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Old 10-08-2015, 08:08 AM   #30 (permalink)
Mr. Charlie
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Join Date: Oct 2013
Location: These Mountains
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I've posted a lot of Ryokan's poetry in this thread, but I read another collection of his work recently. He's one of my favourite poets and author of my favourite poem.

He was supposedly born into a wealthy family but renounced it and was drawn to Buddhism at an early age. He evntually turned his back even on the monastic life, choosing instead to live a solitary life in nature, much like the famous Han Shan and Shih Te - who are said to have been an inspiration.





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


- Ryokan




I watch people in the world
Throw away their lives lusting after things,
Never able to satisfy their desires,
Falling into deeper 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.
Despite myself, I fret over them all night
And cannot staunch my flow of tears.


- Ryokan



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

The Mystery! Unknowable, unlearnable.


- Ryokan




In my youth I put aside my studies
And I aspired to be a saint.
Living austerely as a mendicant monk,
I wandered here and there for many springs.
Finally I returned home to settle under a craggy peak.
I live peacefully in a grass hut,
Listening to the birds for music.
Clouds are my best neighbors.
Below a pure spring where I refresh body and mind;
Above, towering pines and oaks that provide shade and brushwood.
Free, so free, day after day -
I never want to leave!


- Ryokan



Stretched out,
Tipsy,
Under the vast sky:
Splendid dreams
Beneath the cherry blossoms.


- Ryokan




Wild roses,
Plucked from fields
Full of croaking frogs:
Float them in your wine
And enjoy every minute!


- Ryokan




Deep in the valley, a beauty hides:
Serene, peerless, incomparably sweet.
In the still shade of the bamboo thicket
It seems to sigh softly for a lover.


- Ryokan




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

Like the little stream
Making its way
Through the mossy crevices
I, too, quietly
Turn clear and transparent.


- Ryokan




Why do you so earnestly seek
the truth in distant places?
Look for delusion and truth in the
bottom of your own heart.


- Ryokan




Down in the village
the din of
flute and drum,
here deep in the mountain
everywhere the sound of the pines


- Ryokan




The wind gives me
Enough fallen leaves
To make a fire

- Ryokan




And finally my favourite poem:

The rain has stopped, the clouds have drifted away, and the weather is clear again.
If your heart is pure, then all things in your world are pure.
Abandon this fleeting world, abandon yourself,
Then the moon and flowers will guide you along the Way.


- Ryokan
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