Halfway Places

    Here is a poem I would like to share from a translation of one of Master Han Shan's Cold Mountain Poems, edited and translated by J.P. Seaton:


        " I always wanted to go to East Cliff
        more years than I can remember
        until today I just grabbed a vine
        and started up. Halfway up
        wind and a heavy mist closed in,
        and the narrow path tugged at my shirt:
        it was hard to get on. The slickery
        mud under the moss on the rocks 
        gave way, and I couldn't keep going.  
        So here I stay, under this cinnamon tree,
        white clouds for my pillow,
        I'll just take a nap" (p.25)

When I read this poem, I think about the many ways in which I feel an aspiration to do something, only to find myself going 'halfway' in the end. What is it about the nature of longing and desire that leads a person to the 'half way' mark?

One time when I was very young, I had this particular moment when I wanted to read a whole pile of books on my winter break. I recall the moment when I was just about to finish my course work, and how I came down with a cold at that very moment when there was simply nothing more for me to do. In a way, that time of 'non-doing' seemed to be so strange that my body almost seemed to develop a reaction when there wasn't anything more to do. If I couldn't occupy myself with studies, I could at least have a virus to occupy my body! But I also marvel how there is never a point where I am at the place I 'want' to be. It would be a contradiction of want itself, which is always striving toward some greater state of ease or relaxation. And the most elusive part of this whole experience was the sense that what I thought I wanted kept receding further and further along the horizon. I realized that there could never be a time when I could fully relax or settle. There is always going to be a sense of unease: the nagging sense that I am still caught in a delusive trap of thinking I am this body.

Han Shan's poem also alludes to the elusiveness of spiritual practice. Wanting to go somewhere creates a tension that over-strains the mind, to the point where it is constantly adding some new trick to what should already be present and self-evident. When the narrator finally does climb up the vines and traverse toward East Cliff, he is beset with all kinds of obstacles to his seeing, his feeling, and even his way of movement. In the final stanzas of the poem, the reader is left wondering, did the narrator find what he was searching for, did the journey elude his grasp,  or did he settle for something less? I have a sense that the sheer exhaustion of Han Shan's journey yields to the peace that he may have been seeking in the first place. It happens only when Han Shan has given up trying to find the object of his search in a particular place. He is resting not in the goal but in the mind itself, hence his remark "I'll just take a nap".

Sometimes, we long for the soft bed in which to rest, but perhaps where we end up resting is always on the side of the road, where rest is least expected. Maybe ponder this one for a while!

Han Shan (ed/trans. J. P. Seaton) (2009), Cold Mountain Poems. Boston: Shambhala