Zen
Verses and Quotes
Selected Quotations
III
That the self advances and confirms the ten thousand things
is called delusion;
That the ten thousand things advance and confirm the self
is called enlightenment.
- Zen Master Dogen Zenji, 1200 - 1253
Moon in a Dewdrop
Translated by Kazuaki Tanahashi
Clambering up the Cold Mountain path,
The Cold Mountain trail goes on and on:
The long gorge choked with scree and boulders,
The wide creek, the mist-blurred grass.
The moss is slippery, though there's been no rain.
The pine sings, but there's no wind.
Who
can leap the world's ties
And
sit with me among the white clouds.
- Han-shan
Cold Mountain Poems
Riprap and Cold
Mountain Poems, 1990, p.46
Translated
by Gary Snyder
Zen Poetry: Selected Quotations I
Mind, mind, mind -- above the Path.
Here on my mountain, gray hair down,
I cherish bamboo sprouts, brush carefully
By pine twigs. Burning incense,
I open a book: mist over flagstones.
Rolling the blind, I contemplate:
Moon in the pond. Of my old friends
How many know the Way.
- Zengetsu
Zen Poems of China
and Japan, p. 42
Translated by Lucien
Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto
Fishermen
by a rocky shore,
winds blowing wildly,
in a boat unmoored--
such is our condition.
- Saigyo, 1118 - 1190
Saigyo: Poems of a Mountain Home, p. 137
Translated by Burton Watson
The Five Precepts of Zen Buddhism
Leaves fall
where no green earth remains:
a person at his ease,
wears a plain, white robe.
With simplicity and plainness
his original nature still,
what need to practice
"calming of the heart."
- Chia-Tao (779-843)
The Clouds Should
Know Me By Now, 1998, p. 26
Translated by Mike O'Connor
Zen Poetry: Links, Bibliography and Resources
I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution, thousands or even
millions of young Americans wandering around with their rucksacks,
going up the mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men
glad ... Zen lunatics who go about writing poems."
- Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)
The Dharma Bums,
1958, p.
Spirituality - Meditations Along a Garden Path
The body of man is like a flicker of lightning
existing only to return to Nothingness.
Like the spring growth that shrivels in autumn.
Waste no thought on the process for it has no purpose,
Coming and going like dew.
-
Van
Hanh, 1018, Vietnamese Buddhist
Translated by W. S.
Merwin
Zen Poems: Links, Bibliography, Resources, Notes
Why are
people called Buddhas
After they die?
Because they don't grumble any
more,
Because they don't make a nuisance
Of themselves any more.
- Ikkyu
Zen and Zen Classics:
Selections from R. H. Blyth, p. 112
Before the mountain and by grace
of nature
I was allowed to realize "Oh!
I am only a child!"
Tendered by spruce and birds
I saw without my usual defenses
and endless thinking I know
anything or everything
coming between me
and creation.
- Myochi Roko Sherry Chayat, 1990
Butsumon
- The Gate of the Buddha, Vol. VI, Spring 1990, pp.15
With a voice as vast as an ocean that sounds all sounds,
Producing numberless wondrous words,
I shall sing, through all the kalpas of time to come
In praise of the ocean of merit in the depths of the Buddha's heart.
Beyond thinking, beyond speaking,
these depths are still greater,
and neither my word nor my heart can plumb them.
- Great
Kamo Priestess Senshi (964-1035)
However innumerable all beings are,
I Vow to save them all.
However inexhaustible delusions are,
I Vow to extinguish them all.
However immeasurable Dharma teachings are,
I Vow to master them all.
However endless the Buddha's Way,
I Vow to follow it.
- The Four Great Vows of Mahayana Buddhism
The Great Way has no gate;
there are a thousand paths to it.
If you pass through the barrier,
you walk the universe alone.
- Wu-Men
The Enlightened Heart, Edited by Stephen Mitchell, p. 46
The name "Three Teachings" was empty right from the
start--
Miss even one one and all go wrong.
Looking inward or outward, see there is no fixed self.
Break in the front door, if you want to enter your home.
- Zen Master Dogen Zenji, 1200 - 1253
Enlightenment Unfolds, Edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi, p. 28
Last day of
Winter,
leafless walnut trees--
form is emptiness.
First day of
Spring,
clear sky to Mt. Shasta--
emptiness is form.
Daybreak--
forms are forms,
emptiness is speechless.
- Michael P. Garofalo, Above the Fog
Cloud Hands: Taijiquan and Qigong
Transience, emptiness and enlightenment --
These are the ultimate truths of Buddhism;
Keeping and teaching them is true Sangha devotion.
If you don't agree, please ask me about it.
Cut out directly the root of it all;
This is the very point of the Buddha-seal.
I can't respond to any concern about leaves and branches.
