Listen up, followers of the Way, laymen and those who read this thread simply because they're bored. Next up on our magical tour through the poetry of the Awakened, we will be visiting Han Shan and his sidekick, Shih Te.
Popularised by beat generation writers like Kerouac and Snyder, Han Shan and Shih Te are the laughing, ragged pair who left their poetry scribbled on cave walls, trees and monastery walls. These two rejected the ordered Buddhist monastic life, choosing instead to wander free in the mountains, shunned the Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Path in order to draw inspiration and wisdom from another source - the natural world.
More Taoist than Buddhist (which are but two paths to the same realisation), they employ more everyday language, great humour, and often insults, yet their message - encouraging awareness and a shift away from suffering to stillness and clarity - echoes that of all the great Zen poets. In short they offer us liberation.
Great build up, no?
Too bad I can't be bothered cutting and pasting poems tonight. But, ahh, I'll do three just to wet the appetite:
I’m free in this cave on T’ien-t’ai:
no seeker here will ever find me.
Han Shan’s my only friend.
Chewing magic mushrooms,
underneath tall pines,
we chatter back and forth
of ancient times, and new,
sighing to think of all the others,
each on his own way to hell.
Get your heads out, there’s still time!
- Shih Te
When I was young I studied books and swordsmanship
and rode off with a shout to the Capital.
There I heard the barbarians
had all been driven off already . . .
There was no place left for heroes.
So I came back to these crested peaks,
lay down to listen to the clear stream’s flow.
Young men dream of glory:
monkeys riding on the ox’s back.
- Shih Te
You want to learn to catch a mouse?
Don’t take a pampered cat for your teacher.
If you want to learn the nature of the world,
don’t study fine bound books.
The True Jewel’s in a coarse bag.
The Buddha Nature stops at huts.
The whole herd of folks who clutch
at the outsides of things
never seem to make that connection.
- Shih Te
More soon.