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[1] Le Karma est un concept dans l'hindouisme qui explique la causalité à travers un système où des effets bénéfiques découlent des actions bénéfiques passées et des effets nocifs des actions nuisibles passées, créant un système d'actions et de réactions tout au long de la vie réincarnée d’une âme. Un cycle de renaissance. On dit que la causalité s'applique non seulement au monde matériel, mais aussi à nos pensées, mots, actions et actions que d'autres font selon nos instructions.

Silence

29

On the way to shore

Lies a sand plot

Oyster shells

Bow in the lapping waves

Shapes of seagulls flying

Or just landing on the horizon

Are like contours

Of a person lying face down

Wind blowing from the sea

Sticks me to my shirt

Then inflates the fabric

My body inside

Is the core

The bitter seed

Of a half ripe fruit.

(Translated from Vietnamese by Nhat-Lang Le & Susan Blanshard)

Explication

A beautiful poem that dwells on the poet’s visit to a sea side, While approaching the sea shore the poet finds a sand plot. Water lapping there may have drawn the eyes and the ears of the poet. Oyster shells bow in the waters. In other words the hollow in the oyster shells are facing the earth. At the same time the sea gulls flying or landing on horizon are like contours of a person lying face down. Thus, small oyster shells at the edge of the plot of sand are in the foreground. And the background has the horizon where the earth and the skies meet and there the seagulls liken a human being prostrating. This is a unique description of the sea where the oyster shells near and the shapes of seagulls there together prostrate like a person. Whom do they bow down before? Surely  it is the infinitude  apparent in the waves that are limited by the horizon below the boundless azure dome. In other words the whole creation is a prayer hall where the living as well as the inert are lying with the face down. But the man in the poet does not participate in this prayer. The wind from the seas enters into the shirt of the poet and he looks inflated. His body lurks below the wind blown shirt. The body is thus like the seed hidden in an inflated fruit. Through the observation of the self that speaks of an appearance in apparels  blown up and the seed of the body contracted in relation to the blown up shirt might suggest that the appearance never gives one the truth. At the same time the appearance of the seagulls or the oysters might not be true. And it is a pity that we can perceive the other only with the aid of our senses. So we can see the shapes of the seagulls forging together another shape----the shape of a man reclining facing the earth. Even when we look into ourselves we see the shirt. Below that apparent body there is another body which is not inflated by the sea wind But that body below the shirt  is not the self. It is a half ripe seed. If a seed is not ripe it is of no avail. The word seed is very significant. The body that wears the shirt has also in it the seed of consciousness which implies the storehouse of consciousness and accumulated karma that helps to form the consciousness. This seed of consciousness and karma  goads one from one life to another. But there is seed within seed. The Buddha mind lurks below every level of appearance. But when the poet  describes his body as the seed he might speak of himself as an unmanifest inarticulate sound still in the process of becoming. When he becomes ripe or mature in consciousness he can give us the seed sound that might unveil the mystery of creation. The poet thus calling himself a half ripe seed unwittingly betrays the fact that he is a bodhisattva. Our salutes to him.The shirt stands for the petals that protect a seed. The half ripe seed or the poet in the making whose words will charge the world with love and compassion has come to have a glimpse of the sea and the sky where all life and the remains of living beings prostrate before the Buddha mind.

 Dịch giả Takya Đỗ

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