Zen Poems

I am one

Who eats his breakfast,

Gazing at the morning-glories

- Basho

Confused by thoughts

we experience duality in life.

Unencumbered by ideas,

the englithened see the one Reality.

- Hui-Neng

Bodhi originally has no tree

The mirror also has no stand.

Buddha nature is always clear and pure;

Where is there room for dust?



By: Huineng

Tr. Philip Yampolsky





What is this mind?

Who is hearing these sounds?

Do not mistake any state for

Self-realization, but continue

To ask yourself even more intensely,

What is it that hears?

By: Bassui





When mortals are alive, they worry about death.

When they're full, they worry about hunger.

Theirs is the Great Uncertainty. But sages don't consider the past.

And they don't worry about the future.

Nor do they cling to the present.

And from moment to moment they follow the Way.

BY: Bodhidharma



When all thoughts

Are exhausted

I slip into the woods

And gather

A pile of shepherd’s purse.

Blending with the wind,

Snow falls;

Blending with the snow,

The wind blows.

By the hearth

I stretch out my legs,

Idling my time away

Confined in this hut.

Counting the days,

I find that February, too,

Has come and gone

Like a dream. Like the little stream

Making its way

Through the mossy crevices

I, too, quietly

Turn clear and transparent.

By: Ryokan





My Hovel The world before my eyes is wan and wasted, just like me.

The earth is decrepit, the sky stormy, all the grass withered.

No spring breeze even at this late date,

Just winter clouds swallowing up my tiny reed hut.

By: Ikkyu

From Wild Ways: Zen Poems of Ikkyu, translated by John Stevens

Published by Shambala in Boston, 1995.

Summer grasses:

all that remains of great soldiers’

imperial dreams On the white poppy,

a butterfly’s torn wing

is a keepsake The bee emerging

from deep within the peony

departs reluctantly

From The Essential Basho, Translated by Sam Hamill.

Published by Shambala in Boston, 1999.

Sitting alone on an Autumn Night I sit alone sad at my whitening hair

Waiting for ten o’clock in my empty house

In the rain the hill fruits fall

Under the lamp grasshoppers sound

White hairs will never be transformed

That elixir is beyond creation

To eliminate decrepitude

Study the absolute.

By: Wang Wei

Tr. G.W.Robinson

Passing the Temple Tonight he walks with his light stick,

Stops by the Tiger Stream’s source,

Asks us to listen to the mountain sound,

Goes home again by clear waters.

Endless blossoms in the stillness.

Bird-cries deep in the valleys.

Now he’ll sit in empty hills.

In pine-winds, feel the touch of autumn.



By: Wang Wei

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