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The reason I choose
to write a paper on Taneda Santoka is that he is a very important
poet in modern haiku literature, but he is not very well known within the English language haiku community, which is unfortunate. Therefore, what I plan to do in this paper is to discuss various aspects of Santoka's life and his poetry, and hope to address some of the questions that may arise from this discussion.
Taneda Santoka
was born in 1882 and died in 1940. He was 58 years old. Of these 58 years, Santoka spent 16 of them as a mendicant Zen
priest. As James Abrams points out in his article "Hail in the
Begging Bowl," Santoka most likely was in Japan the last in
line of priest-poets.
What is different,
however, about Santoka compared to Basho, Issa, Ryokan, Saigyo, or Dogen, is that he did not follow the traditional conventions of the poetic form in which he worked. Santoka was
a disciple of Ogiwara Seisensui (1884-1976), the leader of the "
free-style school of haiku". This school of haiku discarded the traditional use of the season word and the 5-7-5 structure.
Instead it opted for a freer verse form. John Stevens, in his book Mountain
Tasting, explains that after Shiki's death in 1902, "there became
two main streams in the haiku world, one working more or less in
a traditional form using modern themes and the other which fell
under the 'new development movement.'" Seisensui's school falls under the
latter.
Another important
thing to know about Santoka is that his life was equally as interesting as his poetry. His family life was
filled with tragedy, he tried to commit suicide numerous times and he
also was an alcoholic. Due to all this Santoka became a mendicant priest
who chose walking meditation instead of zazen or sitting meditation.
It is estimated that he walked about 28,000 miles during his life
as a priest. This of course added to his lore. Abrams notes that
in the late 60s Japan began to see a boom in interest in Santoka
and believes that it can be attributed to the poet's wandering lifestyle.
For the majority of people "burdened with family and economic responsibilities" it is easy to see how this could appeal to one's sense of
nostalgia or romanticism. It is interesting to note that we in the US have
had our own Santoka. The first one that comes to mind is Jack Kerouac, immortalized also for his escapades "On the road." Like Santoka, Kerouac could not stay still, wrote to live and also drank
himself to death. Kerouac and Santoka both were attracted to the dharma
(the teachings of the Buddha), and both tried to follow it properly,
but their own ghosts and demons got in the way of their own salvation.
Let's begin with
a brief biography of this colorful figure. As we said before Taneda Santoka was born on December 3rd, 1882 under
the name Shoichi Taneda. He was born in Bofu in the Yamaguchi prefecture,
which is in a rural part of western Japan. Santoka was the first
born out of five children to Takejiro and Fusa. Takejiro, his father,
was a wealthy landowner who had many mistresses and neglected his family.
When Santoka was
10 years old his mother committed suicide by jumping into the family well. She did this when her husband was
on a weekend getaway with one of his mistresses. Santoka was deeply
affected by seeing his mother's dead body be extracted from the well.
His mother was 33. After his mother's death Santoka and his siblings
were raised by one of his aunts.
In 1901 Santoka
went to Tokyo to study for his entrance exams and in 1902 he was admitted to Waseda University where he would study literature.
It was here, in
his early 20s, that Shoichi took on his pen name as Santoka, which means "burning mountain peak." It is also
about this time that he started drinking heavily and began having problems
with all his classes.
In 1904 he had
his first nervous breakdown, dropped out of school and returned home. During this time his father continued to squander
the family wealth on women and had to sell pieces of land to pay
the bills. In 1906 after there was almost nothing left to sell,
Santoka's father used what little was left of the estate to buy a sake
brewery. (Now let me interrupt with a comment: if your son has a drinking problem, the one business you don't want your family to start
is a brewery.) As one would guess the business quickly declined
with his father spending all of his time womanizing and Santoka with
his own demons to deal with.
An interesting
thing that Abrams points out in his article, a point that I could not find in the others, though I could stand
corrected, is that Santoka at an early age wanted to be a Zen priest.
Santoka was not interested in women like his father, and it is said that
due to his mother's death it was too painful for him. Not caring, Santoka's
father pressured his son to marry. It did not take long for the
marriage to fall apart with Santoka going on drinking binges and disappearing
for days on end. He and his wife, Sato, did manage to have one
son which was a result of things going right at the very beginning
of the marriage. They would later divorce in 1920.
