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Tags: zen poetry

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  Haiku Mind: 108 Poems to Cultivate Awareness and Open Your Heart

  by Patricia Donegan

  Haiku, the Japanese form of poetry written in three short lines, is celebrated for its ability to express a simple moment in a profound way. The “haiku moment,” as it is called, refers to a heightened awareness of the world around us and how, in that small, transient period, the greater essence of our lives is reflected. As our culture speeds up and our personal lives feel overbooked and busy, haiku can offer an... (more)
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  The Narrow Road to the Interior

  by Matsuo Basho, Sam Hamill

  Here is the most complete single-volume collection of the writings of one of the great luminaries of Asian literature. Basho (1644–1694)—who elevated the haiku to an art form of utter simplicity and intense spiritual beauty—is best known in the West as the author of Narrow Road to the Interior, a travel diary of linked prose and haiku that recounts his journey through the far northern provinces of Japan. This... (more)
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  Moon in a Dewdrop: Writings of Zen Master Dogen

  by Eihei Dogen

  Eihei Dogen (1200-1253), among the first to transmit Zen Buddhism from China to Japan and founder of the important Soto School, was not only a profoundly influential and provocative Zen philosopher but also one of the most stimulating figures in Japanese letters. Kazuaki Tanahashi, collaborating with several other Zen authorities, has produced sensitive and accurate translations of Dogen's most important texts. ... (more)
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  Immortal Sisters: Secret Teachings of Taoist Women

  by Thomas Cleary

  Immortal Sisters presents life stories and teachings of distinguished female Taoist adepts who lived from the third to twelfth centuries. Among them is the poet and mystic Sun Bu-er, who passed into folklore as one of the famous Seven Immortals and appears as a character in countless popular novels of China. These accomplished women, renowned in their own day and in history, represent a uniquely female heritage... (more)
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  The Sound of Water: Haiku by Basho, Buson, Issa, and Other Poets (Shambhala Centaur Editions)

  by Sam Hamill

  Here are more than two hundred of the best haiku of Japanese literature translated by one of America’s premier poet-translators. The haiku is one of the most popular and widely recognized poetic forms in the world. In just three lines a great haiku presents a crystalline moment of image, emotion, and awareness. This illustrated collection includes haiku by the great masters from the seventeenth to the early... (more)
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  Dogen's Extensive Record: A Translation of the Eihei Koroku

  Dogen's Extensive Record is the first-ever complete and scholarly translation of this monumental work into English. Eihei Dogen, the thirteenth-century Zen master who founded the Japanese Soto School of Zen, is renowned as one of the world's most remarkable religious thinkers. As Shakespeare does with English, Dogen utterly transforms the language of Zen, using it in novel and extraordinarily beautiful ways to... (more)
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  Matsuo Basho's Poetic Spaces: Exploring Haikai Intersections

  by Eleanor Kerkham

  This collection of essays explores certain neglected aspects of this haikai master’s literary and philosophical contributions. Haikai is an art that parodies and often subverts its linguistic, generic, and personal predecessors, and its intersections include imaginative links to the rest of Japanese literature and culture, to Chinese prose and poetry, and to the social, intellectual, and everyday realities of... (more)
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  Far Beyond the Field

  The only collection of haiku by Japanese women, this volume includes translations of 400 haiku written by twenty poets from the seventeenth century (Basho´s school) to the second half of the twentieth. By reading chronologically, the reader comes away with an overview of the way in which this seventeen-syllable form has established itself from its inception to the present. For each poet, Ueda provides a brief... (more)
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  Mountain Home: The Wilderness Poetry of Ancient China

  The earliest and most extensive literary engagement with wilderness in human history, Mountain Home is vital poetry that feels utterly contemporary. China's tradition of "rivers-and-mountains" poetry stretches across millennia. This is a plain-spoken poetry of immediate day-to-day experience, and yet seems most akin to China's grand landscape paintings. Although its wisdom is ancient, rooted in Taoist and... (more)
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  Basho And The Dao: The Zhuangzi And The Transformation Of Haikai

  by Peipei Qiu

  Although haiku is well known throughout the world, few outside Japan are familiar with its precursor, haikai (comic linked verse). Fewer still are aware of the role played by the Chinese Daoist classics in turning haikai into a respected literary art form. Bashô and the Dao examines the haikai poets’ adaptation of Daoist classics, particularly the Zhuangzi, in the seventeenth century and the eventual... (more)
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  Japanese Women Poets: An Anthology

  Throughout history, Japanese women have excelled in poetry - from the folk songs of the Kojiki ("Record of Ancient Matters") compiled in 712 and the court poetry of the 9th to the 14th centuries, on through the age of haikai and kanshi to the 19th century, into the contemporary period when books of women's poems have created a sensation. This anthology presents examples of the work of more than 100 Japanese women... (more)
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  Enso: Zen Circles of Enlightenment

  by John Daido Loori, Audrey Yoshiko Seo

  The enso, or 'Zen circle', is one of the most prevalent images of Zen art, and it has become a symbol of the clean and strong Zen aesthetic - to the point where one sees ensos on everything from screensavers to restaurant menus to print and web advertising. Regardless of how it is interpreted, the enso is an expression of the mind of the artist. It is said that the state of the practitioner can be clearly read in... (more)
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  Moon in the Pines (Sacred Wisdom)

  by Jonathan Clements

  An illustrated collection of translations of classical and contemporary Japanese "haiku". This popular art form is the poetic expression of Zen Buddhism. Traditionally, a haiku poem is just 17 syllables long, which requires the poet, like the follower of Zen, to cut through surface appearances to the heart of an experience. In this collection, translator Jonathan Clements seeks to capture the elusive spirituality... (more)
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  Lotus Moon: The Poetry of the Buddhist Nun Rengetsu (Inklings)

  by Rengetsu

  "One pleasure of discovering the lives and teachings of the rare women we find in the history of Buddhism is seeing how they take up the tragedies in their lives and transform them. Because their stories are less accessible--finding someone like Rengetsu is a great gift. To sit with the poems of Rengetsu is to allow a teacher into the depth of one's mind."-Bonnie Myotai Treace, spiritual director of the Zen Center... (more)
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  Chiyo-Ni: Woman Haiku Master

  by Patricia Donegan

  Chiyo-Ni (1703-1775) is one of Japan's most unusual and renowned haiku poets, and this volume, the first major translation of her work in English, contains over 100 haiku, reproduced in Japanese script, Romaji, and in English. Chiyo-ni was one of the very few great female poets from an age when haiku was dominated by men. Her verses embody Zen-like simplicity and female sensuality, and reflect her life as a... (more)
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  Daughters of Emptiness: Poems of Chinese Buddhist Nuns

  by Beata Grant

  Beata Grant renders a great service by recovering and translating the enchanting verse — by turns assertive, observant, devout — of forty-eight nuns from sixteen centuries of imperial China. This selection of poems, along with brief biographical accounts that accompany them, affords readers a glimpse into the extraordinary diversity and sometimes startling richness of these women's lives. Daughters of Emptiness ... (more)
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  Black Robe, White Mist: The Art of the Japanese Buddhist Nun Rengetsu

  by Melanie Eastburn, Lucie Folan, Robyn Maxwell

  Rengetsu (1791-1875), whose name translates as Lotus Moon, was a Japanese Buddhist nun whose tragic life inspired extraordinary creativity. One of a very few successful female artists in nineteenth-century Japan, Rengetsu was primarily a poet and calligrapher, but also excelled in pottery and scroll painting. Her idiosyncratic personal aesthetic attracted an enormous following in her own lifetime and was imitated... (more)