HAIKU BY SHIKI
Without my journey
And without the spring
I would have missed this dawn.
Zen Haiku, selected and translated by Jonathan Clements
London: Frances Lincoln, 2000
Contemplative Inquiry
This blog is about contemplative inquiry
Tag: Zen Buddhism
February 26, 2015
POEM: PASSING SHAOLIN HERMITAGE
PASSING SHAOLIN HERMITAGE – TO FRIENDS IN THE CAPITAL
I reined in my horse below a pine ridge
and hiked to the lookout on top
the trail appeared impassable as I started out
but once I arrived I wished it were longer
from the summit I heard a chorus of winds
in the woods I bathed in a secluded stream
the sound of a bell roused me on the Way
the evening chime cleared the clouds and mist
though my visit was brief
I finally saw what caused my troubles
but when I thought about building a hut
I knew it would have to wait for old age.
From In Such Hard Times: the Poetry of Wei Ying-Wu translated by Red Pine, Port Townsend: WA, USA: Copper Canyon Press, 2009
Wei Ying-wu was a poet of the later 8th century CE, as we count time. It was a period when the later-remembered-as-glorious T’ang dynasty had begun to unravel. Translator Red Pine says that “Wei lived his life wondering what went wrong”, giving a melancholy tinge to many of his poems. He was distantly related to the Imperial family, a scholar in both the Buddhist and Confucian traditions who spent many years as a state official without much enjoying it.
This poem was written in 771. (In Britain, that’s 22 years before the Viking sack of the Christian monastery at Lindisfarne.) Shaolin Temple was built in the fifth century for a monk from India in a high mountain basin at the foot of Sungshan’s Shaoshih Peak. The trail from the temple to the top went right by the cave where Bodhidharma, the founder of Chan (Japanese Zen) Buddhism spent nine years in meditation.
The chime to which Wei refers was used in Chan monasteries to mark the end of a meditation period. The use of the term ‘the Way’ (Tao) wasn’t confined to Taoists – ‘Tao’ was also used by Confucians, and by Buddhists as a translation of Sanskrit ‘Dharma’. The last two lines of the poem show a tension between Wei’s Buddhist and Confucian trainings – whether to let go of worldly attachments, or whether to stay in his post and “wait for old age” before building his hut.
December 15, 2014
THE MYSTIC SENSE
In his book on Zen Paganism (1), Tom Swiss has a chapter called The Mystic Sense. He includes Mystic, a poem by D.H. Lawrence.
They call all experiences of the
senses mystic, when the
experience is considered.
So an apple becomes mystic
when I taste in it
the summer and the snows, the
wild welter of earth
and the insistence of the sun.
Swiss notes, “one specific, wonderful deep type of beauty comes … from the perception of a relationship between our immediate subjective experience and the broader world”. He adds that depending on our social conditioning and religious training we may come to conceptualise this in terms like ‘cosmic consciousness’, ‘the presence of the divine’, ‘the perception of emptiness’, a feeling of ‘oneness with the universe’, or of ‘sacredness’ or an experience of ‘no-mind’. They are all expressions of the mystical sense, and we have entered a period in which we can let go of any residual belief that this sense is a rare possession, or the exclusive province of a few spiritual specialists and champions.
The way we make meaning and find a language for such experiences may still be heavily conditioned by culture and still be used to justify the truth of dogmas that have in reality “only provided a filter” and “determined what color glasses” we are wearing when we “behold the Clear Light”. But behold it we do, in many different ways, and “with practice we can develop this sense”. Indeed we can “even manage to perceive the mystical experience from multiple perspectives, to swap the glasses for a couple of different colors”. In this context, Swiss reminds us that “this is one of the goals of ceremonial magic, as practised by occultists and Pagans” and not at all confined to still, meditative states.
- Swiss, Tom (2013) Why Buddha touched the earth: Zen Paganism for the 21st. century Stafford, UK: Megalithica books
November 28, 2014
OVERNIGHT STAY WITH K’O-KUNG
For me, this poem by Chia Tao is a contrasting twin to Poems Just Dotted Down in my last blog. On the one hand it is more self-conscious and struggling, and on the other more poignant and touching with the human face revealed. I like to read them together.
For ten li
I’ve been searching for the hidden temple
Up branches
Of the cold stream.
Monks sit Ch’an,
One with the snowy night;
Wild geese, approaching Ts’ao-t’ang,
Fly within hearing.
With lamp flames dying,
Our words are subdued;
The rest of our lives
Should be clouds and high peaks.
Up to now,
I’ve been sick a lot,
And the Enlightened Prince
Does not know my name.
From When I find you again, it will be in mountains: selected poems of Chia Tao (2000) Somerville, MA, USA: Wisdom Publications
Chia Tao (779 – 843) an erstwhile Ch’an monk, became a poet during China’s Tang Dynasty. Ch’an was the Chinese predecessor of Japanese Zen.
English translation by Mike O’ Connor.
November 27, 2014
POEM JUST JOTTED DOWN
In the middle of the night,
I suddenly rise;
Draw water
From the deep well.
White dew
Covers the woods;
Morning stars
Dot the clear sky.
From When I find you again, it will be in mountains: selected poems of Chia Tao (2000) Somerville, MA, USA: Wisdom Publications
Chia Tao (779 – 843) an erstwhile Ch’an monk, became a poet during China’s Tang Dynasty. Ch’an was the Chinese predecessor of Japanese Zen.
English translation by Mike O’Connor.
Contemplative Inquiry 