A Collection of Poems on No Mind and Nature by Zen Master Ryōkan Taigu

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http://jmhs.mars.k12.wv.us/faculty/DaveSoltesz/AsianArt/Japan/

Taigu Ryokan (1758-1831) (nicknamed Great Fool) lives on as one of Japan’s best loved poets, the wise fool who wrote of his humble life with such directness. He is in a tradition of radical Zen poets or “great fools” including China’s P’ang Yun (Layman P’ang, 740-811) and Han-shan (Cold Mountain, T’ang Dynasty), and Japan’s poets of the Rinzai School: Ikkyu Sojun (Crazy Cloud, 1394-1481) and Hakuin Ekaku (1686-1769). Ryokan had no disciples, ran no temple, and in the eyes of the world was a penniless monk who spent his life in the snow country of Mt. Kugami. He admired most the Soto Zen teachings of Dogen Zenji and the unconventional life and poetry of Zen mountain poet Han-shan. He repeatedly refused to be honored or confined as a “professional” either as a Buddhist priest or a poet.

Who says my poems are poems?
These poems are not poems.
When you can understand this,
then we can begin to speak of poetry.

Ryokan never published a collection of verse while alive. His practice consisted of sitting in zazen meditation, walking in the woods, playing with children, making his daily begging rounds, reading and writing poetry, doing calligraphy, and on occasion drinking wine with friends.

Ryokan Poems

First days of spring — the sky

First days of spring — the sky
is bright blue, the sun huge and warm.
Everything’s turning green.
Carrying my monk’s bowl, I walk to the village
to beg for my daily meal.
The children spot me at the temple gate
and happily crowd around,
dragging to my arms till I stop.
I put my bowl on a white rock,
hang my bag on a branch.
First we braid grasses and play tug-of-war,
then we take turns singing and keeping a kick-ball in the air:
I kick the ball and they sing, they kick and I sing.
Time is forgotten, the hours fly.
People passing by point at me and laugh:
“Why are you acting like such a fool?”
I nod my head and don’t answer.
I could say something, but why?

Reply to a Friend

In stubborn stupidity, I live on alone
befriended by trees and herbs.
Too lazy to learn right from wrong,
I laugh at myself, ignoring others.
Lifting my bony shanks, I cross the stream,
a sack in my hand, blessed by spring weather.
Living thus, I want for nothing,
at peace with all the world.

Your finger points to the moon,
but the finger is blind until the moon appears.
What connection has Êmoon and finger?
Are they separate objects or bound?
This is a question for beginners
wrapped in seas of ignorance.
Yet one who looks beyond metaphor
knows there is no finger; there is no moon.

The Lotus

First blooming in the Western Paradise,
The lotus has delighted us for ages.
Its white petals are covered with dew,
its jade green leaves spread out over the pond,
And its pure fragrance perfumes the wind.
Cool and majestic, it raises from the murky water.
The sun sets behind the mountains
But I remain in the darkness, too captivated to leave.

The plants and flowers

The plants and flowers
I raised about my hut
I now surrender
To the will
Of the wind

The winds have died, but flowers go on falling;

The winds have died, but flowers go on falling;
birds call, but silence penetrates each song.

The Mystery! Unknowable, unlearnable.
The virtue of Kannon.

This world

This world
A fading
Mountain echo
Void and
Unreal

Within
A light snow
Three Thousand Realms
Within those realms
Light snow falls

As the snow
Engulfs my hut
At dusk
My heart, too
Is completely consumed

To kindle a fire

To kindle a fire,
the autumn winds have piled
a few dead leaves.

You stop to point at the moon in the sky

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.

Do you want to know what’s in my heart?
From the beginning of time: just this! just this!

How pitiful, those virtuous fellows!
Moving into the recesses, they immerse
themselves in composing poetry
For Ancient Style, their models
are the poems of Han and Wei
For Recent Form,
the T’ang poets are their guide
With gaudy words their lines are formed
And further adorned by
novel and curious phrases
Yet if they fail to express
what’s in their own minds
What’s the use, no matter
how many poems they compose?