Backtracking a
little, in 1913 Santoka became the disciple of Ogiwara Seisenui, the leader of the "New Tendency School." He also
began writing for Seisenui's poetry journal called Soun.
In 1916, he became
poetry editor, which is also the same year that his father's sake business went bankrupt. His father let
all the barrels of sake spoil. Needing a new job and a new start, he
took his wife and son to Kumamato City to start a used bookstore.
Just as things
were going fairly well, Santoka's brother in 1918 committed suicide. To make matters worse the aunt
who raised him after his mother's death also died. He began to drink again
and run up large bar tabs and the cycle of self-destruction resumed,
thus also financially ruining him and his wife's bookstore business.
In 1919 he couldn't
take it any more and left his family to look for a job in Tokyo. In 1920 his wife divorced him. The
same year he found a job as a librarian that had some nice benefits,
but like everything else, he lost that.
After the famous
Tokyo Earthquake of '23 he went back to Kumamoto.
In 1924 the pain
from all of his life culminated in his attempting suicide. Most contemplating suicide would think
of quiet and painless ways to end it, but Santoka of course was different;
he chose to stand facing an incoming train. To me this represents
his strong will to face everything that life had to offer, the
good and the bad. He wanted realization at death and the only way
to have that was to face it directly. Anyway his plan was thwarted, the
conductor spotted him and brought the train to a screeching halt. He was
then brought to a nearby Zen temple where he was invited to stay
as long as he liked. He quickly fell into the rigorous life of a Zen
student and in a year he was ordained a Zen priest at age 42. Though
I have only read what has been written in English about Santoka, I think
it is here with his attempted suicide that his life really begins
to take on a mythical stature.
Every person living
in a Zen temple had certain responsibilities. Santoka's was to teach classes about Zen Buddhism. This
new lifestyle also allowed Santoka to continue his writing. But
as we can guess his ghosts were only in remission. Santoka believed in
order to be a teacher, he should be a perfect example. This internal
struggle resulted in frustration and the feeling that he was a
fake and unworthy of his temple duties.
In 1926, Santoka
left his post to be a mendicant monk.
In 1929 and 1930
he returned to Kumamato briefly. He helped his ex-wife out in her store, started to contribute again
to Soun and then founded his own journal entitled Sambaku. During this
time he continued his cycle of self destruction, running high bar
tabs and disappearing for days on drinking binges. What Santoka seemed to
do after sobering up was to decide to go on pilgrimages or journeys
where he could repent by practicing his walking meditation. These
walks were often in the burning sun or the freezing rain and Santoka allowed
himself no luxuries along the way. However, to some extent, his
intentions were good, but his journeys always seemed to end up by visiting
a poetry friend in the next village or so. This usually meant
inviting himself in with no notice and staying for a few days that
often included the mass consumption of sake. One can only imagine
the face of a poet's wife when she saw Santoka coming to her home.
It is said that Santoka did not like goodbyes and basically after
a few days would say something short and he would just walk away without
turning back. Sometimes too he would get so drunk that he would land
himself in jail, which takes a lot of skill in Japan, because of their
tolerance, or he would not be able to pay his bill and would tell the
police to go to the person's house he was staying at and that they
would pay for him. This was an all too common story for Santoka.
In 1932, Santoka's
disciples or inner poetry circle refurbished an old house and presented it to him. They
called it "Gochuan," which
means "Cottage in the midst." The house or hut, whatever you call it,
was in Ogori in Yamaguchi Prefecture.
That same year
he published his first book, Hachi no ko or Rice Bowl Child. As the story goes, it again
didn't take Santoka long to grow restless. His drinking was out of
control and he decided he needed to repent for all his sins so he took
to the road. This time the combination of the hard road and his
body's being weakened from years of drinking almost took its toll. He
came down with acute pneumonia and was returned to his hut.
One year later,
restless again, he tried to take his life, this time
with sleeping pills. Another failed attempt
and in 1936 he was back on the road. At this point he must have
known his health was failing and Abrams writes:
The last few years
of his life were spent in active writing and continual drifting. As he
[Santoka] noted in his diary at that time, his only two purposes
in life were 'to produce all the true poems that are within
me' and 'to die a blessed death, without lengthy pain, without
being a burden to others.'
In 1938 Santoka
abandoned his hut; he hit the road again and
in 1939 settled in to a temple hermitage in Shikoku near Matsuyama.
Abrams writes:
On October 10,
1940, his poetry companions gathered at the
cottage for their regular discussion meeting and found Santoka in what seemed to
be a drunken stupor, not an unusual condition. They
left him sleeping and went ahead with their meeting,
but after they had returned home, a neighbor came by to
check on him late that night and, finding his condition
worsened, called a doctor. Santoka died early the next
morning, shortly before his 58th birthday, of an apparent apoplexy.
I think it is important
to note that in presenting a paper about
a poet or a writer I would normally have not spent so much time
discussing the person's life history as I have here. I think using
Santoka here as a specific example will help
raise a question that arises all the
time in literary discussions. Can we separate the work from
the poet? Does the person's colorful life enhance
or diminish the author's work? For example, does knowing about
all of Hemingway's adventures raise his work
to a new level, or knowing that Ezra Pound made broadcasts
for the Fascists while living in Italy during World
War II change how we see his work? Is the work strong without our knowing
its associations? Maybe, maybe not. So in other words, if we know the author, do
we look at his or her work differently than if we
did not? The question is between objectivity and association.
What I feel comfortable
saying is that with anything, there
are exceptions. After reading so much about Santoka's
life, I would find it very difficult to separate his life from his haiku.
To me they are one in the same. (An interesting
thing that I also discovered recently is if one reads Kerouac's
letters the writing style is generally
no different than that of his novels. He writes about
the same exact things, the only difference
is that his publishers made him change all the characters' real names
in his novels. It was one of Kerouac's
hopes in his later years to revise all his novels and revert
the fictional names back to the original, but of course he never
got around to it. Reading either his letters or his novels, one walks
away saying what is the difference. I think
the same is true with Santoka.
Let me give you
an example, your rain, Santoka's rain. How many
people here when they write about rain are actually
in the rain. You might get caught in a shower,
but I would guess you are probably writing
from inside a cozy house. (Again there are exceptions.)
When Santoka wrote about rain, he was drenched in it, wearing a thin
monk's robe, straw sandals and a bamboo hat that leaked. He walked
for hours in it and when he found shelter
it was not as if he could change into a dry set of clothes. To me, thus
knowing how Santoka lived really makes me feel a different rain than
if someone else wrote about rain. Santoka's
rain is really wet, really cold, a rain that seeps
into your bones and gives you chills. Here are
some examples of Santoka's rain:
when i die
weeds, falling rain
has my kasa
also begun to leak?
eating my bento
it, too, is rain-soaked
soaking wet
i can't read the
letters
on the signpost
This convention can be
applied to other topics found in Santoka's haiku. The nature
Santoka traveled in, Abrams writes, was not the same nature as Basho,
Issa or Buson, or at least a nature they chose not to portray in their
haiku. "For Santoka [nature] was an exhausting physical experience,
the positive and aggressive exposure of self to blazing suns, freezing
rain, and endless roads of dust and mud."
begging i accept
the blazing sun
hailstones, too,
enter my begging bowl
walking in freezing wind
bitterly reproaching myself
And one of my favorite rain haiku:
i
am wet
by the rain
from that cloud
Even
Santoka's sleep offered little or no comfort after his long lonely day:
using a stone for a pillow
truly sleeping this beggar
Let's talk more about Santoka's haiku. To
start off it is safe to say that Santoka's
haiku were on the short side. His haiku
seldom were longer than ten words and sometimes as few as two.
His haiku are generally
bare, as I said before. To Santoka his haiku
had to tell the stark naked truth even if it were painful. For example:
just
as it is
it rains,
i get wet, i
walk
my
stark naked body
revealed to the sun
Nothing in Santoka's haiku provides shelter
to hide behind. Here we see the monk
wearing
a simple
robe in the
cold:
daily
torn
and tattered
turning
to shreds
my robe
for
traveling
it can't be helped
my old robe
is rotting away
Santoka even goes further than that, he offers the
reader a look at his exposed inner self:
No money
no things
no teeth
just me
This naked approach
to haiku can be found throughout Zen thought. Seeing clearly is seeing the truth. This seeing
though in Buddhism is not an easy thing to do; it is the same with
eating. To really do both properly, to really see or really eat, one
must chew. In this case Santoka has offered us a bowl of rice, plain
white rice, not the house special fried rice with pork, shrimp or whatever,
but simply white rice in a monk's bowl. Can we as readers eat these
haiku and feel full afterwards. In order to do that we need to
be mindful of our meal, really chew our food, take the time to find
its flavor, focus on the taste, the texture, the warmth of the rice.
