Chanting My Weariness of Life猒生吟
口中常吐猒世辭。手端頻作猒生詩。面上猶形猒生態。行止動作一如之。有客不知誰氏子。突然造我仍詰疑。貪生忌死是物情。微至蠅蚊同此志。子言猒生似不誠。果是誠言是何理。我言爾豈知我意。吉人知足是所貴。男兒作相信難矣。完名得退亦不易。七十懸車斯謂終。終則可言能事已。假令此身得強康。留之奚爲又奚俟。何况病與老相攻。十日八九居病裏。世情淡薄滋味窮。徒有空身差苦耳。人間翻覆亦未知。知有何變生不意。安心謝去此其時。儻可得生淸勝地。君知勝地是何處。紫雲紅霧三天是。如今未免造物欺。其生其死隨所使。
With my mouth I am forever spitting out words that the world is wearisome, with my fingertips I often make poems that life is wearisome. On my face too the look of weariness with life comes out, and my going, my standing, my every movement is all of a piece. There was a guest, whose son he was I do not know, who came upon me unawares and pressed me with this question: to crave life and shrink from death is the feeling of all things, and down to the smallest, the fly and the mosquito, this disposition is the same; your words that you are weary of life seem not to be true, and if they are truly true, what reason is there in them?
I said: how should you know what I mean? For a good man it is a precious thing to know when he has enough. To become chief minister is indeed hard for a man, but to keep one's name whole and withdraw is not easy either. To lay down office at seventy is called a finishing, and having finished, one may say he has done all there was to do. Suppose this body of mine were firm and sound, what would I stay to do, and what further would I wait for? Still more when illness and age strike into each other, so that of ten days eight or nine are spent inside illness. My feeling for the world has thinned, the savor of living is used up, and only an empty body is left to suffer. The affairs of men may be overturned, there is no knowing it, so how should I know what unlooked-for calamity may arise? Now is the time to take my leave with an easy mind, and perhaps I may be born into a clear and good land. Do you know where the good land is? It is the immortals' heaven of purple clouds and red mist. Even now I have not escaped the deceiving of the Fashioner of things, and in living and dying I only follow as I am bidden.