Soma
Resources => Poetry [Public] => Topic started by: nichi on March 28, 2007, 12:52:28 AM
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Love Letters
Every day, priests minutely examine the Law
And endlessly chant complicated sutras.
Before doing that, though, they should learn
How to read the love letters sent by the wind
and rain, the snow and moon.
~ Ikkyu ~
(http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0211/LeonidOfTheLake_suddeth.jpg)
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Toki-no-Ge (Satori Poem)
Year after year
I dug in the earth
looking for the blue of heaven
only to feel
the pile of dirt
choking me
until once in the dead of night
I tripped on a broken brick
and kicked it into the air
and saw that without a thought
I had smashed the bones
of the empty sky
Muso Soseki
14th Century Japan
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by willow's shade
by willow's shade
in shadows of the pine
back up against
all karma stopped
the monkey heart is skewered
the racing mind, coralled
the moon bright, the breeze pure
alone I speak
of endless life.
Yun-k'an Tzu
13th Century China
(Called Taoist by some, Zen by others, details about this poet are a mystery.)
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This rare and heavenly creature
alone without peer
look and it’s not there
it comes and goes but not through doors
it fits inside a square-inch
it spreads in all directions
unless you acknowledge it
you’ll meet but never know
Han-Shan (Cold Mountain)
8th Century China
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Two beggars
sharing a meal of the food they've been given
The new moon shines intensely
~Ko Un~
Contemporary Korea
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stove full of pine needles
Forty-some years I've lived in the mountains
Ignorant of the world's rise and fall
Warmed at night by a stove full of pine needles
Satisfied at noon by a bowl of wild plants
Sitting on rocks watching clouds and empty thoughts
Patching my robe in sunlight practicing silence
Till someone asks why Bodhidharma came east
And I hang out my wash.
- Shih-wu
13th Century China
(http://www.capetowndailyphoto.com/uploaded_images/washing_line_IMG_6324-742543.jpg)
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An Exquisite Truth
This is an exquisite truth:
Saints and ordinary folks are the same from the start.
Inquiring about a difference
Is like asking to borrow string
when you've got a good strong rope.
Every Dharma is known in the heart.
After a rain, the mountain colors intensify.
Once you become familiar with the design of fate's illusions
Your ink-well will contain all of life and death.
~Hsu Yun
19th-20th Century China
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A Fisherman
Studying texts and stiff meditation can make you lose your Original Mind.
A solitary tune by a fisherman, though, can be an invaluable treasure.
Dusk rain on the river, the moon peeking in and out of the clouds;
Elegant beyond words, he chants his songs night after night.
~Ikkyu Sojun
Zen Buddhist
15th Century Japan
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I burned incense, swept the earth, and waited
for a poem to come...
Then I laughed, and climbed the mountain, leaning on my staff.
Yuan Mei
18th Century China
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Incomparable Verse Valley
The sounds of the stream
splash out
the Buddha's sermon
Don't say
that the deepest meaning
comes only from one's mouth
Day and night
eighty thousand poems
arise one after the other
and in fact
not a single word
has ever been spoken
~Muso Soseki
14th Century Japan
Translated W.S. Merwyn
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Gathering simples, going home
White clouds flying
Mists melt black mountains
And this wandering mystic's
Wandered astray.
Black apes call and green birds cry
A magic crane goes before me,
Dancing, leads me
To my cave.
- Yun-K'an Tzu
13th Century China
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(I'll be doing more research, but just thought I'd share a brief description of Li Po I found online. I didn't know the Taoists were considered decadent, somehow....)
Li Po (lē bô), Li Pai (lē bī), or Li T'ai-po (lē tī-bô), c.700–762, Chinese poet of the T'ang dynasty. He was born in what is now Sichuan prov. Most authorities believe that he was a Taoist; Li Po's unconcern for worldly preferment and his love for retirement was expressive of both Taoism and the delicate romanticism found in his poetry. An early period of patronage by the court was followed by banishment in 744. He spent the next decade traveling through E and SE China. After the An Lu-shan Rebellion (755–57) he was exiled because of associations with a rebellious member of the imperial family. He soon received amnesty and spent his remaining years traveling along the Chang (Yangtze). Legend maintains he drowned while drunkenly embracing the moon's reflection; however, scholars believe he died from cirrhosis of the liver or from mercury poisoning due to Taoist longevity elixirs. About 1,100 of his poems are extant. Although they include many conventional verses expressing thoughts on actual events, Li Po is best known for his pieces describing voyages through imaginary landscapes, invoking exotic Taoist images and powerful emotions of fear or exhilaration. He uses strange diction and rhyme, as well as hyperbole and playfulness, typically feigning a wish to forget rather than confront reality. He preferred older poetic forms such as songs or ballads and long, tonally unregulated "old-style" verse, introducing to them various personae, including his own cultivated persona of a wild, self-obsessed poet.
