Download or read book Great Fool written by and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 1996-06-01 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taigu Ryokan (1759-1831) remains one of the most popular figures in Japanese Buddhist history. Despite his religious and artistic sophistication, Ryokan referred to himself as "Great Fool" and refused to place himself within the cultural elite of his age. In contrast to the typical Zen master of his time, who presided over a large monastery, trained students, and produced recondite religious treatises, Ryokan followed a life of mendicancy in the countryside. Instead of delivering sermons, he expressed himself through kanshi (poems composed in classical Chinese) and waka and could typically be found playing with the village children in the course of his daily rounds of begging. Great Fool is the first study in a Western language to offer a comprehensive picture of the legendary poet-monk and his oeuvre. It includes not only an extensive collection of the master's kanshi, topically arranged to facilitate an appreciation of Ryokan's colorful world, but selections of his waka, essays, and letters. The volume also presents for the first time in English the Ryokan zenji kiwa (Curious Accounts of the Zen Master Ryokan), a firsthand source composed by a former student less than sixteen years after Ryokan's death. Although it lacks chronological order, the Curious Account is invaluable for showing how Ryokan was understood and remembered by his contemporaries. It consists of colorful anecdotes and episodes, sketches from Ryokan's everyday life. To further assist the reader, three introductory essays approach Ryokan from the diverse perspectives of his personal history and literary work.
Download or read book Zen Fool Ryokan written by Misao Kodama and published by Tuttle Publishing. This book was released on 1999-02-15 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of Zen poetry by 19th century Japanese Buddhist monk and hermit Ryokan is a masterful exploration of life and nature. Ryokan's zen poems are celebration of the joys and sadness of everyday life. His spare, direct style is remarkable for its immediacy and intimacy. This bilingual collection contains more than 150 of his finest poems in Japanese and Chinese, including his famous lyrical correspondence with the nun Teishin, who befriended him in his later years. It also includes a biographical essay on Ryokan, and useful notes on the poems themselves.
Download or read book Great Fool written by and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 1996-06-01 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taigu Ryokan (1759-1831) remains one of the most popular figures in Japanese Buddhist history. Despite his religious and artistic sophistication, Ryokan referred to himself as "Great Fool" and refused to place himself within the cultural elite of his age. In contrast to the typical Zen master of his time, who presided over a large monastery, trained students, and produced recondite religious treatises, Ryokan followed a life of mendicancy in the countryside. Instead of delivering sermons, he expressed himself through kanshi (poems composed in classical Chinese) and waka and could typically be found playing with the village children in the course of his daily rounds of begging. Great Fool is the first study in a Western language to offer a comprehensive picture of the legendary poet-monk and his oeuvre. It includes not only an extensive collection of the master's kanshi, topically arranged to facilitate an appreciation of Ryokan's colorful world, but selections of his waka, essays, and letters. The volume also presents for the first time in English the Ryokan zenji kiwa (Curious Accounts of the Zen Master Ryokan), a firsthand source composed by a former student less than sixteen years after Ryokan's death. Although it lacks chronological order, the Curious Account is invaluable for showing how Ryokan was understood and remembered by his contemporaries. It consists of colorful anecdotes and episodes, sketches from Ryokan's everyday life. To further assist the reader, three introductory essays approach Ryokan from the diverse perspectives of his personal history and literary work.
Download or read book Ryokan written by 良寛 and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1977 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Watson includes the representative works of this Tokugawa poet's waka and kanshi works, along with an introduction and the original Japanese poems in romanized form.
Download or read book One Robe One Bowl written by Ryōkan and published by Weatherhill. This book was released on 2006-04-11 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sampling of poems from the Japanese hermit-monk, who belongs in the tradition of the great Zen eccentrics in China and Japan, evokes the beauty and pathos of human life.
Download or read book The Zen Poems of Ryokan written by Nobuyuki Yuasa and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A poet-priest of the late Edo period, Ryokan (1758-1831) was the most important Japanese poet of his age. This volume contains not only the largest English translation yet made of his principal poems, but also an introduction that sets the poetry in its historical and literary context and a biographical sketch of the poet himself. Originally published in 1981. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf written by and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2004-04-13 with total page 119 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Japanese poet-recluse Ryokan (1758–1831) is one of the most beloved figures of Asian literature, renowned for his beautiful verse, exquisite calligraphy, and eccentric character. Deceptively simple, Ryokan's poems transcend artifice, presenting spontaneous expressions of pure Zen spirit. Like his contemporary Thoreau, Ryokan celebrates nature and the natural life, but his poems touch the whole range of human experience: joy and sadness, pleasure and pain, enlightenment and illusion, love and loneliness. This collection of translations reflects the full spectrum of Ryokan's spiritual and poetic vision, including Japanese haiku, longer folk songs, and Chinese-style verse. Fifteen ink paintings by Koshi no Sengai (1895–1958) complement these translations and beautifully depict the spirit of this famous poet.
Download or read book Sky Above Great Wind written by Kazuaki Tanahashi and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2012-10-09 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The delightful and often funny poetry of Zen’s quintessential free spirit, Master Ryokan—in a fresh translation by a beloved American Zen figure Ryokan Taigu (1758-1831) was a monk in the Soto lineage of Japanese Zen who spent a good part of his life as a hermit, writing poetry, playing with children, and creating simple and exquisitely beautiful calligraphies—sometimes using twigs as his instrument when he couldn't afford a brush. He was never head of a monastery or temple and as an old man, he fell in love with a young Zen nun who also became his student. His affection for her colors the mature poems of his late period. This loving tribute to the great legendary nonconformist includes more than 140 of his poems, 13 examples of his art, and a selection of laugh-out-loud funny anecdotes about his highly idiosyncratic teaching behavior.
Download or read book Zen Poetry written by Lucien Stryk and published by Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the editors of Zen Poems of China and Japan comes the largest and most comprehensive collection of its kind to appear in English. This collaboration between a Japanese scholar and an American poet has rendered translations both precise and sublime, and their selections, which span fifteen hundred years—from the early T’ang dynasty to the present day—include many poems that have never before been translated into English. Stryk and Ikemoto offer us Zen poetry in all its diversity: Chinese poems of enlightenment and death, poems of the Japanese masters, many haiku—the quintessential Zen art—and an impressive selection of poems by Shinkichi Takahashi, Japan’s greatest contemporary Zen poet. With Zen Poetry, Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto have graced us with a compellingly beautiful collection, which in their translations is pure literary pleasure, illuminating the world vision to which these poems give permanent expression.
Download or read book Letting Go written by and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2001-05-01 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of the many eccentric figures in Japanese Zen, the Soto Zen master Tosui Unkei (d. 1683) is surely among the most colorful and extreme. Variously compared to Ryokan and Francis of Assisi, Tosui has been called "the original hippie." After many grueling years of Zen study and the sanction of a distinguished teacher, Tosui abandoned the religious establishment and became a drifter. The arresting details of Tosui's life were recorded in the Tribute (Tosui osho densan), a lively and colloquial account written by the celebrated scholar and Soto Zen master Menzan Zuiho. Menzan concentrates on Tosui's years as a beggar and laborer, recounting episodes from an unorthodox life while at the same time opening a new window on seventeenth-century Japan. The Tribute is translated here for the first time, accompanied by woodblock prints commissioned for the original 1768 edition. Peter Haskel's introduction places Tosui in the context of the Japanese Zen of his period--a time when the identities of early modern Zen schools were still being formed and a period of spiritual crisis for many distinguished monks who believed that the authentic Zen transmission had long ceased to exist. A biographical addendum offers a detailed overview of Tosui's life in light of surviving premodern sources.
