poets-from-japan

"This is what I want: to die in the springtime, beneath the blossoms— midway through the Second Month, when the moon is at the full."

"The poet Saigyo Would have written a poem Even for the woman Washing potatoes."

"The fact that Saigyō composed the poem that begins, "I shall be unhappy without loneliness," shows that he made loneliness his master. He also wrote: In the mountain village who are you calling, yobuko-bird? I thought you lived alone."

"The cherries' only fault: the crowds that gather when they bloom."

"How I delight in this well-timed snow that buries the mountain path behind me as I enter intent on long seclusion"

"風になびく 富士の煙の 空にきえて ゆくへも知らぬ わが思ひかな kaze ni nabiku fuji no keburi no sora ni kiete yukue mo shiranu waga omoi kana"

"Even in one’s sleep, it is dreams of this world one sees, and of no other; just as there is no dawning here that brings true awakening."

"Truly fine poetry sits uncomfortably under any label. Yet, as long as qualifiers do not overwhelm what is universal in the poetry to which they have been attached, they can have value. To forbid any reference to Dante or Milton as "Christian poets" would be to deny something of central importance in the sensibilities and writing of both men. And in a similar fashion we may refer to Saigyo as Japan's foremost "Buddhist" poet—and do so without short-changing what is universal in his verse."

"If one continues to compose poems of the sort that everyone else considers good, one must remain forever at that ordinary level. On the other hand, when one writes poems whose essence is profound and difficult, others fail to understand them, and this is frustrating."

"It creates a heart even in those among us who think of themselves as indifferent to all things— the world. this first wind of autumn."

"Even a person free of passion would be moved to sadness: autumn evening in a marsh where snipes fly up."

"What's to be done? I thought I was past caring for the spring but my frozen water pipe has made me long for it again"

"In a dream I saw the winds of spring scattering the cherry blossoms— and after I woke, the sound was still rustling in my breast."

"If not for solitude, how dismal my life would be!"

"On a branch floating downriver a cricket, singing."

"Everything I touch with tenderness, alas, pricks like a bramble."

"I had forgotten— as I kept on forgetting to remind myself that those who vow to forget are the ones who can't forget."

"The annals of Japanese literary history abound with stories of suffering literati. [...] None of these, however, seems to have borne more grief than the Zen monk Shotetsu (1381-1459), [...] For Shotetsu was not once but thrice stricken: first, by the loss of all of the poems of his first thirty years—more than 30,000 of them—in a fire that destroyed his residence in 1432, at the age of fifty-two; second, by the confiscation of his estate revenues by an angry shogun at around the same time; and lastly by the refusal of his rivals to allow him any representation whatsoever in the only imperially commissioned poetic anthology of his time, the Shin shokuko-kinshū of 1439."

"As if to say— "Isn't it true for men, as well: that the more the words, the less they are of value?"— the cuckoo does not call again."

"When I look upon the rich sheen of summer hairs in my new brush, I am saddened by a deer drawn at night to a hunter's torch."

"A world of grief and pain Oh God, but flowers bloom, even then."

"All these images from a world of long ago— of what good are they? Pine winds, come—please blow away these unforgotten dreams."

"In this art of poetry, those who speak ill of Teika should be denied the protection of the gods and Buddhas and condemned to the punishments of hell."

"The pathway I marked when last year I made my way into Yoshino— I abandon now to visit blossoms I have not yet seen."

"Let me not spend my life lamenting the world’s sorrows for above in the wide sky the moon shines pure"

"That spring long ago at Naniwa in Tsu— was it all a dream? Now only dead leaves on the reeds rustle in the passing wind."

"That one back home whom I promised to think about when I saw the moon: on this night perhaps she too will be soaking her sleeves with tears."

"打坐工夫，或向胞胎未生，不起一念已前行履工夫，二空忽生，散心必歇。"

"不得好說法教化，散心亂念從是而起。"

"坐禪觀舉體無二，抛下萬事，休息諸緣，佛法世法不管，道情世情雙忘，無是非無善惡，何防止之有乎，此是心地無相戒也。"

"這箇是阿誰，不曾知名，非可為身，非可為心。"

"叢林之中，善知識處，深山幽谷，可依止之。綠水青山，是經行之處。谿邊樹下，是澄心之處也。觀無常不可忘，是勵探道心也。"

"直須休去歇去，冷湫湫地去，"

"夫坐禪者，直令人開明心地，安住本分，是名露本來面目，亦名現本地風光。"

"There is the Voice seducing us, calling us to a leap of faith like the deer plunging over the precipice. The Unborn Sphere is everywhere, as is the Hand of God, the Source, the Absolute, out of which flow the streams of faith, the sound of every bell, and the fall of every flower and leaf. Tiny things, sparrows, know the Way of Heaven. There is synesthesia and the juxtaposition of the abstract and the concrete, water turned to bird and whispering fish, satori in the splitting of the moon in a moment of sadness, the poet born again, steeped in sin and the unspeakable mystery of baptismal washing in every tradition. Everywhere too is the cross and sacrament, gratitude for the holocaust of dust and ashes, the tornado-like union of life and death in resurrection."

