Zen Punk

Is there room in religion for rebelliousness, sarcasm and pessimism?

What about blasphemy and breaking taboos? Scatological humor??

Zen poems are confounding because they break conventional expectations of what religious devotion looks like.

Here's a poem that beginner students might expect to be Zen, because it is about serenity and is reverent toward nature: (poems source)

Contentment 

As the pines grew old and the clouds idled 

He found boundless contentment within himself. 

And here are some poems that students might not expect at all to be Zen:

This is Our World

We eat, excrete, sleep, and get up; 

This is our world. 

All we have to do after that–

Is to die.

Angsty poem? Well, not really, but that is how students will probably read it...I'm thinking that this poem is probably going to irk some Millennial generation kids because they will think it is very depressing. :) 

Free Spirit

Every day I'm either in a wine shop or a brothel, 

A free-spirited monk who is hard to fathom; 

My surplice always appears torn and dirty, 

But when I patch it, it smells so sweet. 

A surplice is an outer garment made of cotton or linen. Discussing its odor is a little scandalous in this context, no? :)

A Death Verse

I rebuke the wind and revile the rain,  
I do not know the Buddhas and patriarchs;  
My single activity turns in the twinkling of an eye,  
Swifter even than a lightning flash.  
Death verse of Zen master Nanpo Jõmyõ (titled Daiõ Kokushi 大應國師, 1235-1308) (Zen Buddhism: A History, Japan, 40)

This poem shows a dying Zen master rebuking what is generally sacred in Buddhism: nature and the buddhas, or awakened ones.

Chang Chiu-ch'en's Poem of Enlightenment

In a moonlit night on a spring day, 

The croak of a frog 

Pierces through the whole cosmos and turns it into 

a single family!
The Upasaka Chang Chiu-ch'en (張九成) was pondering a koan when he was in the toilet. Suddenly he heard the croak of a frog, and he was awakened, as evidenced by the following lines:" (The Golden Age of Zen 284)

The last poem takes on a new connotation when you read the liner notes -- that Chang Chiu-ch'en reached enlightenment on the toilet hearing a 'frog croak'...I wonder if the frog croak is supposed to be taken figuratively? :)

So how do we reconcile the punk-rock-ishness of the latter poems with the much more reverent earlier one (and the many others like it)? This contradiction gets to the very heart of Zen -- and is a wonderful problem for students to wrestle with.