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Motto
When I meet a monk,
I bow politely.
When I see a Buddha,
I don't.
If I bow to a Buddha,
the Buddha won't know.
But I honor a monk:
he's here now, apparently,
or, at least, he seems to be.
~Yuan Mei
18th Century China
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Incomparable Verse Valley
The sounds of the stream
splash out
the Buddha's sermon
Don't say
that the deepest meaning
comes only from one's mouth
Day and night
eighty thousand poems
arise one after the other
and in fact
not a single word
has ever been spoken
Muso Soseki
(1275 - 1351)
Japan
English version by W. S. Merwin
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This grasped, all's dust -
The sermon for today.
Lands, seas. Awakened,
You walk the earth alone.
Seigensai
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From high above, the river steadily plunges.
Three thousand feet of sparkling water,
The Milky Way pouring down from heaven.
- Li T'ai-po
Taoist
8th Century China
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The birds have vanished into the sky,
and now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.
-Li Po
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Chang Chiu-ch'en's Poem of Enlightenment
In a moonlit night on a spring day,
The croak of a frog
Pierces through the whole cosmos and turns it into
a single family!
Chang Chiu-ch'en
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Sharing a Mountain Hut with a Cloud
A lonely hut on the mountain-peak towering above a thousand others;
One half is occupied by an old monk and the other by a cloud:
Last night it was stormy and the cloud was blown away;
After all a cloud could not equal the old man's quiet way.
Kuei-tsung Chih-chih, a monk who lived in a humble hut on Lu-shan
http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/zen/poems.htm
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Ancient Air
I climb up high and look on the four seas,
Heaven and earth spreading out so far.
Frost blankets all the stuff of autumn,
The wind blows with the great desert's cold.
The eastward-flowing water is immense,
All the ten thousand things billow.
The white sun's passing brightness fades,
Floating clouds seem to have no end.
Swallows and sparrows nest in the wutong tree,
Yuan and luan birds perch among jujube thorns.
Now it's time to head on back again,
I flick my sword and sing Taking the Hard Road.
~Li Po (Li Bai)
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Question and Answer on the Mountain
You ask for what reason I stay on the green mountain,
I smile, but do not answer, my heart is at leisure.
Peach blossom is carried far off by flowing water,
Apart, I have heaven and earth in the human world.
~Li Po (Li Bai)
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Seeing Off a Friend
Green hills above the northern wall,
White water winding east of the city.
On this spot our single act of parting,
The lonely tumbleweed journeys ten thousand li.
Drifting clouds echo the traveller's thoughts,
The setting sun reflects my old friend's feelings.
You wave your hand and set off from this place,
Your horse whinnies as it leaves.
~Li Po (Li Bai)
Another version/translation:
Parting
Green mountains rise to the north;
white water rolls past the eastern city.
Once it has been uprooted,
the tumbleweed travels forever.
Drifting clouds like a wanderer's mind;
sunset, like the heart of your old friend.
We turn, pause, look back and wave,
Even our ponies look back and whine.
~Li Po
(I like the second better...)
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The flower invites the butterfly with no-mind;
The butterfly visits the flower with no-mind.
The flower opens, the butterfly comes;
The butterfly comes, the flower opens.
I don't know others,
Others don't know me.
By not-knowing we follow nature's course.
- Ryokan, Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf,
Translated by John Stevens
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Gone, and a million things leave no trace
Loosed, and it flows through the galaxies
A fountain of light, into the very mind--
Not a thing, and yet it appears before me:
Now I know the pearl of the Buddha-nature
Know its use: a boundless perfect sphere.