Download or read book Kakurenbo written by Eido Frances Carney and published by . This book was released on 2013-08 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the life of the Zen priest-poet Ryokan is interwoven with memoir of the author as she observes Ryokan's life during her own training as a Zen priest in Japan and encounters Ryokan in contemporary life as a model for learning and renewal. Ryokan loved the game Hide-and-go-Seek, Kakurenbo in Japanese, and this provides a metaphor as the author seeks to uncover the mysterious pathway of the hermit priest who seems to defy description. Ryokan had no plan to promote himself in any way or to encourage popularized stories about his life. He simply continued to live, not as a unique figure, but as someone authentic to his vow, living the Dharma somewhat hidden away as a hermit priest, as he climbed up and down the slope of his mountain refuge bearing the cold in winter and enduring the mosquitos in summer. Yet nearly 200 years after his death, Ryokan is known globally and we hold him in high esteem. Our wish to know him might suggest our hunger in these difficult times to touch a rare sainted life that is unabashedly simple. Perhaps we long to live fully in the courageous way that Ryokan did, to help us withstand with some grace the frictions and challenges that beset us. Translations of Ryokan's poems by the acclaimed Nobuyuki Yuasa highlight each chapter, and appear throughout the book; they serve to express Ryokan's teachings in the Dharma and his wisdom as a guide in the 21st Century. The memoir gives a personal glimpse into Zen training today where the author was the only woman and the first foreigner in the history of the 700-year-old temple. This creative medley-biography of Ryokan, author's memoir, poetry of Ryokan, and teachings in the Dharma-opens us to a new interpretation of Ryokan as a profound teacher, scholar, poet, hermit, and priest. The book includes an appendix with practice to honor Ryokan and to hold him throughout time as a true friend and guide in the Buddha Dharma. The book is for general readership as well as for seasoned meditators.
Download or read book Zen Poems written by Peter Harris and published by Everyman's Library. This book was released on 1999-03-23 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The appreciation of Zen philosophy and art has become universal, and Zen poetry, with its simple expression of direct, intuitive insight and sudden enlightenment, appeals to lovers of poetry, spirituality, and beauty everywhere. This collection of translations of the classical Zen poets of China, Japan, and Korea includes the work of Zen practitioners and monks as well as scholars, artists, travelers, and recluses, ranging from Wang Wei, Hanshan, and Yang Wanli, to Shinkei, Basho, and Ryokan.
Download or read book Zen Poems written by Manu Bazzano and published by Andrews McMeel Publishing. This book was released on 2002 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An anthology presenting a collection of Zen poetry from both contemporary and traditional poets.
Download or read book Japanese Death Poems written by and published by Tuttle Publishing. This book was released on 1998-04-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A wonderful introduction the Japanese tradition of jisei, this volume is crammed with exquisite, spontaneous verse and pithy, often hilarious, descriptions of the eccentric and committed monastics who wrote the poems." --Tricycle: The Buddhist Review Although the consciousness of death is, in most cultures, very much a part of life, this is perhaps nowhere more true than in Japan, where the approach of death has given rise to a centuries-old tradition of writing jisei, or the "death poem." Such a poem is often written in the very last moments of the poet's life. Hundreds of Japanese death poems, many with a commentary describing the circumstances of the poet's death, have been translated into English here, the vast majority of them for the first time. Yoel Hoffmann explores the attitudes and customs surrounding death in historical and present-day Japan and gives examples of how these have been reflected in the nation's literature in general. The development of writing jisei is then examined--from the longing poems of the early nobility and the more "masculine" verses of the samurai to the satirical death poems of later centuries. Zen Buddhist ideas about death are also described as a preface to the collection of Chinese death poems by Zen monks that are also included. Finally, the last section contains three hundred twenty haiku, some of which have never been assembled before, in English translation and romanized in Japanese.
Download or read book written by Ryōkan and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Poetry. Asian Studies. Translated by Larry Smith and Mei Hui Liu Huang. One hundred poems by Japan's great poet Taigu Ryokan (1758-1831) included in English, original Chinese, and in Japanese, translated by poets Mei Hui Liu Huang and Larry Smith. With an introduction, "Taigu Ryokan: Great Fool," by Larry Smith. "These poems, wise and direct, have been rightly treasured for centuries because of the way they expand the mind and refresh the spirit. That is their nature in their original language, and Smith and Huang have managed, with great care and affection, to recreate that nature in English"--David Young, poet and translator.
Download or read book Between the Floating Mist written by Ryōkan and published by Companions for the Journey (Wh. This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wonderful collection by one of Japan's most beloved zen poets.
Download or read book Zen written by Lucien Stryk and published by Artisan Publishers. This book was released on 2000 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illustrated selection of major Zen writings, including the Gateless gate koan collection and the Ox-herding pictures with their verses.
