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Just for fun, I decided to copy-paste the poem into the DharmaMitra LLM translator. It does a good job picking up some obscure terms, but as a translation it is quite bad.

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And it turns out the modern Taisho edition was based on a comparison of two Gozan Japanese reproductions of the Song edition, and thus is quite reliable. And, the Taisho is the source for the modern digital canon by CBETA. Thus the poem in the manuscript is online there

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Xutang’s manuscripts are great examples because we also have a Song era woodblock print of his collected sayings 虛堂和尚語錄. The exact poem from the manuscript is also found in the 13th c. imprint. This is not unusual—I show many examples in my book.

This is actually an early Gozan reproduction of the Song imprint. Scholars have repeatedly shown that they are virtually identical. And since this is the only copy I have here in my office …

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After the poem, Xutang added a short note that records the name of the disciple to whom it is addressed: “Librarian Yuan” 元藏主. Japanese Zen students were often librarians in China, so maybe his name was “Gen.” This same information was later used by an editor to reconstruct a title for the poem.

The colophon states the name of the recipient and that he is about to “wander the realm,” a name for how Chan students traveled from teacher to teacher.

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Jason Protass @protass.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

A very rare Song dynasty #manuscript up for auction this week. A parting poem to a Zen student written by Chan Master Xutang Zhiyu 虛堂智愚 (1185-1269), signed and dated 1254. This is exactly the kind of poem and manuscript I studied at length in my book “The Poetry Demon.”

Plain Chinese calligraphy, preserved on a song dynasty manuscript signed 1254.

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A new translation of Li Qingzhao just arrived. Her poem about surviving after the loss of the nation grabbed my attention.

SOUTHERN SONG
The River of Stars turns in the sky.
On earth, curtains are let down.

The pillow is cold.
The bamboo mat stained with tears.

Loosening my silk robe, I rise
to ask the night of its passing.

The green stitching of the lotus pond is thin
and the gold of the leaves spare.

The weather is the same as before, my clothes the same.
Only I have changed.

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Jason Protass @protass.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

What do you think of Lin Yutang’s pseudo-chemical formulae for traits of well-known historical writers and poets?

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Jason Protass @protass.bsky.social · 24/12/2024

A bereft Yaśodharā as Prince Siddhartha leaves home, 1845 woodblock by the great Hokusai 北斎 (1760-1849).

A woman crowned with a tiara sits collapsed, leaning against the grand doorway of a great house. Her beautiful robes are rumpled and spread on the ground around her. We can see the pained expression on her face, and she stares into her hands. Close up of Japanese woodblock book entitled 釈迦御一代記図会, collection of Brown University Library.

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Jason Protass @protass.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

Anyone know a translation of this “cat contract”? A student asked me, and I 🤷 I remember @bokane.org mentioned it a few months ago… www.burninghou.se/p/the-naming...

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Jason Protass @protass.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

That is a great photo. It is interesting to compare it to photos from before the restoration ten years ago. Here is a photo from when I visited in 2007. AFAIK, the previous restoration work was done in the 19th century -- so this photo shows their work 100 years later. It's a very impressive site.

Thousand-armed Guanyin is carved from the living rock of a cliff, at the Dazu Caves, China. Photo from 2007.

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The book's title "Countless Sands" refers to the unimaginably large number of grains of sand in the Ganges. A common image in sutra literature. There are countless ways we could study medieval Buddhists and their environments. We can only hope these case studies provide a useful start for others.

Table of Contents (1/2)

PART I INTRODUCTIONS
CHAPTER 1 Medieval Buddhists and Their Environments
Jason Protass and Jeffrey Moser

CHAPTER 2 Contextualizing the Relationship between Nature and Culture in East Asian Buddhism
James Robson

Part II Matters of Scale and the Environment
CHAPTER 3 Flesh Mountain: Human Bodies on a Nonhuman Scale
Reiko Ohnuma

CHAPTER 4 Movements and Patterns in Embodied Landscapes for Art
Eric Huntington

CHAPTER 5 Geomorphism at “The Peak That Flew in from Afar”
Jeffrey Moser

CHAPTER 6 The Japanese Image of the Buddhist Earth: Geography, Cosmology, and the Culture of Vision
D. Max Moerman

Part III Environments in the Shaping of Medieval Buddhism
CHAPTER 7 Human Places and Cosmic Spaces: Ecological Engagements at Ellora
Tamara Sears

Table of Contents (2/2)

CHAPTER 8 Riverine Buddhism at Changlu Monastery
Jason Protass

CHAPTER 9 Masculine Mountains: Gendered Affordances at Dali’s Stone Treasure Grottoes
Megan Bryson

CHAPTER 10 The Geoaesthetics of Ritual in the Chinese Buddhist Sanctuary of Shizhuanshan
Phillip E. Bloom

Part IV Environments as Mediums of Practice
CHAPTER 11 “Occasions Both Worldly and Transcendent”: Sacred Trees in Buddha’s India
Maria Heim

CHAPTER 12 Vidyārājas and the Articulation of Ecological Interdependence at Cave Temples
Sonya S. Lee

CHAPTER 13 Mountains, Waters, and Dharmakāya: Kūkai’s Irrigation Projects
Ryūichi Abé

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(3b) Finally, Ryuichi Abe explores Kukai's esoteric interpretation of his large dam projects. Dams destroy forests and create artificial lakes. But Kukai articulates the success or failure of a large dam as a manifestation of the dharmakaya. (Nonduality is not "good" for the environment.)

