[updated September 2022]
Deer Park
鹿 寨
空 山 不 见 人
但 闻 人 语 响。 返 景 入 深 林
复 照 青 苔 上。
Lu Zhai
Kong shan bu jian ren
Dan wen ren yu xiang. Fan jing ru shen lin
Fu zhao qing tai shang.
Deer Park
This poem can be translated with two different viewpoints and outlined below:
Empty mountains no people seen
Yet one can hear human words echo. Reflected light enters deeply into the forest
Shines again upon the green moss.
or
Empty mountains, people have disappeared
Yet one can hear human words echo. Reversion back to a previous condition by entering into the deep forest
Green moss illuminated again.
The most noticeable difference occurs with line three. And more specifically with the initial character, or word, of line three: “fan” (返). More about this issue below.
One of the most important characteristics of both the Chinese visual and literary arts is the importance placed upon mood. Here the mood is one of solitude and serenity so often used by Wang Wei and other Tang Dynasty poets. The place I imagine is that Wang is in the vicinity of a mountain Buddhist temple. Most likely it is the Qing Yuan Temple in the Southern Mountains, near his vacation home and retreat at Wang River.
This poem can interpreted as running simultaneously through two parallel viewpoints: one in the manifested, immanent, material bound realm of time and space (you)( 有 ), and the other in the non-manifest, transcendent realm (wu)（无）. These two ways of looking are not adversarial, but complementary, like the concepts of yang and yin. Also like you and wu, as described by Laozi in chapter one of the Dao De Jing. Refer to the category Artistic and Philosophical Foundations on this website.
Within time and space, Wang Wei appears to be in deep contemplation, initially at dawn, up in a mountainous and forested seclusion. As the sun rises, a shaft of light breaks through the forest canopy. The smell of incense is strong on the wind. This place is so remote and shady that the trees and rocks are covered with green moss.
During the daytime, he has been with people, both monks and laypeople, perhaps listening to sermons and sutra readings, and having profound discussions.
At sunset the lay people head back down the mountain to the world below. Only Wang and the monks remain. As voices fade and echo away, he slips back into a state of contemplation. And then he is startled as the rising moon again sends a shaft of reflected light in through the same forest opening. The moss is re-illuminated. The poem is then composed.
The Buddhist temple area of Lingyin Si, near Hangzhou in China, is one such place. Walking past the main entrance, one can hike up a trail, through the bamboo forests, higher and higher up a narrowing canyon. Past the place where many of Hangzhou’s older residents collect artesian water flowing directly through a pipe from a subterranean water bed. Past two resting places where shrines have been built, to the one near the mountain top. Behind this small shrine dedicated to Dao Guan, are places not unlike the one just described by Wang Wei.
The poem’s title, Deer Park was the location, at Sarath, outside of Varanasi (Benares), in India, where Buddha gave his first sermon after Enlightenment. It was here where Buddha first shared with his five relatives and first disciples, and thus the world, his vision of Emptiness, the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. So perhaps Wang Wei chose this title to tell his readers that this poem is an expression of his sudden enlightenment, or at least as an expression of the True Mind, the highest form of transcendental wisdom. From the Diamond Sutra, we know that much merit may be achieved when expressing Buddhist insights in four line poems. This four-line poem tradition came from India, where they are called gatha. A gatha is the shortest metrical unit of ancient India. It was used to summarize long prose sections of a sutra, and in the oral transmission of sacred teachings. In China, they were used as a seal of understanding that Chan (Zen) students composed upon breaking through the bonds of delusion and attachment.
The first character kong (空) , means empty, or emptiness, and is used many times by Wang Wei throughout his body of work. So with kong shan, we are to concentrate on the emptiness, and not on the mountains. Emptiness appears to have at least four basic aspects and meanings.
On a purely physical level, empty is the emptiness of space, physical space. Like my gas tank is almost empty. The mountains are empty and vast, with a very small human presence, and Wang Wei is by himself, probably in Chan meditation.
On a deeper level, emptiness is referred to several times in Laozi’s Dao De Jing. One of the characteristics of the Dao is emptiness, the non-material aspect of wu. The first and third lines of chapter four:
Dao zhong, er yong zhi huo bu ying
Zhan xi si huo cun
“The Dao is empty like a cup, yet it cannot be filled
How profound! It appears not to exist, but it does exist.”
And from chapter eleven:
Zao hu you yi wei shi
Dang qi wu you shi zhi yong
Gu you zhi yi wei li
Wu zhi yi wei yong
“Make holes for doors and windows to create a room
Must have these empty spaces for the room to be useful.
Therefore, things with substance have advantages and benefits
While that without substance creates usefulness and purpose.”
The characters you zhi yi in line three could also be translated as having-substance, or having thisness or suchness you (有). The Chinese word for suchness is zhenru, which literally means true, real, genuine, natural state of original simplicity. In contrast, wu zhi yi of line four could be expressed as not-having-substance wu (无).
