A High Mountain Summit---a Vietnamese poem by Mai Van Phan explicated

 A Vietnamese poem by Mai Van Phan

A High Mountain Summit

Translated into English  by Pompen Hantrakool

Explicated by Dr RameshChandra Mukhopadhyaya

A wind

 wherever it blows from

it  lifts up the sweet essence of the lotus flower in this place

The poem opens with  the phrase a wind. Well wind is a perceptible natural movement of air. It   is a form of current of air blowing from a particular direction. In Vietnam it might be north easterly or  south easterly or westerlies. But the poet says from whichever direction the wind comes the poet is aware of a wind.There could be many kinds of wind. There could be typhoons or stormy wind. There could be a breeze. No matter whether there is a breeze or a wild west wind or none there is always wind in  the air.There is no wind but there are winds. And this makes us aware of a wind among winds. We cannot see the wind. But we feel that it is there,When the poet says that there is a wind he excites our sense of touch.The wind carries the essence of the fragrance of lotus in a particular place. This is singularly interesting.Firstly it excites our sense of smell. Secondly  the event of the fragrance laden wind flows from whence is indeterminate.If there were a lake laden with lotusflowers in the east or in the south of the place one could say that the wind comes from the east or the south and hence it is laden with the fragrance of the lotus. But no.It seems that there is no lake in any direction laden with lotus. So the wind might come from any direction whatever but it has the fragrance of lotus in a particular place. Yes the particular place is the second point to be noted.The fragrance of the lotus is perceptible in a particular place only. In the neighbouring places the wind drunk in the fragrance of lotus is not found.If a wind is there laden with lotus fragrance it will carry the fragrance in the neighbouring places as well through which it blows. But no the fragrance carried by the wind is only perceptible in a particular place. Thus the law of causality is exploded here. If the place is out there where a fragrant wind blows now and then  defying the laws of environ ment , the poet introduces us into a charmed place where  our ordinary sense perceptions are shocked with pleasant surprise  and where causality does not operate. And we wonder which prince or princess lives there.That could generate an experience of a fairy world. Or else the place is not out there.It is  on  a supraphysical plane.The place could be the creation of the mind. The place could belong to the landscape of imagination. It  is a high mountain summit where dizzy heights of imagination touch the skies of infinitude.In that context the wind could mean a wave of sudden thought coming from the infinite. And it is charged with the essence of the fragrance of the lotus flower, The lotus flower has its roots into mud—the earthiness of the earth. But its efflorescence  is above  the waters. Its eyes are focussed on the Sun, With sunset lotus flowers shut their petals. Lotus flowers are sunsymbols and remind one of the bodhichitta. Bodhichitta has neither north nor south. So it shows up all of a sudden in the heart of the poet. It puts forward an aesthetics .A poet is one whose heart  now and then overflows with the lotus fragrance of bodhichitta