CP in Mongolia

Here is a beautiful doha by the Mongolian scholar-poet Zava Damdin Rinpoche (b. 1976), along with a generous set of interpretive notes for those interested in the perspectives that shape this reading.

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DO YOU REMEMBER,

(English Translation)

Do you remember
when you had just begun to walk,
how you laughed, all dimples,
like a newborn foal
at a neighbour’s place,
finding its feet —
do you remember?

Following after your dear father, your mother,
or someone else,
you spoke just a single word,
and rejoiced in the discovery
as though someone wise with a clear voice
had opened a hidden meaning through metaphor.

Ah, do you remember?

Where did you learn melody, tone, rhythm, and measure
as you went on humming music like a Mozart lullaby

How you would grab a pencil
and on the wall, or somewhere else,
not carelessly, but absorbed,
stare at it with your full attention
and then scribble and draw
just like a gifted, wild Picasso.

Do you remember
the great epic your mother sang for you alone

Perhaps someone may say they had no mother,
yet she sang to you while you were still in the womb

Ah, do you remember?

From the outset,
you were already a great person of art

Without force, correction, or instruction,
you did everything perfectly

When you entered the path of learning
and carefully set down your first letter,
how you sighed, as though you had travelled the whole world
in a single breath

When was it, in your growing youth,
that you first saw someone’s extraordinary gaze,
their tender form, and your hands grew damp,
your heart stirred into waves,
as if reading a lyrical poem

Do you remember

That something utterly pure
does truly exist in this turning world

That things which would never deceive you
exist by nature

… do you remember?

– a little bird of the noble mountain

16.02.2025

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Translation is an interpretation into another culture. Any errors in this regard are entirely my own, and for these I humbly apologise.

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САНАЖ БАЙНА УУ,*

(Original Mongolian)

Санаж байна уу, чи
Сац хөлд орох үедээ яаж хөхсөн инээж байснаа
Саахалтын газар унага босоогоороо төрж тэнцэх мэт
Санаж байна уу?
Сайхан аав, ээж, өөр хэн нэгнийг дагаж нэг үг хэлээд
Саруул дуун ухаантан нэгэн метафор утга нээсэн мэт баясаж байснаа
Ай, чи санаж байна уу,
Аялгуу эгшиг, айзам хэмнэлийг хаанаас ч сурсан юм
Амандаа Моцартын бүүвэйн ая шиг хөгжим аялаад л байснаа
Харандаа шүүрч аваад л ханан дээр, хаа нэгтээ
Хайнга бус төвлөрөн мэлрээд л
Яг билэг танхай Пикасо шиг сараачин зурдаг байснаа
Санаж байна уу, чи
Эхийнхээ ганцхан чамд зориулж дуулдаг байсан үлэмжийн туульсийг
Магадгүй хэн нэгэн ээжгүй гэх ч хэвлий дор байхад чинь дуулсныг
Ай, чи санаж байна уу?
Анхан түрүүн чи яг урлагийн их хүмүүн байснаа
Албадлага, засвар, зааваргүй бүх зүйлийг төгс хийдэг байснаа
Эрдмийн мөр дор орж
Эхний нэг үсэг тавиад л
Энэ дэлхийг ганцхан амьсгаагаар туулсан мэт санаа алдсанаа
Хэзээ билээ дээ, өсөх залуу насандаа
Хэн нэгэн ер бусын харц, ялдам төрхийг хараад л
Гар чинь хөлөрч, зүрх чинь долгисон яг л нэгэн уянгын шүлэг унших мэт болсноо
Чи санаж байна уу,
Чин ариун зүйл энэ орчил дээр үнэхээр байсныг
Чимайг хуурах үгүй зүйлс байгалиасаа оршин байсныг
… санаж байна уу,

Цогт уулын шувуухай
16.02.2025

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NOTES

“Interpretive Segmentation”

As you can see, the original Mongolian doha moves in a continuous flow, but it is not without internal shaping. The repeated refrain “do you remember” already marks clear turns in address, memory, and emotional emphasis; it also carries the poem’s pulse. In the English translation, I have followed those cues by arranging the poem into short sense-units and stanzaic groupings, so that each remembered scene can be held briefly before the next one opens.

This is not meant to impose a new structure on the poem, but to make its existing movement more visible in English. Such attention to lineation and stanza boundaries is part of how poetic meaning is perceived, since divisions in a poem can guide the reader’s sense of emphasis, pause, relation, and rhythmic return (cf. Scherr 2016).

“Do You Remember,“

Sanaj baina uu, (САНАЖ БАЙНА УУ,) DO YOU REMEMBER, keeps the comma from the Mongolian title. The comma leaves the question open, as though the poem is already turning towards someone and beginning an intimate address. This continues in Sanaj baina uu, chi (Санаж байна уу, чи), where chi (чи) means “you”. In English, repeating the second “you” could sound awkward, so I have left it implicit in the translation as “Do you remember”.

