[archived]: East Idioms-1 by Changming Yuan ©

East Idioms

Changing Yuan

Table of Contents

1. Ch’i, Or the Original Breath

2. Dao: the Original Source of Species

3. Nuwa’s Dilemma: An Other Mega-Narrative

4. Yin + Yang

5. The Fengshui Rules: Yang vs Yin

6. Three Sun Shootings: An Other Genesis

7. The Unpatented Quadrants

8. Chinese Gentility: Four Floral Haiku

9. Swirling Swastika: a Chan (Zen) Poem

10. Fate Forecast

11. Fengshui Associations of the Five Elements

12. The Ballad in Bagua (Or Eight Trigrams): A Mini Epic*

13. Half of the Triumph: the Eight Trigrams

14. Nine Detours of the Yellow River

15. The Confessions of the Chinese Calendar

16. Zhuangzi Revisited (1): Butterfly Being

17. Zhuangzi Revisited (2): The Mouse, A Mouse

18. The Confucian Knowledge

19. Confucian Nobilities (1): Pine

20. Confucian Nobilities (2): Bamboo

21. Confucian Nobilities (3): Chrysanthemum

22. Name Changing: A Confucian Principle  

23. This Is a Line: A Piety Poem

24. Curse in Verse: An Ischemic Tradition

25. Ancestry Worshipping
26. You Are a Buddha

27. Chan: Self-Meditating

28. Chan: Inner Landscaping

29. Chan: Self-Rebuilding

30. Chan: Self-Renovating 

31. Therapeutic Chan-Poems (1): Mind-Clearing Mudra

32. Therapeutic Chan-Poems (2): Dewdrop Mudra

33. Therapeutic Chan-Poems (3): Flower-Picking Mudra

34. Therapeutic Chan-Poems (4): Infinity Mudra

35. Therapeutic Chan-Poems (5): Sky-Reaching Mudra

36. Therapeutic Chan-Poems (6): Round-Reaching Mudra

37. Therapeutic Chan-Poems (7): Authentic Fire Mudra

38. Therapeutic Chan-Poems (8): A-Mi-Te Mudra

39. Universal Compassion: the Chan Prayer

40. Karma-Converted  

41. Inner Drought

42. East Idioms (1)

43. ast Idioms (continued)

44. East Idioms (cont. 3)

45. East Idioms (4)

46. East Idioms (5)

47. East Idioms (6)

48. East Idioms (7)

49. East Idioms (8)

50. The Clay Tripod

51. Lexical Tourism

52. Mahjong Marching

53. Personal Politics

54. Yellow Comedy

55. Chanson by a Chinaman

56. Another Impasse

57. Sell Liberation of Words’ Worth

58. The River and the Bridge

59. Well Well, the Well

60. The White Goose

61. The Death of a Chinese Widow

62. Making Tea

63. Sunwashing

64. Reading behind the Words

65. The Knitted Vest

66. Fatherly Fear 

67. Last Meet with My First Love

68. Class 761, Shanghai

69. Dancing with Crane

70. Naming a Nation

71. Worldly Affairs (7): A Chinese Portrait

72. Pidan Or Century Eggs, China

73. The Loss of a Nation’s Identity

74. Fragile, Archaic China

75. Seeing the Dragon: A Parallel Poem

76. Modern Mandarin-Speaker

77. The Girl Who Danced with Democracy*

78. Drawing the Dragon
79. Directory of Directions

Ch’i, Or the Original Breath

neither the hindu prana

nor the Christian holy spirit

i am the authentic source

of light and energy

the force of vital life itself

that you cannot see

touch, taste, hear, or feel

but you can always map

my omnipresence

with the clairvoyant tentacles

of your spirited soul

like air, like water

like air married with water

i am constantly flowing

from yin to yang

or to yin from yang

through and around everything

seeking mixed smoothness

and becoming balanced

although in the depth

of my selfhood

contains an infinitesimal seed

ready to grow

into my own antiself

unworldly, beyond words

i do not even have a shape

but I do have a nickname

as lao zi used to call me

am DAO

Dao: the Original Source of Species

before that big blast

there was neither time

nor space

nor matter

nor laws of physics

nor gods of course

so they say

or believe

but somewhere

out of all that void

Dao grew into one point of being

divided into two

two into four

four into myriads

until it has become

a whole universe

still growing

together with man and god

alike

Nuwa’s Dilemma: An Other Mega-Narrative

Back from her 3 day celestial tour

(each second amounting to a century on earth)

