Zen Poetry
and Sayings
Selected Quotations
IV
Earth, mountains, rivers - hidden in this nothingness.
In this nothingness - earth, mountains, rivers revealed.
Spring flowers, winter snows:
There's no being or non-being, nor denial itself.
- Saisho (circa 1490)
Zen Poetry:
Let the Spring Breeze Enter, p.32
Translated by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto
We pray for our life of tomorrow,
Ephemeral life though it be;
This is the habit of our mind
That passed away yesterday.
- Ikkyu
Zen and Zen
Classics: Selections from R. H. Blyth, p. 111
Like the little stream
Making its way
Through the mossy crevices
I, too, quietly
Turn clear and transparent
The wind has settled, the blossoms have fallen;
Birds sing, the mountains grow dark --
This is the wondrous power of Buddhism.
- Ryokan
Zen Poetry: Selected Quotations I
What a difference! What a difference!
Raise the blind, and see the world!
If someone asks me to tell him what my religion is
I raise my hossu and strike his mouth.
- Chokei, 853 - 932
Zen and Zen
Classics: Selections from R. H. Blyth, p. 227
For twenty years I've sought the Other.
Now, letting go, I fly out of the pit.
What use oneness of mind and body?
These days I only sing la-la-la.
- Keso Shogaku, 15th C
Zen Poems of China and Japan
Thirty spokes join together in the hub.
It is because of what is not there that the cart is useful.
Clay is formed into a vessel.
It is because of its emptiness that the vessel is useful.
Cut doors and windows to make a room.
It is because of its emptiness that the room is useful.
Therefore, what is present is used for profit.
But it is in absence that there is usefulness.
- Tao Te Ching,
#11
Translated by Charles Muller
Flowers in the Sky (Kuge): Zen Master Dogen
Standing alone on a solitary peak,
The gateless gate crumbles.
Moving straight up the windy
road,
Heaven and earth are walking as one.
Buddhas intimate with buddhas--
What need is there for old
medicine bottles?
Then thousand blossoms perfume
the vast sky.
Like this, like this !
- Bernard Tetsugen Glassman, 1982
The
Ten Directions, Summer/Fall 1982, Vol 3, No.2, pp 16.
All beings by nature are Buddha,
as ice by nature is water;
apart from water there is no ice,
apart from beings no Buddha.
- Hakuin Zenki, Song of Zazen
The Five Precepts of Zen Buddhism
Although I try
to hold the single thought
of Buddha's teaching in my heart,
I cannot help but hear
the many crickets' voices calling as well.
- Izumi Shikibu, Japan
An instant realization
sees endless time.
Endless time is as one moment.
When one comprehends the endless moment
He realizes the person who is seeing it.
- Paul Reps, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones,
p. 158
Cloud Hands: Taijiquan and Qigong
With thy perfect intelligence and compassion
Which are beyond all limit,
Thou comprehends the egolessness of things and persons,
And, art free and clear from the hindrances of passion and egoism.
Thou do not vanish into Nirvana,
Nor does Nirvana abide in thee,
For Nirvana transcends all duality of knowing and known,
Of being and non-being.
Those who see thee thus,
Serene and beyond conceptions,
Will be emancipated from attachment,
Will be cleansed of all defilement,
Both in this world and in the spiritual world beyond.
In this world, whose nature is like a dream,
there is a place for praise and blame;
But, in the ultimate Reality of the Dharmakaya,
Which is far beyond the senses and the discriminating mind,
What is there to praise?
O Thou Most Wise!
- Lankavatara
Sutra
The Gnostic Society
In Zen, poetry is not a technology of language, but rather
a
practice of closing the gap between word and action so that
one may come to a point when word is will-manifest, where
real and dream are no more discrete realms. The Zen poet
then ultimately concerns himself not with the skeletons of
words but with shock, with riddle, and with the movement
from head to entirety of being-in-body.
- Leon Tang
Zen and a Poetry of Being
There ain't no answer.
There ain't going to be an answer.
There never has been an answer.
That's the answer.
