Yaping He, 2015.7.24

Chickpea to Cook
Rumi – Translated by Coleman Barks

A chickpea leaps almost over the rim of the pot
where it’s being boiled.

‘Why are you doing this to me?’

The cook knocks him down with the ladle.

‘Don’t you try to jump out.
You think I’m torturing you.
I’m giving you flavor,
so you can mix with spices and rice
and be the lovely vitality of a human being.

Remember when you drank rain in the garden.
That was for this.’

Grace first. Sexual pleasure,
then a boiling new life begins,
and the Friend has something good to eat.

Eventually the chickpea will say to the cook,
‘Boil me some more.
Hit me with the skimming spoon.
I can’t do this by myself.

I’m like an elephant that dreams of gardens
back in Hindustan and doesn’t pay attention
to his driver. You’re my cook, my driver,
my way into existence. I love your cooking.’

The cook says,
‘I was once like you,
fresh from the ground. Then I boiled in time,
and boiled in the body, two fierce boilings.

My animal soul grew powerful.
I controlled it with practices,
and boiled some more, and boiled
once beyond that,
and became your teacher.’

Chickpea To Cook

The Precision Of Pain

For everyone who has loved; for every loved ones, from Beijing with love.

Within Another Life
Leo Stein

Those whose days were grudging or confused
May come back trapped within another life

As a boulder, or a pane of glass,
Or a door at suffers every time it's slammed.

If I return a boulder, love, some summer day
Come sit by me and contemplate these horses and these hills.

And if I am a door, come home through me,
Be sure I'll keep you safe.

And if a knotted,, twisted rope,
From long self-clenching and complexity,

Oh love, unbind, unbraid me then
Until I flow again like windswept hair.

Collected in Kimberley Snow's book In Buddha's Kitchen
Read and recorded by Radha at the Summer Palace in Beijing




Xue Zhao