Nuwa was abhorred to find

How the human world she had created was evolving:

While the human kind had grown

Rampantly in numbers

And in numbers only

It kept degrading inside

Into grotesque beasts

Lower than deformed insects

Seeing how well the World of Gods

And the World of Dead were both doing

Nuwa began to feel

Confused, confounded:

Of all her equally whimsical creations

Why the World of Humans alone

Was developing so loathsomely?

From that moment on she has been hesitating:

Should she destroy the entire human world

And recreate the race, or just let them go

Their own way and destroy themselves?

Yin + Yang

the light soaring spirit

…within…the heavy metallic matter

the budding summer dawn

…beyond…the withered wintry dusk

the hot and hard sunbeam

…through…the cool and soft moonlight

the thin snowflakes

…along…the thick ink

the shiny plane

…around…the dark dot

the transparent palace

…from…the muddy field

the chasing eagle

…over…the submersed slab

the boundless southern sky

…above…the fenced northern earth

the dry poetic voice

…at…the wet narrative pitfall

the male

…with…the female

from and towards……the imbalanced balances

The Fengshui Rules: Yang vs Yin

For Yang Residence

Don’t live in a grotesque-looking house

At the bottom of a valley

With all doors in straight lines

Above all, don’t dream in a legless bed

Right under a chandelier

However exquisite

Or you would be haunted by a devil

For Yin Residence

Let your body be buried

On a wooded ridge

Higher than all houses

Let your soul squat

At an evergreen treetop

Watching the rising sun

(Better like my grandma

Too poor to have a coffin)

Then one of your offspring

Will be a statesman

A maneybag

Or a literate star

(Like me)

Three Sun Shootings: An Other Genesis

            Ancient Chinese myth has it that the world has ten suns to begin with …

Origin of Suns

They are sons of God of Heavens

Each with an all-faced body, a heart

Where dwells a three-legged golden crow

Always playing, lolling and wallowing

As wild as so many bears bursting with fire

In the heavenly river of stars

Until one day they go crazy, all jumping high

In the sky, refusing to return home

Even to take a break at night

First Shooting

To save his tribesmen

Hou Yi shot down

The biggest sun

With his renowned red bow and white arrow

Yet little happened:

Given nine suns still wantoning

In the front yard of heaven

The whole earth was burning with dry heat

Like the living room of hell

Drought in the plains

Fires on the mountains

All men and women fled

Hiding themselves deep in cool caves

But there stared a butterfly effect of hope

Sweeping through the human minds

Second Shooting

           

Using only one other arrow

thicker, longer, whiter

Hou Yi shot down three suns

No sooner had the souls of

The three-legged gold crows

Drifted out of their bodies

Than night began to fall from nowhere

Although not so dark

Not so long

Not so cold yet

Third Shooting

At an unseen moment of glaring spot

With his enormous five-arrowed bow

(Newly made by the five most powerful tribes

From the five-colored rocks

Left over by Nuwa after the Creator finished mending the sky)

Hou Yi squatted straight

Aimed high

And shot down

All the other remaining suns

Except the brightest, the most handsome one

He left for the human world 

To disperse earthly shadows

Ever since then, even Nuwa does not know

Why Kua Fu has been running

After the sun, Xi He’s only son

In an endless and tireless pursuit

From his tribal home near the Wei Lake

To the Yellow River (whose water

Fails to quench his thirst), flowing down

Right from Heaven to the distant wasteland

Beyond the North Sea, where he never means to stand

Where he is fated to fall    

The Unpatented Quadrants

we chinamen, half and quarter chinamen

children of eight or sixteenth chinamen

constantly pounded with a peculiar pride

over our ancestry's four great inventions:

