also grows old, also gets sick and... also dies; wrote about Buddha as Tathagata but... Tathagata is not Buddha; about Zen and happy hormones; about "Quality of death" etc...

He showed me some test results and smiled, saying, "Only half left." Yes. Only half left. Hematocrite was only 17%, Hemoglobin was 7g/dL...

A few days later I heard that my teacher's health was very weak. He had to go to the hospital and was transfused with 3 units of packed red blood cells.

In the manuscript "One day... to the shore", I mentioned Descartes' Je pense donc je suis: I think, therefore I exist. So without thinking, there is no... me! We can also say like a physician: "I breathe, therefore I exist". That means if I don't breathe, there is no me. But when I was in my mother's womb, I didn't breathe either, but I was still there. So is it true that when I... stopped breathing, I stopped breathing, I was no longer there? Of course! At that time, I returned to the mother's womb, the Tathata-garbha womb!

Tuệ Sỹ wrote in Overview of Karma (2021), Time Sutra said: "When time comes, living beings ripen; when time goes, living beings are rushed. Time awakens living beings..." This is the perception of time according to the cycle of life and death of living beings. The perception of time is also the perception of death. Time is known from the perception of the birth and destruction of a human life.

Then close your eyelids and return to the dream world
Like morning dew, like lightning, like evening clouds.

It turns out that these are the words of the Diamond Sutra:

All conditioned phenomena
Are like dreams, illusions, bubbles, shadows
Like dew or lightning.

Should one act thus and contemplate it!

The idiom kālaṃ karoti, "it creates time", means it dies. This is not a perception but an obsession with time as an inevitable fate, in which everyone must die. So, etymologically, kāla , meaning time, also means darkness, the color of night, of death. Kāla is also understood to come from the verb root kal (kalayati) to urge, to urge, death is urging us (Tuệ Sỹ).The fire has been extinguished since the beginning of creation
A human life tormented by flying ashes

(Sitting in the middle of a cemetery)

In the article “Where is the Pure Land?” Tuệ Sỹ wrote from the inspiration of reading my book “Where is the Buddha Land” about the Vimalakirti Sutra (2017), he quoted 4 verses, taken from the Truong Son Dream:

I ask where is the Pure Land Pure, is there a sign of a flying bird in the void? From the call of the black color of the suffering land,
Light up your mind instead of the sunlight. (Truong Son Dream) Yes, only Wisdom (light up your mind instead of the sunlight) can Compassionately help us escape the black color of the suffering land! Tue Sy believes that "because our language level and thinking ability are inherently limited, it is relatively easier to enter the path of the Dharma through the path of art" (Where is the Pure Land), he advocates that poetry, music, drama, dance... can be the "path of the Dharma". He often talks about the musical and dance play Duy Ma Cat, where there is the image of a celestial maiden scattering flowers from the sky to praise a word that is not spoken (by Duy Ma...) and the realm of that word that is not spoken is the realm of poetry.

Between the Saha world and the Buddha realm of the Fragrant Lotus, the lion throne and the city of Vairocana, the infinitely large comes into the infinitely small, and the small enters into the large: this is also a pair of opposing contexts that reveal the nature of existence of the world and the universe. With that image, we train our thinking to go beyond conventional stereotypes, to go beyond the empirical world to reach the transcendent, inconceivable realm.

Thus, reading Vimalakirti's teachings is like watching a script, with opposing characters and contexts, with dramatic events; it is a way to train ourselves and equip ourselves with a tool for self-orientation to reach the height of enlightenment.

White hair and freckled skin is the realm of Vimalakirti. That realm is the realm of superior debate; the boundless, wordless silence of the layman Vimalakirti. And it is also the quiet but magnificent realm of poetry.

Smiling with the sun, how fast a day is
Today winter, tomorrow summer sad?

Counting the gray hairs of life is not enough
The dusty road is long, my feet are tired from walking around

The Zen mind has no language different from ordinary language. But there is still the concern that when the hair is shaved, the poetic love still remains. Well then, whether Zen and poetry are the same or different, we should not doubt or question. Perhaps “Piano Keys” is his most affectionate poem Your hands tremble on the ivory silk keys, I feel the mountains and forests heavy in my eyes,but he already told me “don’t doubt or question”!

Since when has your hair been sweet with songs
Your hands tremble on the ivory silk keys

Your singing sealed the pistil of a resentful flower
I feel the mountains and forests heavy in my eyes

The dim city streets kiss my hair
Whose waves sit and compare the silk keys of an old zither

(Piano Keys)

Because according to him, reaching the highest realm of Poetry is like a Zen student realizing the Emptiness of Tao; that is both difficult and easy. Studying Zen for thirty years, thirty years of tormenting body and mind, but not achieving anything. Angry, he left; Suddenly seeing a flower petal fall, the realm of Emptiness also suddenly and abruptly opens. That magical place is difficult to explain! If you want the poetry to be wonderful, you must not force it, it must be both Emptiness and Stillness. Stillness therefore encompasses all the movements. Emptiness therefore encompasses all scenes. Looking at life, wandering in life, you see yourself as if lying on the top of a high cloud. There are all kinds of salty, sour, and bitter things; in there is a wonderful flavor. Poetry and Dharma (the Way) do not contradict each other, do not harm each other. (Su Dong Po, distant dreamy skies, Tue Sy)

Reading Tue Sy's poems, I often wonder why his poems often mention the great festival, the old heavenly festival?

The eyes wet with golden age, the old heavenly festival
The blue shirt is not forever green on the wild hill

(Old Sky).

The innocent blue-eyed person on the great festival
The corner of the lips smiling in the strange sunlight also becomes thin
(A fleeting dream)

Where is that great festival? Where is the old heavenly festival? Why does it sound familiar!

Ah, was it that day, under the Bodhi tree where the Buddha attained enlightenment, when he said it was the “fruit of joy”, at the first Assembly of Avatamsaka, a world of flowers opened up endlessly, the Tathagata manifested as a blue-green Buddha, innocent, smiling… like when he was a 7, 8 year old boy watching the Ha Dien Ceremony and entered into meditation without knowing it? And the old heavenly assembly over there, was it the ninth Assembly, in the Thệ Đa forest, when people entered the dharma realm, entered the journey, to see the nature of the dharma realm and go into the market with their hands down?

From the cold mountain to the eternally calm sea
This rock peak and that grain of salt have not yet melted

On the top of the Himalayas there are shells and at the bottom of the deep sea there are grains of salt in castles and citadels…

The poetic realm, comes and goes, but leaves no trace. A Swallow, a Red Bird on the edge of the sky for thousands of miles.

I still think, it is that "traceless" poetic world that "saved" Tue Sy, a Swallow, a Red Bird on the edge of the sky for thousands of miles, so that he could return to his familiar thatched roof to "raise a cup of tea with old Trieu". (Which way is the pure land, Tue Sy).

Do Hong Ngoc.
(Saigon, September 2023)

» Tải file Word về máy » - In chương sách này

Tiếp tục nghe? 🎧

Bạn có muốn nghe tiếp từ phân đoạn đã dừng không?