Between Silence and Speech: A Kural Conversation with Shin Yu Pai

The Fruits of Right Speech

With the award-winning writer, photographer, editor, and curator Shin Yu Pai, I was delighted to speak about awareness, silence, fruit, and thunder as reflected in THE KURAL: Tiruvalluvar’s Tirukkural.

Here are a few highlights and where in the video you can find them:

Clear seeing 6:29
Cultural roots and notions of gender and silence 11:35
Discriminating awareness 19:26
Living with a verse as one lives with a koan 26:29
Fruit as experience, memory, and metaphor 30:37
Being able to thunder as an advisor and as a friend 39:05

Shin Yu Pai is the author of eleven books, including most recently Virga (Empty Bowl, 2021). In 2020, Entre Rios Books published Ensō, a 20-year survey of her work across creative disciplines including photography, book arts, public art, performance, personal essay and poetry. From 2015 to 2017, Shin Yu served as the Poet Laureate of The City of Redmond. She is a 2022 Artist Trust Fellow and was shortlisted in 2014 for a Stranger Genius Award in Literature. Her essays have appeared in Atlas Obscura, Gastronomica, ANMLY, Off Assignment, Zocalo Public Square, Tricycle, YES! Magazine, Seattle Met, and South Seattle Emerald. Her poetry films have screened at The Zebra Poetry Film Festival in Berlin and Northwest Film Forum. Shin Yu is a three-time fellow of MacDowell and has been an artist in residence at Taipei Artist Village, Centrum, The Ragdale Foundation, and The Pacific Science Center. She hosts, writes, and produces The Blue Suit, a podcast for KUOW on Asian American stories that will launch in July 2022.

https://shinyupai.com/

Here are the key verses we talked about, in both English and Tamil:

192
Fruitless speech before many—worse
Than heartlessness to friends

பயனில பல்லார்முன் சொல்லல் நயனில
நட்டார்கண் செய்தலின் தீது

194
Fruitless and denatured words in an assembly
Destroy goodness and grace

நயன்சாரா நன்மையின் நீக்கும் பயன்சாராப்
பண்பில்சொல் பல்லா ரகத்து

196
He who celebrates words without fruit—not a son
But the husk of a man

பயனில்சொற் பாராட்டு வானை மகனெனல்
மக்கட் பதடி யெனல்

199
Those who see truth with clear eyes never lapse
Into words without meaning

பொருடீர்ந்த பொச்சாந்துஞ் சொல்லார் மருடீர்ந்த
மாசறு காட்சி யவர்

200
Speak speech that bears fruit—never speech
That bears nothing

சொல்லுக சொல்லிற் பயனுடைய சொல்லற்க
சொல்லிற் பயனிலாச் சொல்

From chapter 20, “Freedom from Fruitless Speech.”

Translated from the Tamil by Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma
THE KURAL: Tiruvalluvar’s Tirukkural
Beacon Press, Boston