Coming to the Buddha's Way: A Zennist Reading of Kenneth Rexroth's Longer Poems.

• Main Authors: Chiu-chu Yeh, 葉秋菊
• Other Authors: Yuan-yin Cheng
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 1993
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/00235221527964953397

碩士 === 淡江大學 === 西洋語文研究所 === 81 === This thesis intends to interpret Kenneth Rexroth's longer poems in light of Zen Buddhism. Read as a unit, as suggested in the Introduction to the Collected Longer Poems by Rexroth, the four poems form a travelogue of a soul, searching its origin through every possible source of enlightenment, including literature, philosophy, and religion. The aim of this thesis is to illustrate that zen Buddhism provides a good framework for understanding the poet's process of searching from one state to another. My discussion falls into four chapters. Chapter One tries to explain from the Zen view the sense of frustration and the limitation of philosophical approaches to the anguish recorded in "The Homestead Called Damascus." Chapter Two and Three demonstrate that Rexroth's quest for spiritual affirmation continues in the next two poems, "The Phoenix and the Tortoise" and "The Dragon and the Unicorn," in which the bitterness and agitation is replaced by a recognition of a universal responsibility and a strong belief of a community of love. The final chapter discusses that Rexroth, in his last long poem "The Heart's Garden, the Garden's Heart," has come to realize that daily existence with its problems is the only reality, identifying himself with the creative forces of life, and finally, at the end is able to approach reality through an experiential tradition to discipline the self. In this sense, his experience embodies the realm of Zen Buddhism: to see things as they are, no more and no less.