There aren’t enough posts on bars on Deep Kyoto. This summer I aims to remedy that. God help my liver! Anyway, the first of many is up tonight: Bar Hawkwind. It’s a good place. I like it.

And this will make you smile if you haven’t seen it already: Where the hell is Matt?

Now on to tonight’s topic. The last meditation from Hozouji, if you remember went like this: すべてが割りけれぬところに人生の妙味がある
Which I somewhat lazily translated as: Not everything can be broken down into simple solutions, and therein lies life’s beauty.

Well, Masaya was good enough to write to me with some thoughts on it and here they are:

There are two tricky parts in the original, which are difficult to translate.

The first is 割り切れぬ（割り切れない, the opposite of 割り切れる）.

Maybe you know, but it’s originally a mathematical term.

If you divide 10 by 2, you get 5. That’s 割り切れる.

If you divide 10 by 3, you get 3.333333333333333333(and 3 continues forever). That’s 割り切れない（= 割り切れぬ）.

We use this idea metaphorically for something that you have to decide, you have to make choice, or even how you feel about.

For example, if someone ask you whether you like your job, and your answer is either ” Absolutely” or “Absolutely not”, then that’s 割り切れる.

If your answer is “Yes and no. I like it because such and such, but I don’t like it because such and such, but then …, even so …. but on the other hand … (arguments for and against continues on and on like the never ending decimal places)”, that’s 割り切れない.

It is also used to describe feelings. When you decide something or accept something, and you feel that something is not quite right about it, that feeling can be described as 割り切れない.

割り切れない indicates there is no simple solution, it’s not easy to find a simple answer.

In your translation, you use “simple solutions” to capture the idea, which is very good.

The next one is 妙味. This is an interesting word. It’s a combining 妙(strange) and 味(taste). “Strange taste” in 妙味 has a positive meaning. It’s strange, unusual, not boring, not common, so it’s interesting. Life is interesting because not every thing has a simple solution, and you have to find answers to many things. And even when you think you’ve found an answer, you have an uncomfortable feeling of unsettledness（割り切れない）.

I like this poem. Thanks.

Thank you, Masaya! Now the thing is, when I first translated this poem there was something, an uncomfortable feeling of unsettledness in fact about my translation that bugged me. That strong sense of life being “interesting” in 妙味 was completely lost in my translation because I stuck too closely to the dictionary definition of beauty. This despite the still small voice at the back of my mind telling me that something was amiss. Of course I could have gone with charm as my friend Osamu suggested, but that word didn’t seem to carry enough weight (not in it’s light and fluffy modern meaning anyway). So Masaya’s commentary got me thinking again and I think I finally hit on the right word:

Not everything
can be broken down
into simple solutions,
and therein lies
life’s fascination.

Seems kind of obvious now… Lesson learned: trust your instincts, not the dictionary!

I shall be posting a fresh meditation very soon.

I know an editor at 実務教育出版, and I told her about Deep Kyoto a while ago. She liked it, and so she included the link to Deep Kyoto in their new book called ネットの英語技術 with a short introduction.

http://www.jitsumu.co.jp/books_navi/toeic/net_eigo/index.html

…I’m promoting Deep Kyoto, you see? I like the way you describe restaurants and bars, and your photos are good too. I want more people to visit Deep Kyoto.

Wow, eh? Thanks Masaya!

信頼は
最上の縁者
心の安らぎは
最上の幸福

shinrai ha
saijou no enja
kokoro no yasuragi ha
saijou no shiawase

Notice how the kanji for good fortune 福 has been squeezed into the word for happiness: しあわせ. This is from the Dhammapada (法句経). The story goes there was this king who used to eat a big old meaty lunch every day and then fall into a big old snorey food coma during the Buddha’s sermons. Unphased, the Buddha advised him to cut back on the fatty foods. The king did so, promptly lost a few pounds and became super alert and attentive. “Thanks Buddha!” said he, “I feel SUPREME!”, whereupon the Buddha intoned a few verses on “the supremes”: “health being the supreme attainment, contentment being the supreme treasure, blah blah blah…” and this time, miraculously, the king didn’t fall asleep! As for translating the Japanese, the biggest problem for me was how to translate は. Does the は in “信頼は最上の縁者” tell us to trust those who are “closest to us” or to make those we trust “our best family”? Jay Rubin has a good book on は and about where exactly it throws its emphasis. I cheated and looked up the Pali verses. This one’s for John Mulry (the laughing Buddha of Birmingham):

Those you trust
are your greatest kin.
Peace of mind
is the greatest joy.