                        the first was paper to transcribe ancient ballads

                                    but later often used to give ultimata to your emperors

                        also the printing technique to transmit sages' teachings

                                    but later often used to exhibit your ugliest scars

                        a third the compass to help find the golden dragon

                                    but later often used to guide your foreign creditors

                        the last gunpowder to launch fireworks at spring festival

                                    but later often used to bombard your long walls

            they chinese, half and quarter chinese

            children of eight or sixteenth chinese

            baffled with belief, brief belief

            that their unknown ancestors happened to invent

                        the wrong stuffs in the right times

                        or the right stuffs in the wrong places

Chinese Gentility: Four Floral Haiku

Orchid:            Deep in the valley

                        Alone on an obscure spot

                        You bloom none the less

Lotus:              From foul decayed silt

                        You shoot clean against the sun

                        Never pollutable

Mum:               Hanging on and on

                        Even when wishes wither

                        You keep flowering

Plum:               Your brave bold blood dropped

                        As though to melt all world’s snow

                        Before spring gathers

Swirling Swastika: a Chan (Zen) Poem

                                    FAMEFAM EM           M

                                                      E          O

                                                      D                      N

                                                      I            E

                                    SMEDITATINGMEDITATIY      

                                    E               T  

                                    X               A

                                    S                T

                                    E               I

                                    X               NPOWERPOW

Fate Forecast

            - Believe it or not, the ancient Theory of the Five Elements accounts for us all.

1 Metal (born in a year ending in 0 or 1)

-helps water but hinders wood; helped by earth but hindered by fire

he used to be totally dull-colored

because he came from the earth’s inside

now he has become a super-conductor

for cold words, hot pictures and light itself

            all being transmitted through his throat

2 Water (born in a year ending in 2 or 3)

-helps wood but hinders fire; helped by metal but hindered by earth

with her transparent tenderness

coded with colorless violence

she is always ready to support

or sink the powerful boat

                        sailing south

3 Wood (born in a year ending 4 or 5)

-helps fire but hinders earth; helped by water but hindered by metal

rings in rings have been opened or broken

like echoes that roll from home to home

each containing fragments of green

trying to tell their tales

                  from the forest’s depths

4 Fire (born in a year ending 6 or 7)

-helps earth but hinders metal; helped by wood but hindered by water

your soft power bursting from your ribcage

as enthusiastic as a phoenix is supposed to be

when you fly your lipless kisses

you reach out your hearts

                        until they are all broken

5 Earth (born in a year ending in 8 or 9)

-helps metal but hinders water; helped by fire but hindered by wood

i think not; therefore, I am not

what I am, but I have a color

the skin my heart wears inside out

tattooed intricately

            with footprints of history

Fengshui Associations of the Five Elements

Fire:                 South, summer, hot, bitter

                        Red, gaiety, pulse, tongue, a;

Water:                         North, winter, cold, salt

Black, fright, bones, ears, e;

Wood:                         East, spring, wind, sour

                        Green, anger, tendons, eyes, i;

Metal:              West, autumn, dry, pungent

                        White, worry, skin/hair, nose, o;

Earth:              Centre, late summer, wet, sweet

                        Yellow, thought, muscle, mouth, u

The Ballad in Bagua (Or Eight Trigrams): A Mini Epic*

qua a: The Creative

hush! did you ever hear

in the very vastest void

a voice almost invisible

awakening Pan Gu

the great father of life

who had arisen

slowly but steadily

amidst all nothingness?

with his hands like a huge ax

Pan Gu clove the chaos into yin and yang

one floating high above

clear and clean

until it formed the heavens

the other sinking deep down

turbid and turbulent

until it solidified into the earth

even bigger than the entire universe

his mind in itself can create

a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven

just as his first manifesto

still echoes from soul to soul:

there is neither god, nor heaven

i am god and i am heaven

let there be a lightway, and here i come!

