In rural Japan a couple-hundred years ago, when Japan wasn't the country it is today, but a simpler, more pastoral land, there lived a Zen monk by the name of Ryōkan.
Ryōkan was not one of those stern, silent monks who smile enigmatically when you ask them a question and look like they take afternoon tea very seriously, but rather a hermitic, oddball chap who would sometimes dress as a woman to sneak into village dances off-limits to Buddhists, and who occasionally forgot to beg for food because he'd spent the day playing games with the local children. This was, like I said, a simpler time, before such activities would likely wind your name up on some form of List.
Ryōkan lived by himself in a ramshackle hut in the forest -- which fact let's be honest wouldn't do him any favours if the men with the List happened along -- and he spent much of his time walking beneath the trees and writing haikus. His poetry was concerned, in the great Zen tradition, not with symbolising the world or representing the inexpressible, but with a simple pointing at things as they were. Art created not to explain or conquer nature, but just as another function of it.
After being robbed (supposedly, but whatevs, it makes for a good story), Ryōkan wrote:
The thief
Left it behind --
The moon at the window.
When he was poor, Ryōkan wrote:
The wind brings
Fallen leaves enough
To make a fire.
When glum:
On rainy days
The monk Ryōkan
Feels sorry for himself.
My favourite of Ryōkan's poems, however, is a lovely little one that goes:
The sound of the scouring
Of the saucepans blends
With the tree-frogs' voices.
This poem reminds me that all our endeavours are just crickets at work, just birds singing, just the ineffable cosmos rumbling on.
So here, in this blog, is my song. It means nothing, points nowhere, is but the semi-regular scrubbing of cloth on metal to get my mind clean. Come sit with me while I do the dishes, if you like. One tree-frog to another. Ribbit, ribbit.