We also need to do the same for each word in his poems. If we are accustomed
to reading a haiku fast, looking for that immediate gratification,
are we really tasting our haiku? Do we actually spend the time with
each word and bring it to life? To read Santoka's haiku the reader must
do this to walk away fulfilled. There are very few clever tricks,
literary devices, flash or what not to catch the reader's eye here. What
keeps Santoka's haiku afloat is its lightness, the bareness and
the sincerity that comes along with this clear vision and truth that
raises his haiku to a different level. The point I want to reiterate
is that in Santoka's poetry we are forced to chew every grain and
my guess is that for people who swallow their food without tasting
it, the meal could go unappreciated.
Let's return
to the nature in Santoka's haiku. This again is very much aligned with Zen thought. When we generally
read haiku from the masters we find an idealized sense of nature surrounding
them. By being aware of the natural beauty that surrounds them,
they become closer to all that is in the universe, thus elevating
themselves in some type of Eastern Petrachian enlightenment. Haiku
is about being aware. Basho, Buson and Shiki, all studied the Chinese
masters and much of their work drew from these classical ascetics. Because
of their success, it is generally safe to say that on the whole
haiku poets tend to follow these poets' examples by leaning on the
side of beauty.
What is important
about Santoka and his using Zen thought in haiku is that there is no side of nature. Everything
is a cycle, everything is interconnected; is there any part of a
circle that is more important than another, can we even ever designate
what are the parts of a circle anyway. This is Santoka's approach. His
nature was dust, rain, mud, frost biting ice and snow; his trees were
bare, cold, scratchy; his plants were weeds or wild grass. But with
all Santoka's unadorned elements, we must remember their importance
is equal to the aesthetically pleasing cherry blossom
or a gentle breeze. Like the classical poets looked to the beauty of
nature to find truth, Santoka looked in nature's bareness to find his.
R.H. Blyth excerpts this from one of Santoka's diaries: "Those who do not know the meaning
of weeds do not know the mind of nature.
Weeds grasp their own essence and express truth."
To take this
one step further, we can even say that the beauty of the classical nature portrayed by the masters
evoked joy, the bareness of Santoka's nature evoked pain. These
feelings, whichever they might be, in the end tell us a lot about the philosophy
and outlook of the life of the poet.
Let's return
to some major themes that thread throughout Santoka's work. The first that comes to mind
is his motion, his traveling. Again, he sought salvation on the road. He
also knew that he had no real destination. There was always one
more trip. This seems the same with Kerouac who also could not stay still
for a second. Maybe when either of them was still he knew he would
finally have to face himself. So by moving they were able
to avoid this own realization. Allow me to read some more of Santoka's
haiku on this theme:
nice road
to a nice building
it's a crematorium
well, which
way should i go
the wind blows
baggage i
cannot throw off
so heavy front and back
mountains
I'll never see again
fade in the distance
Along with walking we find the theme of drinking equally important. Many of his friends said that Santoka used the excuse of walking meditation to visit friends in his haiku circle. He then would stay
for days on end and drink the host out of house and home, or stick him
with a bar tab.
I remember the first time I learned about Santoka. Stephen Addiss had curated an exhibit at the Japan Society in New York City and among the art work were a few pieces by Santoka. Professor Addiss said that
there were many wonderful stories of how Santoka would trade haiku or calligraphy for sake. Many of these stories to me, though I am certain are true, seem to fall into a sort of traditional folklore about poet priests that were established before Santoka's time by Saigyo, Ikkyu and Ryokan, thus laying the groundwork for Santoka to become a folklore hero. Either way, I feel fortunate that I was first introduced to Santoka by calligraphy done in his own hand. An interesting note, Santoka went to great lengths to justify his drinking and even wrote
a number of doctrines about drinking. The same of course goes for Kerouac. If we removed his writing about drinking for example in
his novel The Big Sur, 80% of the pages would be gone. Here are
some haiku by Santoka: no
sake
i stare at the moon
drunk
i slept with crickets
sometimes
the sound of swallowing sake
seems very lonely
For fun here is one by Kerouac:
missing a kick
at the ice box door
it closed anyway
On a very interesting
note another topic Santoka wrote about was pure cold water. How polemic, on one end we have him being a servant
to sake, alcohol representing so many negative things in many cultures
and of course it is against Buddhist precepts to ingest any intoxicants, while on the other end we have the pureness of water and the countless other things it represents. Clear water can act as a mirror also,
to see one's reflection; this water also acts as a lens to see all things. Water is the giver of life, we drink it, plants need it;
water can connect us to the heavens. Here are some examples:
in the ceaseless sound
of the water there is buddha
glad to be alive
i scoop up the water
receiving the deep
autumn waters
i return
Much of Zen thought
and education is based on koans, which are mental puzzles that require a paradoxical approach to solve. (An example of a koan is "what is the sound of one hand clapping?") Santoka's use of alcohol and water could almost be a koan. We know
when he was flat out broke water was the only thing he could obtain to quench his thirst. Imagine the pain he felt sobering up involuntarily, left to drink water and seeing himself in a basin's or a lake's reflection. It was with pain that he could only see his true self.