Han-Shan, circa 630
The Enlightened Heart, edited by Stephen Mitchell
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But I say unto you,
Take this staff just as a staff;
Movement is movement;
Sitting is sitting,
but don't wobble
under any circumstances!
My staff has turned into a dragon
and swallowed up the whole world.
Where are the poor mountains and rivers and great earth now?
Vasubandhu* happened to transform himself
Into a staff of chestnut wood, and,
Striking the earth once,
All the innumerable Buddhas were released
from their entangling words.
Yun-men Wen-yen, (Ummon), 864-949
Sermons
Translated by R. H. Blyth
Zen and Zen Classics: Selections
*Vasubandhu -- The Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu (4th century C.E.) was a great light at the peak of India's resplendent Gupta empire. His works display his mastery of Buddhist as well as non-Buddhist thought of the day, and he made his mark, successively, upon three Buddhist scholastic traditions that are traditionally considered distinct: Vaibhāṣika, Sautrāntika, and Yogācāra. His master work of Abhidharma thought, the Commentary on the Treasury of the Abhidharma (Abhidharmakośabhāṣya), is to this day the primary resource for knowledge of “Śrāvaka” or non-Mahāyāna philosophy among Tibetan and East Asian Buddhist schools.....
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/vasubandhu/
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A serving of snow in a silver bowl,
Or herons concealed in the glare of the moon
Apart, they seem similar, together, they're different.
Meaning cannot rest in words,
It adapts itself to that which arises.
Tremble and you're lost in a trap,
Miss and there's always regrets.
― Dongshan Liangjie (Tōzan Ryōkai)
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This body's lifetime is like a bubble's
may as well let things go
plans and events seldom agree
who can step back doesn't worry
we blossom and fade like flowers
we gather and part like clouds
earthly thoughts I forgot long ago
withering away on a mountain peak
- Stonehouse
(Translated by Red Pine, from 'The Zen Works of Stonehouse: Poems & Talks of a 14th Century Chinese Hermit')
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This body's lifetime is like a bubble's
may as well let things go
plans and events seldom agree
who can step back doesn't worry
we blossom and fade like flowers
we gather and part like clouds
earthly thoughts I forgot long ago
withering away on a mountain peak
- Stonehouse
Exactly as I was saying in my own blog recently... may as well let things go
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Synchronicity...
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When I dwell on things,
Such as flowers and phantoms,
And how they differ,
My heart, all of a sudden,
Shatters into a million pieces.
Shinkei
15th Century Japan
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We live our lives as wanderers
until, dead, we finally come home.
One quick trip between heaven and earth,
then the dust of a thousand generations.
The Moon Rabbit mixes elixirs for nothing.
The Tree of Long Life is kindling.
Dead, our white bones lie silent
when pine trees lean toward spring.
Remembering, I sigh; looking ahead, I sigh once more:
This life is mist. What fame? What glory?
- Li Po
[From 'The Poetry of Zen' translated by Sam Hamill]
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only one koan matters
you
you stand inside me naked infinite love
the dawn bell rips my dreaming heart
we're lost where the mind can't find us
utterly lost
Ikkyu
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Here in my cottage
I forget my loneliness
Thanks to the blossoms.
Only to find myself waiting
For someone to show them to.
Tonna (13.c. Japan)
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Like vanishing dew,
a passing apparition
or the sudden flash
of lightning - already gone -
thus should one regard one's self.
Ikkyu
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Sexual love can be so painful when it is deep,
Making you forget even the best prose and poetry.
Yet now I experience a heretofore unknown natural joy,
The delightful sound of the wind soothing my thoughts.
Ikkyu
Ikkyu Sojun was a scandal-ridden Japanese Zen master. He was quite the erotic-minded monk and was highly influential in many spheres of art. Sam Hamill wrote this about him:
"...(He) was renowned his teaching and for his frankly erotic poems and revolutionary shakuhachi music. Headmaster at Japan's huge Buddhist training centre, Daitokuji, in Kyoto, he resigned after nine days, denouncing the monks for hypocrisy and inviting them to argue their differences "in the whorehouses and sake parlours" where he could be found. At seventy, he scandalized the Buddhist community by moving his lover into his quarters in the temple. His sphere of influence included the tea ceremony, Noh drama, ink painting, calligraphy, and poetry, and he founded what became known as the "Red Thread" (or erotic) school of Zen.
