Topic: Zen and Taoist Poetry

[Nichi]

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

[Michael]

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.

[Nichi]

"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.

[Nichi]

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.

[Nichi]

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]

[Nichi]

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

[Nichi]

Cover your path
With fallen pin needles
So no one will be able
To locate your
True dwelling place.

~Ikkyu

[Michael]

Cover your path
With fallen pin needles
So no one will be able
To locate your
True dwelling place.

~Ikkyu

[Nichi]

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)