Poems of Zen Master Ikkyu

• Religion is non-philosophic, anti-philosophic, and Zen is the purest form of religion. Zen is the very essence of religion. Hence it is irrational, it is absurd. If you try to understand it logically you will be bewildered. It can only be understood illogically. It has to be approached in deep sympathy and love. YOU CANNOT approach Zen through empirical, scientific, objective concepts. They all have to be dropped.

• It is a heart phenomenon. You have to feel it rather than think it. You have to BE it to know it. Being is knowing. And there is no other knowing. That's why religion has to choose a different kind of language. Religion has to talk in parables, in poetry, in metaphors, in myth. Those are indirect ways of hinting at the truth -- only hinting at the truth, no direct pointing; just whispering, not shouting. It comes to you in a deep rapport.

• These small poems of the Zen master, Ikkyu, are of immense importance. They are not great poetry, remember, because that is not the concern. The poetry has been used as a device, so that yom heart can be stirred. The poetry is not the goal. Ikkyu is not concerned with creating great poetry; he is not really a poet, he is a mystic. But rather than speaking prose, he speaks in poetry -- for a certain reason.

• The reason is: poetry has an indirect way of hinting at things. Poetry is feminine. Prose is masculine. Prose, the very structure of it, is logical; poetry is basically illogical. Prose has to be clear-cut; poetry has to be vague -- that's its beauty, its quality. Prose simply says what it says; poetry says many things. Prose is needed in the day-to-day world, in the marketplace. But whenever something of the heart has to be said, prose is always found inadequate -- one has to fall back to poetry.

• There are two languages in language. Each language consists of two languages: one is prose, the other is poetry. Prose has become very predominant because it is utilitarian. Poetry has disappeared by and by, because it has no utility. It is needed only when you are in love. It is needed only when you are talking of love, death, prayer, truth, God -- but they are not commodities. They are not sold in the marketplace, they are not purchased either.

• Our world, slowly slowly, has become linear. The other language, the deeper language, has lost its meaning for us. And because of the disappearance of the second language, the language of poetry, man has become very poor -- because ALL richness is of the heart. Mind is very poor, mind is a beggar. Mind lives through trivia. The heart is an opening to the profundities of life, to the depths of existence, to the mysteries of cosmos.

• Remember this there are tWo languages in language, two ways of speaking, two levels of linguistic usage. There is a language of clear truths, concepts and formulas, the language of pure logic, objective information, exact science. But that is not the language of the heart, and that is not the language of love, and that is not the language of religion.

• Science and religion are diametrically opposite. They belong to different dimensions of existence. They don't overlap each other's grounds, each other's fields. They simply never meet! They don't criss-cross. And the modern mind has been trained for science, hence religion has become almost out of date, of the past.