One Robe, One Bowl

The Zen Poetry of Ryokan

By John Stevens

$19.95
SKU
9780834805705
Extras

Please also visit our Reader's Guide to Buddhist Poetry.

- Paperback
Available
Weatherhill
04/01/2006
Pages: 88
Size: 5.25 x 8.25
ISBN: 9780834805705
Details

The hermit-monk Ryokan, long beloved in Japan both for his poetry and for his character, belongs in the tradition of the great Zen eccentrics of China and Japan. His reclusive life and celebration of nature and the natural life also bring to mind his younger American contemporary, Thoreau. Ryokan's poetry is that of the mature Zen master, its deceptive simplicity revealing an art that surpasses artifice. Although Ryokan was born in eighteenth-century Japan, his extraordinary poems, capturing in a few luminous phrases both the beauty and the pathos of human life, reach far beyond time and place to touch the springs of humanity.

Extras

Please also visit our Reader's Guide to Buddhist Poetry.