The New Lifetime Reading Plan

Hui-neng argues for a wordless discipline, transmitted by "silent precepts" from master to novice, to replace the sutras; tear them up, he shouts, get rid of them, they are only impedi- ments to enlightenment. Of course this raises a problem that has haunted Cfran (Zen) ever since—the Platform Sutra is only the first book in a huge library of Zen scriptures, this in a sect that says "destroy the scriptures" and teaches that enlight­enment can come only from wordless discipline. The Chinese Taoist classic, the Tao Te Ching, says "The Tao that can be called Tao is not the universal Tao; words that can be spoken are not universal words." Zen encapsulates this nicely: "Those who know do not say, those who say do not know." Yet of the writing of books about Zen there is no end.

The Platform Sutra is fairly short, and it is not difficult to read. Unlike the sutras of mainstream Buddhism, it contains few unfamiliar terms and concepts (but if you want to see what these mainstream scriptures are like, try the Diamond Sutra and the Lotus Sutra). Even making allowances for pious leg- end-mongering, it paints a portrait of a remarkable individual, the woodcutter monk Hui-neng; it also allows one to gain an understanding of a religious faith and discipline that has been enormously influential in East Asian religion, literature and art for well over a thousand years, and which has in recent years made its mark in the Western world as well.

J.S.M.

FIRDAUSI

ca. 940-1020 Shah Nameh

Firdausi, the pen name of a man of obscure origins named Abul Kasim Mansur, is generally regarded as the greatest poet in the history of the Persian language. He is said to have been born into a modest land-owning family in the city of Khurasan, where he managed somehow to acquire a good education that included not only the usual Islamic arts and sciences but also, less usually, ancient Persian history and literature. He made his way to the court of Shah Mahmud of Gazni and accepted a commission to complete a long poem on Persian history (the previous holder of the commission had died shortly after beginning the poem).

The finished poem, the Shah Nameh or "Book of Kings," is composed of nearly 60,000 rhyming couplets and tells the story of the Persian throne from the earliest days to the com- ing of Islam. Much of the poem is simply a recapitulation of history, from the rise of the prophet Zoroaster (founder of the pre-Islamic religion of Pйrsia) and the glorious reigns of the empire-builders Cyrus and Darius, to the wars with Greece and the rise and fali of Persian royal dynasties; it ends with the collapse of the Sasanid Kingdom in the mid-seventh century.

But if we think of Firdausi as an historian, we find that he fits no mold that weve encountered thus far in this Plan. His history resembles neither the majestic sobriety of Thucydides [9], nor the cheerful credulousness of Herodotus [8], nor the systematic organization of Ssu-ma Ch'ien [18]. More than any of these, Firdausi resembles Homer [2,3]; he is historian as bard. His strength is in pure narrative; he has an eye for the telling detail and the illuminating anecdote, and the elegance of his poetry (apparent to some degree even through the

screen of translation) carnes the work through occasional dry spells in the action. One thing that makes Firdausi's poetic his­tory so interesting is his willingness to go beyond what most modern critics would call history proper and into the realm of legend to deal at length with the exploits of Persia's great cul- ture-hero, Rustam. Rustam is a perfect prince, eloquent and elegant, but also a warrior of imposing strength and bravery; he is a sort of latter-day Persian reincarnation of Gilgamesh [1] with some of the attributes of Hercules, polished by the man- ners of a highly cultivated and refined court. He is the true hero of the Shah Nameh, an ideal to be emulated by future Persian kings.

Firdausi dedicated the Shah Nameh to his patron Shah Mahmud, but was sorely disappointed by the meager payment he received when he presented his work to the throne. Incensed, he wrote a devastating poetical satire on the tight- fisted monarch and then fled the court, spending much of his life as a traveling versifier before retiring to the family farm in his old age.