gua b: The Lake

soon after Pan Gu                   put the universe in order

there were more than              one thousand thunders

exploded as though                 in a single big blast

triggering a super-                   scaled skyquake

whose tremendous                  tremors traveled

along the ever                          darkening lightning

that created cracks                  and crevices

across the boundless               vault of the heavens

her newborns striving hard but hopeless to survive

the flood, the drought as well as the famine

Nuwa, the gracious mother of the human race

to whom power had been an eternal joy

ceased changing her forms and shapes

starting to rescue her young children

from the danger of being swallowed by death

without getting a chance to grow on their own

day in and day out

not knowing what was tiring

she filled, smoothed and ironed

every gap that needed to be treated

with the soft five-colored stones

she had defined and refined

in her first alchemist’s furnace

until the whole firmament was fully mended

gua c: The Clinging

in the south dominates Yan Di the Great

in the north rules Huang Di the Mighty

they are both Nuwa’s worthy offspring

but they never brother each other

followed by deities and humans alike

they fight fiercely and formidably

for women, for wealth or for war’s sake

the biggest battle                     breaks out in Banchuan

metal scales agape                   with burning cold

chain mail glitters                    over death’s shadows

banners fluttering                    against loud cries

as thick and dark clouds         keep whelming

the whole city seems               ready to collapse

even night is so much              scared to death

it hides itself in                       an unseen corner

for a thousand long days and nights

the whole universe holds its breath

while watching the all decisive dual

between the two heavenly rivals

like tsunamis meeting at the horizon

not a single drop of blood is shed in disgrace

until most are fallen forever in the fields

or too exhausted to return to the heavens

gua d: The Thunder

to revenge on his captain’s      shame of defeat

chi You stages                         an all-front or total war

by summoning                         every wind above earth

retrieving every rain                under the sky

and enrolling each                   fighter of ferocity

like thousands of                     wild mammoths of horror

stampeding at                          an unheard thunder

against the defence                 line of Huang Di

to meet Chi’s challenge           Huang Di dispatches

Yin Long his most valiant       and capable general

who never holds a weapon     in his handsome hands

but on the wall of                    his courageous mind

hangs a sword that                  can break from its case

readily leap forward                like a flying dragon

to cut off the head                  of an arch-enemy

even it is more than                 one hundred zhang away

seeing Yin Long’s legions fail to curb

the sweeping storms manipulated by Chi You

Ba the most talented and beautiful princess

offers to join in the half-fought battle

by stilling each violent wind and rain

to help destroy the most destructive forces

despite the puzzled eye of those who see her:

who is among us this extraordinary fair warrior?

gua e: The Receptive

the greatest                              rebel of all time

was not born                           to be a rebel

but wherever                           there is oppression

there will be                            a timely rebellion

this is                                       a universal truth

although it never has               been hand-written

like the law formulated           for every action

there is an equal                      opposite reaction

the door for dogs and pigs      is widely open

while the gate for humans       is tightly closed

a loud voice is calling              outside the prison

come out, come out,                i will give you freedom

Xin Tian fondly                      desires freedom

but he knows it                       all too well

how can a human bod y          crawl his way

out of the desperate door         for animals?

