In no Chinese poet’s works does compassion for human suffering play so large a part. The works of his maturity — the ballads, satires and petitions- — are largely grounded on pity, and even at the close of his life, when indifference is apt to set in, we find him in the hard winter of 838 ashamed of the comfort of his stove-side when he remembers that at that very moment ‘somewhere soldiers are marching to mount guard, travellers are trudging through the snow, strangers are stranded far from home, without food, without hope; prisoners are shivering in unlit cells’.
–Arthur Waley, The Life and Times of Po Chu-I [also, Bo Juyi]
My joy is like Spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom
Everywhere I walk.
My pain is like a river of tears, so full
it fills up the four oceans.
Please call me by my true name,
so that I can hear at the same time
all my moans and laughter,
so that I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true name,
so that I can awaken,
so that the door of my heart may be left open,
the door of compassion.
–Thich Nhat Hanh