~
Three Zen Masters by John Stevens
http://thegreenleaf.co.uk/hp/Ikkyu/00ikkyu.htm
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The world has billions of people
and no two faces alike
I wonder about the reason
behind such variation
and all with similar views
debating who is right and wrong
just correct yourself
and stop maligning others
- Shih-te [Pickup]
Wiki: Shide (Chinese: 拾得; pinyin: Shídé; Wade–Giles: Shih-Te; literally: "Pick-up or Foundling", fl. 9th century) was a Tang Dynasty Chinese Buddhist poet at the Guoqing Temple on Mount Tiantai on the East China Sea coast; roughly contemporary with Hanshan and Fenggan, but younger than both of them. As close friends the three of them formed the "Tiantai Trio". Shide lived as a lay monk, and worked most of his life in the kitchen of Guoqing Temple.
An apocryphal story relates how Shide received his name: Once, Fenggan was travelling between Guoqing Temple and the village of Tiantai, when at the redstone rock ridge called 'Red Wall' (赤城) he heard some crying. He investigated, and found a ten-year old boy who had been abandoned by his parents; and picked him up and took him back to the temple, where the monks subsequently raised him.
Shide is referred to as Jittoku in Japanese.
Poetry
Shide wrote an unknown number of poems, but 49 have survived. According to Xiang Chu in his book Cold Mountain Poems and Notes, there are 57 poems attributed to Shih-te. Shih-te's poems are short; and rarely exceed 10 lines. They are typically on a Buddhist subject, and executed in a style reminiscent of Hanshan's.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/ShiDe_by_Yan_Hui.jpg/320px-ShiDe_by_Yan_Hui.jpg)
Yan Hui, Shi De 拾得. Color on silk. Tokyo National Museum
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Nice!
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Han Shan spits out these words,
words no one believes ...
Honey's sweet, so people love it,
But the best herbs are bitter, hard to get down.
Go along, and they'll all love you.
Oppose them, and you'll get a big-eyed stare.
All I see is wooden puppets,
playing out their melodrama.
- Han Shan [Cold Mountain]
(Translated by J.P. Seaton)
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You polish words in rue-scented libraries,
and I live in bamboo-leaf gardens, a recluse
wandering every day the same winding path
home to rest in quiet, no noise anywhere.
A bird soaring the heights can choose a tree,
but the hedge soon tangles impetuous goats.
Today, things seen becoming thoughts felt:
this is where you start forgetting the words.
- Meng Hao-jan
8th Century China
[translated by David Hinton]
Meng Hao-jan (also transliterated as Meng Haoran) was a celebrated poet of the Tang dynasty of China. He was also a close friend of the famous Buddhist poet, Wang Wei.
Like many of the educated classes in China, Meng Hao-jan expected to live a life working as a government official, but he failed the civil service exams. He retired to the hilly country of his native Xiangyang (Hubei province) and dedicated himself, instead, to poetry and Ch'an Buddhist practice.
His poetry explored the beauty of nature, the fleeting nature of life, occasionally spiced with political commentary and satire.
http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/Poets/H/HaojanMeng/index.html
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The monkey is reaching
For the moon in the water.
Until death overtakes him
He'll never give up.
If he'd let go the branch and
Disappear in the deep pool,
The whole world would shine
With dazzling pureness.
- Hakuin Ekaku
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the light in the water came back last night
it used to not leave me alone
i made it stop
for i could not sleep staring at it
it wanted to pull me in like lightening
and it did
unless i would blink
or chatter eee eee eeekkkk
bananas
i was going bananas
so i looked the other way
and dulled the sense
i did not want to wander for those hours
like a ghost
where time stood still
i don t know what to do with it
if its there tonight ill probably look for a way
around it
some people chased it
but i never found a reason to
vague
that word does not even
feel like the vagueness
heart and contentment
they worked
i dream of chasing a road
i like to sleep in different places
on the earth
different spaces
and see different things
last night i dreamed
what was it
today i dreamed awake
that was not like the other one though
oh monkey magic yes how could i forget
i saw the whole set advertised
we were going to go back and grab it
i was staring the moon is still pretty super today
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It makes no sense!
- to get entangled again
after so much time!
In the air,
the dangling end
of a broken
spider's thread.
