The Hammock Papers: Ryokan

Showing posts with label Ryokan. Show all posts

19 June 2025

Washing.

Before listening to the way, do not fail to wash your ears.

Otherwise it will be impossible to listen clearly.

What is washing your ears?

Do not hold on to your view.

If you cling to it even a little bit,

you will lose your way.

What is similar to you but wrong, you think is right.

What is different from you but right, you think is wrong.

You begin with ideas of right and wrong.

But the way is not so.

Seeking answers with closed ears is

like trying to touch the ocean bottom with a pole.

Ryokan

13 September 2022

Wash.

Before listening to the way, do not fail to wash your ears.

Otherwise it will be impossible to listen clearly.

What is washing your ears?

Do not hold on to your view.

If you cling to it even a little bit,

you will lose your way.

What is similar to you but wrong, you regard as right.

What is different from you but right, you regard as wrong.

You begin with ideas of right and wrong.

But the way is not so.

Seeking answers with closed ears is

like trying to touch the ocean bottom with a pole.

Ryokan

05 May 2022

Meaning.

My hut lies in the middle of a dense forest;

Every year the green ivy grows long.

No news of the affairs of men,

Only the occasional song of the woodcutter.

The sun shines and I mend my robe.

When the moon comes out, I read Buddhist poems.

I have nothing to report my friends.

If you want to find the meaning, stop chasing so many things.

Ryokan

30 July 2018

Answer.

My life may appear melancholy

But traveling through this world

I have entrusted myself to Heaven.

In my sack, three quarts of rice;

By the hearth, a bundle of firewood.

If someone asks what is the mark of enlightenment or illusion

I cannot say -- wealth and honor are nothing but dust.

As the evening rain falls I sit in my hermitage.

And stretch out both feet in answer.

Ryokan

26 December 2017

Full.

The night is fresh and cool,

Staff in hand I walk through the gate.

Wisteria and ivy grow together along the winding mountain path;

Birds sing quietly in their nests and a monkey howls nearby.

As I reach a high peak a village appears in the distance.

The old pines are full of poems;

I bend down for a drink of pure spring water.

There is a gentle breeze, and the round moon hangs overhead.

Standing by a deserted building,

I pretend to be a crane softly floating among the clouds ...

Ryokan

05 October 2017

Enough.

The winds gives me

Enough fallen leaves
To make a fire

Ryokan

28 November 2016

Enough.

Baumann, Falling Leaves, 1950

the wind brings
enough fallen leaves
to make a fire

Ryokan

08 November 2016

Passage.

If someone asks

about the mind of this monk,

say it is no more than

a passage of wind

in the vast sky.

Ryokan

27 May 2016

Must.

Karr, Untitled, 2013

In the dreamy world,

Dreaming, we talk about dreams.

Thus we seldom know

Which is, and is not, dreaming.
Let us, then, dream as we must.

Ryokan

Here.

Wyeth, Distant Thunder, 1961

Down in the village
the din of
flute and drum,
here deep in the mountain
everywhere the sound of the pines.

Ryokan

26 May 2016

Long.

Time and again

You, too,
Must long for
Your old nest
Deep in the mountain.

Ryokan

25 May 2016

Quietly.

Obata, Mt. Fuji and Ashinoko Lake from Motohakone (detail), 1953

When all thoughts

Are exhausted
I slip into the woods
And gather
A pile of shepherd’s purse.

Like the little stream

Making its way
Through the mossy crevices
I, too, quietly
Turn clear and transparent.

Ryokan

Life.

Obata, Life and Death, Porcupine Flat, High Sierra, California, 1930

Yes, I’m truly a fool
Living among trees and plants.
Please don’t question me about illusion and enlightenment —
This old fellow just likes to smile to himself.
I wade across streams with bony legs,
And carry a bag about in fine spring weather.
That’s my life,
And the world owes me nothing.

Ryokan

24 May 2016

Free.

In my youth I put aside my studies
And I aspired to be a saint.
Living austerely as a mendicant monk,
I wandered here and there for many springs.
Finally I returned home to settle under a craggy peak.
I live peacefully in a grass hut,
Listening to the birds for music.
Clouds are my best neighbors.
Below a pure spring where I refresh body and mind;
Above, towering pines and oaks that provide shade and brushwood.
Free, so free, day after day --
I never want to leave!

Ryokan

23 May 2016

Immensity.

My house is buried in the deepest recess of the forest
Every year, ivy vines grow longer than the year before.
Undisturbed by the affairs of the world I live at ease,
Woodmen’s singing rarely reaching me through the trees.
While the sun stays in the sky, I mend my torn clothes
And facing the moon, I read holy texts aloud to myself.
Let me drop a word of advice for believers of my faith.
To enjoy life’s immensity, you do not need many things.

Ryokan

BARRY HINES

"That's why it makes me mad when I take her out and I'll hear somebody say, 'Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk. I could shout at 'em; it's not a pet, Sir, hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me, right. And that's why it's great.Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk.' I could shout at 'em. It's not a pet, Sir. Hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained, that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me right. And that's why it's great." (A Kestrel for a Knave)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

WALT WHITMAN

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL