THE HAIKU    


    by H. F. Noyes


    PART I:  NATURALNESS


The Japanese world of art and poetry is rife with subtle 
terms of elusive meaning to a Westerner. These are not 
definable with anything like the precision we take for 
granted in English. The word haiku combines hai, 
meaning natural, with ku, the syllable for sky 
or emptiness.* In Part I, let us try to understand 
some of the implications of the first syllable. 

The depth and meaningfulness of the haiku tradition 
hasstemmed in large measure from Zen, a precept of 
which is, "do not on any account interfere with the 
natural course of life." The discursive mind, with 
its ego-centered orientation, is of course the prime 
interferer with the natural. It has been said that 
civilization's art is doing natural things in unnatural 
ways. The haiku master Basho said that we need to learn 
afresh directly from nature not merely through close 
observation, but from "immersing ourselves in things" 
so that there is no artificial separation between 
observer and observed. Then things can speak for 
themselves in their own voices. He wrote:

                     Such stillness!
                The voice of the cicada
                  sinks into the rocks

When we return to a natural childlike wonder, we 
hear again what Tagore called the conch shell of 
the Unknown. The natural subject of the haiku is the 
interplay of all nature, from which are derived those 
arresting juxtapositions of the moment that make our 
haiku live:

                    On the riverbank
              a small boy casts his line –
                 the scattering clouds
                        –  JoanCouzens Sauer [1]

We do not pick and choose according to our judgment of
what is significant. Our sketch of each experience 
simply reflects what is. An example is this haiku by 
Issa, the most artless of the masters:

                  As if nothing happened 
                    –  the crow there
                       the willow here[2]

What is enlightenment but the natural state of "seeing 
into the life of things" – allowing the thing to 
"perceive itself in us"? A haiku should have the 
freshness of "inception," a word Walt Whitman used to 
convey "as it was in the beginning, is now …" It's 
proper subject is being – a world apart from 
mere existence, in which we stray into non-awareness 
and isolation. Thoreau wrote: "Sometimes as I drift 
on Walden Pond I cease to exist and begin to be." In
natural being, we have freedom from conditioning, from 
the pursuit of happiness, beauty, and 
significance. Our thoughts are untethered, unbelled as 
the stars, free as a child at play. Out of the 
freshness of a detached awareness, haiku arise when we 
learn to 
    "Awaken the mind without fixing it anywhere."[3]


      PART II:  EMPTINESS


The second element in the word haiku – ku 
– symbolizes sky or emptiness. There is an Indian 
Buddhist saying that reconciles these two meanings: 
"Unite! Like the union of sky with sky."[4] When 
we're as clear as the sky, we can know the oneness 
of all of life. The concept of emptiness is at the
heart of Taoism. Chuang-Tzu said, "The tao (the Way) 
is emptiness," and Lao-Tzu, "to be empty is to be 
full." The interpenetration – the interbeing – we 
sense in the haiku moment derives from this emptiness-
fullness. The most powerful poetic image I know for 
describing this state of purgation is that of Wallace 
Stevens in these lines from "Snow Man":

  For the listener, who listens in the snow,
  And, nothing himself, beholds
  Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Perception of "nothing that is not there" – that is 
the great secret; for whatever we inject into a haiku 
that is not really there will obviate or defile the 
oneness we seek to invoke.

It is true that the haiku moment we write about takes 
place in the here and now. And yet, paradoxically, 
when our freedom from self-preoccupation allows us 
to tune into the universe, the moment is transmuted 
beyond time and space:

           Beyond all tallied time
           to find this virgin space
           and here encounter now![5]

When we let go of all our preconditioning, discarding 
our habitual mental sets, biases and stagnant emotive 
states, our brush against the small and ordinary 
connects us with the universal and eternal. The 
absence of the period at the end of the modern haiku 
is meant to leave the haiku open-ended for an echoing 
extension into what Blake termed "eternity's sunrise."

When we open a forest seed, in the empty covering may
reside unseen the essence of some great tree. The 
essence of mind is similarly concealed. To quote from 
a Zen anthology:

      There is no place to seek the mind;
 It is like the footprints of birds in the sky[6]

These Li Po lines translate selfless ku into poetry:

      The birds have vanished into the sky
      and now the last cloud drains away.

      We sit together, the mountain and me,
      until only the mountain remains.[7]

Let us on our haiku journeys, in the words of the 
great Persian poet, Rumi, wash ourselves of ourselves.[7]
And through this ego-cleansing we can then hope to
experience Nature's wholeness through the wholeness 
of our own nature.


* This ku is Chinese; the Japanese ku means something
  close to "playful" in English

[1] WIND CHIMES, edited by H.F. Noyes, 
The Blossoming Rudder

[2] Translated by Nanao Sakaki, 
Inch by Inch

[3] The Diamond Sutra

[4] S. B. Dasgupta, An Introduction 
to Tantric Buddhism

[5] H.F. Noyes, My Rain, My Moon

[6] From ZENRINKUSHU cited in R. H. Blyth, 
Eastern Culture

[7] From The Enlightened Heart, 
edited by Stephen Mitchell

This article first appeared many years ago in 
ORPHIC LUTE.


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