On the other hand when he had money, or someone treated him to sake,
he needed to drink a certain amount to "be sober" again, to function
as most alcoholics do. This of course was painful because he would
then castigate himself for breaking his religious vows and having his friends bail him out financially.
What goes in must
come out. Scatological topics are no strangers to Zen. Why, again, there is no difference from the outside from
the inside, no difference or separation between nature and oneself. Urinating and defecating are integral parts of life and have been present in Zen literature for centuries.
I quote Ikkyu:
my dying teacher
could not wipe himself unlike you disciples
who use bamboo I cleaned his lovely ass with my bare hands
In Zen Buddhism shying
away from bodily functions means shying away from life and death. Shying away from the real truth. Here
is a haiku that falls under this category:
nonchalantly pissing
off the side of the road
soaking the young weeds
This poem is important
because to some extent the weeds are Santoka himself. One can still live even without pure water. Notice also
the fate of these weeds--they are not on the path, the road to salvation, but are destined to be on the path's edge. Could this be how Santoka saw himself? I think so.
Another poem tying bodily functions to impermanence is:
pissing blood
how long will I be able
to carry on?
Interconnected to
all of this, Santoka writes about life and some of its hard realities he has to face. I think it is interesting to
note that hardships were not unfamiliar to many of the old masters, but
few chose to express them to such a degree as did Santoka. We look at
Issa for example, how could one have a harder life than his, houses burning down, witnessing all his children become ill and die. Though one
lived, he had passed away before her birth. We recall Issa's famous haiku:
the
world of dew
the world of dew it is indeed
and yet and yet...
It is important to
note that Issa is a good example for another reason. He like Santoka was a poet priest, but in the Pure Land tradition,
not in the Zen.
As mentioned before,
it was the fourth master, Masaoka Shiki, who led the haiku world to reform. It was Shiki who paved the path for poets such as Santoka. Though Shiki was not a poet priest, he suffered tremendously due to being bed ridden with TB. Shiki, like Santoka, called it like it is, which I think during Shiki's time was very daring. Shiki writes:
autumn passes
for me no gods
no buddhas
autumn wind
gods, buddha
lies, lies, lies
Now one from Santoka:
all day long
meeting demons
meeting buddhas
Following the theme of life, there of course is a central theme of death for Santoka. Again let's return to the exception of putting
the poem to the person's life. I think if we read a haiku from someone
who is in great health and not in serious hardship it would be hard for
the reader to accept the poet's words. Santoka of course faced death everyday for much of his life. We remember that both his mother and
his brother committed suicide and he also tried a few times. It can also
be argued that his drinking was a form of slow suicide, and with the combination of his lifestyle he was able to expedite things. Again
it may have been Shiki who paved the way for this to be a common topic
to put in one's notebook. Shiki, having TB, had to also face death on
a daily basis, as did Santoka. I think it is important to note that these
poems did not function the same way as one would write a traditional death poem. Both Shiki and Santoka wrote poems about death on a daily basis. Here are some haiku by Santoka dealing with life on a daily basis combined with death:
some life remains
i scratch my body
falling leaves
deep in the forest
i see a buddha
When hearing this
haiku one can not help but be bombarded with metaphysical metaphors and multiple layers of meaning. This poem undoubtedly offers us many readings. Here we see the falling leaves
and all they represent, but what I think is most interesting is that
it is this bareness of the trees that allows the poet to have a heightened and deeper sense of perception. It is closer to death that the poet
can see clearer and deeper. The buddha in the last line is intriguing.
