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ZEN BUDDHISM "Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess
the origin of all poems. ... You shall no longer take things at second or third
hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor
feed on the spectres in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take
things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from
yourself.”1
The poet sees them for what they are, not as symbols or expressions of something else. As Goethe said, "Do not, I beg you, look for anything behind phenomena. They are themselves their own lessons." This is not materialism; far from it. It is tremendous Zen. No symbolism or simile or analogy is needed in Zen.
“The firefly:
As it dropped from a leaf
It suddenly flew away." Thus Basho's lovely haiku: yet analogy is still permitted. Thus Davies,
“Butterflies will make side-leaps, As though escaped from nature's hand
Ere perfect quite." How far more satisfactory these concrete poems are than odes to large abstractions like Duty and Beauty and Higher Thought! "Followers of identity and tranquillity are to be given the warning; they are ridden by concepts; let them rise to facts and live in and with them.”
1 From Song of Myself. 2 Both quoted in BLYTH, P. 148. 8 Zen Buddhism and Its Influence, p. 233.
