七寶池上底鄉思 Homesickness by the Pool of Seven Treasures

Homesickness upon the Seven-Jeweled Pool

，『，Amitabha said, "Upon the pool of the Land of Ultimate Bliss,

？whence comes this mournful sound of weeping?

，Kalavinka, go down and see

．』who dares be so unruly."

，So the kalavinka beat its wings,

，and flew to a jeweled tree beside the pool,

，：and alighted there, craning its neck to look down:

『，，？"Eh, child of Buddha, have you forgotten this is paradise?

：Do you not love these rows of jeweled groves,

，the blossoms on the trees facing each other,

？leaf matching leaf?

；Do you not hear how here wondrous music fills the ear;

？do you not see how here solemn, glorious forms abound?

，Dwelling in such a land of perfect bliss,

？』why do you go on grieving so?"

，：The young woman seated on the jeweled dais still sobbed softly to herself, and pressing her palms together, answered:

『，，"Great One, this is your native home,

，．to you, of course, it holds no trace of suffering.

，But my native land is in the world of men,

？how can you make me not weep as I long for it?

『，"When I was about to come here,

．my whole body had already grown cold.

，；But my husband still held me close with his warm hands;

．he let his melting tears fall upon my forehead.

『，"When I was about to come here,

；my whole body had gone stiff and straight;

，．but my husband still bent and flexed my limbs, again and again.

『，"When I was about to come here,

，；the color of my whole body had turned to the grey of death;

，but my husband still pressed my two cheeks with his fingers,

．to see whether their former rosy color might yet return.

『，"Now I sit here the whole day long,

．and now and again I hear his grieving cries.

，，Ah, the trace of tears upon my forehead,

，the warmth upon my arms,

，the color upon my face,

，every joint of my whole body,

，all because of my husband's voice,

，！are catching fire, are melting away!

，I had hoped to come here and enjoy happiness,

！but now instead I have withered away!

『，，"Ah, I want to go back,

，I want to go back,

．I want to go back and still his grieving cries.

．』I long to go back this very instant and still his grieving cries."

：The kalavinka said:

『，"Be still a while,

，I will play the heavenly pipes for you,

；to smooth away the knotted sorrow in your heart;

．and turn the grieving cries in your ears into sounds of joy.

，Be still a while,

．I will play this heavenly pipe for you.

『，"Your music cannot be turned into a fountain of love,

；it cannot quench the fierce flame of every trace of love upon my body;

，nor can it become an abyss of forgetting,

，into which he might cast all his feeling,

，and think of me no more.

，I must still go back and see him,

．』and release him from his longing."

『，，"Ah, you have such feeling,

who could still counsel you,

？or bar your way?

，．Go back then, but remember — this is the very seed of transmigration."

：『，！Amitabha said, "Well spoken, Kalavinka!

！You have been able to speak to her of this great chain of causes!

，Even were the world shattered into motes of dust,

．within those very motes would dwell sentient beings beyond number.

，；Therefore, so long as the world does not end, sentient beings do not end;

，；so long as sentient beings do not end, transmigration does not end;

，；so long as transmigration does not end, salvation does not end;

，．so long as salvation does not end, the Land of Bliss can go on manifesting without end."

，，．，When she had finished speaking, the lotus petals gradually wrapped the young woman up, folding once more into a single drooping lotus bud. A breath of wind blew, and it, so frail, could barely

