Zen Poems

Zen Poems

[B]Mind at Peace[/B]
When the mind is at peace,
the world too is at peace.
Nothing real, nothing absent.
Not holding on to reality,
not getting stuck in the void,
you are neither holy or wise, just
an ordinary fellow who has completed his work.
P’ang Y?n (龐蘊 H? Un) (The Enlightened Heart 34)

[B]Suchness[/B]
The wind traverses the vast sky,
clouds emerge from the mountains;
Feelings of enlightenment and things of the world
are of no concern at all.
Zen Master Keizan J?kin (瑩山紹瑾 1268-1325)

[B]Emptiness Poem[/B]
Old P’ang requires nothing in the world:
All is empty with him, even a seat he has not,
For absolute Emptiness reigns in his household;
How empty indeed it is with no treasures!
When the sun is risen, he walks through Emptiness,
When the sun sets, he sleeps in Emptiness;
Sitting in Emptiness he sings his empty songs,
And his empty songs reverberate through Emptiness:
Be not surprised at Emptiness so thoroughly empty,
For Emptiness is the seat of all the Buddhas;
And Emptiness is not understood by the men of the world,
But Emptiness is the real treasure:
If you say there’s no Emptiness,
You commit grave offence against the Buddhas.
P’ang (Essays in Zen Buddhism – Second Series 341)

[B]Light Itself[/B]
Dwell!
You are Light itself.
Rely on yourself,
Do not rely on others.
The Dharma is the Light,
Rely on the Dharma.
Do not rely on anything other than Dharma.
A Pali verse (Zen Word, Zen Calligraphy 31)

[B]The Essence[/B]
The bamboo shadows are sweeping the stairs,
Buy no dust is stirred:
The moonlight penetrates deep in the bottom of the pool,
But no trace is left in the water.
Author unknown (Essays in Zen Buddhism – First Series 352)

[B]Contentment[/B]
松老雲閑 As the pines grew old and the clouds idled
曠然自適 He found boundless contentment within himself.
Babo, preface to The Record of Lin-chi (Lin-chi Lu 臨済録/Rinzairoku)

[B]Three Teachings into One[/B]
道冠儒履佛袈裟 With a Taoist cap, a Buddhist cassock, and a pair of Confucian shoes,
會成三家作一家 I have harmonized three houses into one big family!
Bodhisattva Shan-hui (善慧), better known as Fu Ta-shih (傅大士) (497-?)

[B]Forgetting the Self[/B]
To learn Buddha Dharma is to learn the self.
To learn the self is to forget the self.
To forget the self is to become one with
endless dimension, Universal Mind.
D?gen (Zen Word, Zen Calligraphy 23)

Haiku are easy,
But occasionally they
Are pretty pointless.

Haiku

[U]haiku[/U]

  1. a major form of Japanese verse, written in 17 syllables divided into 3 lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, and employing highly evocative allusions and comparisons, often on the subject of nature or one of the seasons.

  2. a poem written in this form.

a Hiku

An old silent pond…
A frog jumps into the pond,
splash! Silence again.
— Matsuo Basho

[quote=indra deva;46346]haiku are easy,
but occasionally they
are pretty pointless.[/quote]

lol

My favourite haiku:

silence…
cicada’s sound…
penetrates the rock