- Tonna
From 'Just Living: Poems and prose by the Japanese monk Tonna'.
Translated by Steven D. Carter]
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You polish words in rue-scented libraries,
and I live in bamboo-leaf gardens, a recluse
wandering every day the same winding path
home to rest in quiet, no noise anywhere.
A bird soaring the heights can choose a tree,
but the hedge soon tangles impetuous goats.
Today, things seen becoming thoughts felt:
this is where you start forgetting the words.
- Meng Hao-jan
7th/8th Century China
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One short pause between
The leaky road here and
The never-leaking Way there:
If it rains, let it rain!
If it storms, let it storm!
Ikkyu
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the wise know nothing at all
well maybe one song
Ikkyu
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Ikkyu was born in 1394 to Emperor Go-Komatsu and Iyono Tsubone, a court noble who was a descendant of the Fujiwara clan. Both mother and child were forced to leave the court to the countryside where Ikkyu went to stay at a local Zen temple at the age of five to begin his study. This is a letter to Ikkyu from his mother at her deathbed:
"I have finished my work in this life and am now returning into Eternity. I wish you to become a good student and to realize your Buddha-nature. You will know if I am in hell and whether I am always with you or not.
If you become a man who realizes that the Buddha and his follower Bodhidharma are your own servants, you may leave off studying and work for humanity. The Buddha preached for forty-nine years and in all that time found it not necessary to speak one word. You ought to know why. But if you don't and yet wish to, avoid thinking fruitlessly.
Your Mother,
Not born, not dead."
Ikkyu (https://www.facebook.com/sojun.ikkyu/photos/a.268935333275865.1073741827.268932353276163/377293992439998/?type=1)
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If you become a man who realizes that the Buddha and his follower Bodhidharma are your own servants, you may leave off studying and work for humanity.
I don't know about the Buddha not speaking one word - afaik he talked endlessly.
But this bit is what it is all about. As I see it, there are three levels. Firstly, you concentrate on your own well-being and that of your immediate family. Secondly, you rise above personal survival focus and concentrate on the service of the wider world, be it humanity or environment. Thirdly, you realise the impermanence of all things, and you concentrate on ultimate realisation.
Most people, including those on this forum, are on the first level. We have deeper yearnings for the third, but by skipping the second, those third level yearnings lack substance and focus.
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"Living in this world -
to what shall I compare it?
It is like a boat
rowing out at break of day,
leaving no trace behind."
~Poem No. 352 from the "Man'yōshū"
The "Manyoushuu" was written entirely with Chinese characters.
- The Man'yōshū (万葉集 or "Anthology of Ten Thousand Leaves" - sometimes translated as "Collection of Countless Words") assembles poems written between 350 to 750, believed to have been compiled by Ōtomo no Yakamochi around the mid to late 8th century.
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Hanshan's Poem 50:
Show me the person who doesn't die;
death remains impartial.
I recall a towering man
who is now a pile of dust-
the World Below knows no dawn
plants enjoy another spring
but those who visit this sorrowful place
the pine wind slays with grief.
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Prince Ikusa:
"The long spring day,
its mists rising,
before I know it
has turned to twilight,
and the heart that crowds my chest
hurts me so
I moan
like the mountain thrushes." - from the Manyoshu
("Collection of Myriad Leaves," collected early 8th c)
[Source and translation: Sato Hiroaki and Burton Watson, "From the Country of Eight Islands", University of Seattle Press, 1981]
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To what shall
I liken the world?
Moonlight, reflected
In dewdrops.
Shaken from a crane's bill.
– Dogen, 1200-1253, The Zen Poetry of Dogen
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Cover your path
With fallen pin needles
So no one will be able
To locate your
True dwelling place.
~Ikkyu
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Cover your path
With fallen pin needles
So no one will be able
To locate your
True dwelling place.
~Ikkyu
;)
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Searching for the Dharma
You've traveled up ten thousand steps in search of the Dharma.
So many long days in the archives, copying, copying.
The gravity of the Tang and the profundity of the Sung
make heavy baggage.
Here! I've picked you a bunch of wildflowers.
Their meaning is the same
but they're much easier to carry.
~ Xu Yun ~
(Empty Cloud: The Autobiography of the Chinese Zen Master,
Trans. Charles Luck, ed. by Richard Hunn)