Zen Poetry
Selected Quotations
VIII
You’re bound to become a buddha if you practice.
If water drips long enough
Even rocks wear through.
It’s not true thick skulls can’t be pierced;
People just imagine their minds are hard.
- Shih-wu (1272-1352)
not when the monkey settles
on the rocker on the porch of
your mind
sees the orange splash of sunset
and thinks
I hope this lasts forever
but rather when the monkey
notices only that something has happened to the sky
and later sees that it is dark
- Five Poems, Dinty W. Moore
released from rock
a stone lotus
seated and still
for centuries
a candle
silent circle
legs folded
head still
arms cradling
emptiness
- Seated Buddha, Alan Altany
Zen Poetry: Selected Quotations I
Bitter rain soaks the pile of kindling twigs.
The night so cold and still the lamp flame hardly moves.
Clouds condense and drench our stone walled hut.
Broken rushes clog the reed gate's way.
The stream gurgles, a torrent in its bed.
That's all we hear. Only rarely, comes a human voice...
But oh, how priceless is this peace of mind that fills us
As we sit on our heels and put on another Chan monk's robe!
- Bitter Rain by Master Hsu Yun
Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God
while one is peeling the potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the
potatoes
- Allan Watts
Zen Poetry: Selected Quotations II
There is a reality even prior to heaven and earth;
Indeed, it has no form, much less a name;
Eyes fail to see it;
It has no voice for ears to detect;
To call it Mind or Buddha violates its nature,
For it then becomes like a visionary flower in the air;
It is not Mind, nor Buddha;
Absolutely quiet, and yet illuminating in a mysterious way,
It allows itself to be perceived only by the clear-eyed.
- Daio Kokushi, 1232 - 1308, On Zen
Manual of Zen
Buddhism
Joshu was asked,
"When a man comes to you with nothing,
what would you say to him ?"
Joshu replied, "Throw it away!"
Zen Poetry: Selected Quotations III
In the awakened eye
Mountains and rivers
Completely disappear.
The eye of delusion
Gazes upon
Deep fog and clouds.
Alone in my zazen
I forget the days
As they pass.
The wisteria has grown
Thick over the eaves
Of my hut.
- Muso (1275-1351)
What's heaped too
high
spills
Emptiness
just
fills
- Cid Corman
Zen Poetry: Selected Quotations IV
The buddha in the mind is like a fragrance in a tree.
The buddha comes from a mind free of suffering,
Just as a fragrance comes from a tree free of decay.
There's no fragrance without a tree and no buddha without the mind.
If there's a fragrance without a tree it's a different fragrance.
If there's a buddha without your mind, it's a different buddha.
- The Teachings of Bodhidharma
Things are not what they seem;
Nor are they otherwise.
- Lankavatara Sutra
On that far mountain
On the slope below the peak,
Cherries are in flower.
Oh, let the mountain mists
Not arise to hide the scene.
- Oe no Masafusa
Japanese
Gardens
will it matter
when it comes
you do not need
to know now
you do not need
to be told
it is like that
for each of us
day by day
held in being
- Bill Brown, Zen Time
The Buddha's teaching is in accordance with the nature of all
beings,
which is beyond attainability.
This truth knows no hindrances anywhere.
It is like a vacuity of space which is not hindered by anything,
it refuses to take any predicates.
As it is beyond all forms of dualism, in it there are no contrasts,
no characterization is possible of it.
As there is in it no opposition,
it knows nothing that goes beyond it.
As there is in it no origination,
it leaves no traces behind it.
As there is in it no birth-and-death,
it is unborn.
As there are in it no pathways to mark its transformation,
it is pathless.
- Pranjnaparmita, Fo-mu Chinese version
Translated by D. T. Suzuki
Essays in Zen Buddhism, Third Series, 1953, p. 267.
Zen Poetry: Links, Bibliography and Resources
Autumn's colors dropping from branches in masses of failing
leaves.
Cold clouds bringing rain into the crannies of the mountains:
Everyone was born with the same sort of eyes--
Why do mine keep seeing things as a Zen koan?
- Muso
Motion
and Emotion in Medieval Japanese Buddhism
The Cypress Tree in the Courtyard
Buddha, Unform
me,
Sit
where I am not sitting,
I am all weakness.
Meditation, clear mind.
Too much of me, seek nothing,
Pain, empty of need.
Playing
with my soul,
Toss it in the air,
higher
Each time, come back, soul.
- Jerry M. Pickard
Buddha, Unform Me
The Stories of K'ang
Sariputra,
The Zenith has the Brahma Voiced Buddha,
The Lord of the Constellations Buddha,
The Incense Offering Buddha,
The Incense Illuminating Buddha,
The Great Blazing Shoulders Buddha,
The Many Colored Precious Flowers Adorned Bodied Buddha,
The Teak Tree King Buddha,
The Seeing All Wishes Fulfilled Buddha,
The Mystical Mountain Buddha ...
Thus everywhere countless Buddhas,
Equal to the sands along the river Ganges,
Each of them having His Own Lands.
Countless Buddhas with long broad tongues,
Covering three thousand great universes of universes,
Expounding truthful and sincere words to all living beings.
The mind is very difficult to see,
Very delicate and subtle;
It moves and lands wherever it pleases.
The wise one should guard his mind,
For a guarded mind brings happiness.
Dhammapada
Translated by Daw Mya Tin
To have some deep feeling about Buddhism is not the point;
we just do what we should do,
like eating supper and going to bed.
This is Buddhism!
- Suzuki Roshi
A life-time is not what's between,
The moments of birth and death.
A life-time is one moment,
Between my two little breaths.
The present, the here, the now,
That's all the life I get,
I live each moment in full,
In kindness, in peace, without regret.
- Chade Meng, One Moment
Void is Form
When, just as they are,
White dewdrops gather
On scarlet maple leaves,
Regard the scarlet beads!
Form is Void
The tree is stripped,
All color, fragrance gone,
Yet already on the bough,
Uncaring spring!
- Ikkyu (1394-1481)
Penguin Book of Zen Poetry
Last day of Spring,
ripe purple plums drop--
form is emptiness.
First day of Summer,
ditch completely dry--
emptiness is form.
- Mike Garofalo
Above the Fog
Only insentient beings hear the sermon of insentient beings;
Walls and fences cannot instruct the grasses and trees to
actualize spring,
Yet they reveal the spiritual without intention, just by being
what they are,
So too with mountains, rivers, sun, moon, and stars.
- Dogen
Translated by Steven Heine
The Zen Poetry of Dogen, 1997, p. 141
Distributed on the Internet by Michael P. Garofalo
I Welcome Your Comments,
Ideas, Contributions, and Suggestions
Poetry Notebook III of Mike Garofalo
Zen Poetry: Selected Quotations VIII
Version 3.3.11.