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SONG OF SUFFERING FROM HEAT
Red sun dominates earth and sky.
Fire clouds top off mountain peaks.
Grass and trees are scorched and shriveled.
Rivers and ponds have all gone dry.
Lightest white silk is too heavy.
Densest wood gives too little shade.
Sleeping mats are too hot to use.
Linens are washed and washed again.
Thinking of leaving space and time,
where all is emptiness and void.
Long winds come from ten thousand li.
Great waters wash away dirt and care.
But to see flesh as affliction--
that is the unawakened mind.
Just then the Sweet Dew Gate opens
on clear joy, sinuous and cool.
--Wang Wei
王维
苦熱
赤日滿天地，
火雲成山嶽。
草木盡焦卷，
川澤皆竭涸。
輕紈覺衣重，
密樹苦陰薄。
莞簟不可近，
絺绤再三濯。
思出宇宙外，
曠然在寥廓。
長風萬裏來，
江海蕩煩濁。
卻顧身為患，
始知心未覺。
忽入甘露門，
宛然清涼樂。
I have perhaps over-interpreted the next-to-last couplet in the interest of having it say what I think it says. This is a literal translation from Hugh Grigg's blog East Asian Student: "yet worry body as contract disease/begin know heart not yet wake up." Some translations emphasize the notion that the body is the source of suffering and the enlightened mind escapes the flesh. But Wang Wei was a Buddhist, a Zen Buddhist. And, as such, would certainly not have denied the flesh can be a source of pain, but suffering--that he would have seen as a matter of mind. So I think that his seeing that his mind was focused on bodily distress--and on dreaming of escaping it--was his entry into the realization that it was that focus itself that was the source of his suffering.
The "Sweet Dew Gate" is a reference to how the teachings and practice of Buddhism open on enlightenment. Less poetically, it could be called the "Dharma Gate."
Then in the last two lines there a sudden awakening, a throwing open of that gate. There are two schools within Zen, one sees enlightenment as achieved incrementally with long study and practice and the other sees enlightenment as coming suddenly, say, by hearing a hoe clatter on a stone--after long study and practice. Wang Wei's dates are 699-759. The idea of sudden enlightenment is associated with Huineng, the sixth Zen Patriarch, 638-713CE. Wang Wei's dates are 699-759. So the doctrine of sudden enlightenment was relatively new. Zen arrived in China, where Buddhism in general was already established, from India with Bodhidharma, the First Patriarch, in the 520's.
A couple more translation notes: I'm not sure whether the second line means the that the mass of the clouds looks like mountains or that the clouds are above the mountains. And with the line "Sleeping mats are too hot approach," the general meaning is correct, but I've lost the parallelism with the following line as in Hugh M. Stimson's literal translation, "rush-mat bamboo-mat not can approach/fine-linen coarse-linen again three wash." I'd like to do better with these two lines, but have so far failed.
