A conversation. Coward-Lawrence. A piece from 1930: Private lives.
Una conversación. Coward-Lawrence. Una pieza de 1930: Vidas privadas.
Author Archives: rladdaga
Un guerrero es elegido | A warrior is chosen
Lo hemos capturado vivo. Como combatía tan bien le ofrecimos que nos sirviera: prefirió servir a su Príncipe en la muerte.
Le hemos cortado los tendones: él agitó los brazos para demostrar su valor. Le cortamos los brazos: él gritaba de devoción a Aquel.
Le abrimos la boca de una oreja a la otra: con los ojos hizo un signo de fidelidad constante.
No le arrancamos los ojos como hacemos con los vagabundos, pero, cortándole la cabeza con respeto, celebramos el koumys de los bravos y realizamos este brindis:
Cuando vuelvas a nacer, Tch’en Houo-chang, haznos el honor de renacer entre nosotros.
It is here that we took him alive. As he fought well, we offered him a favor: he preferred serving his Prince in death.
We cut his hamstrings: he shook his arms to demonstrate his zeal. We cut off his arms: he howled his devotion for Him.
We slit his mouth from one ear to the other: he signaled with his eyes that he still remained faithful.
Let’s not cut out his eyes like cowards; but sever his head with respect,
Let’s pour the kumis of the brave, and this libation:
When you are reborn, Tch’en Houo-chang, do us the honor of being reborn amongst us.
Victor Ségalen, Stèles
Eng. trans. Jeanine Herman
Sound: Alan Courtis
Be sure | Asegúrate
Asegúrate.
Be sure.
Funzoe
This is from a book called Eat Sleep Sit: My Year at Japan’s Most Rigorous Zen Temple, written by Kaoru Nonomura and translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter. Nonomura has been suffering through the first week of training at Eiheiji Monastery; he comments on the dressing codes at the place, and particularly on the use of “the mantle or kesa, which derives from an everyday sari-like garment of ancient India that was transformed into something sacred”. This is the story behind the mantle:
“During his stay in China, Dogen saw monks place their mantles on their heads and hold their palms together in reverence. He wrote that this holy sight filled him with such irrepresible joy that he wept until the collar of his robe was soaked with tears.
Concerning the material for the mantle, he specified that it should be made from pure materials, and decreed that the following ten types of discarded cloth are especially pure:
Cloth chewed by an ox.
Cloth gnawed by rats.
Cloth scorched by fire.
Cloth soiled with menstruation.
Cloth soiled by childbirth.
Cloth discarded at a shrine.
Cloth discarded at a graveyard.
Cloth discarded in petitions to the gods.
Cloth discarded by king’s ministers.
Cloth laid over the dead.
Monks would gather scraps of such discarded cloth and patch them together. Dogen expounded further on the meaning of such rags, known as funzoe (literally “excrement-sweeping cloth”);
When collecting discarded bits of cloth, some will be silk and some will be cotton. But once they are used to make a mantle, they are neither silk nor cotton but funzoe. Cloth that is funzoe is not silk, nor is cotton.
If a human being should become funzoe, that person would be no longer a living creature, but funzoe; and if a pine or a chrysanthemum should become funzoe, it would no longer be vegetation but would indeed be funzoe.
Only by grasping the principle that funzoe is neither silk nor cotton nor jewels can one understand funzoe and come face to face with it. Those who are not convinced that a mantle is silk or cotton cannot begin to understand funzoe. Even if someone wore a mantle of rough cloth all his life in a spirit of humility, as long as he was distracted by the material and appearance of the cloth, faithful transmission of Buddha’s teachings would never be possible.”
A story of liberation, 1 | Una historia de liberación, 1
The little Elves once stole a child out of its cradle and put in its place a changeling with a clumsy head and red eyes, who would neither eat nor drink. The mother in great troubble went to a neighbour to ask her advice, and she advised her to carry the changeling into the kitchen, set it on the hearth, and boil water in two egg-shells. If the changeling was made to laugh, then all was up with him. The woman did all the neighbour said, and as she set the egg-shells over the fire the creature sung out –
“Though I am as old as the oldest tree,
Cooking in an egg-shell never did I see;”
And then it burst into a hoarse laugh. While he was laughing a number of little Elves entered, bringing the real child, whom they placed on the hearth, and then they took away the changeling with them.
Los duendecillos robaron una vez a un niño de su cuna y pusieron en su lugar a un sustituto de cabeza deforme y ojos colorados, que se resistía a comer o beber. La madre, perturbada, fue a lo de una vecina a pedirle consejo, y esta vecina le recomendó que llevara al sustituto a la cocina, lo dejara cerca del fuego y se pusiera a hervir agua en dos cascaras de huevo. Si el sustituto se reía, develaría su identidad. La mujer hizo lo que la vecina dijo, y cuando puso las cascaras de huevo sobre las llamas, la criatura empezó a cantar:
“Aunque soy más viejo que el más viejo de los árboles
Nunca ví a nadie cocinando en una cascara de huevo…”
Y se largo a reír de modo brusco. Cuando esto sucedió, varios duendes entraron trayendo al niño real, que dejaron en el suelo, llevándose al sustituto con ellos.
Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, Tales | Cuentos
Sound: Claudio Baroni
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