This and That - by Ryokan (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Zen poems of everyday awakening.

A fresh translation of short poems by the Japanese Zen poet Ryokan that reads well as modern American poetry, accompanied by an introduction and commentaries on the poems from the translators. Most of the existing translations are stiff, or sentimental, or awkward as poems in English. This effort is comparable to Gary Snyder's Han-Shan poems, or Thomas Merton's Chuang-Tzu.

One of the greatest poets of the Edo period and certainly one of the most loved, Ryokan was a highly original and eccentric master artist and Zen practitioner. A solitary hermit who begged for food and lived among the poor, often in dire need himself, his offbeat poems are moments of everyday awakening, characterized, as was his personality, by both austerity and playfulness. This translation aims to retain Ryokan's charm without undue sentiment or saint-making, allowing for his rougher edges to appear.

Review Quotes

"An old Zen hermit looking on with sorrow and compassion at a worn-out self and world, Ryokan writes without a speck of guile, expressing feelings that we recognize, even if we don't usually let ourselves feel them. This new translation by Stanley Ziobro and John Slater brings out perhaps better than ever before Ryokan's plain-spoken humanity and wisdom." --Norman Fischer, poet and Zen priest, author of Nature and Selected Poems 1980-2013

"The lived life of Ryokan, the Japanese Zen poet, is that part of our human psyche that remains hidden for the most part, but its whispers reach out to us whenever we care to listen to it. These short poems of Ryokan are those whispers, and remind us of our fragility and the uncertainty of the world around us. Nothing can be more aspirational than to sit back and let them wash over us. The translators are to be thanked for making them available." --Mu Soeng, scholar emeritus at Barre Center for Buddhist Studies; author of The Heart of the Universe: Exploring the Heart Sutra and other books

"Blessed are the poets of our world and those who keep their songs alive through works of translation. This wonderful collection of poems by Ryokan, so finely translated by Stan Ziobro and John Slater, demonstrates how a few words, when arising from wisdom and compassion, have the power to change the human mind and heart. Chew and digest these delicious verses slowly, as they create inner and outer worlds of joy and sorrow, community and aloneness, sacredness and the worldly, all to help us better love and care for our world." --Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, abbot, Zen Mountain Monastery Mountains & Rivers Order

"Professor Ziobro and Fr. Isaac Slater have produced a beautifully annotated, introduced, and translated collection of Ryokan's humorous, iconoclastic, and spiritual poetry. This book should be required reading for anyone who cares about poetry, Japanese culture, or Buddhism." --Elijah Siegler, Professor of Religious Studies, College of Charleston

About the Author

Ryōkan (1758-1831) was a Japanese Sōtō Zen Buddhist monk who lived as a hermit. Even by those standards, he was known for unconventionality, shocking others, for example, by refusing to hurt bugs, and confronting burglars to willingly give them his clothes. But most of all Ryōkan is remembered for his poetry, which presents the essence of Zen life.

John (aka Isaac) Slater has lived since 1999 as a Trappist monk at the Abbey of the Genesee in New York, where he's novice director. He's published collections of his own poems, a co-translation, The Tangled Braid: Ninety-Nine Poems by Hafiz of Shiraz, and Do Not Judge Anyone: Desert Wisdom for a Polarized World forthcoming from Liturgical Press (spring 2025). He has been drawn to the work and figure of Ryokan for more than thirty years. He lives in Piffard, NY.

Stan Ziobro lives in Charleston, SC. After earning a certificate in Asian studies from Kansai University in Osaka, Japan, he graduated from the University of Rochester in philosophy and Japanese. His graduate degrees are in religious studies from Wake Forest University and The Divinity School at University of Chicago. He's worked as a professional translator of Japanese since 1998. Translations include those incorporated in James L. Ford's Jokei and Buddhist Devotion in Early Medieval Japan (Oxford University Press, 2006). He lives in Charleston, SC.