Hello all
Onka asked me to recommend some Zen poets and books of their work so I replied with this and thought it might also be of interest to others.
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I would say that your go-to man is Ryōkan (1758–1831) who was a Sōtō Zen hermit, poet and calligrapher. His book One Robe, One Bowl is one of my absolute favourites and there are other books about him and translations of his poems of which the most authoritative is The Zen Poems of Ryōkan by Nobuyuki Yuasa.
My hut lies in the middle of a dense forest;
Every year the green ivy frows longer.
No news of the affairs of men,
Only the occasional song of a woodcutter.
The sun shines and I mend me robe;
When the moon comes out I read Buddhist poems.
I have nothing to report my friends.
If you want to find the meaning, stop chasing after so many things.
Next I love Han Shan (Cold Mountain; 9th century China) who was a Buddhist/Taoist hermit. His poetry is wonderful and there are great translations of his work either by Red Pine or Peter Levitt/Kaz Tanahashi. Upaya Zen Center recently had a retreat on his work led by Peter Levitt and Kaz: http://https://www.upaya.org/2020/06...nshan-7-parts/
Ikkyū Sōjun (1394–1481) is a great poet but also one of our Zen rebels, who eschewed being a Zen abbot to spend time in brothels and bars, falling in love with a blind girl in his old age. Jundo spent one podcast berating him for being a womanising drunk and while this is doubtless true, he wrote some great poetry (as well as really explicit poetry even by modern standards) which can be found in the book Crow with No Mouth.
Compare:
flowers are silent silence is silent the mind is a silent flower the silent flower of the world opens
all koans just lead you on
but not the delicious pu**y of the young girls I go down on
He was also funny:
born born everything is always born
thinking about it try not to
The man we studied during Rohatsu is Shitou Xiqian (Sekito Kisen in her Japanese spelling). He is not so much of a poet but many Zen teachers wrote teaching verses. He wrote both The Song of the Grass Roof Hermitage, and The Identity of Relative and Absolute that we chant at monthly Zazenkais.
Dōgen is also a poet of some reknown himself, and recent visitor Steven Heine translated a bunch of his poems: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...oetry_of_Dogen
Wearing dragon scales, rabbit horns, and turtle hair,
With falling rain and rising clouds, we see the path is slippery.
Gouging out the empty sky, seeking has not ceased.
Tonight, finally, I grasp the moon in the water.
Although not a Zen priest, the haiku master Matsuo Bashō was a student of Zen and his poems definitely convey that essence. His travelog interwoven with haiku, Narrow Road to the Interior, is a classic of Japanese literature. Robert Aitken Roshi, author of our precepts text The Mind of Clover, wrote a volume looking at Basho's work from a Zen perspective called A Zen Wave: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15849297-a-zen-wave I have also written a little about the relationship between Zen and haiku: https://yearinhaiku.wordpress.com/zen-and-haiku/
Taneda Santōka (1882-1940) came to Sōtō Zen after attempting suicide and was later ordained. Ann knows a great deal of his work and had an exhibition based on paper rakusus she made with each one inspired by a Santōka poem: The Rakusu Project There are a number of books of his work. I have Mountain Tasting which I love.
Going deeper
And still deeper —
The Green Mountains
As far as more modern Zen poets go, two of my favourites are the Rinzai Zen student and environmentalist Gary Snyder (1930- ) and Jane Hirshfield (1953- ;https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/jane-hirshfield) who took Jukai at San Francisco Zen Center in 1979.
For Nothing (Gary Snyder)
Earth a flower
A phlox on the steep
slopes of light
hanging over the vast
solid spaces
small rotten crystals;
salts.
Earth a flower
by a gulf where a raven
flaps by once
a glimmer, a color
forgotten as all
falls away.
A flower
for nothing;
an offer;
no taker;
Snow-trickle, feldspar, dirt.
Shunryu Suzuki's wife Mitsu (1914-2016) was also a fine poet with two collections of haiku poetry with many Zen themes, White Tea Bowl and Temple Dusk.
Autumn cloud
as if it knew
my life alone.
---------------------------
I have probably missed some people out but this can be seen as a start to some of the more important poets in the Zen tradition.
