What shall I leave
behind?
The flowers of spring,
the cuckoo of summer and
the leaves dyed by autumn.
Tag: taigu ryōkan
222
Everything begat by circumstances
dies when circumstances change.
219
Reading a million books
does not compare to understanding a single sentence.
If someone asks, say:
“Know your mind as it is.”
206
Things one should beware:
Verbosity
Fast speech
Loud speech
Talking without being asked
Intervening in the discourse of others
The desire to have the last word
Duplicitous speech
Talking before the other has finished
Talking at an inappropriate time and place
Talking sense to a drunk
Talking sense when one is drunk
Talking sense to someone mad
Talking sense when one is mad
Bringing up trivial things
Grandiloquent speech
Talking publicly about others’ secrets
Jesting while others are solemn
Grovelling
Replying without listening to what the other said
Getting stuck at the doorway chatting
Contentious speech
Political gossip
Fooling children
Putting words in a child’s mouth
Frivolous dullness
Showing off with Chinese words
Tall stories
Talking about things one cannot do anything about
Badmouthing others
Unnecessary words
Endlessly looking back on things that are gone and won’t return
Praising one’s own deeds
Boasting
Talking against one’s better knowledge
Talking in loud voices while others sleep
Pedantry
Forcing others to listen to one’s own private matters
Talking without listening what the other says
Talking in feigned geniality — it will only bring bitterness
Talking as if knowing about something you have no knowledge of
Best not to tell anyone that one should not say that
⋅ Nota Bene ⋅
(This was a rather long section: I left some things out, things that kind of repeated or I didn’t know how to translate.)
199
What was yesterday right,
is today wrong;
what is today right,
was perhaps yesterday wrong.
Right and wrong aren’t enduring truths,
advantages and disadvantages are hard to guess beforehand.
188
Not that I don’t
care to converse
with the rest of the world
— I know how to have fun
only by myself.
112
At last I learn:
you can do nothing about the world:
hypocrite
they say, if I forsake it
— if I don’t, I’ll become anguished.
49
If you do not covet, everything will be enough,
if you demand, nothing will be enough.
The Header
I tried to find this poem in English but Google yielded no results so I just ended up translating it myself. It’s likely bad and amateurish but I tried.
The mountains coloured by autumn
shall serve as my signposts:
traces of me shall fade
in the immemorial past.
According to the translator, “the mountains coloured by autumn,” is in Japanese “someiro no yama”, which phonetically alludes to “sumeru no yama”. Sumeruyama is, apparently, a nexus mountain in buddhism. Basically, the above is a suicide poem but I thought it was beautiful.
Hiraeth 