Ryōkan

Hermit, poet and Calligrapher Japanese, Ryōkan (良寛) (1758 - 1831) is one of the great figures of the Bouddhisme Zen of the end of the Period Edo. In Japan, its softness and its simplicity made of him a legendary character.

Its life of hermit is often the matter of its poems. One evening when it crosses the threshold of its hut to the return of a walk, Ryōkan realizes that its thin goods disappeared. It composes this Haïku then:

Forgotten by the robber:

the moon
with the window.

A life of hermit

Ryōkan was born with a dubious date, in 1758, in Izumozaki, small village on the west coast of Japan, in current the prefecture of Nīgata, the country of snows. Its name of birth is Eizō. His/her father is chief of the village and priest shinto. Child, it studies traditional Japanese and Chinese. Towards the 20 years age, Ryōkan goes in a temple Zen Sōtō of the vicinity and becomes beginner. It there meets a Master of passage, Kokusen, and leaves with him for the south the country. During twelve years, it is formed with the practice of Zen. In 1790, Kokusen names it with the head of its disciples and confers to him the name of Ryōkan Taigu, spirit simple in the large heart. With died of the Master one year later, Ryōkan gives up its functions and starts one long period of solitary wandering through Japan. It ends up settling, at the 40 years age, on the slopes of the Kugami mount, not far from its native village, and takes for residence a small hut with the thatched roof, Gogōan.

In the green forest,

my hermitage.
Seuls finds it
Which lost their way.

No rumor of the world,

song of a logger, sometimes.

Thousand peaks, ten thousand brooks,

not a heart which lives.

Begging each day its food according to the strict rule monacale and practitioner assiduously the sitted meditation or Zazen, Ryōkan however does not celebrate any ritual nor does not exempt any teaching. Never either it evokes a point of doctrines or a report on any awakening, small or large does not give. In summer, he walks; in winter, he suffers, too often, of the cold, the hunger and loneliness. Left to beg, it is delayed to play chache-mask with the children of its neighbors, to gather a parsley bit at the edge of a path, to look after a patient at the village or to divide a bottle of Saké with the farmers of the country.

Tomorrow?

the next day?
Which knows?
We are drunk
of this day even!

Penmanships of Ryōkan, today very appraisals by the museums, caused already many covetousnesses around him. Also, each time it goes downtown, it is with which, small tradesman or fine well-read man, more the crafty one will show itself to tap to him some treasure resulting from his brush. Ryōkan, which has as a follower Hanshan, the large Chinese hermit of the Dynastie Tang, calligrapher and poet like, does not have cure of it to him.

Monk simpleton the year spent,

this year very similar.

At the end of twenty years spent in the forest, weakened by the age, Ryōkan must leave Gogōan. It then finds refuge in a small temple a little well off a village. He sighs after the mountain, compares his life with that of a bird out of cage. At the 70 years age, it éprend of a nun called Teishin, itself 28 years old. They exchange tender poems. Ryōkan which deplores not to have seen it of all the winter, Teishin answers that the mountain is buckled dark clouds. Ryōkan retorts to him that it has to only rise above them naked to see the light. He dies between his arms on January 6th, 1831.

His lifestyle non conformist, his total absence of religiosity, caused many quarrels of scholars. Was its Buddhism authenticates? Was he yes or not an waked up man? To these questions, Ryōkan, for which Zen could be only deep freedom, had delivered its answer:

Which will I leave behind me?

flowers of spring,
the cuckoo in the hills,
and sheets of the autumn.

References

  • John Stevens, Three Zen Masters: Ikkyū , Hakuin, and Ryōkan, Kodansha, Tokyo, 1993.
  • Ryuichi Abe and Peter Haskel, Great Fool: Zen Master Ryokan: Poems, Letters, and Other Writings , University off Hawaii, 1996.
  • Ishigami-Iagolnitzer Mitchiko, Ryôkan, monk Zen , Editions of CNRS, Paris, 1991.
  • Ryōkan, 99 haïku of Ryōkan , Verdier, Lagrasse, 1986.
  • Ryōkan, Tales Zen: Ryôkan, the monk in the middle of child , Mail of the Book, Paris, 2001.
  • Ryōkan and Teishin, Dew of a lotus , Gallimard, Knowledge of the East, Paris, 2002. Collection of Waka and long poems, such the Rabbit of the moon , published by Teishin in four years after the death of Ryōkan.

External bond

  • Haïkus de Ryōkan

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