Zen And Poetry

Why? Why might we say that Zen is a kind of poem? Well, this comes about because, of course, Zen practice is committed always to realizing the silence at the heart of all things.

But equally, it's committed to articulating the silence at the heart of all things.

The question that has forever been central to Zen teachers and Zen students and people who cross over the threshold of a dojo is, can the great matter, can this silence be expressed in words or not? It's sometimes put forward a little simply that words obscure the silence.

But might it be possible for words and facts to not just convey this silence in a very mysterious way, but also allow us the opportunity to refine and clarify this silence.

In the Shodoka, it says that to be mature in Zen is to be mature in expression.

And of course this isn't limited to verbal expression, not at all.

But it does bring to the fore the question of what is it to be mature in expression? How do we express the inexpressible? How do we live this silence and make it audible not just for ourselves but for all the many beings? Now, of course, this silence was first set forth by Bodhidharma, our first ancestor.

And Bodhidharma, as we all know, arrived from India, appeared in China somewhere in the sixth to fifth centuries.

And there's a famous verse attributed to him.

I don't know whether these were his words or not.

And I think this is a good thing.

His words or not.

Can't be sure.

Can't say.

But these words set forth the entire catastrophe of our practice.

And they are these.

Bodhidharma said that he had come from India to China to convey a special transmission outside the scriptures, not founded upon words or letters, directly pointing to mind and realizing true nature.

I'm sure the irony is not lost on any of you that this is given in the form of a verse, even though he's saying that this direct pointing that he is so anxious to convey does not rely on words and letters.

You may go looking for it in sutras and sastras and the Abhidharma, and all of these may be pointers to mind, but pointing is not enough.

Bodhidharma wanted to bring a full embodiment of this silence at the heart of our practice to an entirely new continent, into an entirely new language, just as Zen has travelled from continent to continent, from culture to culture, directly pointing and realising our true nature at every single step.

Now Bodhidharma was not somehow opposed to words, as that verse demonstrates.

He was famously a great admirer of the Lankavatara Sutra, a sutra that written all the way through is very suspicious of words.

No wonder Bodhidharma was so thankful for it.

But his gift to all of us was this special transmission that does not depend on intellectual understanding.

This is not some kind of literary practice that we're involved in here.