Topic: Zen and Taoist Poetry

[Nichi]

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]

[Nichi]

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

[Nichi]

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)

[Nichi]

Like vanishing dew,
a passing apparition
or the sudden flash
of lightning - already gone -
thus should one regard one's self.

Ikkyu

[Nichi]

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

[Nichi]

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.


Yan Hui, Shi De 拾得. Color on silk. Tokyo National Museum

[Firestarter]

Nice!

[Nichi]

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)

[Nichi]

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

[Nichi]

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

[runningstream]

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

[Nichi]

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]

[Nichi]

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

[Nichi]

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

[Nichi]

the wise know nothing at all
well maybe one song

Ikkyu