Aerial photo of Mannoike in 2019, reproduced by permission of Manno City, in Countless Sands, fig. 13.1. A smaller reservoir was first built around 701-704. In 821, Kukai constructed this large dam and artificial lake. Kukai's works lasted hundreds of year, before reconstruction was needed. The artificial lake is still a major irrigation reservoir today. The filling of the dam had serious impacts on the local ecology; ironically, the area is now wildlife sanctuary, with rare trees, birds, and other animals.

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(Part 3) "Environments as Mediums of Practice" includes some particularly strong essays. This section includes Maria Heim's very insightful study of charismatic trees in early Buddhist texts. As well as Sonya Lee's analysis of the Dazu caves and the role of deities there in healing practices.

Wheel of Reincarnation, at Large Buddha Bend, Baodingshan, Dazu, China, created c. 1177-1249. Photograph by Sonya Lee. Published in Countless Sands, fig. 12.5

(2c) Vice versa, Bloom presents a botanist in medieval China who created an arboreal park that participated in Buddhist practice (non-human agency). Protass studies one monastery repeatedly rebuilt on the Yangzi River, and shows how Buddhist practice was shaped by the realities of the river.

Riverway entrance to Jinshan Monastery, Zhenjiang, photographed sometime before 1887 by Edward Bangs Drew (1843-1924); Harvard University Library. Image republished with permission in Countless Sands, fig. 8.2.

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(2b) Sears shows how architecture at Ellora Caves encodes practices that depended on the seasonal monsoons to create waterfalls. Bryson argues that Buddhist caves in Yunnan are better understood as the result of affordances (not agency). She connects the qualities of rocks to male or female icons.

Vulva cave at Stone Treasure Mountain, Dali Bai autonomous region, Yunnan. Photograph by Megan Bryson. Image published in Countless Sands, fig. 9.5

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(Part 2) "Environments in the Shaping of Medieval Buddhism" debates the presence of non-human agencies in medieval Buddhist communities. Our authors found some really fascinating examples. These provocative case studies model different ways to do religious-environmental history.

Countless Sands, fig. 10.6 : standing Avalokiteśvara (center) being attended by Yan Xun (right) and his wife (left), patrons of Shizhuanshan, Sichuan, carved between 1082 and 1096. Yan Xun wrote that if people encountered Buddhist images in a forested landscape, they would be inspired to follow the Dharma. He understood that this sacred forest was itself performing rituals, without the presence of human observers.

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(1c) Moser, looking at the Feilaifeng caves, Hangzhou, shows how the carvers incorporated the geomorphology of the living rock into the images--and how this made distant India feel present. Finally, Moerman shows us how to read a Buddhist world map from late medieval Japan. The images are stunning.

"Nansenbushū bankoku shōka no zu" map created in 1710, Japan. The countries of East Asia are cartographically accurate; while the rest of the map is based on mythological Buddhist texts, as well as Xuanzang's travel diary. Most of the map is black and white, while the East Asian countries are hand colored. Daiv Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford University. Republished with permission in Countless Sands, fig. 6.2

(1b) Ohnuma focuses on the human body as a metaphor for vast numbers in the Karuṇāpuṇḍarīkasūtra. It is a macabre read. Next, Huntington describes several possible relationships between landscape and icons, giving examples that encode the movement of bodies, and fractal or iterative patterns.

Tibetan landscape as a demoness. Image adapted from Sorenson et al "Thundering Falcon" fig 94. Republished in Countless Sands, fig. 4.11

(Part 1) "Matters of Scale and the Environment" asks how did medieval Buddhists think on non-human scales? The imagery explored in these essays is unforgettable. They show Buddhists had many strategies for moving across the human and more-than-human scales of time, space, and embodiment.

Gandharan image (2nd or 3rd century) of a small icon of the Buddha (at left) brought to show the living Buddha (center). Peshawar Museum #1534. Photograph by John C. Huntington, from the Huntington Archive. Countless Sands, fig. 4.1

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Our new book "Countless Sands" organizes the resulting essays around those three themes. Our short introductory essay explains why we approached the topic this way. An essay by James Robson focuses on the complicated place of Asian religions in 20th c. environmental thought, including Deep Ecology.

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At a workshop in 2019, we gave three prompts from the environmental humanities. We asked for one case study that would put medieval Buddhists in dialogue with these modern questions. Each author was invited to share a new text or object to think with, as well as a new way to think about it.

Woodblock image of Changlu monastery amid woods, fields, and waters, with sails in the near distance. From a late Qing gazetteer (1885). Countless Sands, fig. 8.3

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The project started as a conversation between art historians and scholars of Buddhist texts. This mix of object-based & text-based methods is well-suited for thinking about religious communities and their environments. It let us focus on the entanglements of Buddhist ideas and practices.

Reclining Buddha, Wofoyuan, Sichuan, China, Tang dynasty, early eighth century. Getty Images. Countless Sands, fig. 5.2