The realities (rather than concepts) of emptiness (sunyata), suchness or the thing itself (tathata), and the oneness of the phenomenal world are the essential enterprises of the Haiku poem. In its expression of true reality, Poetry of this and other kinds finds experience in Zen, as the direct awareness of things-as-they-are. In experiencing the world as it happens, rather than ideas about it, Zen espouses the impossibility of describing or hanging on to truth. Zen is truth, it is life. As D. T. Suzuki writes, Zen, being life itself, contains everything that goes into the makeup of life: Zen is Poetry. He continues, Zen is not to be confined within conceptualization Zen is what makes conceptualization possible. The nonconceptual nature of Zen, of reality itself, is built into the Haiku expressive form, its breadth and structure, its refusal to initiate subjectivity or duality, its ability to capture and experience a moment in time. As a mediation of Zen religiosity , Haiku often seeks those aims that Zen avows: the spontaneity of the satori experience, in which the self is transcended and a realization of emptiness, suchness, and oneness with the uniVerse is momentarily glimpsed.
While other form of Poetry, Eastern and Western, likewise carry the ability to touch this deep transparency, it is the Haiku that builds this experience into its form. The syllabic restrictions of Haiku (seventeen in total) can be examined as an avoidance of barriers in the pursuit of essential reality. Adding words means commentary, conceptualization, a finger pointing to the moon (as the old paradigm goes) rather than the moon itself. To the degree that words and description are not reality, it reduced words to a minimum [because they stand in the way of reality. Zen believes in say ing by not-saying. Haiku mediates this belief. As with the inherent barrier of words, the subjective nature of self likewise intervenes in the attainment of oneness, in touching things-as-they-are. To this end, Haiku has an inherent preoccupation with discarding the self and the ego, as in Zen practice. Basho, the most famous Haiku poet and the ideal of the poet-ascetic, instructed: Learn from a pine things about a pine, and from a bamboo things about a bamboo. This communion with the object of the poem aims at the dissolution of subjectivity, and thus the ego. Dualisms between poet and object are transcended to initiate and express the satori experience. The true poet, writes Makoto Ueda, has his mind totally transparent during his composition. This transparency, the absence of ego, speaks to both the transpersonal tendency of Haiku Poetry and the central practice of Zen, meditation. The one who is able to forsake personal emotion for transpersonal energy, throu gh deep contemplation and communion with the uniVerse, reaches a state that can allow for spontaneous creation. Haiku is thus formed, not through force or logic, but ideally from a place of emptiness, of satori. Similarly, Haiku poems avoid reference to universal oneness, the emptiness and suchness it attempts to experience. To speak of the one as though it were an entity among entities is precisely (and wrongly) to constitute such an entity. Again we see how concepts, in Zen and Haiku, become useless. As an expression of Zen ascetics and values (if there can be said to be such a thing), Haiku is perhaps the natural mediator.
The essence of Haiku, in its ability to touch essential reality, seems more a result of poetic spirit than reliance on specific form. All Poetry can initiate Zen fundamental s. Poetic spirit, Basho wrote, through which man follows the creative energy of nature, [allows for everything they see [to become a lovely flower. Thus a poem is simply the result of a much larger poetic framework, the expression of a holistic mode of being in which life itself becomes Poetry. This is the real nexus of Haiku and Zen, of Poetry as religious dialogue. As the natural result of a religious/poetic existence (one in the same given the Zen approach), Poetry is written all the time, not simply with pen and paper, but through the discourse known as life. The poem simply crystallizes the moment of becoming or melting into the eternal stillness It is an enlightenment as returning to the original oneness. But this crystallization is born of a much larger method, one which entails a deep connection with the phenomenal world, with nature itself. Most Zen Poetry deals with concrete phenomena, the song of the cicada or frog, mountains and mists and moons. Any noti on of enlightenment that would transcend the phenomenal world in search of a world beyond is rejected. Washing dishes, weeding the garden therein is found satori, and thus Poetry.
As the experience and expression of satori, of things-as-they-are (tathata), ego-transcendent emptiness (sunyata), of the oneness of the entire uniVerse, Poetry initiates an awareness as realized in Zen. While the Haiku does so in form as well as substance, all Poetry that is written from a place of emptiness, from a transpersonal perspective of suchness, can touch essential reality and instigate the essence of Zen mind. Yet the poem is only half the equation: the ability of the reader to likewise ascertain the transcendence of self, the momentary glimpse of satori, carries equal weight. He or she must also be available to the spontaneous connection, ready to experience that which a Haiku or other poem seeks to transmit. The reader comprehends the poem only to the extent that he himself is able to achieve similar intuitive perception through the re-created experience of the poem. Our own availability to the transmission of the satori experience is perhaps the completion of the poets work, the circle that closes back in on itself, in which reality-as-it-is becomes realized, transmitted, and experienced anew.
1.Hiraga, Masako K. 1987. Eternal Stillness: A Linguistic Journey to Bashō's Haiku about the Cicada. Poetics Today, 8(1). Durham: Duke University Press.
2. Huntley, Frank Livingston. 1952. Zen and the Imagist Poets of Japan. Comparative Literature. Eugene: University of Oregon Press.
3.Norton, Jody & Snyder, Gary. 1987. The Importance of Nothing: Absence and Its Origins in the Poetry of Gary Snyder. Contemporary Literature, 28(1). Madison: University of Wiscons in Press.
4.Lama Purevbat. Interview. May, 2006. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
5.Rextroth, Kenneth. 1971. One Hundred Poems from the Japanese. New York: New Directions.
6.Suzuki, D.T. 1951. The Philosophy of Zen. Philosophy East and West, 1(1). Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
7.Thich Nhat Hanh. Interview. March 2006. Thenac, France.
8.Ueda, Makoto. 1963. Basho and the Poetics of Haiku. by Makoto Ueda The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. Philedelphia: The American Society for Aesthetics.
9.Watanabe, Manabu. 1987. Religious Symbolism in Saigyō's Verses: A Contribution to Discussions
Author:: Isaac Blacksin
Keywords:: Zen,Haiku,Basho,Poetry,Asia,Eastern,Buddhism,Buddha,Spirituality,Verse
Post by History of the Computer | Computer safety tips
No comments:
Post a Comment