The placement of the question mark in English follows the movement of the address rather than adding a question mark after every refrain. Where “do you remember?” completes a turn of memory, I have closed it with a question mark. Where “Do you remember” opens into the following lines, I have left it open, allowing the question to gather force before it resolves. This punctuation is therefore part of the poem’s address, not merely a matter of grammar.

From my reading of the literature, the original Mongolian may also carry a more direct tenderness, as though the orator is gently turning towards the listener while asking the question; this is supported by work on Khalkha Mongolian address forms, where second-person pronouns and related forms of address are shown to carry important interpersonal nuance (cf. Brosig 2018).

” A neighbour’s place”

Saakhaltīn gazar (саахалтын газар), “a neighbour’s place”, refers to the home-place or nearby ground of another household, close enough to be part of one’s everyday social and pastoral world. The image of a newborn foal finding its balance gives the child’s first steps a distinctly Mongolian tenderness: unsteady, upright, and full of life.

Remembering original open-ness

A Buddhist-inclined reading of this doha might begin with the tenderness of memory. The repeated “Санаж байна уу” — “Do you remember?” — does not simply ask the reader to recall childhood. It gently asks whether we can remember a more original openness of mind: before too much correction, comparison, fear, or social instruction entered into it.

Gaston Bachelard’s writing on childhood reverie is also helpful here, because he treats childhood not merely as biography, but as a living depth of imagination to which thought may return (Bachelard, 1960/1971). Walter Benjamin, too, gives support to the idea that childhood memory is not simple nostalgia, but a way of re-entering the textures of perception, gesture, and early wonder (Benjamin, 1950/2006).

The child in the poem laughs, speaks, hums, draws, listens, loves, and wonders. In a Buddhist sense, these are not just sentimental scenes of childhood. They can be read as glimpses of a mind not yet hardened by grasping or self-consciousness. Its seems that the child does not need to become “artistic”; the child already moves naturally in rhythm, image, sound, gesture, and feeling. This is close to the doha’s line: Анхан түрүүн чи яг урлагийн их хүмүүн байснаа — “From the very beginning, you were already a great person of art.”

Here, “art” could be heard as a sign of innate responsiveness: the ability to meet the world directly, before experience is narrowed into fixed habits.

From a Buddhist perspective, this may sit nearer to the broader idea that ordinary experience is shaped by conditions, habits, perceptions, and mental formations, but that these may not finally exhaust the nature of mind or the possibility of seeing differently (cf. Powers 2015, 13–31).

The mother’s song is especially important. Even if someone says they had no mother, the doha says that the mother sang while the child was still in the womb. In a Mongolian Buddhist reading, this may be heard not only biologically but relationally and karmically. Life is received through connection. Before the child speaks, studies, or chooses, the child has already been held by sound, body, care, and unseen causes. This wider field of relation is also important in Mongolian religious life-worlds, where human life is often understood as taking place among visible and less visible relations, places, forces, and inheritances (cf. Sneath and Turk, 2021).

The later moment of youth — seeing an extraordinary gaze or tender form, feeling the hands sweat and the heart stir into waves — is also not merely romantic. It shows the mind encountering beauty and being moved by it. Desire may be near, but the poem does not make the moment crude. It remembers the freshness of first perception. In this sense, the poem’s remembering is not an escape into the past; it is a way of recovering attention. Paul Ricoeur’s work on memory is useful here because he treats remembering as an active, interpretive act, one that can return us to what still asks to be understood (cf. Ricoeur, 2000/2004).

The final lines turn the doha towards a quieter spiritual claim: Чин ариун зүйл энэ орчил дээр үнэхээр байсныг — “That something utterly pure truly existed in this turning world”; and Чимайг хуурах үгүй зүйлс байгалиасаа оршин байсныг — “That things which would not deceive you existed by nature”.

This is where I feel the resonance deepens. According to my reading of the literature, orchil (орчил) suggests the turning world, the cycle of life, change, and becoming. Yet within this turning world, the doha holds that purity, truthfulness, and non-deception are not absent. They are not imposed from outside; they are said to “exist by nature”. The doha seems to ask whether we can remember that, beneath confusion and disappointment, there may still be forms of experience that do not deceive us: a mother’s song, a child’s laughter, a first letter, a lyric poem, the movement of the heart before it becomes guarded.

As I read it, this is not only a poem about nostalgia. It is a doha about remembering original sensitivity. It asks us to look back not in order to escape the present, but to recover a more uncontrived way of seeing. Perhaps, from a Buddhist perspective, it may be inviting us to remember the mind before it became too burdened: playful, receptive, tender, creative, and still capable of recognising what is clear in this turning world.

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CP in Mongolia

Catherine Pleteshner, Independent Scholar and Musician

Mongolian Poetry 45: Do You Remember,