- Zen Master Yung-chia Hsuan-chueh
Shodoka
When we see truly, there is nothing at all.
There is no person; there is no Buddha.
Innumerable things of the universe
Are just bubbles on the sea.
Wise sages are all like flashes of lightning.
- Yoka Genkaku (665-713 CE), Shodoka
In all lands of the ten directions,
Vast, great, pure, and wonderfully adorned,
All Tathagatas sit beneath regal Bodhi trees,
While assemblies walk around in wonder.
- The
Flower Adornment Sutra
Translated by The Buddhist Text Translation Society
Why is it? Because:
All phenomna are like a dream, an illusion,
a bubble, a shadow,
like dew and lightning.
Thus should you meditate on them.
- The
Diamond Sutra
Translated at the Sukhavati Forest Retreat
When you hear the splash
Of the water
drops that fall
Into the stone bowl,
You
will feel that all the dust
Of your mind is washed away.
- Zen Tea Master, Sen-No-Rikyu
The Buddha was not really a god.
In fact, he thought it quite odd
That we go all around
Worshipping mounds
More mindless than peas in a pod!
- Ethan A
Mills
His Thirty-two Marks and Unequaled Light and Virtue!
They are beyond all comparison!
The White Curled One Who Pervades the Five Mystical Mountains!
His Violet-eyed Purity Extends to the Four Seas!
His Inner Illumination has transformed Buddhas beyond number and counting,
And also transformed Bodhisattva Assemblies without number!
Tie up the tiger and return it to the true
lair;
Bridle the dragon and gradually increase the elixir.
Nature should be as clear as water,
Mind should be as still as a mountain.
Turning the breath, gather it into the gold crucible;
Stabilizing the spirit, guard the jade pass.
If you can increase the grain of rice day by day,
You will be rejuvenated.
- Sun Bu-er (circa 1100 CE)
High summer's tyranny has loosed its hold;
From their hot zenith my desires descend
To genial afternoon. Though I grow old,
Autumnal ripeness comes before the cold.
The hostile sun, with whom I would contend,
Tempers his lustful fire, and as a friend
Inaugurates my evening years of gold.
I, who could not give up the world, go free:
This irreligious world renounces me.
Ignored in peace and decently neglected
Till I am safely dead, I lay no claim
To riches, privilege, prestige, degree,
Nor crave the flaring fraudulence of fame,
But work unknown, my only wealth the Name.
All beings are from the very beginning Buddhas.
It is like water and ice:
Apart from water, no ice,
Outside living beings, no Buddhas.
Not knowing it is near, they seek it afar.
What a pity!
It is like one in the water who cries out with thirst;
It is like the child of a rich house who has strayed among the poor.
The cause of our circling through the six worlds
Is that we are on the dark paths of ignorance.
Dark path upon dark path treading,
When shall we escape from birth-and-death?
- Hakuin, 1689-1769
Song of Meditation
Emptiness in Full Bloom: Flowers in the Sky (Kuge)
Do you not know the ease of the man of the Way;
One who has gone beyond learning, and whose state is "non-action,"
Who neither suppresses thoughts, nor seeks the "Truth?"
To him the reality of ignorance is the Buddha Nature;
The empty illusory is the Dharmakaya.
When one who is awakened to the Dharma-body, there are no objects;
The essence of all things comes from the self-nature -- Buddha!
The Five Aggregates -- mere floating clouds aimlessly coming and going;
The Three Poisons -- bubbles that appear and disappear.
Release the Four Elements: cling to nothing!
And in the midst of Nirvana you may eat and drink!
Seeing that all things are not lasting and are Void,
One attains the Great Perfect Enlightenment of the Tathagatas.
- Ch'an Master Hsuan Chuen of Yung Chia
The Song of
Enlightenment
In the morning, bowing to all;
In the evening, bowing to all.
Respecting others is my only duty--
Hail to the Never-despising Bodhisattva.
In heaven and earth he stands alone.
A real monk
Needs
Only one thing--
a heart like
Never-despising Buddha.
- Ryokan
Translated by John Stevens
Three Zen Masters, p. 128
The Three Noble Principles:
Good in the Beginning,
Good in the Middle,
Good at the End.
- Pema Chodron
The Places That Scare You, p. 1
Unity attained:
Who dares to equal him
Who falls into neither being nor non-being!
All men want to leave
The current of ordinary life,
But he, after all, comes back
To sit among the coals and ashes.
- Tung-Shan (806-869), Verses on the Five Ranks
Zen Poetry: Selected Quotations
Compiled by Michael P. Garofalo
Poetry Notebook III of Michael P. Garofalo
Zen Poetry: Selected Quotations III
Available on the Net since January, 2000.
April 8, 2005
Cloud Hands: T'ai Chi Ch'uan and Qi Gong