--Thinking of an unknown homeland
"Thirty years ago, you watched me from the tips of the willow branches. In those days I was still young, the moon was round, and so too were people's hearts. Thirty years later, it is my turn to gaze at you from the willow's boughs. You are a cup of wine steeped in the color of home. As the wine fills, homesickness fills as well."
--Shu Lan
You said
that the crabapple blossoms on campus were just at their height, red, and so beautiful they seemed almost pitiable.
Yes, truly beautiful. What beautiful flowers they are. Those shy flowers, those crimson flowers.
And thinking of them, I suppose the mountain azaleas of my homeland must be blooming just about now too....
When spring rushes past like a train bristling with brushes in seven colors, the earth is dyed all over in a glossy red.
What master could have laid down such splashed ink? The brushwork is so powerful, so unbridled, so vivid, and yet it holds a deep lingering resonance.
The mountain azalea is no ordinary flower.
It is like a young woman possessed of a clear, proud spirit.
Red as cinnabar, lovely as rosy mist. Its color surpasses even a blood-warmed sunset.
The red of plum blossoms is too aloof; the red of peaches too commonplace.
It is not as naively bright as the pomegranate's red, nor as seasoned as the lychee's.
Nor does it carry the haughtiness of the rose's red.
Within its crimson there is a faint translucence of white, mingled with the innocence known only to those raised in the wild, where ardent purity and a soft, classical grace dissolve into one another.
They say the peony's red is beautiful too, but in bearing and charm, surely it cannot rival this flower.
"To look once into the distance from between the mountain cliffs: that was the lifelong dream you held."
What spaciousness, what quiet peace.
The mountain azalea is like a branch of Zen.
"All sentient beings bear the marks of suffering; only the Buddha wanders free."
Perhaps the Mahayana Dharma is, at heart, just this: to sink one's roots into one's own soil, holding gratitude and tolerance in the breast.
Acting without contention, seen by no one though it may be, year after year the flower blooms unchanged.
What untroubled composure, what serene dignity.
The mountain azalea is born able to bloom only in the wild.
However desolate the mountain ridge may be, there its figure will surely appear.
Once she has rooted herself in that ground, she blooms without reserve.
Her young leaves are sparse, frank almost to the point of nakedness, and her branches are supple, carrying in them a certain tenderness.
Neither the rough waves of time nor the scars carved by time and space can diminish her passion in the least.
Long enduring wind, frost, snow, and rain, still she stands with her breast lifted;
even if people do not spare her a single glance, she smiles beautifully;
even if the other flowers scorn and reject her, still she keeps blooming in pride.
What kind of power is this?
Is it not the power of life, the power of life itself?
It is like an infant stirring in its mother's womb,
and also like the sun casting its red radiance from the mountain peak.
Filled with hope, overflowing with vitality and force.
How close, how warm, this keen sense of life is.
Thinking back to the distant past, my childhood playmates seemed like a flock of birds of paradise, frolicking across those pale crimson cheeks.
We would pluck a branch of mountain azalea and tuck it into our hair, and then we were like a crowd of brides.
Like brides who would one day be married off to the old man Time, or become the beloveds of God.
"Flowers fall, flowers fly, flowers fill the sky; red fades, fragrance breaks, and who takes pity?"
Thinking of it that way, Daiyu's burial of the flowers is hardly worth making so much of.
People seek sorrow for themselves and weary their own hearts.
What is sad is the human world; flowers do not grieve.
Even in a half jar of chilled wine, fragrance remains;
a handful of warm soil abides forever.
"Now, as I bury flowers, people laugh and call me mad"--
Sister Lin too, perhaps, was merely seeking sorrow without cause, searching for resentment where there was none.
You tenderhearted people of later generations, please do not simply imitate this young woman's figure as it was.
"Fine trees in the rear courtyard," "writing splendid and bright."
My mountain azalea too is beautiful as writing, and beloved by me as writing is.
Even when the flowers on the far shore bloom, I cannot break off a branch.
And yet that flower will go on living forever within my heart....