I A POEM BY MAI VAN PHAN THE VIETNAMESE POET EXPLICATED

A Poem in Vietnamese

Written by Mai Van Phan

Translated into English by Pompen Hantrakool

Explicated by Dr Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

 Text

I shrink myself on a chair

Drawing a sky

No place for clouds

The poem opens with a koan—I shrink myself on a chair. That is, presently before, the poet was standing and at that time he was developing expanding extending rising growing increasing.But the poet shrinks himself on a chair.When the self is expanding growing increasing it cannot espy the grandeur of the vast nonself.To know the world one must contract  and ones mind  should get rid of the love for the self. One should be keen on knowing the nonself as it is. To shrink might mean to withdraw the senses inward so that one might have the  vision of the reality.

The poet shrinks himself on a chair. A chair has four legs to support and a back rest. Also there could be rest for the arms.Well to sit on a chair means to remain in an intermediate postion between standing or motion and sleeping or absolute inertness.Besides chair is a metaphor for the highest status in the society. The chairman conducts a meeting. You will not find any word like table man or benchmen to describe such a high status In the universities a renowned professor is signified as  the chair such as in the phrase—chair of literature department. Furthermore chair is the metaphor for threshold.The threshold stands at the point of convergence where the world without and the world within or the private space meet. This is hybridized space between inside and outside private and public object and subject. Seated at the threshold between two worlds   the poet draws a sky. The threshold must have been at the borderline between the two worlds of earth and the sky .And the poet looks up at the sky and draws. He is plunged in drawing the sky. This speaks of an aesthetics. The poet Mai Van Phan always sits in the threshold of the two worlds so that he can look upon the existence steadily and as a whole. And he is drawn to paint the sky While drawing the sky he reviews how it is being drawn. Thus the poets word paintings are metapaintings which are aware of themselves. Because the painting as it were looks into itself while being drawn. And to the poets surprise there are no clouds in the sky. What are clouds but water drops  floating in the sky because they are not enough heavy to be pulled by the gravitation. They speak of intense emotion. The sky stands for the mind. The mind of the poet is rid of emotions feelings and thoughts. It is the state of nirvana.It is in this state that nothing exists. Everything is empty or nihil.But this emptiness is not altogether empty. It is the all pervading bodhichitta that has no content. In the state of nirvana the poet attains the beatitude of bodhichitta..Read in the context of the earlier poem Searching for a flower one could read a narrative. Earlier the poet guided by a chance fragrance reached some steep stone slopes  going up a mountain.We imagine that  the poet climbed the mountain. Seated on a chairlike prop at the mountain the sky is only descried by the poet. And it is empty of clouds. It is emptiness all about. In other words the present poem suggests that the poet has reached the highest rung of meditation  where the dichotomies of the object and  thesubject the private and the public the inside and the outside vanish