Update May 6th: Some further thoughts from old pal Masaya Kanzaki:

I looked at the poem and had to think for a while.

The two lines are parallel to each other in terms of structure.

A は B. C は D (A= 信頼, B=最上の縁者, C=心の安らぎ, D=最上の幸福) is like “A is B. C is D.”

For me the beauty of the poem is this parallel structure, so I want you keep it in your translation, which would be something like:

Trust is the greatest kin.

Peace of mind is the greatest joy.

The first line is ambiguous but 「信頼は最上の縁者」 itself is ambiguous too, so you can leave the ambiguity in the translation.
My interpretation is “Trusting other people is good; it’s like the greatest kin.”

I wasn’t quite sure what 縁者 means so I looked it up in the dictionary.

It says that people used to make a distinction between 親類 and 縁者, both of which mean “relatives”.

親類 refers to relatives who are connected by blood, whereas 縁者 refers to relatives who are connected by marriage.

Going back to the poem, trust can’t create blood relations but it can create a strong bond like the one between 縁者.

Another interpretation is that 縁者 does not mean relatives. It can be seen as the combination of 縁（connection） and 者（person） to mean a person who connects you to others.

Trust is the greatest connection creator.

That’s all I can think of at the moment.

Well, I think that’s plenty. Thanks Masaya!

My goodness! The snow was coming down in sheets today! I don’t think I’ve seen such a snowfall in Kyoto before. After finishing my stint at the clinic today, I slopped through the slushy streets to check out the latest meditation at Hozouji. It’s a simple one this month. Simple kanji, simple words, simple message. But it’s no less important for all its simplicity.

Here it is again in Japanese script, romaji and then my translation:

人間は不完全
良くなろうと
思う心が
救いの根

ningen ha fukanzen
yoku narou to
omou kokoro ga
sukui no ne

People aren’t perfect
But the heart that wills itself
To be better
That’s the root of salvation.

Like so many of these meditations, the message is one of simple common sense. As my friend Masaya Kanzaki writes: “My interpretation of the poem is that we are imperfect and never achieve perfection, so we should value the attempt to be better itself; the intention and process, not the final results.” But still knowing this is true and keeping it in mind are two separate things. This will to betterment is the “root” (根) of salvation; something we must foster and tend, to let it grow, first in our own hearts as we learn to grow beyond our simple human frailties, and then perhaps in our relations with those around us as we strive to live for a better world.

Checking google analytics the other day, I discovered that a lot of people were coming to this blog via the obscenely popular TOEIC BLITZ BLOG written by my old friend and colleague Masaya “The Messiah” Kanzaki. Masaya was kind enough to write a post about my blog, and recommend it as “interesting” and “probably good reading practice”. Which was jolly nice of him. So I thought I’d do a bit of reading practice of my own and read his. Most of the entries (when he is not linking to English articles) are in Japanese, but they are mercifully short and not so difficult for someone of my reading ability. Anyway, in this piece 英語を楽しむ　or “Enjoy English”, Masaya advises his readers to find something they can enjoy doing in English. For a lot of people this will be reading books or magazines of personal interest, or watching movies, or listening to and learning English songs (Masaya closes his post with a nice bit of The Specials). Whatever floats your boat basically. All very good advice because you remember more when you’re having fun and are actively interested, than you do when you are thinking: “God, I hate this! How much longer will it take me to remember this stupid grammar? My brain hurts… etc”. So I was thinking, I don’t really study Japanese much any more, but what enjoyable things do I do that involve learning?

Well, I sit in my regular, sipping beer and chatting in Japanese to the other regulars and through those conversations I do learn a lot… But that could get expensive if I did it every night (まさか!)… Well, another thing I do is I read… Nothing too heavy or overwhelming, but something light and of interest. For instance, recently I’ve been working my way through the very excellent 京都:音楽空間 a guide to all the best music spots of Kyoto, whether they be bars (my regular is in there), or cafes, or live music venues, or record shops etc. It’s great, because there’s enough new vocabulary there for me to be challenged, and plenty of old vocabulary I need to review, but mostly because I want to read it so I do. Through reading this book I can find all kinds of interesting places and meet all kinds of new people that I would never encounter otherwise, which is basically the primary reason to learn a language really (though we sometimes tend to forget it). And of course, it’s proving to be invaluable source material for my Deep Kyoto project too. Life’s too short to be spending your free time suffering after all (that’s what work is for) so have a bit of fun. Enjoy yourself.

It’s getting late now, so I’ll sign off but tomorrow I’ll be doing something else I find an enjoyable method of study: translating the latest meditation at Hozouji Temple. Unless any of you want to have a crack at it first: