Good morning and goodnight r/zenners. Thank you to jungle_toad for all the many weeks of excellent and provocative slams. I'm happy to take over the mantle for a while.
I thought, that in the tradition of study, scholarship, and deepening zen practice, that I would offer the poetry slam in a “call and response” kind of way.
This is somewhat borrowing from the Chinese traditon of “shi” (詩) or “regulated verse”, where poets respond to the work of earlier poets, often using similar literary tropes, creating a dialogue across space and time. Their eyebrows entangled with yours.
So, I will just plod along during the year, taking the easy way out, and start with the Wumenguan. I’ll be using the Aitken translation, but there are others.
When I feel like we need a break, I’ll throw in a week of some poems from Stonehouse, or “Nineteen Old Poems” Gushi shijiushou(古詩十九首), or “New Songs from the Jade Terrace” (玉臺新詠), a collection that itself riffed off an earlier anthology called “The Three Hundred Poems” (三百首詩).
The ‘poetic’ part of the Wumenguan is the verse where Wumen himself offers a mirror to the case, fleshy and steep. In the posts, I’ll include the case, but not Wumen’s comment, and the verse, then, like my predecessor, I’ll include my random scribbling, to mobilize your pity.
As always, the case is just a suggestion. If you want to go off in a different, random direction, be my guest.
Case 1: Zhaozhou’s dog
A monk asked Zhaozhou “does a dog have Buddha Nature (or not)? Zhaozhou answered “Mu” (no).”
Wumen’s verse:
Dog, Buddha Nature,
The perfect presentation of the whole.
With a bit of ‘has’ or ‘has not’
Body is lost, life is lost.
BigSky’s verse:
It can’t be encountered casually,
The steepest gate is not hidden,
When nothing is excluded
Even this mangy bag of fleas
Ascends to heaven.
Submitted May 06, 2023 at 03:03AM by bigSky001 https://ift.tt/LxIq8eY
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