Life, death and reincarnation as experienced and expressed in the poems of Hanshan and Thomas Merton
Item abstract only
Author
Lee, Cyrus See all items with this value
Date
2007
Volume
8
Pages
334-341
ISSN
1530-4108 See all items with this value
Abstract
Some 10 years ago, I visited a famous Chinese Buddhist temple called Shi Sha Chih nearby Nanking City. There I met with an old monk called Venerable Yuan Shen and presented him an English book of mine entitled “Thomas Merton and Chinese Wisdom." In return, he gave me a set of his beautiful calligraphy, in which he wrote the following parallel sentences: "The wild panorama should often be read as a poetry; and the good mountain should always be seen as a painting."
In this paper I intend to present you some wild poetry of an ancient Chinese Buddhist monk and his name is called "The Cold Mountain"; similarly, I will present you some beautiful painting of a modem American Catholic monk and h~ name is called "The Silent Lamp."
Ethnologically speaking, the cold mountain is the English translation of Hanshan, and as a mystic poet, he lived in the Tang Dynasty. On the other hand, the silent lamp is the Chinese translation of Merton and also as a mystic poet he lived in America but died in Thailand.
Since Hanshan and Merton are both mystic poet-monks, who similarly bad a hard and uneasy life, and both of them died in a mysterious way, and surprisingly they also accepted a kind of reincarnation. Thus, in this paper I am going to present my comparative study on life, death and reincarnation as they had experienced and expressed in their poems.
In this paper I intend to present you some wild poetry of an ancient Chinese Buddhist monk and his name is called "The Cold Mountain"; similarly, I will present you some beautiful painting of a modem American Catholic monk and h~ name is called "The Silent Lamp."
Ethnologically speaking, the cold mountain is the English translation of Hanshan, and as a mystic poet, he lived in the Tang Dynasty. On the other hand, the silent lamp is the Chinese translation of Merton and also as a mystic poet he lived in America but died in Thailand.
Since Hanshan and Merton are both mystic poet-monks, who similarly bad a hard and uneasy life, and both of them died in a mysterious way, and surprisingly they also accepted a kind of reincarnation. Thus, in this paper I am going to present my comparative study on life, death and reincarnation as they had experienced and expressed in their poems.