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No Words
Zen poetry is everything you might expect it to be, and less. An interview with Seido Ray Ronci.
Why is metaphor, part of the bedrock of Western poetry, absent in most Zen poems? I think metaphor is the bedrock of Western poetry because we’re never satisfied by what just is. This is why nonpractitioners often regard Zen poetry as trivial or overly simplistic. We love to complicate things, and we take delight in our imaginations and our creativity. Metaphor carries us over to another understanding; but that suggests that our present understanding is insufficient, doesn’t it? This is why people have such difficulty with koans. In the search for “understanding,” the mind grapples with ideas. And yet it’s only when ideas are exhausted that any breakthrough can occur. I’m a great fan of metaphors, as any poet or reader of poetry is bound to be. But from a Zen point of view, I think it helps to remember that metaphor can also be like putting a head on top of your head. Isn’t one enough?
I’m reluctant to say that Zen poetry doesn’t rely on metaphor—that seems too broad a statement. But usually the thing itself is sufficient, and it resonates in a profound way. There is a Buson poem that goes something like this: “The piercing chill I feel / my dead wife’s comb / under my heel.” What more do you need? The roaring resonance of such a poem occurs in the belly, not in the brain. Don’t misunderstand me—I’m not putting down metaphor. But where do metaphors come from? In a word: thinking.
I want to go back to the problem of nonpractitioners finding Zen poetry “trivial or overly simplistic.” Do you believe that only a zazen-trained mind can fully apprehend a Zen poem? People often mistake profound subtlety for simplicity, and often equate simplicity with triviality. So a poem like the early-nineteenth-century poet Issa’s “Farmer / pointing the Way / with a radish” tends to get glossed over or ignored. I guess it’s not imperative that a person need be a practitioner to appreciate a Zen poem, but it sure helps. Why? Because one learns through zazen that enough is enough. The untrained mind starts to ruminate: What farmer? An old farmer, a young farmer? What does he farm? What “Way” is he pointing out? To whom?
Are Zen poems written for a different purpose than other poems? I’m inclined to think that Zen poetry does indeed have a unique function. The Zen poem, as I see it, functions much like the koan—it is just a point of departure. The reader is eliminated, the ego drops, and what’s left is just the farmer pointing the way with a radish. For most readers, this is not enough.
Boom , buzz, hiss and moan, these sounds don't make the teacher groan. Smiling, i go back to work on my koan. Bang, crash whiz, wheee, onomatopoeia almost set me free. The theme of the piece is easy to describe, we invite the devil in when we conceptualize. Concepts we need when to understand we try, but whatever you do don't reify.
Poems are words. Koans are words. No escape. Boooom!
Undeniably, there are domains of life where words are unnecessary and others where words are insidpensable.
In dreams, in silent prayers, in deep conemplation we do not use words or voice. But reality is not confined to just that. Voice and language are THE most fundamental phenomena in the development of humanity.
Poetry (Zen or not Zen) is an example of how words can paint a field of sublime, colourful and supreme sphere of creativity, a field divine in nature. Poetry without words of poetry is aiken to the sound of one hand clapping, a useless trick. To look lightly at words, to say : no-words, or to separate words from the process of creativity of the mind - is just as someone exhalting a beautiful final product of a painting but belitteling and rejecting the physical paint which the artist skillfully used to project the wonderful image.
Zen has been caught up in this duality of thinking - in its focus on 'no-words / no-voice' - way of thinking since its inception. But, to teach about their silence-based doctrine, Zen masters had to use voice and words to belittle voice and words almost divine capabaility in conveying mental message (or observed truths of the dharma).
Whether written or spoken (and in particular when spoken), voice vibrations of words are products of the mind itself, and convey feelings and intelligence. The feelings and intelligence conveyed through words are not "beyond words", they are simply "beyong measure".
It is a mystery to recon with and not to belittle or deny: when the spiritiual aspect of the mind, having a certain intangible image to convey - interacts with the physical reality of the body, giving signals of commands to appropriate muscles at the throught, modulating air in the lungs and mouth cavity to create vibrations in a refined resonance and intensity - in order to encapsulate a mental message in a single envelope of sound waves. Then sending these waves to travell through space and reach the perception of the hearer, and subsequently to recreate the original message of a mind communicating with a mind.
This mystery - like music as well - is an act of "creation". What people call "divine creation" is simply the processs of the spiritual aspect (some call it god) manifesting itself by producing a physical aspect (of reality). No sepration.
It is attributed to Bodhidharma that he viewed charcaters of the sutras or words as mere scribbles of ink on paper. Maybe Bodhidharma is innocent of this story, but many Zen masters similarly view a bank note or cheque (carrying a highly needed value for someone) - as mere scribbles of ink over a piece of paper.
The Buddha mind is called the mind of absolute freedom. It has no hindrance before it. It creates words and voice. Voice and words do not limit the mind, they ARE the mind itself. What the mind produces is an extension of the mind.
Zen masters do not comprehend this and insist on a vision of separation of the words and voice from their origin. This understanding is based on duality: the mental aspect (with its infinite imagey) is mistakenly seen as incapable of manifestation in the physical aspect (reality of physical vibrations of words). Voice which encodes the mental aspect or vibrations of music which encode sublime feelings cannot be separated. They are two different aspects but are inseparable: 2 but not 2. Two but inseparable.
It is like the example of a house. The interior of the house can be supermely colourful and beam with creative imagination and lights - like the mind - and it is very very different from the exterior of the house. The exterior of the house, while existing in association with other physical objects in the surroundings has to be strictly defined (like words or voice). You cannot separate the interior of a house from its exterior. To separate the mind of Enlightenment from words of enlightenment is to separate the mental and physical, and duality is a non-Buddhist perspective.
http://www.sokahumanism.com/nichiren-buddhism/Miditation_and_Chanting.html
safwan
A practice that defines itself as in opposition to other practices, as most of the content of the above Nichiren site does, is hardly a glowing example of the practice of compassion.
If you try to treat someone's illness without knowing its cause, you'll only make the person sicker than before. Nichiren Buddhism gets right to the heart of the matter.