- Gertrude Stein
Zen Poetry: Links, Bibliography and Resources
A man as old as a dragon bell, I walk slowly
to visit a meditation temple,
to ask the mean of a good heart. Remotely,
I feel the sickness of the void is itself void.
Mountains and rivers are in the Buddha's eye,
the universe in dharma's body.
Don't be surprised that meditation controls hot days
and raises wind over the land.
- Wang Wei, 699-761
Laughing Lost in the Mountains: Poems of Wang Wei,
p. 133
Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed and growing sweet--
all this universe, to the furthest stars
and beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.
Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.
Illuminated in your infinite peace ......
- Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926)
"Buddha in Glory," from The Enlightened Heart,
Edited by Stephen Mitchell, p 131
The Cypress Tree in the Courtyard
Completely freed from yes and no;
great emptiness charged within;
no questions, no answers;
like a fish, like a fool.
- Robert Aitken, Roshi, Verse of the Han
Walking is Zen,
- Shodoka
You should know that
such people will have planted good roots
With not just one Buddha, two Buddhas, three, four or five Buddhas,
But will have planted good roots with measureless millions of Buddhas.
All who hear such phrases and produce even one thought
Of pure faith are completely known and completely seen by the Tathagata.
Such living beings thus obtain measureless blessings and virtue.
And why?
Those living beings have no further mark of self, of others, of living
beings,
Or of a life;
No mark of dharmas and no mark of no dharmas.
If your hearts grasp at marks, then that is attachment to self, to others, to
living beings, and to a life.
For that reason you should not grasp at dharmas, nor should you grasp at no
dharmas.
All you Bhiksus should know that the dharma which I speak is like a raft.
Even dharmas should be relinquished, how much the more so no dharmas.
- The Buddha, The
Diamond Sutra
And before the Wise Ones appeared,
Forty million years of ducks in the mud.
Blowing out a candle
ten thousand miles away
Cutting up a duck for dinner.
A dog barks at nothing,
a thousand ducks twitch--
winds of winter.
Has a duck the Buddha-Nature?
"Sssshhh!
Stop quacking like a duck."
- Michael P. Garofalo, Above the Fog
Zen Poems: Links, Bibliography, Resources, Notes
As all things are Buddha-Dharma,
There are delusion, realization, practice,
birth and death,
buddhas and sentient beings.
As myriad things are without an abiding self,
There is no delusion, no realization,
no buddha, no sentient being,
no birth and death.
The buddha way, in essence,
Is leaping clear of abundance and lack;
thus there are birth and death,
delusion and realization,
sentient beings and buddhas.
Yet in attachment blossoms fall,
And in aversion weeds spread.
- Zen Master Dogen
Actualizing the Fundamental Point
Enlightenment Unfolds, Edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi, p. 35
Tea is not but this:
First you make the water boil,
Then infuse the tea.
Then you drink it properly.
That is all you need to know.
- Verses of Sen-No-Rikyu, Tea Master
The sound of the water
says what I think.
- Chuang Tzu
Contemplating the clear moon
Reflecting a mind empty as the open sky -
Drawn by
its beauty,
I lose myself
In the shadows it casts.
- Dogen, 1200 -1253
Translated by Steven Heine
Motion and Emotion
in Medieval Japanese Literature
Then in the end
one leaves the body
together with one's possessions.
Knowing this, the intelligent man
Enjoys possessions and gives.
Having enjoyed and given
in line with his means,
uncensored he goes
to the heavenly state.
- Aditta Sutra
Translated by John Bullitt
Weary body, inviting bed
nestled around zendo
under the stars.
The world my pillow,
the sky my blanket,
the dharma my warmth
- dreams of sesshin.
- Dean Crabb
The Last Samu
Weekend
Above, below and around you, all is
Spontaneously exisitng, for
There is nowhere which is
Outside Buddha-Mind.
- Huang Po
Old Pan Kou knows nothing about time
and nothing about space has well.
His life is self-natured and self-sufficient.
He needs to ask for nothing outside of his own being.
The genesis of the world is the exercise of his mind.
