It's not always Edenic

A favorite form of poetry of mine have been those created by the hermit poets in China and Japan.  Many of their poems portray the simple life of the hermit, high up in the mountains in a small hut or cave,  free of the cares of the mundane world.  However, it isn't always that Edenic as we learn from some of their poems.



Shut up among the solitary peaks,
I sadly contemplate the driving sleet outside.
A monkey's cry echoes through the dark hills,
A frigid stream murmurs below,
And the light by the window looks frozen solid. 
My inkstone, too, is ice-cold.
No sleep tonight, I'll write poems,
Warming the brush with my breath. 
                           -- Ryokan --



In a dilapidated three-room hut
I've grown old and tired;
This winter cold is the
Worst I've suffered through.
I sip thin gruel, waiting for the
Freezing night to pass.
Can I last until spring finally arrives?
Unable to beg for rice,
How will I survive the chill?
Even meditation helps no longer;
Nothing left to do but compose poems
In memory of deceased friends.
                           -- Ryokan --

The above poems are from Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf  
trans.  John Stevens 





 No. 6
The mountains are so cold
not just now but every year
crowded ridges breathe in snow
sunless forests breathe out mist
nothing grows until Grain Ears
leaves fall before Autumn  Begins
a lost traveler here
looks in vain for the sky
-- Han Shan  (Cold Mountain) --



No. 172
I'm poor alas and I'm sick
a man without friends or kin
there's no rice in my pot
and fresh dust lines the steamer
a thatched hut doesn't keep out the rain
a caved-in bed hardly holds me
no wonder I'm so haggard
all these cares wear a man down 
 -- Han Shan  (Cold Mountain) --

No. 6 and No. 172  are from 
The Collected Poems of Cold Mountain
trans. Red Pine


note: Grain Ears falls fifteen days before the
summer solstice and Autumn Begins occurs
45 days after the solstice.


The world can be a cruel place, even for enlightened ones. 

Ryokan's Irony?

Done begging in a rundown village,
I make my way home past green boulders.
Late sun hides behind western peaks;
pale moonlight shines on the stream before me.
I wash my feet, climb up on a rock,
light incense, sit in meditation.
After all, I wear a monk's robe--
how could I spend the years doing nothing? 

                                                -- Ryokan --

  That last sentence makes me look again at the seven lines preceding it, and I have to wonder about them.  Is he being ironic here?  What, if anything, does this say about a monk's way of living?  Or, about Ryokan?

Ryokan: the ultimate enlightenment?

Is he enlightened or just lazy?


Without a jot of ambition left
I let my nature flow where it will.
There are ten days of rice in my bag
And, by the hearth, a bundle of firewood.
Who prattles of illusion or nirvana?
Forgetting the equal dusts of name and fortune,
Listening to the night rain on the roof of my hut,
I sit at ease, both legs stretched out.  
                           -- Ryokan --
from  Zen Poetry
edited and translated by Takashi Ikemoto and Lucien Stryk





What I find most intriguing is that he rejects both the spiritual world (illusion and nirvana) and the material world (name and fortune).  Is this the ultimate enlightenment? 

Ryokan: time and memory

This poem by Ryokan seems very appropriate for this time of year.


Time passes,
There is no way
We can hold it back---
Why, then, do thoughts linger on,
Long after everything else is gone? 

 from Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf
trans. John Stevens


Another view, perhaps?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne?


HAPPY NEW YEAR!

November

                                                     November First

What I love best in autumn is the way that Nature takes her curtain, as the stage folk say.  The banner of the marshes furl, droop and fall.  The leaves descend in golden glory.  The ripe seeds drop and the fruit is cast aside. And so with slow chords in imperceptible fine modulations the great music draws to a close, and when the silence comes you can scarce distinguish it from the last far-off strains of the woodwinds and the horns.
-- Donald Culross Peattie --
from  Autumn:  A Spiritual Biography of the Season



A poetic description which ends with a musical motif.  My only quibble is that I don't think Nature has dropped the final curtain.  Nature is still around; it's just dropped the curtain for the end of  Act Three.  Act Four will be coming soon, and then, of course, it's not the end of the run.  Nature's Play is a long-running one and, while it may vary, it won't end (until the planet is no more). 





On a bitterly cold November night
The snow fell thick and fast---
First like hard grains of salt,
Then more like soft willow buds.
The flakes settled quietly on the bamboo
And piled up pleasingly on the pine branches.
Rather than turning to old texts, the darkness
Makes me feel like composing my own verse.
                                  -- Ryokan --
from Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf
trans. John Stevens 

Interesting reaction; rejecting the past and turning to the future.   A wish for spring?




November Night

Listen . . .
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd \, break from the trees
And fall.

-- Adelaide Crapsey --
from  Art and Nature:  An Illustrated Anthology of Nature Poetry




I remember those nights growing up in Chicago.