Preface — On the Caigentan菜根譚題詞

A banished guest with a solitary trail, I have withdrawn to a thatched hut. I gladly keep company with people inside the bounds of the world, and I do not gladly keep company with people outside them. I freely dispute with the sages of a thousand ages over where the Five Classics agree and differ, but I do not freely scatter my footprints with two or three young men along the shifting slopes of cloud and mountain. Day after day I chant aloud and sing in answer with fishermen and farmers by the shores of the Five Lakes and in the hollows of the green fields, but I do not day after day link arms and pour out my heart with those who fight over a knife's point and an awl's tip and count a peck of salary a glory, in courtyards of heat and cold, in dens that stink of raw meat. Now and then, when someone studies the teaching of Lianxi and Luoyang, I guide him; when someone studies the work of Tianzhu, I open it up for him; and one who makes a trade of talk that discourses on heaven and carves dragons, I keep at a distance. This is enough to use up all the skill I have here in the mountains.

It happened that a friend named Hong Zicheng brought the Caigentan and showed it to me, and he asked me for a preface as well. At first I only glanced at it and thought little of it. Then I cleared the old volumes from my desk, put aside the stray cares in my breast, took it in hand and read it. At once I saw this. Where it speaks of nature and destiny (性命), it goes straight into what is dark and subtle. Where it speaks of human feeling, it follows every turn to the steepest places. It looks up at heaven and down at earth, and one sees how unhurried its breast is. It treats fame and merit as dust, and one knows how high and far its judgment and taste reach. What its brush shapes and casts is nothing but green trees and blue mountains. What its lips bring forth is all the living stir of the hawk in flight and the fish at play. How much the author gained for himself I truly dare not claim to know, but going by the words he has set out, they are all urgent speech that lances the age and wakes people. They are not the showy froth that goes in at the ear and out at the mouth.

The book takes its name from "vegetable roots (菜根)." The name surely came out of clear hardship and long trial, and it was gained as well in the midst of planting and watering. One can imagine how he was thrown about by wind and wave, and how fully he tasted danger and hard going. Master Hong said, "If heaven wears out my body, I put my heart at ease to make it up. If heaven blocks my circumstances, I open my Way through and pass beyond." How he warned himself and drove himself is also worth pondering. So I have set these few words at the head of the book, to let everyone share it and know that in vegetable roots there is a true taste.

Written by Yu Kongjian, Master of Sanfeng.