A Zen Harvest: Japanese Folk Zen Sayings

by Sōiku Shigematsu, Robert Aitken (Foreword)

One of the vital aspects of traditional Rinzai Zen koan study in Japan is jakugo , or capping-phrase exercises. When Zen students have attained sufficient mastery of meditation or concentration, they are given a koan (such as the familiar “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”) to study. When the student provides a satisfactory response to the koan, he advances to the jakugo exercise–he must select a “capping phrase,” usually a passage from a poem among the thousands in a special anthology, the only book allowed in the monastery. One such anthology, written entirely in Chinese, was translated by noted Zen priest and scholar Soiku Shigematsu as A Zen Sayings of the Masters. Equally important is a Japanese collection, the Zenrin Segosh u, which Mr. Shigematsu now translates from the Japanese, including nearly eight hundred poems in sparkling English versions that retain the Zen implications of the verse.

Genres: Buddhism, Poetry, Spirituality

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Sōiku Shigematsu (重松 宗育 Shigematsu Sōiku, born October 13, 1943) is a Japanese priest of Myoshin-ji branch of Rinzai School of Zen Buddhism, abbot of Shōgen-ji Temple in Shimizu-ku, Shizuoka, author and translator of books and essays on Zen that were instrumental in spreading interest in Zen literary tradition to the West in the latter half of the 20th century. Shigematsu taught English literature at Shizuoka University also visiting the United States on several occasions, most notably in 1985-6 as a Fulbright scholar. He won the Jerome J. Shestack Poetry Prize from The American Poetry Review in 1987.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Saturnq]

Want to give this 5 stars but author fails to credit any poets in this collection of poetry. Beautiful collection, but you won't know which entries are, say, Basho, unless you already know Basho and can recognize his writing.

[W.B.]

I know the whole point of a zen (which is soft and has no point) collection is that everyone is everyone else. But it still irked me that the quotes are not attributed in this miscellany. I get that these are the waves of human consciousness breaking, breaking on the shore and sometimes flying free, evaporating , liberated. But still. I. Want. To. Know. Who. Said. That. Dust, yes. Dust said it. I get it. But whose dust? (This is called failing zen.)

[Hawraki]

مجموعة قصائد مستلهمة من الزن (أو الصوفية البوذية) كما يقرّبها بالمعنى المترجم، وهي قصائد عذبة، تأملية، خفيفة. تجعل العالم أخفّ وطأة، وأعمق معنى.

استمتعت جدًا بمقدمة المترجم، ومقاربته لبعض المقاطع الشعرية ببعض الأبيات العربية الشهيرة، كما استوقفتني القصائد باختلاف أنماطها.

[Sokhieng Tim]

'Nothing is especially interesting in this world; it's our mind that makes it a really interesting place.'

[Cooch]

A lot of wisdom here

This book is priceless as a 'seeder' of ideas and a primer for thought. I found some of thoughts later germinated into poems.

[Hanane]

المقولة الوحيدة التي أعجبتني :
حلق
في السماء
إلى ما فوق تلك الغيوم
وسوف ترى القمر
حتى في يوم ماطر.

و المقدمة كذلك رائعة.

[Simona]

Verta laiks nuo laiko paskaityti.