Lamp to Lamp - (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Rooted in the raw mystery of nature, this centuries-spanning journey through the Chan Buddhism poetic tradition awakens sudden, quiet insight.

Featuring works from both renowned Buddhist ancestors as well as sages unknown in the West, these beautiful poems deepen our understanding of Chan Buddhism's evolution. We discover that the distinctive, naturalistic style of Chan expression--earthy yet transcendent, direct yet mysterious--was nurtured not only in Tang-dynasty China but over the course of many centuries on the Korean peninsula, in the mountains of Central Asia, in the highlands of Siberia, and in the rainforests of Canton. And it was developed by both male and female poets.

In these poems, moments of personal struggle, sudden insight, and deep connection to nature bring English-language readers as close as possible to a mind-to-mind encounter with the Chan tradition's founders and innovators from the sixth century to the twentieth century. With a substantive introduction and short biographies of each of the poets included, this essential anthology is a testament to poetry's role in the journey of spiritual awakening.

Review Quotes

"Peter Levitt and Rebecca Dawn Nie have gathered the living voices of Chan and Seon masters--men and women, hermits and statesmen, kitchen monks and wandering nuns--revealing their intimate struggles, insights, and realizations of 'the great matter of birth-and-death.' Rendered with such clarity and warmth, these poems speak directly into the present, carrying the ordinary human tenderness and insight that have always defined this path. Reading these pages is like sitting face-to-face with the ancestors themselves. A book of rare beauty and lasting companionship."
--Guo Gu, author of The Essence of Chan

"Reading Lamp to Lamp, I was surprised by how close these ancient Chan masters could feel. Though they lived centuries ago, they worried, wandered, laughed, grieved, and looked at the moon just as we do, and somewhere along the way they discovered a little more freedom. Peter Levitt and Rebecca Dawn Nie have given us a beautiful and deeply valuable book, one I warmly recommend to anyone who wishes to encounter the living heart of Chan through the voices of those who walked this path before us."
--Haemin Sunim, author of Love for Imperfect Things

"Elegant and otherworldly, the poems of Lamp to Lamp show us how beauty, sorrow and awakening are all one experience. Peter Levitt and Rebecca Dawn Nie have distilled the centuries-long tradition of Zen poetry to its pure essence. This is a treasure for lovers of literature and practitioners of Buddhism alike."
--Zen Master Matthew Juksan Sullivan, author of The Garden of Flowers and Weeds: A New Translation and Commentary on the Blue Cliff Record

"Japanese Zen Master Dogen said, 'Having joined the Way, they are able to turn mountains and rivers into words; and hold wind and rain to make them into tongues. Thus, they thoroughly expound great empty space and turn the unsurpassed Dharma wheel." I appreciate the translators' excellent work, which introduces us to so many Zen adepts' poetic gems. The poems in Lamp to Lamp are like hundreds of rivers flowing into the ocean of Dharma, each of them expressing their uniqueness while allowing myriad beings to reveal their compassionate presence."
--Shohaku Okumura Roshi, former abbot of Sanshin Zen Community

"Given the many thousands of extant Chan Buddhist poems from China and Korea across centuries of history, compiling an anthology such as this is no easy task. Peter Levitt and Rebecca Dawn Nie have succeeded admirably in rising to the challenge with this welcome volume of poems by both male and female poets--judiciously selected, informatively contextualized and, above all, sensitively and beautifully translated."
--Beata Grant, translator of In the Shade of the Green Willow: Poems and Reflections of a Buddhist Woman in Modern China

"Lamp to Lamp, masterfully translated, reminds us of an invisible heritage of awakening and poetic heart from ancient China to contemporary Korea in diverse and profound manifestation. Stunning and inspiring!"
--Kazuaki Tanahashi, author of Painting Peace

"Poetry and prose are often at odds. In the case of Lamp to Lamp, both work wonderfully together: brief biographical sketches with simple yet memorable verses by famous and not-so-famous Chan masters. The scope is also impressive. Fifteen centuries of Chan flowering across East and even Central Asia, and yet the same, timeless fragrance--an indication of the quality of the translations."
--Red Pine, translator of Poems of the Masters: China's Classic Anthology of T'ang and Sung Dynasty Verse

"Peter Levitt and Rebecca Nie's elegant new translations bring these songs of awakening and the quest for liberation alive, giving them the space they need, unburdened by annotation, to fly free on the page."
--Paul Harrison, George Edwin Burnell Professor of Religious Studies, Stanford University

About the Author

PETER LEVITT is a poet and translator whose numerous books of poetry include One Hundred Butterflies, Within Within, The Essential Dogen, The Complete Cold Mountain, and Yin Mountain. 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.

REBECCA NIE is a transmitted Chinese American Zen master of the Jogye Order, scholar, and award-winning algorithm and new media artist. Born and raised in China, she came of age in Canada and the United States, and now she serves as the Buddhist Chaplain-Affiliate at Stanford University. Ms. Nie is also the founding abbot of M.V. Seon Sanctuary, dedicated to unleashing humanity's full potential through artistic expressions and offering systematic training in Eastern wisdom-spiritual traditions.