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Rightview Quarterly frequently features 'Buddhist' poems on its pages. Here we are pleased to present selections by the renowned Korean poet and writer, Ko Un. And from the current issue, selected poems by Phillip Whalen.

PHILIP WHALEN has been described as the poet laureate of the Beat generation. His poetry is inspiring, original, candid, and often witty. It is filled with perceptual moments of profound insight. Here we have selected a few of his 'Buddhist' poems from The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen—a 900-page tome that includes all of Whalen’s poems, collected and assembled by his longtime friend and editor, Michael Rothenberg.

Japanese Tea Garden
Golden Gate Park in Spring

1.
I come to look at the cherryblossoms
for the last time
2.
Look up through flower branching Deva world
(happy ignorance)
3.
These blossoms will be gone in a week
I’ll be gone long before.

Whalen_Poems

ko-un
KO UN is Korea's foremost living writer. After immense suffering during the Korean War, he became a Buddhist monk. His first poems were published in 1958, then a few years later he returned to the secular world. He has published more than 120 volumes of poems, essays, and fiction and has been nominated for a Nobel Prize several times.

RESTING
by Ko Un

The era when you galloped on horseback
is past, but not gone. Another era
for galloping on horseback is here.
Earn what you need for each day
Then take it easy, eating and resting. Azaleas
still blossom all round you. Sighing
is not sorrow. When you stop to sigh,
kites in the sky seem to pause as well.

True rest should be the mind’s highest state.