Virals is a section in which one person choses a haiku by another person and comments on that haiku. Then the author of that haiku is invited to select a haiku by someone else and comment on that poem, and so on. For an introduction to this section, see Virals.
Viral 6.5
From Here On Earth
BY Judith Christian
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that star
seems close enough
to swim to
—Diane Gillen Lynch
We are, always have been, and always will be, among the stars. It was natural enough, pleasant enough, to choose this haiku by Diane Gillen Lynch. I first heard the rhythms of language in songs such as “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” and I am dazzled by the images sent by the Hubble Space Telescope. It is also easy for me to travel off into intellectual musings about our relationship to stars. Why do we travel among them? Why do we want to touch them?
Ancient Buddhist cosmology asserted the existence of multiple, if not infinite, world systems. Then, as now, the light that travels from stars is what defines, what gives us the knowledge of those worlds. Epicurus, about 23 centuries ago, wrote, “There will be nothing to hinder an infinity of worlds.” Is it that the light of our minds knows that the stars will never end, and so to be among them means that we, too, have no beginning and no end? Modern astrophysics edges closer and closer to the ancients’ belief in the coming into being and passing away of an infinite number of universes, the system itself having no beginning and no end.
But wait . . . Basho is shaking his head and warning me away from such musings. Look at the first line of this well-tempered haiku. That star . . . of course. One star, the particular (Venus?), shining in the night sky, and from its light, the coming into existence of the observer. From our position on the Earth, with the naked eye we can look at only one star at a time. We can see many, but to really look, to discern the color and brightness with the naked eye, it’s one at a time. It is that particular star, and this particular poem, we are to look at, with the same intense gaze that is required to look at the night sky.
Where is the star and where is the observer? I see the star on or near the horizon, and between that star and the observer is a lake, or more likely, an ocean; but even if there is no intervening body of water, the night sky has its own horizons, and its own endless black pool. And, yes, the star seems close enough, but to swim to? There is a longing set up by the word seems, and the wistful desire to rejoin our eternal star selves is mediated by that word. We are firmly on terra firma, we are, alas, stuck here on Earth, which is exactly where a haiku should be. There is a beautiful hesitation, a gap between the second and last line, a place of expectation. I’m hooked. I’m there gazing into the distance for a moment, until the wave comes in and wakes me: to swim to. There is a dark danger in the last line. Overcome by longing for the eternal, desperate, or just impulsive—there could be many reasons for a night swim to a star; but like a hand grabbing one’s elbow, “seems” keeps us safe. There will be no swim. There is only the wonder, the inscape, the lapping water, and the lasting light of this poet and this poem.
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As featured poet, Diane Gillen Lynch will select a poem and provide commentary on it for Viral 6.6.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
• Viral 6.1 (Metz ➝ Robinson)
• Viral 6.2 (Robinson ➝ McClintock)
• Viral 6.3 (McClintock ➝ LeBlanc)
• Viral 6.4 (LeBlanc ➝ Christian)
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The best poems of Bashō, Chiyo-ni, Buson, et al. are, obviously, great regardless of whether we call them “haiku” or “hokku”. The fact is that “hokku” is reserved now for the starting verse of a renku, and “haiku” is understood to indicate standalone verses, including those from before the 20th c. Blyth titled his four-volume study of mostly pre-20th c. work Haiku. When the HSA Definitions Committee approached the Japanese scholar Kametaro Yagi, he told them in no uncertain terms: “‘Hokku’ as a synonym of ‘haiku’ is now completely obsolete” (Haiku Path, p. 75).
It’s rather like insisting that we call an American Dipper a Water Ouzel and a Gray Jay a Whiskey Jack and a Peregrine Falcon a Duck Hawk, simply because those were the names those birds had in Thoreau’s time. “What’s in a name?” Names often change, and as you should know change is the world’s nature.
Also, “modern haiku”, in my view, is extraordinarily diverse and quite fascinating in both its continuities and discontinuities with the past. If you observe contemporary haiku carefully enough, you should be able to find much to admire, even with highly conservative predilections. Also, do you really imagine you would have liked everything going on in haiku in earlier times? There’s no point in idealizing the past. Most haiku of earlier eras were trivial, ephemeral, derivative, formulaic, uninspired. I feel certain there is more quality work being done now in haiku than ever before–and that there has never been a more exciting time to be involved with haiku than now, during its global expansion.
All artforms are progressive and dynamic. In twenty-first century America we don’t write our haiku in seventeenth-century Japanese. Vital art is never simply an imitation of old art, however much it may find inspiration there. I believe in taking a sympathetic interest in the work and aims of my contemporaries–not bashing them for failing to conform to a static, Platonic ideal of what haiku “should be.” I also believe in restless experimentation to find what really works as haiku in English. Those are ways of living in the now.