When his mind starts to think, the world starts to move.
The world has never been made by any special desing.
Neither has an end ever been put to it.
A little while when I am gone
My life will live in music after me,
As spun foam lifted and borne on
After the wave is lost in the full sea.
A while these nights and days will burn
In song with the bright frailty of foam,
Living in light before they turn
Back to the nothingness that is their home.
- Sara Teasdale, A Little While
I asked a child, walking with a candle,
"From where comes that light?"
Instantly he blew it out.
"Tell me where it is gone --
then I will tell you where it
came from."
- Hasan of Basra
If you want to be free,
Get to know your real self.
It has no form, no appearance,
No root, no basis, no abode,
But is lively and buoyant.
It responds with versatile facility,
But its function cannot be located.
Therefore when you look for it,
You become further from it;
When you seek it,
You turn away from it all the more.
- Linji
Master, I am new here.
What is your teaching?
"Have you already eaten your gruel?"
Yes.
"Go wash your bowl."
Master, what more can you teach me?
"ABCDEF."
I do not understand.
"GHIJKL."
Thank you, Master.
- Yun-men (864-949), Blue Cliff Record and Book of
Equannimity
When mortals are alive, they worry about death.
When they're full, they worry about hunger.
Theirs is the Great Uncertainty.
But sages don't consider the past.
And they don't worry about the future.
Nor do they cling to the present.
And from moment to moment they follow the Way.
- Bodhidharma
Look directly!
What is this?
Look in this manner
And you won’t be fooled!
- Bassui
In a moonlit night on a spring day,
the croak of a frog
pierces through the whole cosmos
turning it into
a single family.
- Chang Chin-ch'en, From the Golden Age of Zen, p. 284
Untold unspeakables
Fill all unspeakables;
The unspeakable eons
Explanation of the unspeakable
cannot be finished.
If untold Buddha-lands are reduced
to atoms,
In one atom are untold lands,
And as in one,
So in each.
- The Buddha, The Flower Ornament Scripture
despite fascination
do not be concerned
that form is emptiness
and emptiness is form
It is All
a brown falling leaf
no different
from
anything
else.
- Michael McClure
Last day of
Spring,
ripe purple plums drop--
form is emptiness.
First day of Summer,
ditch completely
dry--
emptiness is form.
- Michael Garofalo, Above the Fog
Those who see worldly life as
an obstacle to Dharma
see no Dharma in everyday actions.
They have not yet discovered that
there are no everyday actions outside of Dharma.
- Zen Master Dogen
Food and clothes sustain
Body and life;
I advise you to learn
Being as is.
When it’s time,
I move my hermitage and go,
And there’s nothing
To be left behind.
- Layman P’ang
Zen Poetry: Selected Quotations
Distributed on the Internet by Michael P. Garofalo
I Welcome Your Comments,
Ideas, Contributions, and Suggestions
A Short Biography of Mike Garofalo
Poetry Notebook III of Michael P. Garofalo
Zen Poetry: Selected Quotations IV
Available on the Net since Januay, 2000.
