Sông Hằng một dải trôi mau;
Vận đời đôi ngã bạc đầu Vương gia.
Tuyết sơn phất ngọn trăng già,
Bóng Người thăm thẳm vượt qua chín tầng.
Cho hay Bồ tát hậu thân,
Chày kình chưa chuyển tiếng vần đã xa.
Sườn non một bóng Đạo già
Trầm tư năm tháng bên bờ tử sinh.
Nhìn Sao mà ngỏ sự tình:
Ai người Đại Giác cho mình quy y?
Năm chầy đá ngủ lòng khe;
Lưng trời cánh hạc đi về hoàng hôn.
Trăng gầy nửa mảnh soi thềm,
U ơ tiếng Trẻ, êm đềm Vương cung.
Sao trời thưa nhặt mông lung;
Mấy ai thấu rõ cho cùng nghiệp duyên.
Khói mơ quấn quýt hương nguyền,
Hợp tan là lẽ ưu phiền đấy thôi.
Vườn Hồng khóa nẻo phỉnh phờ,
Cùng trong cõi Mộng chia bờ khổ đau.
Thời gian vỗ cánh ngang đầu;
Sinh, già, bịnh, chết, tránh đâu vận cùng.
Khổ đau là khối tình chung,
Ai nâng cõi Thế qua bùn tử sinh?
T.S. Mùa Phật Đản 2549
A LITTLE SONG OF VESAK
The Ganges River flows running fast, as life is impermanent
Dancing between the destinies of life whitened the hair of the Royal Highness *
The snow-topped Himalayan mountain waved to the moon with its summit
As the image of the new-born Boddhisattva passed over the highest heaven,
touching the abode of gods
The truth is that the last existence of the Boddhisattva had not yet been announced,
But the whole world was shaking
The sound was heard afar
Even as the drum had not been struck
Reciting the Sutra has yet to transform, though its essence has echoed through mountains and rivers
On the side of a mountain,
An old recluse was meditating upon the meaning of existence, on the verge of life-and-death
Looking deep at the star, He, the old recluse
The Awakened One
Said let us take refuge
Time continued passing, as pebbles were sleeping in the bed of the brook,
and life was coming to its end,
A stork flew to the end of day through the twilight of the sunset.
The half slim moon still shone on the royal terrace
The lullaby to the holy-baby was resounding peace to the royal palace
As stars here are sparse and massive in the immense sky,
Who comes to see through the karma among relations?
The smoke of dreams is winding around the incense of prayer
Uniting and separating is but a sense of sorrow.
The rose garden was deceivingly closed to all,
as those in the same dreamy world differentiated the terrain of suffering
The time is passing, flapping its wings overhead
Birth, old age, sickness, death, is inevitably the end of life
Suffering is the common share of affection
Who is to lift the human realm over the muddle of life and death?
* There was a prophecy that the prince would leave home for a holy life and attain the supreme enlightenment, otherwise he would be a great emperor. Worry about the prophecy was whitening the hair of the father-king.
Translated by Phe Bach