Is this a typical stone buddha found most anywhere in Japan, or is
this a vision of a deity welcoming the poet to the next realm. Maybe a
Zen answer would be yes, both are correct.
Another major topic
that is abundant in Santoka's work is loneliness. Part of his loneliness again was to isolate himself, see himself
as he truly was and to do penitence for his falls from grace. This loneliness of course is a major theme running throughout the history of haiku literature, but maybe not to the degree as we see here. Some examples are: after all
it's sad to be alone
the withered grasses
the caw of a crow
i too am alone
Here's another one reminiscent of the tanka poet Takuboku:
all day i said nothing
the sound of waves
the long night
made longer -
a dog barking
The opposite of loneliness
is being surround by people. One of Santoka's true joys, like many
haiku poets, was to be with good friends. It was these friends Santoka to some extent depended on. Here is
an example:
(to a friend) The
caption:
Tomorrow I'll come
cooking wild vegetables
for your visit
Interesting note
here, what makes this haiku different is that the vegetables are wild. Santoka, probably can not afford to buy food himself, so he will forage around for something to serve his guest. Stevens also tells a story about a visitor bringing food for himself and Santoka, but when he offered it, Santoka said you eat first,
I have only one bowl, Santoka waited till his guest was done and then ate
out of the same bowl. Or the time he had an overnight guest, but there
were not enough blankets or another place to sleep. Santoka stayed up
all night so his guest could sleep and basically froze. These stories though are not uncommon in the Zen tradition, they are almost expected.
There of course are
many other themes that were present throughout Santoka's work, but the last one I would like to touch upon today
is that of war. Many non-Japanese do not know that many haiku poets
in Japan were thrown in Jail in the 20th Century for either writing non-traditional haiku or writing anti-war protest haiku. Anything against the norm was seen as subversive and many haiku poets spent
some time in jail in the 30s and 40s and were labeled "thought offenders." Saito Sanki was one such poet. In his book The Kobe Hotel he
goes into depth about the round up of poets and going to jail. Here are
some of
his anti-war poems:
cannon booms
I count them
ice melting on my tongue
I buy a mourning
badge -
past noon
the fall of pine cones
from the night ground
stained with cold blood
mushrooms grow
in darkness
over the ochre earth
a single exchange of bullets
As you can hear these
haiku by Saito Sanki paint a picture that is far from the nationalistic propaganda that glorifies the Japanese
Empire of the early 20th Century. Santoka also wrote about Japan's invasion
of China. The only difference is Santoka was hard to find at
that time and somehow managed to avoid the ultra nationalists and jail.
Here are some of Santoka's perhaps most powerful and moving haiku: Marching together
on the ground
they will never step on again
Winter rain clouds-
Thinking: going to China
to be torn to pieces
Leaving hands and
feet
behind in China
the soldiers return to Japan
Will the town
throw a festival
for those brought back as bones?
the bones
silently this time
returned across the ocean
the air raid alarm
screaming, screaming
red persimmons
At this point in time we have covered the poet's life and read enough
of Santoka's haiku for one to get a basic feeling for what the poet is about. My general assumption is that many will like Santoka's poems
and many will not. Whichever category you here might fall under, one can not deny that he has some to offer each and everyone of us. You can't like all the haiku all the time, or some of the haiku some of the
time or all the haiku none of the time, I believe an old Zen master said that.
But maybe it is better
to quote R. H. Blyth than a Bob Dylan Zen Master to conclude this paper. Blyth writes:
Santoka put every
ounce of his spiritual energy into his verses. His verses are a
combination of Zen, Buddhism, and Japaneseness, the last word implying
an innate appreciation of the transitoriness of life, the just-so-ness,
the thus-ness of things, their existence value.
Stanford
M. Forrester is a past president of the Haiku Society of
American and the editor of bottle rockets: a collection of short
verse. In 2003, some of his haiku were published in the Everyman's
Library Pocket Poets Series in the anthology Haiku, edited by Peter
Washington. Most recently some of his poems can be found in American
Zen: A Gathering of Poets, published by Bottom Dog Press.
His favorite
quote is:
"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not
even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and
your own common sense." —Buddha
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