Mr. Charlie

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

Mr. Charlie

A nightingale's song
Brings me out of a dream:
The morning glows.

- Ryokan




Someday I'll be a weather-beaten skull resting on a grass pillow,
Serenaded by a stray bird or two.
Kings and commoners end up the same,
No more enduring than last night's dream.

- Ryokan




In all ten directions of the universe, there is only one truth.
When we see clearly, the great teachings are the same.
What can ever be lost? What can be attained?
If we attain something, it was there from the beginning of time.
If we lose something, it is hiding somewhere near us.

- Ryokan




How can we ever lose interest in life?
Spring has come again
and cherry trees bloom in the mountains.

- Ryokan




A cold night – sitting alone in my empty room
Filled only with incense smoke.
Outside, a bamboo grove of a hundred trees;
On the bed several volumes of poetry.
The moon shines from the top of the window,
And the entire neighborhood is still except for the cry of insects.
Looking at this scene, limitless emotion,
But not one word.

- Ryokan




My life may appear melancholy,
But travelling through this world
I have entrusted myself to Heaven.
In my sack, three sho of rice;
By the hearth, a bundle of firewood.
If someone asks what is the mark of enlightenment or illusion,
I cannot say… wealth and honor are nothing but dust,
As the evening rain falls I sit in my hermitage
And stretch out both feet in answer.

- Ryokan

Mr. Charlie

Daily, nothing particular,
Only nodding to myself,
Nothing to choose, nothing to discard.
No coming, no going,
No person in purple,
Blue mountains without a speck of dust.
I exercise occult and subtle powers,
Carrying water, shouldering firewood.

- Ho Koji,




Sitting alone amongst the forest trees,
The sixfold faculties always still and quiet.
It seems as if you've lost a precious jewel,
But have no pain of worry or distress.

In all the World your visage has no peer,
And yet you always sit with your eyes closed.
The thoughts of each of us possess a doubt:
What do you seek by dwelling in this place?

- Nagarjuna




You find a flower half-buried in leaves,
And in your eye its very fate resides.
Loving beauty, you caress the bloom;
Soon enough, you'll sweep petals from the floor.

Terrible to love the lovely so,
To count your own years, to say "I'm old,"
To see a flower half-buried in leaves
And come face to face with what you are.

- Han Shan




Like the empty sky it has no boundaries,
Yet it is right in this place, ever profound and clear.
When you seek to know it, you cannot see it.
You cannot take hold of it,
But you cannot lose it.
In not being able to get it, you get it.
When you are silent, it speaks;
When you speak, it is silent.
The great gate is wide open to bestow alms,
And no crowd is blocking the way.

- Cheng-tao Ke




Even
a good thing
isn't
as good as
nothing.

- Wu-men




I'd like to
Offer something
To help you;
But in the Zen School,
We don't have a single thing!

- Zen Master Ikkyu




An inch of time is an inch of gold:
Treasure it.
Appreciate its fleeting nature-
Misplaced gold is easily found,
Misspent time is lost forever.

- Loy Ching-Yuen






I praise those ancient Chinamen

Who left me a few words,

Usually a pointless joke or a silly question



A line of poetry drunkenly scrawled on the margin

of a quick splashed picture - bug, leaf,

caricature of a Teacher -

On paper held together now by little more than ink

and their own strength brushed momentarily over it



Their world and several others since

Gone to hell and a handbasket, they knew it—

Cheered as it whizzed by—

& conked out among the busted spring rain cherryblossom winejars

Happy to have saved us all.


- Philip Whalen

Mr. Charlie

Glad you like 'em. She is indeed a fine poet.

Baihe

I feel the same way.If you have her more poems,please share with me .

Mr. Charlie

Just for you:



Don't call this world adorable, or useful, that's not it.
It's frisky, and a theater for more than fair winds.
The eyelash of lightning is neither good nor evil.
The struck tree burns like a pillar of gold.

But the blue rain sinks, straight to the white
feet of the trees
whose mouths open.
Doesn't the wind, turning in circles, invent the dance?
Haven't the flowers moved, slowly, across Asia, then Europe,
until at last, now, they shine
in your own yard?

Don't call this world an explanation, or even an education.

When the Sufi poet whirled, was he looking
outward, to the mountains so solidly there
in a white-capped ring, or was he looking

to the center of everything: the seed, the egg, the idea
that was also there,
beautiful as a thumb
curved and touching the finger, tenderly,
little love-ring,

as he whirled,
oh jug of breath,
in the garden of dust?

- Mary Oliver






On a summer morning
I sat down
on a hillside
to think about God -

a worthy pastime.
Near me, I saw
a single cricket;
it was moving the grains of the hillside

this way and that way.
How great was its energy,
how humble its effort
Let us hope

it will always be like this,
each of us going on
in our inexplicable ways
building the universe.

- Mary Oliver

Baihe

When I read this ,I see a beautiful picture

Mr. Charlie

I've already posted some of Li Bai's poetry but have come across some superior (or preferrred at least) translations. First a little about the man:

Li Bai (701-762) is best known for his love of wine and is widely acknowledged as China's greatest poet. It is said that Li Bai never ammended or edited any of his poems, that every one of his poems is a first draft - a remarkable fact if true.

Rather unusually for the time, he was celebrated during his own lifetime and indeed recognised as a genius - a reputation that led him to become friend and advisor to the Emperor - a precarious position that later saw him imprisoned, sentenced to death, and eventually exiled.

He was a controversial figure, a free spirit with a deep love of nature and even deeper love of Taoist values who championed intoxication and the nomadic lifestyle, and criticised law and order. Rumour has it he drowned while drunkenly reaching for the reflection of the moon on the river, which, ironically, is a recurring scene in many of his poems.




You ask me why I dwell in the green mountain;
I smile and make no reply for my heart is free of care.
As the peach-blossom flows down stream and is gone into the unknown,
I have a world apart that is not among men.

- Li Bai






This next one beautifully describes the dropping away of the self until Oneness is experienced:


The birds have vanished from the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.

- Li Bai


More soon.

Baihe

I have some Li Bai's poetry .Share with you.


BIDDING A FRIEND FAREWELL AT JINGMEN FERRY
Sailing far off from Jingmen Ferry,
Soon you will be with people in the south,
Where the mountains end and the plains begin
And the river winds through wilderness....
The moon is lifted like a mirror,
Sea-clouds gleam like palaces,
And the water has brought you a touch of home
To draw your boat three hundred miles.

- Li bai

IN THE QUIET NIGHT
So bright a gleam on the foot of my bed --
Could there have been a frost already?
Lifting myself to look, I found that it was moonlight.
Sinking back again, I thought suddenly of home.

- Li Bai

Mr. Charlie

I shoulda just copy and pasted this (perhaps his most famous poem) but I'm lazy. Try not to let the rubbish song put you off as it's a good translation.