話說: huà shuō — 1. It is said that ... (at the start of a narrative) 2. to discuss; to recount
完: wán — 1. to finish 2. to be over 3. whole 4. complete 5. entire (HSK 2)
蓮: lián — lotus
瓣: bàn — 1. petal 2. segment 3. clove (of garlic) 4. piece 5. section 6. fragment 7. valve 8. lamella 9. classifier for pieces, segments etc
漸: jiān — to imbue
把: bǎ — 1. to hold; to grasp 2. to hold a baby in position to help it urinate or defecate 3. handlebar 4. classifier: handful, bundle, bunch 5. classifier for things with handles 6. (used to put the object before the verb: 把 (bǎ) + {noun} + {verb}) (HSK 3)
少婦: shào fù — young married woman
裹: guǒ — 1. to wrap around 2. bundle; parcel; package 3. to press into service; to pressgang; to make off with (sth) (HSK 7-9)
起來: qǐ lai — 1. to stand up; to get up 2. also pr. (qǐ lái) (HSK 1)
再: zài — 1. again; once more; re- 2. further; beyond this point of time 3. (before an adjective) more 4. then (after sth, and not until then) 5. no matter how ... (followed by an adjective or verb, and then (usually) 也 (yě) or 都 (dōu) for emphasis) 6. (used to introduce additional information, as in 再則 (zài zé), 再就是 (zài jiù shì) etc) 7. (literary) to reappear; to reoccur (HSK 1)
合成: hé chéng — 1. to compose 2. to constitute 3. compound 4. synthesis 5. mixture 6. synthetic (HSK 5)
一: yī — 1. one 2. single 3. a (article) 4. as soon as 5. entire; whole; all; throughout 6. "one" radical in Chinese characters (Kangxi radical 1) 7. also pr. (yāo) for greater clarity when spelling out numbers digit by digit (HSK 1)
朶: duǒ — variant of 朵 (duǒ) (HSK 5)
菡: hàn — lotus blossom
萏: dàn — lotus
低垂: dī chuí — 1. to droop 2. to hang low
着: zhāo — variant of 著 (zhāo) (HSK 1)
微風: wēi fēng — 1. breeze 2. light wind
一: yī — 1. one 2. single 3. a (article) 4. as soon as 5. entire; whole; all; throughout 6. "one" radical in Chinese characters (Kangxi radical 1) 7. also pr. (yāo) for greater clarity when spelling out numbers digit by digit (HSK 1)
吹: chuī — 1. to blow 2. to play a wind instrument 3. to blast 4. to puff 5. to boast 6. to brag 7. to end in failure 8. to fall through (HSK 2)
他: tā — 1. (third-person singular) (since the early 20th century, usu. male) he; him; his 2. (bound form) other; another; some other (as in 他日 (tā rì) and 他人 (tā rén)) (HSK 1)
荏: rěn — 1. beefsteak plant (Perilla frutescens) 2. soft 3. weak
弱: ruò — 1. weak; feeble 2. young 3. inferior; not as good as 4. (following a decimal or fraction) slightly less than (HSK 4)
得: dé — 1. to obtain 2. to get 3. to gain 4. to catch (a disease) 5. proper 6. suitable 7. proud 8. contented 9. to allow 10. to permit 11. ready 12. finished (HSK 2)
支: Zhī — surname Zhi (HSK 3)

，．sustain itself, and so it fell into the pool.

，，，The kalavinka seemed to remember nothing of this, and in that grove where blossom faced blossom and leaf matched leaf, went on singing

．to other sentient beings.

Loading the interactive reader…

What it’s about

Amitabha hears sobbing beside the jeweled pool of his Pure Land and sends the kalavinka bird to investigate. A young wife seated on a lotus admits that paradise is beautiful, but it is the bird's homeland, not hers. She remembers dying in her husband's arms: his warm hands bent her stiff limbs and his tears tried to restore color to her face. Hearing his grief from heaven rekindles every bodily trace of their attachment.

The celestial bird offers music to turn sorrow into joy, but she says no tune can extinguish love's fire or become an abyss of forgetting. She wants to return and stop her husband's cries. The bird permits her, warning that attachment causes rebirth; Amitabha praises this as the great causal bond through which endless sentient beings make endless salvation necessary. Lotus petals close around her and fall into the pool, while the bird moves on, unsettling any easy opposition between earthly love and religious release.

When it was written 背景

The Seven-Treasure Pool, jeweled trees, lotus birth and kalavinka derive from descriptions of Amitabha's Western Pure Land. Xu recasts that devotional scenery as a dramatic lyric in which homesickness makes perfect paradise insufficient. The ending is deliberately double: attachment perpetuates samsara, yet the Buddha calls the bond good because compassion and deliverance exist only while feeling beings remain. Repetitions of 我要囘去 and chains ending in 不盡 give the poem its liturgical force. Readers can enter through the wife's concrete deathbed memories before approaching its paradoxical theology.

Words in this chapter 生词

迦jiā迦jiā — (phonetic sound for Buddhist terms)
囘huí囘huí — variant of 回 (huí)
不盡bù jìn不盡bù jìn — not completely · endlessly
夫君fū jūn夫君fū jūn — (honorific) husband
有情yǒu qíng有情yǒu qíng — to be in love · sentient beings (Buddhism)
悲啼bēi tí悲啼bēi tí — to wail with grief · plaintive cry
陵líng陵líng — mound · tomb · hill · mountain
煖nuǎnHSK 5煖nuǎn — variant of 暖 (nuǎn) (HSK 5)
頻pín頻pín — frequency · frequently · repetitious
輪迴lún huí輪迴lún huí — (Buddhism) samsara; cycle of rebirth · to recur cyclically; to succeed one another in cycles
爲wéiHSK 2爲wéi — variant of 為 (wéi) (HSK 2)
少婦shào fù少婦shào fù — young married woman