The winds have died, but flowers go on falling
by RyokanEnglish version by Sam Hamill
Original Language Japanese
The winds have died, but flowers go on falling;
birds call, but silence penetrates each song.
The Mystery! Unknowable, unlearnable.
The virtue of Kannon.
 | -- from The Poetry of Zen: (Shambhala Library), Edited by Sam Hamill / Edited by J. P. Seaton |
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/ Image by fotologic /
I like the way this short Zen poem taps into the melancholy of autumn. That meditative ache leads us to something deeper, a quiet awareness of subtle life continuing steadily beneath the ebb and flow of outer phenomena -- The Mystery!
(And the reference to Kannon -- that's the Japanese name for Kwan Yin, the female boddhisattva of compassion, healing, and providence, a sort of mother goddess figure in some strands of Buddhism.)
