Brahmacārin Wang (c. 7th–8th centuries)
I have a couple acres of land
Planted on the slopes of South Mountain;
There are four or five blue pines
And two vines of green beans.
When it’s hot, I bathe in the pond,
When it’s cool, I sing by its banks;
Rambling about, I take my satisfaction,
Completely unaffected by others.
Translated by Victor H. Mair
The vast majority of the poems attributed to Wang Fan-chih (=Sanskrit Brahmacārin [“Lay Buddhist devotee or ascetic with his mind set on purity”]) were recovered only in the early part of last century among the Tun-huang manuscripts (see selection 214). They are important for the large amount of vernacularisms they employ. Like the Cold Mountain poems (see selection 45) with which they share so many similarities, the oeuvre of Wang Fan-chih was almost certainly not written by a single individual but, rather, represents a certain type of popular poetry with proto-Zen tendencies.