Tag: Ikkyū

  • On carrying wooden swords

    1435 FORTY-SECOND YEAR, EIKYŌ SEVEN
    WOOD’S YOUNGER BROTHER, THE HARE

    Ikkyū spent some time down in Izumi [Sakai]. Whenever he went out in the city streets, he took along a wooden sword. As he walked, he rapped his fingers on its hilt.

    The townspeople argued with him saying, ‘The virtue of a sword is killing. What use does a monk have for one?’

    He replied, ‘You don’t know it yet, but these days the world is full of a false wisdom that is just like this wooden sword. As long as it is kept in the scabbard, it looks as good as a real blade, but if it is drawn out from the scabbard, it is seen to be only a sliver of wood. It cannot even kill people—much less make them live.’

    — Sanford, Zen-Man Ikkyū, pp. 91–92.

    Part of the reason I am not a serious practitioner of Zen is the number of props that someone being serious about Zen seems to require. Incense, robes, zafu and zabuton, chimes and gongs, and whatnot, along with a meditation space and a shrine (if you lean that way), blank walls to limit distraction…

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  • Ikkyū quotes

    Photo by Andrea Sun on Unsplash
    nobody knows I'm a storm
    I'm dawn on the mountain
    twilight on the town
    alone with
    the icy moon
    no passion
    these trees
    this mountain
    nothing else
    all koans just lead you on
    but not the delicious pussy
    of the young girls I go down on
    no more Zen
    write one great line
    like a needle piercing
    a sore spot on your arm

    — Ikkyū