Listeningto the rain

I’ve never bothered about getting ahead
But just gone leisurely along
letting things take their way
In my bag are three measures of rice
A bundle of firewood sits by the hearth
Who cares about delusion and enlightenment?
What use is there in fame and fortune?
In my hut, I listen to the evening rain
And stretch my legs without a care in the world

Leave it to the Heaven

All my life too lazy to try to get ahead,
I leave everything to the truth of Heaven.
In my sack three measures of rice,
by the stove one bundle of sticks -
why ask who’s got satori, who hasn’t?
What would I know about that dust, fame and gain?
Rainy nights here in my thatched hut
I stick out my two legs any old way I please.

Names are names

Who was it said, “Names are the guests of reality”?
These words have come down to us from ancient times
But even if people know that names aren’t real
They don’t see that reality itself has no root
Name, reality - both are beside the point
Just naturally find joy in the ever-changing flow

Do not tempt yourself

Let the smallest lust for fame and fortune enter the mind,
and all the waters of the ocean will not wash it away.

Feeling the chill

Picking persimmons
My balls feel the chill
Of the autumn wind

*A Visit from Chikukyu Rojin*

My hut is the truth

The cicadas buzzing in the treetops
The stream cascading down the ravine
The rain last night that left the air
cleansed of every speck of dust
Don’t say my hut has nothing to offer
Come and I will share with you
The cool breeze that fills my window

Life is passing

The days and months move on, and now as
the year draws to a close
Heaven sends down a chastening frost
Across a thousand hills, trees stand bare
On myriad paths, scarcely a traveler
I burn dried leaves
The long night passes, broken
now and then by the sounds
of wind and rain
As I think back, everything gone by
Is just a picture in a dream

Coming home

How long has it been since I came to this place?
With no one to tend them, the grounds have run wild
My begging bag and bowl just sit gathering dust
A solitary lantern lights the bare walls
Evening rain patters on my lonely door
Every detail is complete
Ah! What else is there that I need?

Truth is everywhere

Walking along
I followed the drifting stream to its source
But reaching the headwaters left me stunned
That’s when I realized that the true source
isn’t a particular place you can reach
So now, wherever my staff sets down
I just play in the current’s eddies and swirls

Beyond words

Because of the finger
you can point to the moon
Because of the moon
you can understand the finger
The moon and the finger
Are neither different nor the same
The parable is used only
To lead students to enlightenment
Once you’ve really seen things as they are
There’s no more moon, no more finger

Oneness

Where you have beauty
you have ugliness, too
Where you have right
you will also have wrong
Knowledge and ignorance are each other’s cause
Delusion and enlightenment produce one another
It’s always been so
It didn’t start now
You get rid of this, then grab hold of that
Don’t you see how stupid it is!
If you’re determined to find the innermost truth
Why trouble about the changing face of things?

Loosing the way

Sitting alone in my empty room
My mind restless and downcast
I saddle my horse and ride far, far away
Climb to a height
And gaze out over the distant scene
A whirlwind springs up, shaking the earth
In no time at all, the sun sinks in the west
Broad rivers churn with foaming waves
Fields stretch endlessly past the horizon
Black monkeys call to their companions
With melancholy cries
geese wing their way south
A hundred cares line my brow
Ten thousand troubles rend my heart
I want to return
but I’ve lost the way
Here it is, the end of another year
What am I to do?

Life

The weather at last is turning mild
Swinging my staff
I set off for a spring outing
Streams burble in the valleys and gorges
Mountains and forests ring
with the trilling of birds
I may go walking with a monk
Stop at a friend’s and rest a while
There’s nothing like this life of mine
A boat that’s slipped its moorings
bobbing on the waves.

*Song of the Wide-Open Spaces*

All alone, leaning against a solitary pine
Together with the tree again
letting the time slip by
Is there anyone in this whole wide world
Who’ll come along with me?

*An Answer to your Poem*

For being obstinate and stupid
there’s no one like me
My neighbors have become the trees and grasses
I’m tired of mulling over
delusion and enlightenment
Seeing how old and decrepit I’v grown
I can’t help laughing at myself
Carefree, I hoist my robe above my legs
and ford the stream
My begging bag in tow
I go rambling with the springtime
I’m content just living this life of mine
It’s not that I loathe the dust of the world

Life in oneness

In the shadow of the mountain
Like the water that trickles
through moss-covered rocks
Thus do I live
Quiet, unnoticed
But free of impurity

Bamboo weath

I count them off -
Already sixty years buried in the forest
I live out my remaining days
with one wooden box, one gourd flask
People may envy worldly honors and riches
But now is the bamboo shoot season
And I haven’t time to bother
about such things

Cozy

Burning brushwood
I hear the sound of a passing shower
Night has fallen

Homesick

Though travels
take me to
a different stopping place each night
the dream I dream is always
that same one of home

Alone among others

In this village
coming and going
there are so many people -
but when you’re not among them
it’s lonely.

