I rinse my mouth in the water and wash my feet.
In front, I face an old man angling for fish:
How many in all are those who lusted for bait
And now vainly long to be “east of the lotus leaves.”
translated by Hugh M. Stimson
I rinse my mouth in the water and wash my feet.
In front, I face an old man angling for fish:
How many in all are those who lusted for bait
And now vainly long to be “east of the lotus leaves.”
translated by Hugh M. Stimson
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Sorry to bother you, Leonard, but I am curious–what does “east of the lotus leaves” mean?
It’s actually a reference to a line from an old Chinese song that goes like “fish play east of the lotus leaves.” It refers to a happy place which Wang Wei has the fish in his poem giving up because of their hunger for worldly food and thus getting caught by the bait of the fishermen. Wang Wei tried to live a life abstaining from “worldly food.”
I was wondering if it might be a metaphor for an ascetic life. Thank you for the explanation.
You were right.