Tag: Poetry

Master Dogen wrote two virtually identical poems about zazen.

The earlier version [which is taken from Steven Heine’s translation] reads as follows:

The moon mirrored
By a mind free
Of all distractions, 
Even the waves breaking
Are reflecting its light.

The later version [again Heine’s translation] reads:

The moon reflected
In a mind clear
As still water
Even the waves breaking
Are reflecting its light.

In these translations, the two poems are remarkably similar. There’s two sections, and the second section, about the waves breaking, the last two lines of the poem, are identical in both.

The third line, which in Heine’s versions are different, are identical in the original Japanese, albeit with one important difference. The word ‘sumu’ in the earlier poem means ‘residing’, and goes with ‘uchi’, which means ‘within’ or ‘inside’, but in the later poem ‘sumu’ means ‘becoming clear’ so there is an association with ‘mizu’ [water].

As a translation choice, Heine renders the first lines of both poems very similarly, but in the earlier poem the Japanese gives a sense of being quietened, whereas in the later version the emphasis is more on clarity, in the sense ‘cloudedness disappears’, which matches up with the changed meaning of sumu.

Apart from that, what’s the difference?

I think the material difference is the second line and specifically the change in one word. The  second line in Japanese in the early version reads ‘kokoro no uchi ni’ and in the later version reads ‘kokoro no mizu ni’.There’s a change of one word: from free to clear.

Why did Dogen feel the necessity to change it? The purpose of the two poems is the same,  a description of zazen practice as wholehearted activity and not the cultivation of tranquillity understood as calmness, the absence of thought, the absence of emotions and so on. The two poems are identical in their description of meditation, not in terms of quietude or tranquillity but as fully engaged non-dualistic practice.

I think the reason for the change is that what the second version makes clear is that the essence of mind in zazen, the ‘water’ in the poem, isn’t to be still, it is to be clear. And if the mind is clear then it makes no difference if there’s a lot of activity [waves] or very little activity.

And if the essence of  the mind is to be clear, we can see in practical terms how the water metaphor might play out. In the first version, at least in Heine’s translation, the word distractions is mentioned explicitly and it’s not mentioned in the second. It’s not mentioned in the second because the distractions are mentioned implicitly, by their absence. Often distractions are thought of in terms of dust, that’s often a metaphor that’s used like ‘mind dust’. We can see that water which is clear, whether enlivened or whether tranquil, will reflect moonlight. We can also see that dirty water – water which isn’t clear, water covered over with  the mind dust of picking and choosing, liking and hating whatever’s arising within experience  isn’t going to reflect the moon. The essence of the mind is clearness.

The essence of mind in Zazen is to be spacious: not  excluding anything, not  restricting attention to objects of love and hate but holding everything in equanimity, like space. That’s how we should practise.

Dogen wrote many poems directly or indirectly about Zazen, but there’s one in particular which is of considerable interest, because it’s almost an identical  poem to one written very shortly before.

In Steven Heine’s wonderful book, “The Zen Poetry of Dogen”  the earlier poem, which he’s entitled “Zazen Practice” goes as follows:

“The moon mirrored

by a mind free of all distractions 

even the waves, breaking

are reflecting its light.”

The slightly rewritten version is entitled ‘Zazen’

:

“The moon reflected

in a mind clear as still water 

even the waves, breaking

are reflecting its light.”

Both poems have a similar two-part structure. The second part, “even the waves breaking are reflecting its light,” is identical and the first part is almost identical.

The second part is something we’re familiar with in Dogen’s writings. He’s radicalising the traditional metaphor that ‘successful’ meditation is “like the moon being reflected in still water.”

In other words,  we’re undisturbed, we see reality as it is. He radicalises that by saying that the moon’s light is always there. So whether the moon is fragmented into a million pieces on the breaking waves or is in one piece when, for instance, it’s reflected on a still pond, it’s the same moon. 

By clear implication the purpose of meditation, as it were, is not quietude or tranquillity, but non-duality.  And that is seen in a way that’s not quietistic, but dynamic, inclusive, whole and expressive.

That’s a very important point in Dogen.  But why the slight change? 

I think that the first version of it retains a shred of dualism between ‘moon’ and ‘mind’. 

And, the use of ‘distractions’ comes with the possible implication that we should be free of them. Not distractions in the sense of splitting: the ego interjecting itself into the totality in a dualistic way, but distractions seen as mental activity full stop. Obviously the removal of the word takes away that erroneous implication.

The moon is always reflected, because – thanks to interdependence – everything is relationship. Everything is expression. Everything is experience. There’s not an original moon and then the moon’s reflection is added on later. The moon is always reflected: in the still pond of our eyes, in the tranquil water, in the waves, in our mind, and so on. 

And apart from that, the moon doesn’t exist. Because nothing does.

Just when my longing
to see the moon over Kyoto 
one last time grows deepest 
the moon I behold this autumn night 
leaves me sleepless for its beauty.

Dogen  wrote this poem towards the end of his life.  It’s contained within a marvelous book by Steven Heine “The Zen Poetry of Dogen.” The poetry is a great way to engage with the feeling-ness of Dogen.

When he wrote the poem he was mortally ill and required to leave Eiheiji in the mountains and go to Kyoto for medical treatment.

Kyoto at that time was the center of Japanese society and culture, and was the society into which Dogen had been born.

In the poem he catches himself picturing the moon over Kyoto and then realizes that that moon is the same moon that he’s looking at right now. 

Dogen often uses the phrase “the moon in water”. In this poem is the realization that the moon reflected in the water of his imagination is the same moon which is reflected in the water of his eye now.

That moon is always the same moon. Without it being reflected in water there is no moon:  there is no moon apart from its reflection in the heart of another.

 It doesn’t matter if the water is tranquil and peaceful, energetic or disturbed. It doesn’t matter if it has one moon or a thousand, or countless shards of light .

Or if one moon has a billion oceans. 

This world of samsara is a stormy ocean
Sometimes we are drowning, clinging to the debris of the self
Sometimes we are ecstatic fish, thrown about like lumps of electricity
In the vast aliveness

In zazen, we are a high cliff, white as bone
The ocean’s push is a baby’s hand:
The Dharma is written everywhere
Like white ink on white paper