A beautiful conflict

Woody peonies
now just at the
best of their bloom -
too beautiful to pick
too beautiful not to pick

Life is like rain

These old days - I wonder,
did I dream them
or were they real?
In the night I listen
to the autumn rain

World intimacy

In the still night by the vacant window,
wrapped in monk’s robe I set in meditation,
navel and nostrils lined up straight,
ears paired to the slope of the shoulders.
Window whitens - the moon comes up;
rain’s stopped, but the drops go on dripping.
Wonderful - the mood of this moment -
distant, vast, known only to me.

I am a tired walking stick

Dark of winter, eleventh month,
rain and snow slushing down;
a thousand hills all one color,
ten thousand paths where almost no one goes.
Past wanderings all turned to dreams;
grass gate, its leaves latched tight;
through the night I burn chips of wood,
quietly reading poems by men of long ago.

I have a walking stick -
don’t know how many generations it’s been handed down -
the bark peeled off long ago,
nothing left but a sturdy core.
In past years it tested the depth of a stream,
how many times clanged over steep rocky trails!
Now it leans against the east wall,
neglected, while the flowing years go by.

Ego suffering

I see people in the world
Throw away their lives lusting after things,
Never able to satisfy their desires,
Falling into deep despair
And torturing themselves.
Even if they get what they want
How long will they be able to enjoy it?
For one heavenly pleasure
They suffer ten torments of hell,
Binding themselves more firmly to the grindstone.
Such people are like monkeys
Frantically grasping for the moon in the water
And then falling into a whirlpool.
How endlessly those caught up in the floating world suffer.

Thoughts create loss of life

Keep your heart clear and transparent
And you will never be bound.
A single disturbed thought, though,
Creates ten thousand distractions.
Let myriad things captivate you
And you’ll go further and further astray.
How painful to see people
All wrapped up in themselves.

Sick of thoughts

The water of the mind, how clear it is!
Gazing at it, the boundaries are invisible.
But as soon as even a slight thought arises,
ten thousand images crowd it.
Attach to them and they become real,
be carried by them and it will be difficult to return.
How painful to see a person trapped in the ten-fold delusions.

Forget and see

The past and the present,
the false and true are just
thin clouds which obscure
the mountain peak.
Shall we brush them away
revealing light?
What do you think, my friend?

The answer is blowing in the wind

The plants and flowers
I raised about my hut
I now surrender
To the will
Of the wind.

Be (not a man)

As a boy I left my father, ran off to other lands,
tried hard to become a tiger - didn’t even make it to cat!
If you ask what kind of man I am now,
just the same old Eizo I’ve always been.
(Eizo)

Reality wins

When all thoughts
Are exhausted
I slip into the woods
And gather
A pile of shepherd’s purse.

No mind is like water

Like the little stream
Making its way
Through the mossy crevices
I, too, quietly
Turn clear and transparent.
no-mind

Life is going on happily with no mind

The flower invites the butterfly with no-mind;
The butterfly visits the flower with no-mind.
The flower opens, the butterfly comes;
The butterfly comes, the flower opens.
I don’t know others,
Others don’t know me.
By not-knowing we follow nature’s course.

from “Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf” translated by John Stevens
spacer

Lazy and happy

Too lazy to be ambitious,
I let the world take care of itself.
Ten days’ worth of rice in my bag;
a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.
Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?
Listening to the night rain on my roof,
I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.

source

http://communication.ucsd.edu/bjones/Zen/

http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/R/Ryokan/Tokindleafir.htm

Quote

語是謗、寂是誑、語寂向上有路在

“Speech is blasphemy, silence a lie. Above speech and silence there is a way out.”

I-tuan (義端) one of Nan-ch’uan’s great disciples (The Golden Age of Zen 250, 322 n.13)

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