Zen Poetry

Let the Spring Breeze Enter

Lucien Stryk, Takashi Ikemoto

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9780802198242
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

From the editors of Zen Poems of China and Japan comes the largest and most comprehensive collection of its kind to appear in English. This collaboration between a Japanese scholar and an American poet has rendered translations both precise and sublime, and their selections, which span fifteen hundred years—from the early T'ang dynasty to the present day—include many poems that have never before been translated into English. Stryk and Ikemoto offer us Zen poetry in all its diversity: Chinese poems of enlightenment and death, poems of the Japanese masters, many haiku—the quintessential Zen art—and an impressive selection of poems by Shinkichi Takahashi, Japan's greatest contemporary Zen poet. With Zen Poetry, Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto have graced us with a compellingly beautiful collection, which in their translations is pure literary pleasure, illuminating the world vision to which these poems give permanent expression.

Part One
Chinese Poems of Enlightenment and Death

NOTE: Most of the following Chinese masters and laymen, sixty in all, flourished during the Southern Sung dynasty (1127–1279), but their exact dates, with some exceptions, are missing in biographical records of Chinese Zenists. Among those who can be dated, Mumon-Ekai (Rinzai sectarian and author of Mumonkan: The Gateless Barrier, one of the most celebrated collections of disciplinary Zen questions and answers), Tendo-Nyojo (instructor in Soto Zen of Dogen, who, returning home from the Continent, founded the Japanese Soto sect) and Daie-Soko (Rinzai Zen leader with a large following) stand out as brilliant figures in Chinese Zen history.

Enlightenment

Ox bridle tossed, vows taken,
I’m robed and shaven clean.
You ask why Bodhidharma came east—
Staff thrust out, I hum like mad.

REITO

Twenty years a pilgrim,
Footing east, west.
Back in Seiken,
I’ve not moved an inch.

SEIKEN-CHIJU

Once the goal’s reached,
Have a good laugh.
Shaven, you’re handsomer—
Those useless eyebrows!

KISHU

The old master held up fluff
And blew from his palm,
Revealing the Source itself.
Look where clouds hide the peak.

KAIGEN

The mountain—Buddha’s body.
The torrent—his preaching.
Last night, eighty-four thousand poems.
How, how make them understand?

LAYMAN SOTOBA (1036–1101)

How long the tree’s been barren.
At its tip long ropes of cloud.
Since I smashed the mud-bull’s horns,
The stream’s flowed backwards.

HOGE

Joshu’s “Oak in the courtyard”—
Nobody’s grasped its roots.
Turned from sweet plum trees,
They pick sour pears on the hill.

EIAN

On the rocky slope, blossoming
Plums—from where?
Once he saw them, Reiun
Danced all the way to Sandai.

HOIN

Joshu’s “Oak in the courtyard”
Handed down, yet lost in leafy branch
They miss the root. Disciple Kaku shouts—
“Joshu never said a thing!”

MONJU-SHINDO

No dust speck anywhere.
What’s old? new?
At home on my blue mountain,
I want for nothing.

SHOFU

Over the peak spreading clouds,
At its source the river’s cold.
If you would see,
Climb the mountain top.

HAKUYO

Loving old priceless things,
I’ve scorned those seeking
Truth outside themselves:
Here, on the tip of the nose.

LAYMAN MAKUSHO

Traceless, no more need to hide.
Now the old mirror
Reflects everything—autumn light
Moistened by faint mist.

SUIAN

No mind, no Buddhas, no live beings,
Blue peaks ring Five Phoenix Tower.
In late spring light I throw this body
Off—fox leaps into the lion’s den.

CHIFU

Sailing on Men River, I heard
A call: how deep, how ordinary.
Seeking what I’d lost,
I found a host of saints.

SOAN

In serving, serve,
In fighting, kill.
Tokusan, Ganto—
A million-mile bar!

JINZU

Years keeping that in mind,
Vainly questioning masters.
A herald cries, “He’s coming!”
Liver, gall burst wide.

ANBUN

Seamless—
Touched, it glitters.
Why spread such nets
For sparrows?

GOJUSAN

Clear, clear—clearest!
I ran barefoot east and west.
Now more lucid than the moon,
The eighty-four thousand
Dharma gates!

MOAN

I set down the emerald lamp,
Take it up—exhaustless.
Once lit,
A sister is a sister.

GEKKUTSU-SEI

Not falling, not ignoring—
A pair of mandarin ducks
Alighting, bobbing, anywhere.

NAN-O-MYO

How vast karma,
Yet what’s there
To cling to? Last night,
Turning, I was blinded
By a ray of light.

SEIGEN-YUIIN

A deafening peal,
A thief escaped
My body. What
Have I learnt?
The Lord of Nothingness
Has a dark face.

LAYMAN YAKUSAI

A thunderbolt—eyes wide,
All living things bend low.
Mount Sumeru dances
All the way to Sandai.

MUMON-EKAI (1183–1260)

Where is the dragon’s cave?
Dozing this morn in Lord Sunyata’s
Palace, I heard the warbler.
Spring breeze shakes loose
The blossoms of the peach.

KANZAN-SHIGYO

No mind, no Buddha, no being.
Bones of the Void are scattered.
Why should the golden lion
Seek out the fox’s lair?

TEKKAN

Earth, river, mountain:
Snowflakes melt in air.
How could I have doubted?
Where’s north? south? east? west?

DANGAI

Joshu’s word—Nothingness.
In spring blossom everywhere.
Now insight’s mine,
Another dust-speck in the eye!

KUCHU

Joshu exclaimed, “Dog’s no Buddha,”
All things beg for life.
Even the half-dead snake
Stuffed in the basket.
Giving to haves, taking from
Have-nots—never enough.

ICHIGEN

Searching Him took
My strength.
One night I bent
My pointing finger—
Never such a moon!

KEPPO

Death

The fiery unicorn snapped
Its golden chain, moon-...

Table of contents

• Cover page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• A Note on the Translation
• Part One Chinese poems of Englightenment and Death
• Part Two Poems of the Japanese Zen Masters
• Part Three Japanese Haiku
• Part Four Shinkichi Takahashi, Contemporary Japanese Master
• Afterword Death of a Zen Poet: Shinkichi Takahashi