Yuan Mei

1716-1798

"Ghost Hunter" from A Chinese Ghost Story

Yuan Mei was a Qing poet who is nearly as well regarded as his Tang predecessors. Like Wang Wei, he wore many hats, having been a successful official, a writer of how-to books for the civil service exams, a compiler and editor of volumes of supernatural tales, and a successful landscape artist. Yuan embraced the spirit of Zen, but strongly rejected both folk Taoism and formalized Buddhism, which he saw as a tool of the corrupt Neo-Confucian upper class.

Mad Words

To learn to be without desire,
    you must desire that.
Better to do as you please:
    sing idleness.
Floating clouds, and water idly running -
    Where's their source?
In all the vastness of the sea and sky,
    you'll never find it.

Translated by J.P. Seaton
Taken from A Drifting Boat.

Green Mountain

Clouds come, and the green mountain is not.
Clouds go, and the green mountain is.
I long to ask the green mountain,
"Could you be aware...
    that you come and go, too?"