TRYING TO LIVE A MORE SATISFYING LIFE

Hung Ying-ming, Master of the Three Ways: Reflections of a Chinese Sage on Living a Satisfying Life, translated by William Scott Wilson, with a foreword by Red Pine (Boston & London: Shambhala, 2012) (From Book One: "9. Late at night, when others are at rest, / Sitting alone, I look deep into my heart: / For the first time, distractions cease, and the truth along becomes manifest, as dew appears at dawn. / At such times / I experience a free and responsive mind. / Now the truth is manifested about the past, and I am once again aware of how difficult it is to escape distractions. / At such times / I experience mortification and shame." Id. at 11. "44. If you want to study, it is necessary to collect your spirit, / And to concentrate in earnest. / But if in cultivating virtue there remains any idea of merit or fame, / Learning will inevitably amount to nothing. / And if reading books you have a tendency toward recitation and stylishness, / Surely there will nothing in the depths of your heart." Id. at 27. "139. Character is the  master of talent, talent the servant of character. / To have a talent but no character / Is like a house with the master absent and the servant in control. / How many times will the little demons appear? / How many times run amok?" Id. at 71. "187. The disease of blatant desire can be cured, / But the disease of excuse-making is difficult to alleviate. / The obstacles of external affairs and things can be displaced, / But the obstacles of Reason are difficult to remove." Id. at 93. From Book Two: "8. Men understand how to read books that have words, / But do not understand how to read those that lack them. / They know how to pluck the lute that has strings, / But do not know how to play the one that has none. / Caught by the form, but untouched by the spirit: How will they get at the heart of either music or literature?" Id. at 113. "74. If you're bridled and chained by worldly desire, / You will learn how distressful life can be. / If you're comfortable and at ease with your own true nature, / You will learn how life can be enjoyed. / Knowing how you become distressed, / Your earthly desires will be destroyed; / Knowing how life can be enjoyed, / You will, of yourself, reach the mind of the sage." Id. at 146. "100. The actress puts on white powder and daubs herself with rouge, / And with the touch of the brush creates both beauty and crone. / But when the songs have been sung and the theater is closed, / Where are beauty and crone then? / The go player fights for the fore and contends for the rear, / Competes with each stone for victory or defeat. / But when the game has ended and the stones are put away, / Where are victory and defeat then?" Id. at 158. "128. The human is, at bottom, nothing more than a marionette. / You need only to have your hands at the source / To let no string become tangled, / To pull and release each freely, / To have stop and go reside in yourself, / And not to allow even a thin hair to be manipulated by another. / In this way, you can surely transcend this place." Id. at 128. From the Introduction: "Master of the Three Ways is a book about living with simplicity and awareness. It is a book about getting at the true taste of things without all the distracting and encumbering sauces and spices. It is a book about living without stuff, whether it be material, psychological, or spiritual...." Id. at xvi-xvii. From the backcover: "At once profound, spiritual, and witty, Master of the Three Ways is a remarkable work about human nature, the essence of life, and how to live simply and with awareness. In three hundred and fifty-seven verses, the author, Hung Ying-ming, a seventeenth-century Chinese sage, explores good and evil, honesty and deception, wisdom and foolishness, heaven and hell. He draws from the wisdom of the 'Three Creeds'--Taoism, Confucianism, and Zen Buddhism--to impress upon us that combining simple elegance with the ordinary, we can make our lives into art. This sense, along with a particular understanding of Zen that makes art from the simple in everyday life, permeates Chinese and Japanese culture to this day." Note: This book was previously published under the title The Unencumbered Spirit: Reflections on a Chinese Sage.).