Saigyo

Saigyō (1118-1190, born Norikio Satō) is among Japan’s most celebrated and enduring poets. As a young man, he was a samurai and served as a low-class imperial guard. A brief love affair with the highest-ranking lady in the court, and a strong desire to be free from violence, drove him to leave the life he knew to become a devoted Buddhist monk who lived in solitude and wandered near and far. His wandering life was profoundly intimate with the natural world, and his time immersed in nature inspired his deeply felt poetry. Saigyō’'s genre was waka, a one-column poem consisting of phrases comprising five, seven, five, seven, and seven syllables. During his lifetime, war and a major political shift from imperial to military administration devastated the people and the land, but Saigyō was a friend to all people. He exchanged poetry with an exiled emperor, former court ladies, a prostitute, and renowned poets. And in one seminal poem that voices his intimate feeling and identification with the natural world and his life as a monk, he expressed the desire to die close to the day of the Buddha’s passing in the middle of spring, while sitting beneath a full moon with a canopy of cherry blossoms blooming overhead. He managed to accomplish this as his last poetic expression.

Peter Levitt

Peter Levitt is a poet and translator whose numerous books of poetry include One Hundred Butterflies and Within Within. In addition, he is the author of Fingerpainting on the Moon: Writing and Creativity as a Path to Freedom. He is the guiding teacher of the Salt Spring Zen Circle in British Columbia.

Kazuaki Tanahashi

KAZUAKI TANAHASHI, a Japanese-trained calligrapher, is the pioneer of the genre of “one-stroke painting” as well as the creator of multicolor enso (Zen circles). His brushwork has been shown in exhibitions in galleries, museums, and universities all over the world. Tanahashi is the author of over forty books, including Painting Peace, Heart of the Brush, and The Heart Sutra.

"Saigyō has long been regarded as the ultimate Buddhist poet. Living a lonely life of wandering and renunciation during a period of great turmoil, Saigyō was as often moved to tears by the beauty of flowers and the moon as he was by the pain of the violence of the world he lived in. Levitt and Tanahashi’s great translations carry across into English the elegant simplicity and quiet emotion of the original poems that have been loved for a thousand years in Japan and all over the world. Tanahashi’s extensive historical introduction gives us a strong impression of the confusing social and political passions that marked Saigyō’s time." —Norman Fischer, poet and Zen priest, author of Selected Poems and Training in Compassion

"Even as Levitt and Tanahashi hear the sound of a storm murmuring in a tree’s branches––echoing social storms raging in Saigyō’s times and ours––they dwell in mountainous depths. Like Saigyō, they, too, know ‘the moon in your mind becomes a clear mirror,’ and they ‘see enlightenment all around.’ Feeling the sky in Saigyō’s heart, they offer illuminating, aesthetically refined renderings of his poetry, enabling us to commune with nature, to hear the whispers of the moon, and to be serenaded by the cherry blossoms." —Paula Arai, PhD, author of Painting Enlightenment: Healing Visions of the Heart Sutra

"What a beautiful book! A perfectly selected set of gorgeous, limpid translations by two contemporary masters. Full of feeling and clear awakening, these wonderful, brief poems of wandering Japanese poet-monk Saigyō convey the depth and beauty of his vision of this fleeting world and life. A masterwork!" —Henry Shukman, author of One Blade of Grass and Original Love

"This is a beautiful and haunting book. Saigyō reaches across the centuries and reveals the intimate way for us today." —James Ishmael Ford, author of The Intimate Way of Zen: Effort, Surrender, and Awakening on the Spiritual Journey