Poetry Snack: A Chinese Garden of Serenity

While in undergraduate school I took quite a few poetry courses, all dealing with analysis. Unfortunately, I am one of those folks who can appreciate poetry in a variety of forms, but find it difficult to put pen-to-paper myself. I do, however, find some joy in writing brief observations of the natural world and the work of Robert Bly (among others) has given me some hope that the narrative paragraph can be a form of poetry.

I recently unearthed a copy of the book A Chinese Garden of Serenity which is a collection of epigrams, or meaningful sayings, from the Ming Dynasty called 'Discourses on Vegetable Roots.' (As I recall, I found it among the stacks of books at a used book store in Virgina Beach during a March trip to visit my brother-in-law about four years ago.) These works are translated by Chao Tze-chiang. I hope that you will find the line and lyric as poetic as I have:

The attitude of people towards me may be warm or cold, but I respond neither gladly nor resentfully; the tastes of the world may be savory or insipid, but I react neither happily nor disgustedly. If one does not fall into the trap of the mundane, one knows the way of living in, and escaping from, the world.

The "answer" to happiness (I think) suggested in the preceding epigram is to neither run or over indulge in life but to experience the moments as they come. Along the same lines is the following excerpt:

Walking along a narrow path, one should lave a margin; tasting rich delicacies, on should share a morsel. These are the happiest ways of dealing with the world.

Published as a hardcover volume in 1959 by Peter Pauper Press, this book is no longer for sale on-line via standard booksellers, though I suppose a rare bookseller might have a copy hiding within the stacks. If you're interested in reading more, you could try there or I would suggest a good used book store, which happens to be where I bought this slim edition for $3.00! If you're a "real live" acquaintance of mine, I'd be happy to lend it to you, too. :)