Zen Poems Thread

[Myosha]

Yes, I’m truly a dunce
Living among trees and plants.
Please don’t question me about illusion and enlightenment --
This old fellow just likes to smile to himself.
I wade across streams with bony legs,
And carry a bag about in fine spring weather.
That’s my life,
And the world owes me nothing.

Ryokan

[Myosha]

Mind and Senses

The mind is an organ of thought and objects are set against it:
The two are like marks on the surface of the mirror;
When the dirt is removed, the light begins to shine.
Both mind and objects being forgotten, Ultimate Nature
reveals itself true.

Yung-chia Hsüan-chüeh


Gassho,
Myosha

[Rich]

Thanks for ryokan

Kind regards. /\

[Guest]

The thief left it behind:
the moon
at my window.

-Ryōkan
(Written after a thief robbed his hut)

[Myosha]

As flowing waters disappear into the mist
We lose all track of their passage.
Every heart is its own Buddha.
Ease off ... become immortal.

Wake up! The world's a mote of dust.
Behold heaven's round mirror.
Turn loose! Slip past shape and shadow,
Sit side by side with nothing, save Tao.

- Shih-shu, 1703

[Ongen]

Four hours of zazen to go and the sesshin is over.
What did I learn?

There's nothing to it really. Kokushi was an old fool.

Not much of a poem huh?

Gassho

Vincent


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Nameless]

The sun is rising
Sinking softly out of sight
Midnight crickets chirp

Gassho, John

[Myosha]

Spring has its hundred flowers,
Autumn its moon,
Summer has its cooling breezes,
Winter its snow.
If you allow no idle concerns
To weigh on your heart,
Your whole life will be one
Perennial good season.


Gassho,
Myosha

[Nindo]

from Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, canto #20

In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley-corn less,
And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them.

I know I am solid and sound,
To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow,
All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.

I know I am deathless,
I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter's compass,
I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt
stick at night.

I know I am august,
I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood,
I see that the elementary laws never apologize,
(I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by,
after all.)

I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.

One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself,
And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten
million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.

[Myosha]

Pilfered with gratitude:

"Ryokan once wrote;

Blue sky, cold geese honk
On a bare mountain, tree leaves flutter.
At dusk in the village, smoke billows from every house.
Alone with my empty bowl, I head home.

Zen has taught me to experience life as it occurs, experience these fleeting moments of clarity, along with everything else in life, the good and the not so good, the happy and the sad, the blade of grass and the ripples on the pond,yet at the end of the day I try not to become attached to these things. I head home with an empty bowl.

Of course at times this is easier said than done.


Gassho,
Mike"


Gassho,
Myosha

[JohnsonCM]

Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free.

Rumi

[Yahantei]

One, seven, three, five.
What you search for cannot be grasped.
As the night deepens,
the moon brightens over the ocean.
The black dragon's jewel
is found in every wave.
Looking for the moon,
it is here in this wave
and the next.

A verse that master Hsueh-t'ou Ch'ung-hsien wrote for a disciple (Translated by Yasuda Joshu Roshi and Anzan Hoshin Roshi, from Cooking Zen, Great Matter Publications. 1996)

[Myosha]

I deplore this vulgar place
where demons dwell with worthies.
They say they're the same,
but is the Tao impartial?
A fox might ape a lion's mien
and claim the disguise is real,
but once ore enters the furnace,
we soon see if it's gold or base.

- Hanshan

[Diarmuid1]

Exposure

Seamus Heaney

It is December in Wicklow:
Alders dripping, birches
Inheriting the last light,
The ash tree cold to look at.

A comet that was lost
Should be visible at sunset,
Those million tons of light
Like a glimmer of haws and rose-hips,

And I sometimes see a falling star.
If I could come on meteorite!
Instead I walk through damp leaves,
Husks, the spent flukes of autumn,

Imagining a hero
On some muddy compound,
His gift like a slingstone
Whirled for the desperate.

How did I end up like this?
I often think of my friends'
Beautiful prismatic counselling
And the anvil brains of some who hate me

As I sit weighing and weighing
My responsible tristia.
For what? For the ear? For the people?
For what is said behind-backs?

Rain comes down through the alders,
Its low conductive voices
Mutter about let-downs and erosions
And yet each drop recalls

The diamond absolutes.
I am neither internee nor informer;
An inner йmigrй, grown long-haired
And thoughtful; a wood-kerne

Escaped from the massacre,
Taking protective colouring
From bole and bark, feeling
Every wind that blows;

Who, blowing up these sparks
For their meagre heat, have missed
The once-in-a-lifetime portent,
The comet's pulsing rose.

[Myosha]

Venerable Vimalakirti says,

A bodhisattva should regard all living beings as a wise man
Regards the reflection of the moon in water,
As magicians regard men created by magic.
As being like a face in a mirror,
like the water of a mirage;
like the sound of an echo;
like a mass of clouds in the sky;
like the appearance and disappearance of a bubble of water;
like the core of a plantain tree;
like a flash of lightning;
like the appearance of matter in an immaterial realm;
like a sprout from a rotten seed;
like tortoise-hair coat;
like the fun of games for one who wishes to die...

- Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra