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[Zen Monkey]

Sky Above, Great Wind: The Life and Poetry of Zen Master Ryokan



A beautiful book of the Zen poetry and biography of the quiet and eccentric Zen Buddhist monk Ryokan who lived much of his life as a mountain hermit. This dude's definitely my favourite Japanese poet and his free flowing style is very reminiscent of the legendary Chinese mountain poet Han-Shan. The book includes images of his calligraphy too which are almost as beautiful as his poetry.

Some choice poems below. Read 'em slowly and deliberately, chew over each word and savour the flavour. Remember that Zen poems are about intuitive understanding - flashes of insight, not intellectual appreciation. Enjoy. Or not.



"Keep your heart clear
And transparent,
And you will
Never be bound.
A single disturbed thought
Creates ten thousand distractions."



“Too lazy to be ambitious,
I let the world take care of itself.
Ten days' worth of rice in my bag;
a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.
Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?
Listening to the night rain on my roof,
I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.”



“Why do you so earnestly seek
the truth in distant places?
Look for delusion and truth in the
bottom of your own heart.”



“The rain has stopped, the clouds have drifted away, and the weather is clear again.
If your heart is pure, then all things in your world are pure,
Then the moon and flowers will guide you along the Way”

Absolutely gorgeous. Every time I read that I break into a big grin.



“In all ten directions of the universe, there is only one truth.
When we see clearly, the great teachings are the same.
What can ever be lost? What can be attained?
If we attain something, it was there from the beginning of time.
If we lose something, it is hiding somewhere near us.”



“Good friends and excellent teachers - Stick close to them!
Wealth and power are fleeting dreams but wise words perfume the world for ages.”



“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.”



“If there is beauty, there must be ugliness;
If there is right, there must be wrong.
Wisdom and ignorance are complementary,
And illusion and enlightenment cannot be separated.
This is an old truth, don't think it was discovered recently.
"I want this, I want that"
Is nothing but foolishness.
I'll tell you a secret -
"All things are impermanent!”



“How can we ever lose interest in life? Spring has come again
And cherry trees bloom in the mountains.”



“The flower invites the butterfly with no-mind;
The butterfly visits the flower with no-mind.
The flower opens, the butterfly comes;
The butterfly comes, the flower opens.
I don't know others,
Others don't know me.
By not-knowing we follow nature's course”



“I don't tell the murky world
to turn pure.
I purify myself
and check my reflection
in the water of the valley brook.”



“In my hometown, there are two brothers
with contrary characters.
One is clever and eloquent,
the other is foolish and silent.
The foolish one
seems to have all the time in the world.
The clever one
is always busy depleting his life.”



"I watch people in the world
Throw away their lives lusting after things,
Never able to satisfy their desires,
Falling into deeper despair
And torturing themselves.
Even if they get what they want
How long will they be able to enjoy it?
For one heavenly pleasure
They suffer ten torments of hell,
Binding themselves more firmly to the grindstone.
Such people are like monkeys
Frantically grasping for the moon in the water
And then falling into a whirlpool.
How endlessly those caught up in the floating world suffer.
Despite myself, I fret over them all night
And cannot staunch my flow of tears."

[Dogg Thang]

I mentioned in the film thread that I have been reading the Ring books by Koji Suzuki. I had read Ring back in the day so reread that a couple of weeks ago and then moved onto Spiral and Loop, which I have never read. The thing about Ring is that the movie is so much better than the book. And the reason is that the book tries to marry science with supernatural and, in doing so, creates something that’s actually trickier to buy. The book also has a kind of procedural thing so it’s more of an investigation and much less of a horror. Suzuki doubles down on that in the second book which, for example, spends a whole chapter cracking a code and taking us through all the permutations. The result, being honest, is really dull.

But the third book... wow. It’s like watching someone have a breakdown. He basically destroys his own concept. It’s bizarre. And so I shall save you the trouble of reading it by spoiling it below. Spoilers for Ring, Spiral and Loop. Read only if you don’t intend to read the books but are curious about how the books differ from the movies:

->Open Spoiler<-

So the big thing that Nakata left out in his adaptation of Ring is that, in the book, Sadako is raped by her doctor who also happens to be the last person in Japan to have smallpox. Her supernatural powers and rage merge with the smallpox virus to create what is called her child - the ring virus. It’s basically smallpox via video tape... for a while.