"The Buddha-Jesus statue at Takamori Soan symbolizes the dynamic of eternal salvation so well. Buddha, in a sense, is the Lord of this world. There is a story about Buddha saying at his birth, “I alone am the honored one in the heavens and on earth” (Chinese 天上天下唯我独尊). Jesus is the Son of the Holy Other, the Father, who is not contained in this universe, but is its Creator. Jesus is sent to live among us in this world as a channel for eternal salvation. Buddha, gazing upon the child, Jesus, is holding incarnate Love, coming from the Holy Other as His Only Son. Buddha represents this world, yearning for salvation."

"He was unlike anyone whom I had ever met before, a Zen master, a Buddhist who had met Jesus, a Dominican friar, and a Catholic priest. Yet I felt utterly at home with him, touched at the core of my being."

"Oshida told Father Trahan that what he had said was infinitely more precious than any word to indicate that he understood what Oshida wanted and needed to do. He left the superior’s room with a Deo gratias! (“Thanks be to God”) and a Tibi gratias! (“Thank you”) on his lips. He was overwhelmed by the deep sense that he had experienced the chikaryū (地下流), the “subterranean stream,” the current of faith flowing from the Unborn Sphere deeply beneath the world’s religions, traditions, and indigenous communities in the East and West, forming many different and distinct tributaries."

"It is true, even in Buddhism, there is pain, vain talk about ‘enlightenment’ as though enlightenment were a uniform one could put on. And then there is the problem of the koan. Buddhists and Western followers of Buddhism are attached to the koan because they lack any real sign of tradition. If they do not have sub-currents it is better for them to disappear. The koan is the occasion to cut us off. “If you have faith, you can move mountains” (Matthew 17:20) is a koan. It cuts through! The bonzes do not know the reason for the koan. Therefore the bonzes cannot satisfy. A flower can be a koan. A great master, Gutei, made a koan of his finger."

"In every religion it is the same—each one is unique. Shakyamuni Buddha and Dogen Zenji and others—each is unique. The sutra—the canonical Scripture—in other traditions is another kind of revelation. Don’t compare! Don’t say, “I am superior.” Learn other mystical currents. We should adore by Spirit and bare reality. Don’t condemn! Don’t compare!"

"限りなき なみだの海に 消えず 立たなむ 茂人"

"Father James Campbell, an American Dominican, loved to tell of his meeting with Oshida. He had been a bomber pilot in the Second World War and repented of his collusion in this violence. He went to Japan to ask for forgiveness and there met Oshida. James expressed his sorrow at his sin; Oshida laughed and said that he had been in the anti-aircraft artillery and he repented that he had not shot down James! There followed laughter and the tumbling down of all barriers. Two people face-to-face, naked and unafraid."

"Holy breath breathes deeply setting earth and water ablaze false self’s face burns away God-given life endures"

"If the so-called “followers of Christ” today insist that their task in East-West dialogue means you compare yourselves to others, is this the sign of the New Horizon of bare reality? Each way should be unique, a unique way to the very him, to himself, not to man in general."

"Falling leaf’s voice listen the Unborn Sphere"

"In this art of poetry, those who speak ill of Teika should be denied the protection of the gods and Buddhas and condemned to the punishments of hell."

"On this spring night the floating bridge of my dreams has broken away: and lifting off a far peak— a cloud-bank in empty sky."

"和歌に師匠なし。たゞ旧き歌をもつて師となす。心を古風に染め、詞を先達に習はば、誰人かこれを詠ぜざらんや。"

"Most will never know the experience of seeing a field of corpses, not a few, but innumerable [...] At one point, you couldn't cross the riverbed except by stepping on the dense piles of flesh and bone rolling in blood. That's the terror of war! (The Italian Front as Seen by a Japanese Samurai)"

"Masses of people, seen wandering in the dark, on the vast bed of the fast flowing Piave - bursts, cannonade, fires, searchlights giving a sinister glow to the black black sky — a field full of corpses, where we had to pass, silent, trampling them — walking in the dark, in woods and wild fields, hearing the groans and the heartbreaks — shadows of soldiers passing in the dark, silent, carrying the wounded — a pause in the tiring path, called by suffering comrades ; — all this seemed to me as if I had found myself in Dante's Inferno. The solemnity, the grandeur of the Divine Poem, I could feel it fully on that evening on the Piave. (The Italian Front as Seen by a Japanese Samurai)"