Arts, Literature & Culture

The incomparable poetry of Han Shan (Cold Mountain) and his sidekick Shih Te, the rebel poets who became icons of Chinese poetry and Zen, has long captured the imagination of poetry lovers and Zen aficionados. Popularized in the West…  Read More

This celebration of what is perhaps the most influential of all poetic forms takes haiku back to its Japanese roots, beginning with poems by the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century masters Basho, Busson, and Issa, and going all the way up to…  Read More

For the masters of the Chan tradition, poetry was a form of creative expression, but even more than that, it was a primary vehicle for teaching. Here a modern master presents ten teaching poems from the ancient masters, with illuminating…  Read More

Here are more than two hundred of the best haiku of Japanese literature translated by one of America’s premier poet-translators. The haiku is one of the most popular and widely recognized poetic forms in the world. In just three…  Read More

A fiery and intensely dynamic Zen teacher and artist, Hakuin (1685–1768) is credited with almost single-handedly revitalizing Japanese Zen after three hundred years of decline. As a teacher, he placed special emphasis on koan practice, inventing many new koans himself,…  Read More