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    Quiet Room
    Quiet Room
    Quiet Room
    Ebook124 pages1 hour

    Quiet Room

    By Arthur Braverman

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    About this ebook

    Quiet Room is a collection of Zen poetry by 14th century Zen master Jakushitsuwidely considered to be one of the finest poets of the genre.

    The poetry of Rinzai Zen master Jakushitsu remains as fresh and resonant today as when it was written centuries ago. Now his brilliant, poignant zen poetry, carefully translated by Zen practitioner Arthur Braverman, is available in English for poetry and Zen enthusiasts to read and savor.

    This, the most complete selection of Jakushitsu's work, is also put into context by Braverman with thoughtful excerpts from Buddhist scripture and other relevant sources. Here we see the full scope of Jakushitsu's timeless thinking, and along the way gain a greater understanding of Japanese Zen practice, the culture of traditional Japan, and of ourselves.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTuttle Publishing
    Release dateDec 8, 2015
    ISBN9781462917044
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      Book preview

      Quiet Room - Arthur Braverman

      A Quiet Room¹ :

      Introduction

      ZEN MASTER JAKUSHITSU

      (1290-1367)

      In 1326 a ship from mainland China reached the shores of Japan in the province of Nagato.² Among the passengers were a Chinese Chan master named Ching-cho and a number of Japanese monks returning from the mainland. Ching-cho was a disciple of Ku-lin, the teacher most responsible for the spread of a literature and a style of Zen poetry that was to define learning in Rinzai Zen monasteries in Japan throughout the fourteenth century.

      A Japanese monk on the ship gave his fellow travelers all the mementos he had received from his meetings with Chinese masters, said his good-byes, and slipped away into obscurity. There is no record of his whereabouts for the eight years following his return to Japan, and little is known of his life for decades after. He eschewed life in big cities where powerful lords and prominent monks sponsored the construction of large monasteries—places where new Zen literature was to flourish. Other than the recorded entries of his visits to their temples, nothing is known of his relationship with Ching-cho and Ching’s teacher Ku-lin. His love for the art of verse, however, is evident in the poems he left us. The Japanese monk’s principal teacher in China was Ming-pen, a recluse whose hermetic leanings were to influence the writings of his Japanese students. This Chinese master shunned the large religious centers on the mainland as did his disciple when he returned to Japan.

      The Japanese monk’s name was Jakushitsu. Like many Zen masters and Buddhist poets before him, he seems to have questioned the appropriateness of a man of Zen creating verse.³ Though he may have given up poetry for long periods of time, he left us with enough poems to provide us a fuller understanding of his Zen than if we had only his letters and sermons to refer to. Whether he had developed a relationship with Ching-cho or Ku-lin, we can only guess. The style and subject matter in his poems leads us to believe that he was greatly influenced by Ku-lin at least indirectly Because of his love of this art form, he left us descriptions of nature expressed with an immediacy that is the signature of good poetry This apparently withdrawn Zen master came alive in verse—writing of friendship, loneliness, and death with a sensitivity that was both dynamic and vulnerable. And he managed this while maintaining an altitude that was both serious and playful:

      Alone

      playing in this joyful leisure

      White haired

      I face the green mountain

      JAKUSHITSU’S LIFE

      LIVING IN THE MOUNTAINS

      Neither seeking fame

      nor grieving my poverty

      I hide deep in the mountain

      far from worldly dust

      Year ending

      cold sky

      who will befriend me?

      Plum blossom on a new branch

      wrapped in moonlight

      Eigenji Monastery, is situated on Mount Zuiseki in a remote part of Shiga Prefecture overlooking the Eichi River. It exemplifies the ideal of rinka Zen. Rinka, meaning under the forest, is contrasted with sôrin, or forest, and refers to the many temples located away from the large centers of Kyoto and Kamakura. Rinka characterizes ideal Zen life, away from the hustle and bustle of big cities and apart from the political pressure of the powerful and wealthy. Eigenji, hidden amid mountains, woods, and streams, reflects the natural beauty of rural Japan. The poet-monk Jakushitsu, reluctant as he was to give up his life as a wandering recluse, was lured away from the remote hills and backwoods of Japan to settle in Eigenji when his aged bones could no longer easily carry him from one mountain hermitage to another. Though Jakushitsu previously declined offers to take charge of two large sôrin or gozan⁴ monasteries, at seventy-one he became founding abbot of Eigenji. His close relationship with his disciple Sasaki Ujiyouri, ruling lord of Ômi (present-day Shiga Prefecture), who had the temple built for the master, and the fact that Eigenji was away from the centers of political intrigue, Kyoto and Kamakura, certainly influenced Jakushitsu’s decision to finally settle down as a teacher in a Zen monastery.

      The Ox-Herding Pictures are a series of ten illustrations accompanied by commentaries in prose and verse describing the stages of religious practice in Zen. The tenth picture, entided Entering the Marketplace with Giving Hands, depicts one of the central themes in Zen: the final stage in the life of a Zen practitioner in which he shares his understanding with others. This is one way of looking at this period in Jakushitsu’s life.

      Roaming the mountains of Japan certainly seemed an intricate part of the lifestyle of this poet-monk whose most famous poem ends with the verse: If I die at the foot of this cliff / even my bones will be pure. From the fact that Jakushitsu refused previous requests to serve as abbot of large monasteries we know that he must have struggled with this decision to take charge of Eigenji. What went through his mind at the time he made the decision, we can only surmise. This perceptive and elegant Zen master devoted five years to teaching and left a well-kept record of his letters, lectures, and, most important, some of the best Chinese poetry a fourteenth-century Japanese monk-poet ever produced. To better understand Jakushitsu’s life and teaching, we must start with his early years, which, to borrow again from the Ox-Herding series, this time from the first picture in the series, can be described as Searching for the Ox.

      In 1303, when the thirteen-year-old Jakushitsu entered the Tôfukuji Monastery in Kyoto, Zen Buddhism was beginning to establish itself as a religion among the nobility and warriors of Japan. Yet the power of the older sects, Tendai and Shingon, was still to be reckoned with in the capital. Tôfukuji was a large Zen monastery founded by Enni Ben’en (1201-1280) in 1255. Along with a Zen meditation hall, it had facilities for Shingon and Tendai rites. Enni had received the seal of esoteric teaching in the Tendai tradition before traveling to China and completing his Zen training. He had also studied Confucianism for three years in Kyoto and was reputed to be one of the greatest scholars of his time. His reputation as a learned monk set the scene for an intellectual atmosphere at Tôfukuji that would help define that monastery through the ages. By

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