Posts Tagged → daitokuji

I was like an old tree until we met

stilted koans are all monks have

Ikkyü also had a hermitage in Kyoto which he called Katsuroan (Blind Donkey Hermitage), and often stayed at Daitokuji. But increasingly, to the point of anguish, he became disgusted with worldly carryings on at the main temple, shuddering at the…frantic hustling for donations:

 

Yoso hangs up ladles baskets useless donations in the temple

my style’s a straw raincoat strolls by rivers and lakes

*

ten fussy days running this temple all red tape

look me up if you want to in the bar whorehouse fish market

 

In 1471, when seventy-seven, Ikkyü revealed his passion for a blind girl, an attendant at the Shuon’an Temple at Takigi. He wrote poems about their affair, some farcical, some very moving. He was self-conscious at the oddness of an old zen monk falling for a young woman, but they spent years together, Ikkyü’s feeling for her growing in intensity:

 

I love taking my new girl blind Mori on a spring picnic

I love seeing her exquisite free face its moist sexual heat shine

*

your name Mori means forest like the infinite fresh

green distances of your blindness

*

I was like an old leafless tree until we met green buds burst and blossom

now that I have you I’ll never forget what I owe you

 

Ikkyu

poems translated by stephen berg in crow with no mouth

prose introduction by lucien stryk

wikkyu

🪷

 

one who meets daito face to face

your old home town

 

As with the classical

Chinese teachers of the Tang dynasty,

Shuho maintained that awakening was central to

Buddhist practice. In a document called Daito’s Testament, he

reminded his students, “You have come here not for food or clothing

but for religion. As long as you have a mouth, you will have food;

as long as you have a body, you will have clothes. Don’t concern

yourself with these. Be mindful throughout your waking

hours; time flies like an arrow, don’t waste it with

concern over worldly matters.”

 

He went on to tell his disciples

that even if they were to become the abbots

of wealthy monasteries and received the respect of

the laity and nobility, even if they were rigorous in their practice

of meditation and ritual activities, but they lacked awakening, they were

no more than members of the “tribe of evil spirits.” Conversely, if they

were poverty stricken, lived in a ramshackle hermitage, and ate

only what wild food they gathered in the forests and

yet they were awakened, then they would be

“one who meets me face to face

and repays my kindness.”

 

Daito Kokushi

years of hunger beneath gojo bridge