Gassho
Kokuu
Onka asked me to recommend some Zen poets and books of their work so I replied with this and thought it might also be of interest to others.
--------------------
I would say that your go-to man is Ryōkan (1758–1831) who was a Sōtō Zen hermit, poet and calligrapher. His book One Robe, One Bowl is one of my absolute favourites and there are other books about him and translations of his poems of which the most authoritative is The Zen Poems of Ryōkan by Nobuyuki Yuasa.
My hut lies in the middle of a dense forest;
Every year the green ivy frows longer.
No news of the affairs of men,
Only the occasional song of a woodcutter.
The sun shines and I mend me robe;
When the moon comes out I read Buddhist poems.
I have nothing to report my friends.
If you want to find the meaning, stop chasing after so many things.
Next I love Han Shan (Cold Mountain; 9th century China) who was a Buddhist/Taoist hermit. His poetry is wonderful and there are great translations of his work either by Red Pine or Peter Levitt/Kaz Tanahashi. Upaya Zen Center recently had a retreat on his work led by Peter Levitt and Kaz: http://https://www.upaya.org/2020/06...nshan-7-parts/
Ikkyū Sōjun (1394–1481) is a great poet but also one of our Zen rebels, who eschewed being a Zen abbot to spend time in brothels and bars, falling in love with a blind girl in his old age. Jundo spent one podcast berating him for being a womanising drunk and while this is doubtless true, he wrote some great poetry (as well as really explicit poetry even by modern standards) which can be found in the book Crow with No Mouth.
Compare:
flowers are silent silence is silent the mind is a silent flower the silent flower of the world opens
all koans just lead you on
but not the delicious pu**y of the young girls I go down on
He was also funny:
born born everything is always born
thinking about it try not to
The man we studied during Rohatsu is Shitou Xiqian (Sekito Kisen in her Japanese spelling). He is not so much of a poet but many Zen teachers wrote teaching verses. He wrote both The Song of the Grass Roof Hermitage, and The Identity of Relative and Absolute that we chant at monthly Zazenkais.
Dōgen is also a poet of some reknown himself, and recent visitor Steven Heine translated a bunch of his poems: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...oetry_of_Dogen
Wearing dragon scales, rabbit horns, and turtle hair,
With falling rain and rising clouds, we see the path is slippery.
Gouging out the empty sky, seeking has not ceased.
Tonight, finally, I grasp the moon in the water.
Although not a Zen priest, the haiku master Matsuo Bashō was a student of Zen and his poems definitely convey that essence. His travelog interwoven with haiku, Narrow Road to the Interior, is a classic of Japanese literature. Robert Aitken Roshi, author of our precepts text The Mind of Clover, wrote a volume looking at Basho's work from a Zen perspective called A Zen Wave: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15849297-a-zen-wave I have also written a little about the relationship between Zen and haiku: https://yearinhaiku.wordpress.com/zen-and-haiku/
Taneda Santōka (1882-1940) came to Sōtō Zen after attempting suicide and was later ordained. Ann knows a great deal of his work and had an exhibition based on paper rakusus she made with each one inspired by a Santōka poem: The Rakusu Project There are a number of books of his work. I have Mountain Tasting which I love.
Going deeper
And still deeper —
The Green Mountains
As far as more modern Zen poets go, two of my favourites are the Rinzai Zen student and environmentalist Gary Snyder (1930- ) and Jane Hirshfield (1953- ;https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/jane-hirshfield) who took Jukai at San Francisco Zen Center in 1979.
For Nothing (Gary Snyder)
Earth a flower
A phlox on the steep
slopes of light
hanging over the vast
solid spaces
small rotten crystals;
salts.
Earth a flower
by a gulf where a raven
flaps by once
a glimmer, a color
forgotten as all
falls away.
A flower
for nothing;
an offer;
no taker;
Snow-trickle, feldspar, dirt.
Shunryu Suzuki's wife Mitsu (1914-2016) was also a fine poet with two collections of haiku poetry with many Zen themes, White Tea Bowl and Temple Dusk.
Autumn cloud
as if it knew
my life alone.
---------------------------
I have probably missed some people out but this can be seen as a start to some of the more important poets in the Zen tradition.
Gassho
Kokuu
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