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willnotte's review against another edition
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
The Zen master who has retreated from society for the seclusion of a mountain cave is one of the most well known figures in Buddhism (and in Western popular culture in the altered and commercialized version of Yoda in Star Wars). This short book contains the poetry of three such Zen legends—while the poems are attributed to three individuals, as the book notes, they were most likely written by many poets over the course of a few hundred years. Han Shan is the most acclaimed, and the majority of the poems are his, with additional poems by Shih Te and Wang Fan-chih.
There are beautiful poems here on nature, impermanence, time’s flow. While Han Shan gets the bulk of the book, I prefer Shih Te’s poetry, more obviously infused with compassion—the monk in his cave who can’t shake his concern for the folks in the city he left behind.
If you are building a poetry library this book would be a good addition. If you are interested in Zen, I wouldn’t recommend starting with a poetry book, but this would be a good compliment to even a very small Zen library
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