Full Description
For Nirvana features exceptional examples of the poet Cho Oh-Hyun's award-winning work. Cho Oh-Hyun was born in Miryang, South Gyeongsang Province, Korea, and has lived in retreat in the mountains since becoming a novice monk at the age of seven. Writing under the Buddhist name Musan, he has composed hundreds of poems in seclusion, many in the sijo style, a relatively fixed syllabic poetic form similar to Japanese haiku and tanka. For Nirvana contains 108 Zen sijo poems (108 representing the number of klesas, or "defilements," that one must overcome to attain enlightenment). These transfixing works play with traditional religious and metaphysical themes and include a number of "story" sijo, a longer, more personal style that is one of Cho Oh-Hyun's major innovations. Kwon Youngmin, a leading scholar of sijo, provides a contextualizing introduction, and in his afterword, Heinz Insu Fenkl reflects on the unique challenges of translating the collection.
Contents
Contents Preface Introduction, by Kwon Youngmin Bitter Flower Daydream Distant Holy Man Elm Tree & Moon Desire, Deeper than the Marrow What I've Always Said The Sound of Ancient Wood The Dance & the Pattern Spring Musan's Ten Bulls 1. Searching for the Bull 2. Finding the Footprints 3. Seeing the Bull 4. Catching the Bull 5. Taming the Bull 6. Riding the Bull Home 7. The Bull Transcended 8. Both Bull & Self Transcended 9. Reaching the Source 10. Return to Society Regarding My Penmanship Weekend Scrawl Wild Foxes Hoarse Speaking Without Speaking 1 Speaking Without Speaking 2 Speaking Without Speaking 3 Speaking Without Speaking 4 Speaking Without Speaking 5 Speaking Without Speaking 6 Waves What the Northeast Wind Said 1 What the Northeast Wind Said 2 What The Southeast Wind Said Ancient Rules for Everyman 3. Amdu-Drowned Man 4. Joju's Great Death 11. Gaesa Entering the Bath 13. Chuimi's Zen Gong Buddha Children of Namsan Valley Walking in Place The Path of Love At the Razor's Edge Crime & Punishment Today's Beaming The Way to Gyerimsa Temple Jikjisa Temple Travel Diary 1. The Way Forward 2. Not Two Gates 3. Sitting Buddha 4. Blue Crane-Zen Master Yeongheo 5. Stone Lamp 6. Cold Lamp-Master White Water 7. Mind Moon Tales from the Temple 2. The Seagulls & the East Sea 3. Two Squirrels 16. The Cry of Wild Ducks 25. The Otter & the Hunter 29. The Green Frog The Way to Biseul Mountain 2007-Seoul at Noon 2007-Seoul at Night Wild Ducks & Shadow Winter Mountain Beasts A Day at Old Fragrance Hall Bodhidharma 1 Bodhidharma 2 Bodhidharma 3 Bodhidharma 4 Bodhidharma 5 Bodhidharma 6 Bodhidharma 7 Bodhidharma 8 Bodhidharma 9 Bodhidharma 10 Sunset, Bay of Incheon The Sea Words of a Boatman Moments I Wished Would Linger You and I: Our Outcry You and I: Our Lamentation Siblings When the Dawn Comes Down A Fistful of Ashes Holding on to a Finger When the Thunder God Came to My Body Opening the Mountain-Side Window Proximation Sun & Moon Arising, Passing, Attachment The Wind that Once Wept in the Pine Grove Gwanseum This Body of Mine The Day I Try Dying As I Look Upon Myself Waning Landscape At the Tomb of King Seondeok Forest New Shoots Early Spring Three Views of Spring The Sound of My Own Cry All the Same at Journey's End Scarecrow Days Living on the Mountain Vapors My Lifelines Embers (Afterword) Translator's Afterword Acknowledgments