Because in Spiral, what they learn at the end of Ring in order to save themselves turns out to only work once and then it stops working. So only one person is saved from Ring. The rules of the virus change as it mutates. Also the video tape doesn’t seem to kill people in quite the same way any more (very physical symptoms - it caused a tumour in the heart that causes a blockage) but others are getting infected. It turns out that a character’s journal about the events of Ring now spread the virus instead, of a mutated version of it. Also it causes someone to get pregnant instead and give birth to Sadako who can now use the same trick to bring anyone back to life if they have a DNA sample... that gets convoluted.

But in Loop is where the magic happens. Because most of Loop is about a whole other guy who is battling a cancer outbreak. Smallpox is dropped and we have no mention of Sadako until we eventually find out that Sadako and all the characters in the previous two books were just part of a computer simulation. Yep. The entirety of the first two books were just basically a computer programme running a test on evolution. The book goes so far as to say that’s the only way the nonsensical stuff in the books could happen. The author uses the word nonsensical about his own work.

So weird given what a hit Ring was that, basically from the end of that first book, he was determined to break it. Like the video tape idea? Well now that’s gone. Oh, still with me? Well none of it happened then.

Anyway, that’s those books spoiled for you. Join me next time when I will spoil some other classic.

[Zen Monkey]

I love Mary Oliver. She's my kinda poet. Doesn't try to impress with fancy, flowery, elaborate displays of eloquence. She bypasses the confused head and goes straight for the heart, straight for what stirs and moves us. See what I mean:




“Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.”

- Mary Oliver




Sometimes I need
only to stand
wherever I am
to be blessed.

- Mary Oliver




Wherever I am,
the world comes after me.
It offers me its busyness.
It does not believe
that I do not want it.
Now I understand
why the old poets of China
went so far
and high
into the mountains,
then crept into the pale mist

- Mary Oliver





You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

- Mary Oliver





I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall—
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.

- Mary Oliver




Poetry is a life-cherishing force.
For poems are not words, after all,
but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost,
something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.

- Mary Oliver




Love yourself. Then forget it.
Then, love the world.

- Mary Oliver




Ten times a day something happens to me like this
- some strengthening throb of amazement
- some good sweet empathic ping and swell.
This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know:
that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.

- Mary Oliver





To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.

- Mary Oliver





You can have the other words-chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity.
I'll take grace. I don't know what it is exactly, but I'll take it.

- Mary Oliver





Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled—
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.

- Mary Oliver




When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it is over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

- Mary Oliver

[_SD_]

He-Man

[randombs]

Sarah Millican's How To Be Champion.

It's good fun, and I keep reading it in her voice.

[prinnysquad]

I had to abandon Murakami’s 1Q84 last year due to unforeseen distractions. Not out of choice.

So I’ve started it again.

What a masterpiece of dreamy prose. The way he makes the mundane and everyday sound so absorbing and lyrical is just magnificent. I’ve never read anyone quite like him.

[JazzFunk]

The Bridge by Iain Banks. I've often found his density of prose offputting and have given up early on a couple of his books but I've ground through the early bit and I'm really enjoying it, the world itself reminds me a bit of Bioshock Infinite, I like the vibe and really don't know what's gonna happen next. Good!

Read a few books recently, finished off I, Partridge last week and I liked it but it hardly made me laugh at all, which was sad for me. Also, An Idiot Abroad was lying around so I banged that in a coupla days, felt more intimate than the show but I felt it could've had a bit more substance, I would've liked more time dedicated to the places he went because it feels like a lot is skimmed through. But an easy, fun read.

[Zen Monkey]

Freedom From the Known by Jiddu Krishnamurti

Russell Brand fans may be familiar with the name Krishnamurti as Russell quotes the man a lot and, reading his book, I can understand why. He was that rarest of things - an enlightened being. Well worth a read as it is very thought provoking. Some choice excerpts:



“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

“The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.”

“You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing, and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.”

“One is never afraid of the unknown; one is afraid of the known coming to an end.”

“The more you know yourself, the more clarity there is. Self-knowledge has no end - you don't come to an achievement, you don't come to a conclusion. It is an endless river.”

“Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay.”

“To understand the immeasurable, the mind must be extraordinarily quiet, still.”

“If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.”

“Happiness is strange; it comes when you are not seeking it. When you are not making an effort to be happy, then unexpectedly, mysteriously, happiness is there, born of purity, of a loveliness of being.”

“The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear.”

“As long as one is escaping from loneliness, there is no essential difference between the worship of God and addiction to alcohol. Socially, there may be a difference; but psychologically, the man who runs away from himself, from his own emptiness, whose escape is his search for God, is on the same level as the drunkard.”

“It is only when the mind is free from the old that it meets everything anew, and in that there is joy.”

“The ending of sorrow is the beginning of wisdom. Knowledge is always within the shadow of ignorance. Meditation is freedom from thought and a movement in the ecstasy of truth. Meditation is explosion of intelligence.”

“Thought is so cunning, so clever, that it distorts everything for its own convenience.”

“To transform the world, we must begin with ourselves; and what is important in beginning with ourselves is the intention. The intention must be to understand ourselves and not to leave it to others to transform themselves or to bring about a modified change through revolution, either of the left or of the right. It is important to understand that this is our responsibility, yours and mine...”

“Be a light unto oneself”

“The primary cause of disorder in ourselves is the seeking of reality promised by another.”

“When one loses the deep intimate relationship with nature, then temples, mosques and churches become important.”

“The significance of life is living.”

“No one can describe reality.
You must experience it, see it, feel the whole atmosphere of it”

“Happy is the man who is nothing.”

“What you are the world is. And without your transformation, there can be no transformation of the world.”

“It is a great art to have an abundance of knowledge and experience - to know the richness of life, the beauty of existence, the struggles, the miseries, the laughter, the tears - and yet keep your mind very simple; and you can have a simple mind only when you know how to love.”

“All outward forms of change brought about by wars, revolutions, reformations, laws and ideologies have failed completely to change the basic nature of man and therefore of society.”

“So as long as the mind is comparing, there is no love, and the mind is always judging, comparing, weighing, looking to find out where the weakness is. So where there is comparison, there is no love.”

“Why are we such tortured human beings, with tears in our eyes and false laughter on our lips? If you could walk alone among those hills or in the woods or along the long, white, bleached sands, in that solitude you would know what meditation is. The ecstasy of solitude comes when you are not frightened to be alone no longer belonging to the world or attached to anything. Then, like that dawn that came up this morning, it comes silently, and makes a golden path in the very stillness, which was at the beginning, which is now, and which will be always there.”


What a perceptive fellow!

[Zen Monkey]

Party of One.



As a hardcore loner who has never experienced loneliness and enjoys solitude more than company, I thought I'd really enjoy this book but, look beneath the social commentaries on the many ways loners have advanced society (as if people who love company haven't contributed equally) and how America, a country where loners played a huge role in the foundation and development of the nation - particularly the wild west - has fallen out of love with the loner, and what you see is an insecure and thinly disguised argument that loners experience more joy than non-loners. And if you really read between the lines, you can even make out the suggestion that loners are better than non-loners. How ridiculous! I hate all that 'we're better than the others' nonsense.

A rubbish book.

[Zen Monkey]

After giving up on the awful Party of One, I've started reading Kakuzo Okakura's classic:

The Book of Tea



It's a good read, so far. Written for a Western audience, the book is primarily about teaism but extends equal time and thought to philosophy and religion and culture and morality and aesthetics and human nature and architecture and simplicity and appreciation and history and the characteristics of Zen Buddhism and Taoism and Nature many other areas. A few quotes:


“We must remember, however, that art is of value only to the extent that it speaks to us. It might be a universal language if we ourselves were universal in our sympathies.”


“In joy or sadness flowers are our constant friends.”


