IKKY'S

DEATH
POEM

DEATH POEM

by James H. Sanford

In: Zen-man Ikky, (Harvard Studies in World Religions; no. 2),
Scholars Press, Chico, CA. 1981, pp. 190-192.


Ikky's Death Poem



t was the custom for a declining Zen master to author a
final poem as a legacy to his followers. Such a death poem
might be written a good deal in advance of the man's de-
mise, or it might be written from his deathbed. In either case,
the poem was taken to be an especially meaningful expression
of the monk's entire lifetime.
There are at least three poems that are commonly presented as
Ikky's death poem. The first of these is:
Dimly, dimly, thirty years,
Weakly, weakly, thirty years;
Dimly, weakly, sixty years.
In the end I take a crap as offering to Brahma.
This is resonably good Zen "theology" and would certainly
not be an unlikely self-statement from Ikky, but it really
seems a bit shallow as a summation of his entire life. Further-
more, it appears to date from his sixtieth year and is written in
Japanese, whereas the normal tkan death poems were al-
ways in Chinese.
A second poem is also a bit too shallow and found only in a
Japanese version:
The loan was taken a month ago, yesterday.
Repayment is this month, today.
I return four of the five I borrowed,
I still hang on to Original Emptiness.
I
Ikky's Death Poem
The third poem survives in Ikky's own hand:
In all the world
Who understands my Zen?
Even if Hs-t'ang
1
were to come,
He wouldn't be worth half a copper.
There can be little doubt that this was Ikky's actual death
poem and that it dates from his final days and quite possibly
his final hours. First of all, the poem is written in Chinese in
the four lines of four characters style that was the standard
format for death poems of the Hs-t'ang/Dai lineage. Be-
yond this, the text echoes quite closely the content of the death
poems of the earlier masters of Ikky's line poems in which
three themes emerge repeatedly an explicit recognition of
impending death, a resigned but somehow despairing sense
of aloneness before this final event, and the expressed fear
that whatever the religious insights the writer has attained,
they are almost certain to be lost to later generations. Ikky's
poem stresses the last of these themes, but the other two are
also there just below the surface. The closing two lines make
up a quite defensible Zen statement, but their surprising
harshness is, of course, typically Ikky.
Aside from this internal literary evidence, and the fact that it
is clearly written in his hand, the scroll itself virtually be-
speaks Ikky in that he has initially omitted the third charac-
ter of the first line and then later scrawled it into the margin
between the second character and the misplaced fourth char-
acter. Few things could be more characteristic of Ikky than
this iconoclastic refusal to "pretty things up".

1
Xutang Zhiyu (1185-1269) [Jap. Kid Chigu]
Ikky's Death Poem
On the reverse side of the scroll is the signature San, the date
1641, and the explanation of the scroll's transmission. Accord-
ing to this inscription, the scroll was originally placed in the
hands of Ikky's disciple, Bokushitsu, who passed it on to a
monk called Shgaku who gave it to one Gyokuh Srin.
Srin in his turn put it in the hands of the Shinj-an hermitage
for further safekeeping.

Other English versions:
South of Mt. Sumeru,
Who meets my Zen?
Even if Hs-t'ang comes
He's not worth half a penny.
Translated by Sonja Arntzen

[1]
In this vast universe,
Who understood my Zen?
Even if Hs-t'ang himself came back
He would not be worth half a penny!
[2] Death Verse
In this vast realm
Who understands my Zen?
Even if Master Kid shows up,
He is not worth a cent!
Translated by John Stevens
Ikky's Death Poem

South of Mount Sumeru
Who understands my Zen?
Call Master Kido over
He's not worth a cent.
Translated by Lucien Stryk & Takashi Ikemoto

In all the kingdom southward
From the center of the earth
Where is he who understands my Zen?
Should the master Kido himself appear
He wouldn't be worth a worn-out cent.
Translated by Yoel Hoffmann