April 8, 2005
Cloud Hands: Tai Chi Chuan and Qi Gong
Haiku Poetry: Links, References, Resources
Alphabetical Subject Index
Cloud
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2,700 Quotes Arranged by 130 Topics,
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Arthritis Therapy - Exercise: T'ai Chi Ch'uan and Chi Kung
Bear, Standing Bear, Level 1 Ranking, Valley Spirit Taijiquan
The Bear: The Five Animal Frolics (Wu Qin Xi)
California (Northern) T'ai Chi Ch'uan and Qigong Directory: Instructors, Schools, Information
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Cloud Hands: T'ai Chi Ch'uan and Ch'i Kung
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Cold Mountain Poets: Wanderers, Mystics, and Sages
Confucius (K'ung Fu-tzu) (551 - 479 BCE)
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Cuttings: Short Poems by Michael P. Garofalo
The Deer: The Five Animal Frolics (Wu Qin Xi)
Diabetes Therapy - Exercise: Taijiquan and Qigong
Disclaimer of the Cloud Hands Website
Eight Section Brocade Ch'i Kung
Embrace the One - Zhan Zhuang - Standing Like A Tree
Entering Tranquility (Ru Jing) Meditation
Exercise - Diabetes Therapy - Taijiquan and Qigong
Feedback, Kudos and Reviews for the Cloud Hand's Website
Five Animal Frolics (Wu Qin Xi): Tiger, Bear, Crane, Deer, and Monkey
Five Elements (Wu-Xing) and Taijiquan
Five Stepping Movements of Taijiquan
Gardening: Quotes, Poems, History, Sayings
The Four Gates: Grasping the Sparrow's Tail
Michael P. Garofalo's Biography
Michael P. Garofalo's T'ai Chi Ch'uan and Qigong Practice
The Goddess - Quotations, Poems, Sayings, Prayers, Songs
Green Way Research - Taijiquan and Qigong
Gu Shen (Valley Spirit) Taijiquan Instructional Program
Health and Fitness - T'ai Chi Ch'uan
Hidden Tiger, Beginning Program, Level 2, Valley Spirit T'ai Chi Ch'uan
Instructional Program, Valley Spirit T'ai Chi Ch'uan
Kundalini (Coiled Serpent) Energy
Kwang Ping Taijiquan of Kuo Lien Ying
Links and Bibliography: Qigong
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Meditation Instructor: Michael P. Garofalo in Red Bluff, California
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Northern California T'ai Chi Ch'uan and Qigong Directory: Instructors, Schools, Information
Older Persons Exercise and Well Being Programs
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Reviews of the Cloud Hand's Website
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Short Form, Yang Style, Beijing Simplified 24
Simplified 24 From, Yang Style
Soaring Crane, Intermediate Program, Level 3, Valley Spirit T'ai Chi Ch'uan
Speaking to the Spirit Meditation
Staff Weapons: Jo, Bo, Can, Staff, Spear
Standing Bear, Level 1 Ranking, Valley Spirit Taijiquan
Standing Like A Tree - Zhan Zhuang
Subject Index to the Cloud Hands Website
Swordsmanship and T'ai Chi Ch'uan
T'ai Chi Ch'uan: Bibliography and Links
T'ai
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T'ai Chi Ch'uan Instructor: Michael P. Garofalo in Red Bluff, California
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Taijiquan For Good Health, Fitness and Vitality
Taijiquan Instructor: Michael P. Garofalo in Red Bluff, California
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Thirteen Postures: 8 Gates and 5 Steps
Thirteen Treasures Walking Qigong
The 300 Missing Poems of Han Shan
The Tiger: The Five Animal Frolics (Wu Qin Xi)
Tiger, Hidden Tiger, Beginning Program, Level 2, Valley Spirit T'ai Chi Ch'uan
Tree Qigong - Zhan Zhuang - Standing Like A Tree
Trees - Quotations, Poems, Lore, Wisdom
Valley Spirit T'ai Chi Ch'uan Club
Valley Spirit Taijiquan Journal
Valley Spirit Taijiquan Instructional Program
Vancouver, B.C., T'ai Chi Ch'uan and Qigong Directory: Instructors, Schools
Walking - General Fitness Exercise
Washington T'ai Chi Ch'uan and Qigong Directory: Instructors, Schools, Information
Waving Hands Like Clouds: T'ai Chi Ch'uan and Qigong
Yang Style Taijiquan Long Form 108 Movements
Yang Style Taijiquan Short Form 24 Movements
Yin-Yang Sensitivity Training: Sticking Hands - T'ui Shou
Zhan Zhuang - Standing Like A Tree
Valley Spirit T'ai Chi Ch'uan Club
Red Bluff, Tehama County, North Sacramento Valley, Northern California, U.S.A.
Cities in the area: Oroville, Paradise, Durham, Chico, Hamilton City, Orland,
Willows,
Corning, Rancho Tehama, Los Molinos, Tehama, Proberta, Gerber, Manton,
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Cloud Hands: T'ai Chi Ch'uan and Ch'i Kung