“Have you not noticed that the wild flowers are becoming scarcer every year? It may be that their wise men have told them to depart till man becomes more human. Perhaps they have migrated to heaven.”


“The ancient sages never put their teachings in systematic form. They spoke in paradoxes, for they were afraid of uttering half-truths. They began by talking like fools and ended up making their hearers wise.”


“For Teaism is the art of concealing beauty that you may discover it, of suggesting what you dare not reveal. It is the noble secret of laughing at yourself, calmly yet thoroughly, and is thus humour itself,--the smile of philosophy.”


“We boast that we have conquered Matter and forget that it is Matter that has enslaved us.”


“Education, in order to keep up the mighty delusion, encourages a species of ignorance. People are not taught to be really virtuous, but to behave properly. We are wicked because we are frightfully self-conscious. We nurse a conscience because we are afraid to tell the truth to others; we take refuge in pride because we are afraid to tell the truth to ourselves. How can one be serious with the world when the world itself is so ridiculous! The spirit of barter is everywhere. Honour and Chastity! Behold the complacent salesman retailing the Good and True. One can even buy a so-called Religion, which is really but common morality sanctified with flowers and music. Rob the Church of her accessories and what remains behind? Yet the trusts thrive marvelously, for the prices are absurdly cheap, --a prayer for a ticket to heaven, a diploma for an honourable citizenship. Hide yourself under a bushel quickly, for if your real usefulness were known to the world you would soon be knocked down to the highest bidder by the public auctioneer. Why do men and women like to advertise themselves so much? Is it not but an instinct derived from the days of slavery?”



If that floated anyone's boat (where did that saying even come from? ), then the audiobook is available on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BJUOkHogEo

[Atticus]

Recently read End Of Watch (book 3 in the Bill Hodges/Mr Mercedes trilogy) and Revival. The Mr Mercedes books were a nice change, nothing spectacular but enjoyable none the less. Revival was back to the horror, but as with many of King's books the horror takes a back seat to the nostalgia and sadness of good times passing and never coming back.

Currently taking a break from King with a Peter Straub book called Ghost Story. Nice to read a different writer for a change ... I feel out of my comfort zone, and better for it.

[Dogg Thang]

Due to a work thing, I have mostly been reading teen romance novels lately. Yep. Most have actually been pretty good. Although a couple tend to have the problem I have with romance films aimed mostly at an audience of women - the guy is actually a knob and his only redeeming quality is falling for the main character.

The one I just finished was called Tell Me Again How A Crush Should Feel and it's actually really lovely. A very short and simple read about a girl with Iranian parents who falls for a new girl in school who seems like some kind of magical fantasy girl. It's a very sweet book and one I normally wouldn't have found so that was nice.

[QualityChimp]

Hit and Run (DI Stella Cole Thriller, #1)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34737518-hit-and-run

Seven Ancient Wonders (Jack West Jr. #1)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/144791.Seven_Deadly_Wonders

Escape!

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43865841-escape

[JazzFunk]

Very quiet on my early shift this morn, proper weird for an A&E Sat, ended up reading the last 155 pages of The Bridge by Iain Banks. I *did* enjoy it, got 'the twist' (if it was even meant to be a twist?) very early on. I'll deffo persist with more of his stuff even if I do find the tone/style of this a wee bit beige/cold/depressing, bit hard going at first...but deffo some nice imagery in there, the tanks oozing down the side of a volcano part-submerged in a sticky river of lava being a particular fave. 7/10. Great but beige.

Hope it's quiet tomorrow morn, gonna take in 'Brave New World' by Aldous Huxley, never got around to reading it.

[JazzFunk]

Done half of Brave New World. It's a very old book now, it's obviously dated due to the way tech has advanced so rapidly but I wished I'd been around at the time to read it, visionary stuff and so many ideas. Reads like a warmer version of J.G. Ballard, not quite as dry with a few gags chucked in.

Ha. Quite a slow day today. Hated the new shifts at first because of the booooring quiet patches on nights/earlies but now I can use these mellow moments to get through my mahoosive book backlog...and get paid more while I do.