his mind can                            never be slaved

nor can his will                        be walled

Xin Tian has                            to be beheaded

but the moment                       his head chopped off

he restarts to wave                  with wonders

his brave axe                           and unbending shield

trying to see                            with his nipples

and roaring                              with his naval instead

gua f: The Mountain

just like any other normal bird

jing Wei has a beak sharp and hard

with which to peck around on the ground

and pursue her dream dropped while flying

she has a pair of wings of heavenly hope

plumed with feathers of despair

that empower her to fly long distance

and low enough to her father’s kingdom

but unlike any other                bird on earth

her calls and songs                  are her own name

who used                                 to take a lonely walk

along a less trodden trail         in the woods

until on a hot and                    humid summer day

she ventured to swim              in the East Sea

without a companion              in her private quest

and never returned                  to the palace of Yan Di

ever since the rebirth               she secured

of the foamy peak                   of a huge wave

Jing Wei has been                   fully engaged

in filling the vast                     and violent sea

with fresh twigs                      and stones

she collects and transports      from Mount West

one at a time                            with her lonely beak

although it seems                    simple but impossible

gua g: The Dangerous

out of nowhere                        out of everywhere

torrents of rain                                    all fall together

lakes overturn                          and rivers overflow

mountains collapse                  in muddy nightmares

as young and old fight                        against hunger

humans and animals duel        with plagues

the whole world seems           to be doomed

to perish                                  in a single fierce flood

to tame the rivers and watercourses

Guen steals a seed of xi soil from heaven

but long before he can accomplish his task

Guen is killed at Tian Di’s heavenly order

and his body thrown in the wildness

where it refuses to decay for three years

until a yellow dragon is begotten

leaping out of his belly cut widely open

Yu quickly grows                    to be Guen’s great son

for he never forgets                 his father’s behest

even though he has                 no magic xi soil

nor any help                            from high above heaven

he gulps down                         all the dark clouds

sucks up                                  all the torrential rains

chains every stream                 running mad

to free the land                        from the flood’s grips

gua h: The Wind

far beyond the vast east sea

Xi He gives birth to ten suns

playing happily in the heavens

like so many wantons who never stop

chasing one another unawares

their faces getting dirtier and dirtier

until summoned by their dear mother

bathing them in the depths of Sweet Pond

at an unseen moment of glaring sot

all the ten sons seem t turn wild

like mad fires sending out more heat than light

burning every green leaf in the field

when Hou Yi has to hold high

his red bow and white arrows

and shoot down the suns up to nine

leaving just one as Xi He’s only son

no one is sure                          what Kua Fu is up to

who never ceases                    seeking the traveling sun

in an endless                            and tireless chase

from his comfort home           near the Wei River

to the Yellow River flowing   down from heaven

whose water fails                    to quench his thirst

to the wasteland                      beyond the North Sea

where he means                       to stand to fall forever    

*As many literary scholars have noted, Chinese literature has no epic in the western sense of the term.  Considering this fact, my 'ballad of bagua: a mini epic' is not only highly experimental in form -- I used the most ancient Chinese folk form of 'bagua' or eight trigrams (in a slightly modified manner), but also very ambitious in content, for I tried to write the most ancient Chinese myths into a poetic narrative. To my best knowledge, this is the very first attempt in any language, since no poet has ever done so even in the Chinese language. 

Half of the Triumph: the Eight Trigrams

The creative:    yangyangyangyangyangyangyangyang

                        yangyangyangyangyangyangyangyang

                        yangyangyangyangyangyangyangyang

the clinging:    yangyangyangyangyangyangyangyang

                        yinyinyinyin                      yinyinyinyin

                        yangyangyangyangyangyangyangyang

the dragon:      yinyinyinyin                      yinyinyinyin

                        yangyangyangyangyangyangyangyang

                        yinyinyinyin                      yinyinyinyin

The receptive:  yinyinyinyin                      yinyinyinyin

                        yinyinyinyin                      yinyinyinyin

                        yinyinyinyin                     yinyinyinyin

Nine Detours of the Yellow River

you are unaware of your obscure sources

but you are explicitly sure of the vast sea

                        as your final destination

            you always frown with your brownish wrinkles

            but you prefer a nonprofessional smile on your face

                                                your only luggage of life

                        all your teeth have been lost or pulled out

                        but you keep licking the muddy banks with your heart

                                    despite your dreams forged

            your song is no more than a foam of silence

but you struggle hard to remain afloat on the sea of noise

                        beyond the borderline of heaven

your love for the loess plateau often overturns and overflows

            but you have never flooded the valley of the dragon's mind

                                                since confucius's times

            your course ahead is crowded with holes and crevices

                        but you will deliver your promises to every unevenness

                                    instead of promising the deliveries only

                        you occupy an enormously tiny place of the world

            but you feed all the hopes and wishes of those

                                                with thirsty mouths stranded ashore

            you flow down from the sky created by yourself

but you hope to avoid falling on the broken floor

                                                of your own church

you may be tortured or burned to steam

but you will eventually find your impossible way

                        to the sea of blue sky

The Confessions of the Chinese Calendar

            it all began with an animal race Emperor Jade called to amuse himself and his earthly subjects...

