Zen poetry

[The Cobbler's Apprentice]

It may well be difficult to run a thread on zen poetry given the forum rules and restrictions on quotes, cut and paste etc. But many zen poems, particularly haiku, are very short........so I/we might get away with it.

Of poetry in general, Jane Hirshfield writes that great art and poetry is "a truing of vision.........a changing of vision. Entering a good poem, a person feels, tastes, hears, thinks, and sees in altered ways................by changing selves, one by one, art changes also the outer world that selves create and share."

Here is a poem by Lai Ded (14th century).......

I was passionate
filled with longing,
I searched
far and wide.

But the day
that the Truthful One
found me,
I was at home.


On another note, there is a long tradition in Japanese zen of masters writing Death Poems. When they suspect that their time is up, or will be very soon, they reach not for bottle or the anti-depressants, but for the pen! Here is one example....

Bury me when I die
beneath a wine barrel
in a tavern.
With luck
the cask will leak

(We all need a sense of humour at times, even zen masters)


Here's another, with less humour......

Death poems
are mere delusion —
death is death.


Yet nothing beats a haiku. One to finish......

For those who proclaim

they've grown weary of children,

there are no flowers.

[Miss Hepburn]

You would think if something was from the 14thc ---it would be ok to paste!
Right?

Bury me when I die
beneath a wine barrel
in a tavern.
With luck
the cask will leak
Lol!

[The Cobbler's Apprentice]

Originally Posted by Miss Hepburn

You would think if something was from the 14thc ---it would be ok to paste!
Right?

Looks like I've got away with it......

Originally Posted by Miss Hepburn

You would think if something was from the 14thc ---it would be ok to paste!
Right?

Things actually become free domain pretty quick, relatively speaking.
Yogananda's chants are now free of copyright. Some old tv shows as well.

For zen poetry I would just write my own. I'll try:

frozen lake
footsteps in the snow
who passed by this way?
no one I know

walking was easy
for empty were my sacks
looking down i noticed
my feet made those tracks

[ayar415]

Originally Posted by AbodhiSky

my feet made those tracks

Tracks of sorrow.

[Miss Hepburn]

Three hundred people onboard
The fly is trapped
I tell him, follow me out the door
He lands in the tip of my nose.


(A true story)

[Miss Hepburn]

Late, lost and alone
Ah, a puppy!

You stop to point at the moon in the sky
by Ryokan

English version by Sam Hamill
Original Language Japanese

You stop to point at the moon in the sky,
but the finger's blind unless the moon is shining.

One moon, one careless finger pointing --
are these two things or one?

The question is a pointer guiding
a novice from ignorance thick as fog.

Look deeper. The mystery calls and calls:
No moon, no finger -- nothing there at all.

[The Cobbler's Apprentice]

"No moon, no finger - nothing there at all"


Dogen:- (to whom I am besotted.... )

Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.”

.......to come back to where we started and know it for the first time

Words are scrolling along the screen
Looking out the window I take a deep breath
Oh look an unskillful thought arises
The joys of forum life