Laozi expands the meaning of emptiness in chapter forty as discussed earlier where the expressions being-within-form (you) and being-without-form (wu) are very good translations of you and wu by Wang Keping. Being-without-form seems to be closer to the meaning of wu, instead of the often used non-being. As we know from chapter four, this aspect of the Dao appears not to exist, but in actuality it does.
Laozi uses the character you (有) to express the manifest, the immanent, actual, visible, particular, nameable, that having-substance, and being-within-form. The character wu (无) is used to express the non-manifest, the transcendent, potential, invisible, universal, nameless, have-no-substance, and being-without-form. So from the Dao De Jing, wu is the stillness and silence before and after sound, the non-manifest before birth and after death, and the always full of potential Dao, before and after its expression and manifestation.
One afternoon, within the Yellow Mountains of eastern China, I took a very steep gondola ride hundreds of feet into the air to arrive near the top of the mountains. After getting off, I found a narrow ledge where a thousand feet down below, above the valley floor, there was an ocean of clouds.
I watched the white clouds appear to come from out of this ocean, rising up, vanish into the air, reappear again, swirling around the crags and summits, only to disappear again into thin air. These observations illustrate the movements between you and wu, as well as emptiness, impermanence, and the phenomena of conditionally arise. At each elevation, from the valley floor to above the mountain peaks, were the conditions of temperature, dew point, humidity, wind, air pressure, and perhaps many more change.
Like in Wang Wei‘s poem, everything, including me, were in a state of contemplation. The abrupt-rising mountains, the pine trees growing out of cracks in the rock, the songbirds in the forests, the clouds, the winds and sun, all in a state of emptiness and contemplation. This is a pervasive mood and viewpoint of Wang Wei, the Tang Dynasty, and much of Chinese art.
The emptiness of the empty mountains also reflects the pervasive Chinese artistic concept of kongbai (空白). Kongbai literally means “white space”, or “blank space“. Western artists may call it “negative space“. Most, if not all, Chinese paintings have a lot of kongbai, while most Western paintings have very little, where the canvases are covered with paint from border to border. The use of kongbai recognizes and honors the unsaid, the unpainted, the unexpressed, and yes even the inexpressible aspects of our world. It too is like the fertile wu (that gives rise to you) that surrounds the painters composition, and much like the silence that surrounds the sounds of poems and music. Kongbai in both poetry and painting is expressed commonly and pervasively, and reflects the intentional incompleteness, indirect and intuitive suggestiveness of the Chinese arts.
The fourth aspect of empty, or emptiness, comes from Buddhism. Here emptiness, or “sunyata“, in Sanskrit, is not the nothingness of above, but means the emptiness of inherent existence (svabhava). It also refers to the enlightened state of being. From the Surangama Sutra, the Buddha explains that there are three understandings of emptiness.
The first understanding is intellectual. Here the self and all phenomena, every thing (living and non-living), every event (past, present, and future), and every thought is connected and interdependent upon everything else, in an interrelated web of conditions arising and falling away. What Buddha awakened to was this truth of dependent origination: the understanding that all things have no real independent identity, being, or power, and are therefore empty. People are empty of a real and permanent self or soul, and phenomena are empty of any real and permanent attributes. All of what most people consider as reality is really thought constructions, or mental fabrications, of the discriminating, distinction-making capacity of our yet-to-be-awakened minds.
The you, or manifestations, of things, events and thoughts are analogous to waves being empty, where they appear on the surface of the ocean, and then disappear back into it. Just as there is no real and lasting difference between two waves, there is no inherently real or lasting difference between two objects, two people, or two thoughts, since all arise and revert back to their source. Another image often provided for this emptiness is Indra’s Net, which is a multidimensional web, upon which a countless number of dew drops (or jewels) rest, all reflecting each other into infinity.
The second understanding involves practice. There is no wall or boundary between what perceives and the perceived, between observer and observed, between subject and object, between self and other. According to the Buddha, our initial and fundamental error is to divide reality into self and other, what he called “adding understanding to understanding”.
The third understanding has emptiness as the description of enlightenment, or of the True Mind. With enlightenment comes the realization that true emptiness is identical to the fullness of wondrous existence. The True Mind is wondrous, subtle and hidden, which is nearly identical to Lao Zi’s use of “miao” (妙) and “xuan” (玄) in the first chapter of the Dao De Jing.
So back to Wang Wei. From the first line Wang Wei makes the statement that people are not seen. No people are seen because the path to sudden Enlightenment, is by necessity, a path traveled alone. So Wang Wei is sitting by himself in the forest, either in fact, or by function, perhaps close to one of the many Buddhist mountain temples, in meditation.
The Chinese characters to express this state of mind, this condition (jing) is yinju, a compound word used several times by Wang Wei in other poems. Yinju is more than a youthful trip to Walden’s Pond, or John Muir’s hikes through Yosemite, or the pursuits of Dharma bums, but rather like the Indian forest-recluse tradition called aranya. Aranya is a quiet place in a forest or other place of solitude, where spiritual practitioners gather to meet and live.
