Poetry and Zen

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Xuedou said: "If you want to express the inexpressible, you must use the sword that kills and the sword that gives life. A verse that merely describes is dead words. A verse that cuts through all description and makes you gasp—that is the living phrase. My hundred verses are not literature. Each one is a trap for a dragon."

license: public_domain

Attribution

• Attributed To
  Xuedou Chongxian

Lineage: Yunmen

By Xuedou Chongxian

• Verse on Case 1: Bodhidharma's Vast Emptinessverse
• Verse on Case 6: Yunmen's Every Day Is a Good Dayverse
• Verse on Case 14: Yunmen's Appropriate Statementverse
• Snowy Cliffproverb
• Hundred Cases, Hundred Versesproverb

From Traditional Zen Sayings

• A Special Transmission Outside the Scriptures
• Thirty Blows
• A Day Without Work Is a Day Without Eating
• Mountains Are Mountains
• Cease and Desist
• Die While Alive
• The Whole Universe Is the Eye
• The Directness of Realization
• The Barrier of Words
• The Great Doubt Block

Sources

• contentWikisource — English-language free library

  Xuedou Songgu Ji, preface on versifying koans

  Traditional Zen Sayings: Poetry and Zen