Hexagrams: Zen Poetry

Gordon Greene Roshi, January 2021

 

 

Piercing eyes. Blue fingers. “Any change?” — Andy Robins, Coventry, UK

 

Definition: Hexagram – a six-word poem, written or spoken as a form of training in Chosei Zen

 

 

Street is awake. Who sees that?  — Olga Kalanina, Chicago, IL

 

Background: One limitation of online training events is that they stimulate less use of the senses than in-person Zen training. One way to address that is to overtly put the senses to work in a structured manner. To that end, we adapted for our own use the six-word memoir form created by writer Larry Smith in 2006.

 

 

Smell of winter. Don’t know why. — Ken Kushner, Madison, WI

 

Characteristics: There is a long relationship in Japan between the haiku poetry form and Zen. There are many characteristics of a haiku as described by D. T. Suzuki in Zen and Japanese Culture. The ones that feel most significant when writing a hexagram are:

 

  • Words emerge from the unconscious, leaving no taste of ego.

  • They are constrained to six words, no more, no less.

  • It shows absorption into a moment, especially in nature but not necessarily.

  • It is anchored by something specific, tangible, concrete.

  • A hexagram captures an experience felt and shared through the senses.

  • It is evocative of emotion without naming an emotion.

 

 

Icy cold. Squirrels. Life and death. — Joe Pittelli, Gardner, MA

 

Instructions:

  • There are three scheduled times for writing hexagrams each day, 30 – 45 minutes in length.

  • Each time, go outside for 15 – 20 minutes, walking or standing quietly as if doing zazen.

  • If you can’t go outside, step onto a balcony, open a window, stand in a doorway.

  • Come back inside and write as many hexagrams as possible about your experience. You might have only one, or five, or even none.

  • You don’t have to show these to anyone unless you decide you would like to share.

  • One way to deepen a hexagram is to share it with others and see how they then play with it, changing words, either to sharpen your meaning or to take part of the hexagram in a new direction.

 

 

Junk is good. The effort, the failures. Writing poetry is less about expertise than effort. We write poetry from the inarticulate part of ourselves. We write from the place where we don’t know what to say…Poetry is an act of courage. Of stopping. Of listening, seeing, pay attention. Of seeing things as they are this very moment.

– James Keene, Bainbridge Island, WA

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