Historical Zen monks of Japan were often associated with specific monasteries, but many were mountain-dwelling hermits. Nearly all of them were poets expressing their sensibilities about their experiences, and about nature, seasons, flowers, and waters. Here are several lesser-known hermit-poets associated with the Five Mountains tradition of the fourteenth century. Source: Poems of the Five Mountains: An Introduction to the Literature of the Zen Monasteries, translated and edited by Marian Ury. 2nd ed., rev., 1992.
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Jakushitsu Genko (1290-1367) lived in the Bingo Province, today’s Okayama Prefecture. He is famous for classic reclusion, for — as editor-compiler Marian Ury puts it – “refusing summonses from both the shogunate and the imperial court.”
In Jakushitsu’s poem “Double Yang,” the poet writes that “Just now a mountain child comes to pluck chrysanthemums – He says to me: ‘Today is Double Yang!’” Notes Ury: ”Alone in his hermitage the poet must be reminded what day it is.”
Here is a reprsentative Jakushitsu poem:
“Living in the Mountains”
I don’t crave fame and profit or care that I’m poor;
Hiding in the depths of the mountains I keep far away the world’s dust;
The year has waned and the skies are cold: who’d be my companion?
The plum blossoms are adorned in moonlight — one branch, new.
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Chugan Engetsu (1300-1375) grew up as an “unwanted child,” cared for by a wet nurse and grandmother and given to a temple at age six. He mastered Confucian classics and Buddhism, especially Zen. He wrote a controversial history of Japan suppressed by the imperial court, such that no copy survived. In his poem “Musing on Antiquity at Chin-lu,” Chugan reflects wistfully on the vanity of worldly ambition, all subject to impermanence:
“Musing on Antiquity at Chin-lu”
Its great men pass on without cease,
but the land is uncrushed, ungentled;
The Six Courts have crumbled utterly,
but the mountains and rivers abide.
The ancient sites of royal offices:
merchants’ and fishermen’s dwellings;
The sounds that lingered from precious groves:
woodsmen’s and oxherds’ songs;
The canyons are filled with endless clouds, constantly bearing rain;
On the Great River the winds are calmed, but waves still arise.
The fair beauties of those years — where are they now?
For the traveler from afar, in this vast view,
how much to admire and to mourn!
Another poem, “In the Evening of the Year”:
In the evening of the year, under chilly skies
When the wind is pure and the moon is white
I chant leisurely verses, playing the elegant hermit —
But sitting alone I sigh over dim shapes,
Unable to explain the world’s workings
Except that each life of itself has a limit:
If I can only divert the present moment
I not need to think of the time when this self has ended.
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Gakuin Ekatsu (1367-1425)
Gakuin spent nearly a decade touring Zen monasteries in China, and when he returned to Japan lived in an island hermitage where he concentrated on composing poetry and compiling the poetry of the celebrated scholar and Zen master Zekkai Chūshin (1336-1405). Zekkai composed in Chinese, and his influence is reflected in Gakuin’s devoted compilation.