Asia Trip 2023 Inspirations VI - Sanzen-In 三千院, Temple Of Trichiliocosm

This poem was inspired when I visited the Sanzen-in garden in Kyoto…

1 莫見石池波動難 ‘tis difficult to see stone waves moving without the rock garden pond,
2 秋時紅楓葉落殘 And autumn’s withering red maple leaves are falling.
3 水滴流聲三千院 The sound of flowing and dripping water of the Temple of Trichiliocosm,
4 清靜隔世避塵凡 Is a serenity that separates the escaped realm of mortals.

1 There is no rock garden at the Sanzen-in. What I was remembering was the one from Ryoanji, 龍安寺 from a previous trip. Another interpretation is that it is not difficult to see the ripples moving in the rock garden because of the double negatives used in the line.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ry%C5%8Dan-ji

2 This line comes from these photos that I took,

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3 This line comes from these photos,

三千院 or in Japanese Sanzen-In. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanzen-in 

Textually, the name means three thousand courtyard/institution in Chinese. “Three thousand” is a short for trichiliocosm, a Buddhist term to mean “a concept in cosmology” of a third-order universe containing one thousand second-order clusters which in turn consists of one thousand first-order clusters which in turn is made from a thousand worlds.

4 清靜 must be translated as “serene” and not quietude as this would contradict the previous line in a place of sounds. 凡塵 is the normal way of saying “mortal realm” but is reversed in order to satisfy the rhyming rules.

Thursday, November 23, 2023