Three zen masters

The virtuous – The dreamer – The vagabond

You will discover the tales of three prodigious and sensitively distinct Japanese lives. First, Master Dôgen in the 13th century, with the delicacy of a great scholar at the service of the experience of meditation and the spreading of the awakening begun upon his return from a long journey in the Chinese monasteries. The tale of a man with a frail constitution, founder of a rigorous order but who also loves to sing in the name of mountains and nature as a living expression of truth. Five centuries later, Ryokan, a wandering poet and beggar monk: he touches us with his disarming and enlightening naivety, his love of beings and women, his taste for gambling with the children of the villages he crosses, his joy and goodness, which he shares in dazzling haikus, masterpieces of the genre. And finally Santoka, at the beginning of the 20th century, who spends his life wasting it, then becomes a Zen monk and ends up an alcoholic vagabond. Always in search of enlightenment, he writes heartbreaking and daring poems that testify forcefully to the debacle of his illusions and the traditional world around him.