(8-96) Like Christians, many Buddhists also believe all you have to do for your problems in life is study Buddha's sutras. I, however, am still unable to be enlightened by any sutra. A sutra may be good for a particular truth. However, it never lifts you up as a well-composed poem does.

I learn my Zen from traditional Chinese poems, particularly from the Tang and Song dynasties. Unlike Western poetry whose main goal is sublimity, the goal for Chinese poetry is to achieve a state of mind (yi jing) that continues when the words stop. As one Chinese critic put it, the state of mind should be joy but not indulgence, melancholy but not depression, discontent but not anger, sad but not worried. In other words, the state of mind should be well controlled and understated.

Among all the Western poets I know, Auden comes closest to Chinese poetry with his well controlled and understated passion. His playfulness with the language is also parallel to those classic Chinese poets. In fact, I think it is the playfulness of the language that carries the mind to a state beyond words. Here is an example:

Another Time

For us like any other fugitive
Like the numberless flowers that cannot number
And all the beasts that need not remember,
It is to-day in which we live.

So many try to say Not Now,
So many have forgotten how
To say I Am, and would be
Lost, if they could, in history.

Bowing, for instance, with such old-world grace
To a proper flag in a proper place,
Muttering like ancients as they stump upstairs
Of Mine and His or Ours and Theirs.

Just as if time were what they used to will
When it was gifted with possession still,
Just as if they were wrong
In no more wishing to belong.

No wonder then so many die of grief,
So many are so lonely as they die;
No one has yet believed or liked a lie,
Another time has other lives to live.

Auden has successfully lifted my mind to a state that is sad but not worrisome, discontent but not angry, melancholy but not depressed. Let's compare his poem to a Tang poet Wang Wei's piece. It is about being middle aged, living under the foothill of south mountain, going about all alone, and end it with sentences like:

Traveled to the end of the river,
sat and watched the beginning of the cloud.
Occasionally I met the old man from next door,
We talked and laughed as if there were no tomorrow.

Both poets are aware of the transiency of time. Wang Wei, however, embraced the moment of here and now with more grace and less despair. The most important theme about Zen is to live the moment as it is to the fullest. What could be more enlightening than these poems? Imagine a body of poetry in the Tang Song Period that has thousands of poems like that.