Rat

yes, i admit betraying the cat as my only close friend

but i won the race, with my head rather than my legs

Ox

to honor my contract with the yellow sun

i eat green grass, yet give red meat to man

Tiger

as the only feared king of the thick jungle

i am afraid and tired of my own timidness

Rabbit

with my cagey ears held so high

i will not miss a sound of peace

Dragon

although my portraits hung lively above the clouds

no human eyes have ever seen my authentic being

Snake

the moment i sloughed off my old slim self

i forgot ever seducing any manhood in heaven

Horse

my body looks more masculine than a strong man

and my heart feels more feminine than a tender girl

Goat

when i bleat towards the passers-by

i never mean to speak in an other voice

Monkey

each time i try to find any lice in the corner of my mind

i act like the humans outside the fence with barbed wire

Rooster

with my wings plumed with the feathers of night

i can not fly but to crow loudly towards dawn

Dog

given my canine camaraderie and pack mentality

i feel at home before, among or behind soldiers

Pig

i spend all my lifetime wisely

to guard this single moment                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Zhuangzi Revisited (1): Butterfly Being

Neither a human

Dreaming of being a butterfly

Nor a butterfly

Dreaming of being a human

But simply a moth egg 

Attached firmly

To a yellowish leaf

Within the human mind

Or perhaps the other way around

Am I?

Zhuangzi Revisited (2): The Mouse, A Mouse

if the little mouse became

as boundless as the sky as it wishes

the sky would become

as free as a cloud

the cloud

as powerful as a wind

and if the wind became

as unshakable as a wall

the wall would become

as penetrating as a mouse

and the little mouse

a mouse                   

The Confucian Knowledge

Only you know

You only know

You know only

When you know that you know

When you know that you know not

You need to know when you know not that you know

You know that you know not when you know not

Or you know not that you know not when you know not

Confucian Nobilities (1): Pine

Sitting on a boulder

Like Thousand-Hand Thousand-Eye Guanyin

You reach out all your deeply tanned arms

Pointing all your evergreen fingers up to the sky

Not to take in moisture from the surrounding mists

But to give out the freshest air you could

With eyes held in as many hands

You are witnessing the sounds of the world

Still, in spirited stillness

Confucian Nobilities (2): Bamboo

With your hair-like roots

Holding the earth so tightly

You stand straight

Even during a summer storm

Thin as your body

You keep an open mind

For all secrets of growth

Between your heart-ringed joints

Despite your slim leaves

You are full of spirits

Ever so clean

Ever so green

Confucian Nobilities (3): Chrysanthemum

Still, you are always amazed

Why chrysanthemums bloom

Without feeling

At their spots of growth

While they are identified by color

White, yellow, pink, red, orange, blue, purple

Tender-textured

Petals powdered

With the coolest rays

Of the mid-autumn moon

You are stricken by their very graciousness

Each hiding behind its jade-veined fingers

Yet each refusing to budge against the chiseling frost

Still and proud

Name Changing: A Confucian Principle  

Confucius once said

If the name is not right

Language will carry no might

So my father created my name

By rearranging the sun and moon

Vertically and horizontally

To equip it with all

The forces of yin and yang

Dispersed in the universe

Since I became subject

To a totally different grammar

All people have complained

Or made fun of my name

So harsh and awkward

They conspire to seduce me

To adopt a familiar one

Like Michael in the powerful speech

But to retain the subtle balances

In the wild wild world I wander

To hold my father’s sunbeam

With my mother’s moonlight

I fiercely refuse to change it

Even though I often feel lost

When the sounds I hear

Do not sound like my name at all

This Is a Line: A Piety Poem

            (for Liu Yu and other mothers)

A line this is for my mother’s birthday

A birth line for my mother’s day

A mother for the birthday of a line

A celebration of my mother’s line of birth

Mother, I will line your birth with celebration

I will day a line with birth celebration, Mother

I will mother a day line with celebration

I will celebrate the mothering of a line

Mother, I will celebrate a line’s birthday

Mother my celebration of a line’s day

Mother my day’s line for a birthday

Celebrate my line with my mother’s birth

Celebrate the day with my mother’s line

Mother, I celebrate your birthday with a line

Curse in Verse: An Ischemic Tradition*

As if this had been a family curse

You have all the symptoms of ischemia:

Palpitations, short breaths, irregular heartbeats 

Although no test results show you

Having a physiological cause of the problem

While your family doctor keeps wondering

Why you do not have enough blood

Flowing around behind your Chinese chest

You know your heart muscle as a sponge

From which you have squeezed out

Too many of your blood-rooted words

Like your father, like your son

*While my father Yuan Hongqi has never been able to get his poetry published, my 16-year-old younger son Allen Qing Yuan has already had his poems appearing in a number of countries. Even today, many Chinese families still keep the long lasting tradition of placing supreme values on the literary/poetic art, resulting from the obsession with the ‘scholar-official,’ a concept deeply rooted in classis Confucianism.

