Ikkyū (1394-1481)

Ikkyū is one of the most significant (and eccentric) figures in Zen history. To Japanese children, he is a folk hero, mischievous and always out-smarting his teachers and the shogun. He was renowned his teaching and for his frankly erotic poems and revolutionary shakuhachi music. Headmaster at Japan's huge Buddhist training centre, Daitokuji, in Kyoto, he resigned after nine days, denouncing the monks for hypocrisy and inviting them to argue their differences "in the whorehouses and sake parlours" where he could be found. At seventy, he scandalized the Buddhist community by moving his lover into his quarters in the temple. His sphere of influence included the tea ceremony, Noh drama, ink painting, calligraphy, and poetry, and he founded what became known as the "Red Thread" (or erotic) school of Zen.

If there’s nowhere to rest at the end
How can I get lost on the way?

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Nobody told the flowers to come up nobody
Will ask them to leave when spring’s gone

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I won’t die I won’t go away I’ll always be here
No good asking me I won’t speak

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I’m in it everywhere.
What a miracle trees lakes clouds even dust

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My mind can’t answer when you call
If it did I’d be stealing your life from you

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Pleasure pain are equal in a clear heart
No mountain hides the moon

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I try to be a good man but all that comes
Of trying is I feel more guilty

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Don’t worry please please how many times do I have to say it
There’s no way not to be who you are and where.

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It’s logical: if you’re not going anywhere
Any road is the right one

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Suddenly nothing but grief
So I put on my father’s old ripped raincoat

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I’m up here in the hills starving myself
But I’ll come down for you

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It takes horseshit to grow bamboo
And it too longs forever weeps begs to the wind

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Something in us always wants to cry out
Someone we love knows she hears

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Watching my four-year-old daughter dance
I can’t break free of her

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I think of your death I think of our touching
My head quiet in your lap

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This hungry monk chanting by lamplight is Buddha
And he still thinks of you

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Nobody understands why we do what we do
This cup of sake does

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Age eighty weak
I shit and offer it to Buddha

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This donkey stumbles blind over stones into walls, ditches
No words for grief or joy no words for his ruined heart

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No words sitting alone night in my hut eyes closed hands open
Wisps of an unknown face

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Rain drips from the roof lip
Loneliness sounds like that

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No masters only you the master is you.
Wonderful, no?

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Only one koan matters
You