-Selected modern Zen poems in the world: the modern orientation of modern Zen poems
Since the 6th century AD, Zen Buddhism has gone out of India and combined with Confucianism and Taoism in China, forming a unique Zen Buddhism in China. It does not recognize any authoritative idols, has no canon and scriptures, and is a non-religious religion.
The combination of Zen and China's poetry has formed a peculiar variety in the poetry garden-Zen poetry. The combination of Zen and poetry has its inherent inevitability. Both of them face a fundamental big problem: life. The occurrence and perfection of both are also based on the same situation: consciousness. What Zen and poetry want to accomplish is to experience and open up, so that what originally existed in things can be highlighted again.
Legend has it that Buddha Sakyamuni said at the Lingshan meeting that someone presented him with a flower. He touched the flowers and looked at everyone. He didn't speak for a long time. At this time, everyone looked at each other and didn't know what it meant. Only Mahakaya realized something and showed a knowing smile on his face. Therefore, the Buddha passed on the doctrine of "don't stand in words, don't pass it on to people, point to people's hearts, and see nature as a Buddha". Zen, in this way, was born in "Flower Laughter".
Zen is unspeakable, but it is not completely unspeakable.
There is no better language form to express Zen than poetry. Because of the implication, meaning, charm and illogical and irrational thinking of poetry, it is possible to express Zen. Similarly, in the contact with Zen, poetry absorbed Zen's transcendental, bright, ethereal and transparent wisdom and spiritual realm to life, nature and everything in the mountains and rivers. In this realm, the poet has become a Zen master who "has no self in all laws, observes nature clearly, dislikes things, and does not feel sorry for himself".
Zen poetry has a history of more than 1000 years in China since the Jin Dynasty. In addition to a large number of works by poets and monks in history, poets such as Xie Lingyun, Tao Yuanming, Bai Juyi, Wang Wei, Meng Haoran, Su Shi and Tang Yin also left many masterpieces handed down from generation to generation. However, the history of China's modern Zen poetry is not long, because the history of China's new poetry is less than a hundred years. Modern Zen poetry is a poem with Zen flavor and meaning written in the form and expression of modern poetry. Most of the old-style Zen poems are written by poets and monks, while most of the Zen poems written by poets in the world are written by monks, monasteries or related poems. In fact, this should be said to be a principled misunderstanding of the concept of Zen poetry. Because monks and monasteries cannot be equated with Zen, let alone Zen itself. Zen is a spirit that goes directly to things and transcends things, a way to grasp life and its truth, and a spiritual realm of clarity, tranquility and enlightenment. It exists and is contained in the most common things, such as ocean, land, air, vegetation or spring flowers and autumn moon.
Modern Zen poetry is constantly developing and innovating in theme selection and expression techniques. This is particularly evident in Japan, where Zen culture is very strong. For example, a poem in the book "Weak Flowers" written by Miho Dazhi:
Morning glory blooms in the morning and withers at noon.
I will thank you for the trip flowers that opened at noon.
Gourd flowers that bloom at night will die the next morning.
Life is short, but it has time.
Hurry back, but I don't know where to go.
The natural and ordinary things in life, after being touched by poetry, take on unusual significance. On the other hand, many times, the most complicated things are actually the simplest; The deepest truth is the most common.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Zen reached the other side of the ocean, conquered people with completely different cultural backgrounds with its indescribable charm, and fascinated the "beat generation" after the war. A famous American beat poet, he translated the poems of China poet Han during his college years and traveled to on 1956. He lived in Japan for more than ten years and became a monk for three years, specializing in Zen. After returning home, he and his Japanese wife lived in seclusion in the northern mountainous area of Hugali. Under the idea of "returning to nature", his poems integrate Zen spirit into his poems, trying to accommodate historical and natural scenery into his own heart, so as to make his poems closer to the true colors of things, so as to resist the imbalance, disorder and ignorance of his time, and thus to be unique in contemporary American poetry circles with concise and clear language and wise insight. For example, his "Snow on Kulakak Mountain":
The only thing you can trust
This is the snow on Kulaka Mountain.