In line two, people are present, but their presence is inferred, or known only indirectly through their echoes. He can hear the echoes of people’s words. He does not hear the words directly from the people, he hears the echoes. Echoes from the past. Echoes from the emptiness, and the stillness and silence required to have echoes, and later, the kongbai to have reflections. Echoes from the Buddha, the Sutras, his teacher Daoguan, from the Buddhist Patriarchs and Bodhisattvas who have come before him.
Starting in line three, the Chinese character fan (返) is crucial in this, as well as in many other Wang Wei poems. Literally it means to return, come back, go back, go in an opposite direction, reverse, to feel rejuvenated, to go back to one’s hometown, to return to the original source, to turn over, turn around. It is a character and concept often used by Laozi. Notice the first character in chapter forty of the Dao De Jing above. On a deeper level it can mean the interrelation between opposites (yin and yang), and their constant returns to unity, to a union of opposites. In the Dao De Jing, Laozi uses the expression wu ji bi fan, which means “the inevitable reversal of the extreme“. In the West, we may know it as “the regression to the mean”. Either way, it is a movement to the middle, to a state of harmony and balance, even if it is impermanent.
From chapter one of the Dao De Jing, the world can be seen in two different ways. One is through the eyes of having desires (you yu yi guan qi jiao). Using this way of looking, fan jing is a reflected light, the moonlight, returning deeply into the forest. In the past, jing (景) has been translated as “reflection“. But jing can also means a view, sight, or scenery, as well as a situation, condition, circumstance, and a scene from a play. It can also mean to wake up to reality, or to come to see the truth.
The other way to view the world is through the eyes of having no desires (wu you yi guan qi miao). Within this viewpoint there are two more aspects. One is where fan jing means tathata (Sanskrit) or zhengru (Chinese). Tathata means “suchness”, the highest form of transcendental wisdom, which is a going back, a return to one’s native home. Like one going back to the Garden of Eden, where everything is familiar, empty, ever-enduring and non-dualistic. For Wang Wei this is a yin ju place, deep in the forest where the green moss grows. In the other aspect, fan jing means paravritti (Sanskrit), which is also a turning back. But this time it signifies a spiritual change or transformation, which usually occurs suddenly. This is an event experienced personally, and not to be understood intellectually.
As a practitioner of Chan, Wang Wei must have been familiar with the Buddhist texts, the Lankavatara and the Diamond Sutra, which state that there are both gradual and sudden ways of awakening to enlightenment. The gradual way focuses on the purification of the mind’s projections. The sudden way involves paravritti, an instantaneous turning about, or turning around within the depths of consciousness where the dualistic views are cast off. It is likened to a mirror immediately reflecting whatever forms and images appear before it.
This recurrent theme of reflections and echoes is manifest again when looking at this poem written out by a shufa (书法) (calligraphy) master, in the traditional way, starting with the first character in the upper right corner, going down five characters and then moving to the left for the next column. What is noticeable are the two characters in the middle: ren (人) and ru (入). Ren means person or people, and ru means to enter. They are next to each other, and are mirror reflections of one another. Placed right in the middle of the poem. An echo can be thought of as a reflected sound. And a reflection can be considered an echoed light.
So fan jing can mean a returned reflection, as perhaps Wang Wei first meditated at dawn, during the sunrise, and now it is in the early evening. So the light enters the forest again, this time as a moonrise, giving the scene a whole new appearance. So if the deep forest allows in only a small amount of light, in the morning, the sunlight came in from the east, and now in the early evening, it is the light again from the east, from a moonrise that enters the forest. Buddha faced east while sitting under the Bodhi (Sanskrit for enlightenment) tree. Like an echo, the light enters from the east, and returns again from the east. First directly as the sun (yang), then indirectly as the moon (yin).
From a purely Chan Buddhist perspective, perhaps fan jing (返景）is Wang Wei’s experience of the Original Mind, the True Mind, or of a state of being that exists before our enchantment and attachment with the things of the world. He had left this state of being, state of consciousness, and now in forest meditation, has returned to it.
In line four, the character fu (复) literally means to repeat, double, duplicate, turn around, turn over, answer, reply, regain, recover and resume. Zhao (照) literally means to shine, illuminate, reflect, mirror, understand, in the direction of, towards, in conformity with.
So fu zhao can be interpreted as a reillumination of the green moss in the deep forest. Moss can symbolize the yin aspect of the Dao: the dark, shady, moist. Moss also represents the constant, invariable part of the world where there is no dust, illusion, or seasonal change of colors. The yin of the deep forest moss, contrasts well with the yang of the entering and illuminating light. This is the same yin of yinju, and the yang of taiyang (sun). The sun, by way of the moon, indirectly illuminates above the green moss, not the green moss directly, but indirectly. The forest moss does not change, but our perception of it can change as the light of spiritual discernment changes.