Excellent compilation of Chinese and Japanese Zen poems. Some examples:
I stand here and watch the people of this world:
all against one and one against all,
angry, arguing, plotting and scheming.
Then one day, suddenly, they die.
And each gets one plot of ground:
four feet wide, six feet long.
If you can scheme your way out of that plot,
I’ll set the stone that immortalizes your name.
You want to learn to catch a mouse?
Don’t try to learn from a pampered cat.
If you want to learn the nature of the world,
don’t study fine bound books.
The True Jewel’s in a coarse bag.
Buddha-nature stops at huts.
The whole herd of folks who clutch at looks of things
never seem to make the connection.
You ask why I live
alone in the mountain forest,
and I smile and am silent
until even my soul grows quiet.
The peach trees blossom
The water continues to flow.
I live in the other world
one that lies beyond the human.
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.
“One who speaks does not know; one who knows does not speak.”
Thus I have been instructed by the Old Master.
If you tell me the Old Master was one who knew,
I ask,
Why did he write five thousand words to explain it?
Summer grasses:
All that remains of great soldiers’
imperial dreams.
If pressed to compare
this brief life, I might declare:
It’s like the boat
that crossed this morning’s harbor,
leaving no mark on the world.
A final drop of dew
or the first sparkling leaf –
each illustrates
this brief temporal world
in which all things pass through.
I’d like to divide
myself in order to see,
among these mountains,
each and every flower
of every cherry tree.
Those who won’t discard
all attachments to this world
and accept this life
are doomed to return like gold
to die again and again.
So you must persist
in asking where my heart goes
all the long, cold night.
Like following trails left by birds
who vanished with yesterday’s sky.
Utter aloneness –
another great pleasure
in autumn twilight.
What might I leave you
as my lasting legacy –
flowers in springtime,
the cuckoo singing all summer,
the yellow leaves of autumn.
The distant mountains
are reflected in the eye
of the dragonfly