The Selected Poems of Wang Wei Quotes

“And you--if you make it this far, you've found your way home.”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“Self is but a fleeting form taken on by earth's process of change--born out of it, and returned to it in death. Or more precisely, never out of it: totally unborn. Our truest self, being unborn, is all and none of earth's fleeting forms simultaneously. This leads to the very core of Taoist thought and Ch'an practice. As natural process emerges from nonbeing, to say we are unborn is to say that we are most essentially nonbeing.”
― David Hinton, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“In classical Chinese, there is no fundamental distinction between heart and mind: the term hsin connotes all that we associate with both of those concepts. But in Wang Wei, as in most classical poets, this sense is almost always secondary to the technical use of hsin in Taoism and Ch'an Buddhism, where it means consciousness emptied of all content, or perhaps consciousness as empty awareness. At this fundamental level, mind is nothing other than the pregnant emptiness from which all things are engendered.”
― David Hinton, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“I no doubt painted in some former life,
roamed the delusion of words in another,

and habits linger. Unable to get free,
I somehow became known in the world,

but my most fundamental name remains
this mind still here beyond all knowing.”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“Same as ever. Nothing much changed, old
friend. Why grieve over a timeworn face?”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“A mountain cloud all grief and sorrow,
I drift the end of an empty day, aimless,

and what have I to do with people now?”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“After so many years, I'm suddenly old,
and each day my hair turns whiter still,

but wandering here, a glance between
all heaven and earth, who stays long?”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“In these twilight years, I love tranquility
alone. Mind free of all ten thousand affairs,

self-regard free of all those grand schemes,
I return to my old forest, knowing empty.”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“Out beyond the river it goes all the way:
grief and sorrow, a lone plume of smoke,

and you think of going back, of offering
your lofty talent to those who need you.”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“We gaze off this tower into our thoughts.
Feelings wide-open to the far end of sight”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“Setting out alone in old age, emptiness
knowing itself here in such splendor,

I often hike up to where streams end,
gaze into a time newborn clouds rise.

If I meet some old-timer in these woods,
we laugh and talk, all return forgotten.”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“and knowing you're one among things,
you know how trifling it is to be human.”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“Here, green moss on rock grows pure
and delicate grass beneath pines soft,

birds outside the window sing idleness
and tigers at the steps are high-minded.”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“That healthy glow of youth fades into the dusk of old age,
a child's dangling tufts transformed in a trice to white hair.

A single lifetime, and so many things to wound this heart:
if you don't enter the empty gate--where will you get free?”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“Come--we'll show each other the way.”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“Crystalline waters grow quiet at nightfall.
Moonlight infusing idleness everywhere,

I trust myself to this isolate paddle, this
observance on and on, no return in sight.”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“Everything dream here in this human life,
he's easily wild, maybe singing some song.”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“Done struggling for a place in that human realm, I'm just this
old-timer of the wilds. So why are these seagulls still suspicious?”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“Of your bones now buried white cloud, this much remains
forever: streams cascading empty toward human realms.”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“How long can a life last? And once
it's gone it's formless all over again.

I think of how you waited for death:
ten thousand ways a heart wounds.”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“Noble-minded ones fill the ranks of heaven,
but simple people gladly keep their distance”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“We're both travelers dark-eyed with love
and both possessed of white-cloud mind.”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“Forever hemmed in, I trust myself to wide-
open distance: it melts tangles clean away.”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“A Red Peony

Among captivating greens idle and serene,
its red robes are shallow, and then so deep.

A blossom's heart is grief-torn? In all this
spring color, who could fathom the heart?”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“In mountain forests, I've lost myself completely:
identity's nothing but the role we play in public.”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“Bird song and tumbling blossoms scatter through tangled confusion away.
Streamside door and mountain window all idleness and silence, silence--

up in those gorges, who would guess the great human drama even exists?
And when people in town gaze out, they see distant empty-cloud mountains.”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“Lotus blossoms adrift out across treetops
flaunt crimson calyces among mountains.

At home beside this stream, quiet, no one
here. Scattered. Scattered open and falling.”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“No one seen. Among empty mountains,
hints of drifting voice, faint, no more.

Entering these deep woods, late sunlight
flares on green moss again, and rises.”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“Stop searching and you arrive here

where people wander without danger,
look without seeing profound depths.

You who drift a world of dust hoping
to return--what other home is there?”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei

“We wander life, no way back. Even a simple
birdcall starts us all dreaming of home again.”
― Wang Wei, The Selected Poems of Wang Wei