LIFE LESSONS | IMPERMANENCE | ZEN

How Zen poetry is no poetry at all

(lessons taken from Dōgen Zenji’s waka)

Mandarin duck spotted in Hougang Canal, Singapore — photo: Katherine Lu, 2021

There is a particular poem that keeps popping up in my mind, in even the most inconvenient of circumstances. Imagine. You are in a business meeting discussing a company’s learning strategy and the meeting organizer has just called your name and raised a question about how you would approach problem so-and-so, and you look up and say:

You might think you cannot imagine such a thing ever happening. But look. This happened to me, even the other day.

Or I lie in bed just before slumber comes and I murmur sounds and my spouse asks me what? and I don’t know what to say except …

There cannot be any doubt that Dōgen Zenji (1200–1253) must be counted among the greatest poets of all time. Except that Dōgen opposed all art forms, including even literature and poetry, most of all his own.