One Robe, One Bowl: The Zen Poetry of Ryōkan

"I’m not really into poetry. I haven’t had loads of exposure to that in the past. But when I was a monk, my mum really struggled to know what to buy me on birthdays and at Christmastime, because monks are not really—well, you can receive a gift, but you’re not really supposed to keep it unless it’s related to one’s training. That was always really hard for my mum. So, I went home to visit one Christmas, and she thought this was the one thing she could buy me that I wouldn’t give away, and I would be allowed to keep in my room. I read it, and it had such an impact on me. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . To this day, I’m still not too sure why. But I have a sense. I felt like what he was expressing was my experience of living in the monastery. Most of his poetry is about living in a home that’s up in the hills, away from everybody else, an incredibly simple life. Really, it’s just a commentary on the passing experience of life; on impermanence and everything changing. I think in everyday life it’s very difficult to see that, because we are so busy. But when you’re away like that, you see the leaves changing colour on the trees, those things that perhaps feel very ordinary if we have lots going on in our life, but in that context, they’re everything. This is life, happening all around us. So I felt that in those simple haiku in that book, he just captures a moment, that, for me, reflected a very similar experience at that time. I’m a little biased. But I’m a huge believer in taking retreats. I think retreats can take many forms. You definitely don’t need to become a monk or a nun, you definitely don’t need to go to live alone in the mountains, but I do think that retreating into nature can be a really helpful shift for both body and mind. When most people go into nature, we let go of some of the tension. Our body and mind tend to quiet down. There’s less distraction, so we tend feel a bit calmer, more at ease. For people considering a more meditative-type retreat, I always say—because it was recommended to me in this way—dip your toes in the water before jumping into the deep end of the pool. Rather than saying, ‘Right, I’m going to do a 10-day, or a month-long, retreat,’ try a weekend. And see how the weekend goes. Make sure there’s a teacher there who’s very supportive, who understands that you’re new, and that you haven’t done this before. You can then build it up from there. That can really begin a journey of a lifetime. A journey of not only better understanding our own minds, but of better understanding the human condition. If we better understand the human condition, out of that arises empathy, and out of that arises compassion. As a consequence, we tend to live in the world in a more harmonious and peaceful way."