No art is more closely associated with Zen than poetry. Why? A poem can be executed more quickly, and with more irony between the levels of concretion and abstraction than music, painting, or theater. It seems that long ago, Chinese practitioners realized this fully.
Poetry doesn't seem to be of great importance in Indian Buddhism, but as its ideas filtered into China, and missionaries began to recognize a few points of correspondence between Buddhism and the indigenous Taoism, the Chinese language became a natural medium for brief, vivid snapshots of life. Nature, in particular, took on a centrality that it never had in India.
One can, and some do, derive a strong environmental ethos out of this tradition. The arts are most prominent, however. At TAS we intend to develop the arts much more powerfully over the next few years.
Two things prepared me for an interest in Zen. One was the very large number of artists and musicians I loved who practiced Zen, John Cage most importantly among them. The biggest influence was Chinese poetry. Arthur Waley and Kenneth Rexroth's translation completely blew me away. My interest in China began there.
So let's have Friday's be a poetry day. There is so much, that I will certainly run out of Fridays before we run out of great poems. But let's begin today...
Wang Wei is one of the four giants of Tang Dynasty poetry (618-907 c.e.), a Buddhist, and the founder of one of the most influential styles of landscape painting.
Poetry doesn't seem to be of great importance in Indian Buddhism, but as its ideas filtered into China, and missionaries began to recognize a few points of correspondence between Buddhism and the indigenous Taoism, the Chinese language became a natural medium for brief, vivid snapshots of life. Nature, in particular, took on a centrality that it never had in India.
One can, and some do, derive a strong environmental ethos out of this tradition. The arts are most prominent, however. At TAS we intend to develop the arts much more powerfully over the next few years.
Two things prepared me for an interest in Zen. One was the very large number of artists and musicians I loved who practiced Zen, John Cage most importantly among them. The biggest influence was Chinese poetry. Arthur Waley and Kenneth Rexroth's translation completely blew me away. My interest in China began there.
So let's have Friday's be a poetry day. There is so much, that I will certainly run out of Fridays before we run out of great poems. But let's begin today...
Wang Wei is one of the four giants of Tang Dynasty poetry (618-907 c.e.), a Buddhist, and the founder of one of the most influential styles of landscape painting.
Mourning Meng Hao-Jeng (transl. David Hinton)
My dear friend nowhere in sight,
this Han river keeps flowing east.
Now, If I look for old masters here
I find empty rivers and mountains.
1 comment:
I think this is really great! I hope you will write some of your own poems and share them too -
thanks!
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