Zen · Chan · 1758–1831
Ryokan Taigu
Soto Zen · "the Great Fool" · Selected poems of Ryokan
A monk who played ball with children and owned a single bowl. Zen as joyful simplicity.
The essence of the teaching: Freedom is found not in acquisition or status, but in radical simplicity, in accepting impermanence and merging with nature. Enlightenment is not a distant summit, but immediate presence in ordinary life, when the chasing mind grows still.
Transmission
Ryokan lived in a hut with one robe and one bowl, begged for alms, and played ball with the village children, forgetting the time. They called him the Great Fool – and he wore the name with joy, for he had thrown away all the pretensions of learning. The sacred and the everyday were not separate for him: to beg for alms, to wash the feet, to gaze at the moon – all of this is practice, all of this is Buddha. Wealth and honors are dust, he said, while a cracked beggar's bowl is of noble blood. Sit quietly in nature, listen to the rain and the wind without sticking names onto the sounds, and let the "I" dissolve into all that is around. Then you will see: there was nothing to seek, and nowhere to seek it.
The full transmission — for members of the School. Here is its essence and its taste.
The tradition
Zen · Chan
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