Which Vanity Is Real?

Two more poems from the anthology A Book Of Luminous Things and then i promise i'll put it back on the bookshelf.

The first makes me think of those henro walking the trail on Shikoku and looking for free lodging each night as they work their way around the island. In this case the poet talks about a fisherman's hut, but on Shikoku it could just as easily be an old Shinto shrine located on some out of the way part of the trail.

Coming At Night To A Fisherman's Hut

Fisherman's hut, by the mouth of the river,
Water of the lake to his brushwood gate.
The traveler would beg night's lodging.
But the master's not yet home.
The bamboo thick, the village far.
Moon rises, fishing boats are few.
There! far off, along the sandy shore
The spring breeze moving his cloak of straw.

Chang Chi
9^th century

Those few minutes of indecision and wonderment. No one is here. What should i do? Do i wait? Do i move on? But the next village is pretty far away and leaving would mean walking into the dark. Then, maybe for the first time today, your mind stops as you're unable to make a decision. And in that moment of silence, you start to see. The bamboo. The moon. The boats. Everything around you. Your connection to it all. You begin, for a few moments at least, to become part of the experience, part of the landscape, instead of the henro just walking and counting kilometers.

Then the master of the shop next to the shrine appears and everything reverts back to what it once was as the spring breeze brings movement back into the picture.

The second poem, another definitely about the henro trail, especially for those who have already walked it and still dream about it nightly, is by Po Chu-I, another 9^th century Chinese poet.

A Dream Of Mountaineering

At night, in my dream, I stoutly climbed a mountain,
Going out alone with my staff of holly-wood.
A thousand crags, a hundred hundred valleys—
In my dream-journey none were unexplored
And all the while my feet never grew tired
And my step was as strong as in my young days.
Can it be that when the mind travels backward
The body also returns to its old state?
And can it be, as between body and soul.
That the body may languish, while the soul is still strong?
Soul and body—both are vanities;
Dreaming and waking—both alike unreal.
In the day my feet are palsied and tottering;
In the night my steps go striding over the hills.
As day and night are divided in equal parts—
Between the two, I get as much as I lose.

"Soul and body—both are vanities;
Dreaming and waking—both alike unreal."

What is real? Who are you? The man or woman? The butterfly? This question has been asked, pondered, and meditated on countless times since Chuang Tsu first posed it back in the 4^th century B.C.

When the mind travels backwards, what happens to the body? When the mind travels into the future? The dream you and the wakeful you, both nothing but vanities that hold you back, that keep the real you hidden, unable to be, unable to express itself.

If you walk the henro trail, daily moving forward, yet all the while getting as much as you lose, and therefore going nowhere, what ground are you standing on? And, are you really going nowhere even if your body isn't moving?