Here is a short talk I recently shared.
The reading today departs from Eliot Weinberger's book Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, which provides numerous translations, with critique, all of a single Chinese poem of just twenty characters.
Its poet, Wang Wei, is a revered Tang Era artist. They were known to be a student of Chan Buddhism and to express it in their work. They pioneered landscape scroll painting, and on one such scroll some hills are depicted with a fence to enclose the deer. The poem at hand accompanies this place.
I wasn't entirely satisfied with the translations in the book, so I tried to fashion my own, which may be foolhardy since I don't know any Chinese:
The Deer Park
Vacant hills, no one in sight,
yet sounds of people, conversation reverberate.
Returning, beams reach the forest deep;
again glimmers rise above green moss.
Pointers on what is going on here require some Buddhist terms.
The front half presents the view from emptiness: no separate witness, just motion within the medium. The back half presents the view from suchness: the permeating awareness interlocking with the spontaneously manifesting immanent variety. In the first half the contrasting words "no one" and "people" posit dissonance within unity, while in the second half the agreeing words "returning" and "again" reveal harmony within differentiation. This overall shape is the yin-yang.
The title, "The Deer Park", refers to the place of the story of the Buddha's enlightenment, but the poem and the landscape scroll link this idea with some more specific place.
Where is Wang Wei really showing us?
What are the deer, and what is the enclosure?