Ancestry Worshipping

No, we never planned it that way
But it so happened this seventh summer
I took my twelve-year-young son
To my father’s native village among hairless hills
In the far east end, the other side of the world
Which he had left as a starving orphan
And returned with me in the Mao suit
Like a magic-toyed boomerang
When we were both at Allen’s age
For the first times in our lives

Last time, my father forced the Little Red Guard in me
To kowtow, burn joss sticks and paper money secretly
For his parents, whose dialect had survived
Though I understood it only half-heartedly

This time, I cajoled my boy to grasp a handful of earth
From the grave of my grandma worshipped by villagers
(Her humaneness has supposedly made her a local deity)
And smuggle it to the backyard of our home in Vancouver
Like some foreign seeds prohibited at the customs

As we departed, again, our clan elder chanted:
Under the shade of a new highway
This old grave will soon be erased…

You Are a Buddha

As long as you can

Go along, or

Go alone

With Karma

As long as you are ready

To accept, or

Give up

Everything, anything

Chan: Self-Meditating

Imagine

Sitting under a tall pipal

On a vast stretch of prairies

Where you transform your entire selfhood

Into the little marigold in front of you

Then, the running stream water

The gliding bird

The drifting cloud

The morning light

The summer sky

Where you are

The universe

Where the universe

Is you

Chan: Inner Landscaping

With its whim-bladed diaphanous scissors

The west wind arrives simply too early

Trimming the edges of late summer

Pruning the few overgrown branches

Of frenzy afternoons, like an artful hairstylist

Eager to enhance her patron’s charisma

Next year, when the season returns

It will grow greener, with stronger boughs

More tender buds, like the lilac tree

Trembling with muted laughter

In the front yard of my mind  

Chan: Self-Rebuilding

Let the seed of fire grow,  rising

Above your inner horizon

Like the most glaring summer sun 

Let the ball burn brilliantly

Burning out every cell within your body

And shooting its light through your skin

Then, let the light from heaven fall

Filling in each blank within your shape

Until all the light starts melting together

To stuff your entire selfhood

Chan: Self-Renovating 

In the heart of every selfhood

Is there a tiny seed of antiself

That keeps growing unnoticeably

Until it is big, big enough

To become one and the same

With your entire being inside out

Like a drop of condensed color

Dyeing all the water

In a diaphanous jug

Each time an antiself gains a growth  

Your previous selfhood gets thinner

Lighter, larger, yet more colorful

Like yin seeking to become

Totally mixed up with yang

In an ever renewed balance

Therapeutic Chan-Poems (1): Mind-Clearing Mudra

Stand straight

Stand still

Eye to eye

To a pipal or oak tree

Communicate with it

In the mother tongue of love

And imagine

Opening every door and window of your heart

Irrigating every cell of your liver with dewdrops

Bringing your vision from the horizon afar

Slowly and progressively

Back to your inner being

Above a lotus flower

Pure, fresh, crystal

Therapeutic Chan-Poems (2): Dewdrop Mudra

On the open stage of her mind

She finds herself standing alone

High above a crystal lotus flower

Where she bends down gracefully

To collect a dewdrop

From its most tender petal

Like a drop of elixir from heaven

Which she can use

To soothe, to purify

Every part of her body

Every corner of her heart

Only if she likes

Therapeutic Chan-Poems (3): Flower-Picking Mudra

With all your tenderness

Bend down gradually

And reach out your left arm

To pick up your favorite flower

From the inner garden

Behind the fence of your thought

And bring up the flower

Close up to your face

Where you can see its bold brilliance

Melting into a pool of fragrance

Where you and the flower

Become one and the same 

Therapeutic Chan-Poems (4): Infinity Mudra

Stretching my hands

Along the horizon

And beyond all boundaries

I try to hold the entire universe

In my two arms

Slowly rising

Like the ocean

And gather all the energy

The spirit

The light

And the inspirations

From the very infinite