Fields and Woods
Thawing, freezing and thawing
I can't believe it at all.
There is a storm on the mountain today.
Like a fuzzy bubble
this is true
But the only hope
It's still snowing on Mount Kulakak.
China's modern Zen poetry, due to many historical and practical reasons, has a short time of occurrence and development, and is still in the stage of exploration, trial and formation. Moreover, the so-called "Zen poetry" is just a poem that makes readers "wake up" in some aspects and taste an understandable but difficult-to-express charm and realm. In fact, it is difficult to draw a clear line between Zen poetry and non-Zen poetry. For example, Tao Yuanming's "Picking chrysanthemums under the east fence, leisurely seeing Nanshan", Wang Wei's "Moonlight in the pine forest, Crystal stone in the stream" and Jia Dao's "Few people come, Gaosonghe is not crowded" all inadvertently reveal a profound Zen. Poets have Zen mind, and writing poems will naturally have Zen mind; Just like the Zen master is very poetic, there are many good sentences in his words.
Among Taiwan Province poets, Zhou Mengdie is a Zen poet who takes poetry as his poem and Zen as his career. His poetic style of personality, which is both distressing and surpassing, has formed its own unique charm. In the poem "Ferry Boat", he wrote:
Is water carrying a boat, walking with me?
Am I walking full of boats and water?
Obscure and sultry
Einstein's smile is mysterious and desolate.
But I think the poet who can best meet the interest of modern Zen poetry is love. Especially after he reached middle age, the lateral transplantation of western modernist things has been completed. The spirit of freedom of oriental thought and the inheritance of poetry became a new beginning for him. The exploration and practice of modern Zen poetry is a clear trace left by him on the road of poetry. For example, his poem "Jinlong Temple":
Wanzhong
This is a path for tourists to go down the mountain.
pteridophyte
Along the white stone steps
Chew all the way down.
If it snows here,
Just to see
A frightened grey cicada
Put the lamp on the mountain.
one by one
light
Love said: after years of pursuit, my choice is close to the so-called "livable without a fixed place, should have a heart" in the Diamond Sutra. Our "heart" is a vivid and ubiquitous life, and it can't be locked at both ends of a pillar. How can a person find the "true self"? How to achieve complete freedom! How to suddenly wake up before returning to dust? For a poet, his best answer is to become a bird, a cloud and soar with the wind.
The concept of love should be a problem that all poets should think and practice.
Yang Ping is a younger poet in the ranks of modern Zen poets in Taiwan Province. In his poem "No Life Really Dies", there is such a passage:
No life really dies.
Withered flowers, extinct animals
The light that disappeared on the horizon.
From pupa to butterfly
What is tangible is the body, and what is peeling off is the past.
Rotation is an eternal song of sympathy!
Whether inquiring or revealing, the poet has a real awakening when he faces life and observes the world with Zen mind and eyes.
In Taiwan Province Province, it seems that a group of poets writing modern Zen poems are forming, and many poems and comments in this field have been published. I haven't seen many works in this field in mainland China, probably because the author is blind. However, I believe that with the breaking of the ideological imprisonment of people, especially intellectuals, and the poet's increasing concern, introspection and transcendence of self, self and nature, Zen culture, which is regarded as the representative of oriental culture and spirit by the modern western world, will surely be paid more and more attention and absorbed. Some modern poets have begun to grasp the world and life with the wisdom of Zen.
It can be expected that modern Zen poetry, which is in the same strain as China's ancient national culture with a long history, will become a clean stream flowing through this impetuous world and an oriental wisdom basket dedicated to human peace and happiness! (1997, Zhengzhou)
-North and South: Selected Modern Zen Poems in the World: A Glance at Modern Zen Poems