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.
RHYTHM IN HAIKU?: An article by Elizabeth St Jacques
LOOKING AT HAIKU: An article by Elizabeth St Jacques
HAIKU LIGHT: Haiku by some of the best poets in the world today.
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