There are some overlaps in our view of the relationship between haiku, Buddhism, and nature, and I respect your erudition but not the inflexible and dismissive polemics in whose service you tend to place that erudition. I’m sure you’ll come back with more of the same semantic politics, but you’ll have to forgive me if this is my last word on this particular subject, about which there is nothing new to be said: “haiku” vs. “hokku”. Everyone knows the historical facts, and life’s too short for endlessly repeating the obvious. So I’m more than happy to agree to disagree with you.
While it is true that the Buddha’s teachings on dukkha, anicca, and anatta charaterize all conditioned phenomena, the Buddha taught that phenomena are not, or are without a Self.
This was meant to apply to the conglomerates that composed human being as well as to phenomenal existence, from the microcosm to the macrocosm.
From the nikayas:
“Wherefore, monks, whatever is material shape, past, future or present, internal…thinking of all this material shape as ‘This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self,’ he should see it thus as it really is by means of perfect wisdom. Whatever is feeling…whatever is perception…whatever are the habitual tendencies…whatever is consciousness, past, future or present, internal…thinking of all this consciousness as ‘This is not mine, this am I not, this is not my self,’ he should see it thus as it really is by means of perfect wisdom. Seeing it thus, monks, the instructed disciple of the pure one turns away from material shape, he turns away from feeling, turns away from perception, turns away from the habitual tendencies, turns away from consciousness; turning away he is detached; by his detachment he is freed; in freedom there is the knowledge that he is freed and he comprehends: Destroyed is birth, brought to a close the Brahma-faring, done is what was to be done, there is no more being such or so.”
Jack wrote:
“Nothing I do
can separate me from you-
green hill”
A student of hokku would say, however, that implicit in that is the “I”-”you” dichotomy of separation.
Nothing I do
can separate me from you-
green hill
I’ve been reading this thread with interest. Wish I had more time to contribute. A couple of observations:
I think it’s notable that more than a few people here are, or have been, practising buddhists.
While neither hokku or haiku or modern haiku (if you want to call it that) lead directly to enlightenment (big, small, great, minor, medium, can these distinctions be meaningful descriptors for enlightenment?) they have lead some to an interest in the thought and even practice of buddhism.
Regarding the last posting by Alan, I agree with much (but not all) that he says. What is interesting to me is the degree to which the viewpoint of modern haiku can divorce man from Nature, whereas in Buddhism, whether spoken of or not, Nature is implicit in all that is said. The three “sigils” of Dukkha, Anicca, and Anatta inherently apply not to man as separate from Nature, but to man as a part of Nature, to which whole all these characteristics apply.
In teaching hokku this is simply a part of it from the very beginning. In modern haiku it is a conscious choice to either “reconnect” with Nature or not. But of course it is a false choice, because man is inherently inseparable from Nature — it is only through delusion that one can imagine humans as separate. To put it in deistic terms, “Vocatus atque non vocatus Deus aderit” — “Called or not called, the god will be there.” That is something that much of modern haiku with its dismissal of Nature or delusional reinterpretation of Nature as “all things whether human artifacts or not”
fails to recognize.
And that is also why there is the present distinction between haiku as “poetry” and hokku (and conservative haiku) as an expression of the unity of man and Nature. Modern haiku is all too often a manifestation of the psychological alienation of modern humans that Carl Jung so deplored, an alienation reflected in much modern art and literature. It is quite the opposite of what we find in old Chinese landscape painting, in flower arranging, in the tea ceremony, landscape gardening, and in hokku — as well as in New England Transcendentalism.
As for “not attaching much importance” to terminology — whether one uses the historically incorrect and anachronistic term “haiku” to describe what was really hokku or not — the matter is of vital importance because of what modern haiku has become and the great extent to which it is completely different from the old hokku in aesthetics, technique, and underlying principles. I would not place such great emphasis upon it if I had not discovered through experience how deleterious this misuse of terminology is to the learning of hokku.
That is just one more instance of how very different the whole approach of hokku is from that of modern haiku in general.
David
Alan said it rather well when he wrote:
“Later Buddhist-inspired nature poetry, I feel, builds from such “foundations” as well as from key concepts such as impermanence, selflessness, mindfulness, and so on, all of which have applications to nature in a broad sense. Mindfulness, in particular, leads to the kind of “wordless” expression Michael describes quite well: “words…become so transparent and invisible that you go directly to the image or experience, and see or feel that as directly as possible.”
In hokku we put that a slightly different way, but the meaning is essentially the same. We say that the write of hokku gets himself out of the way so that Nature may speak. It is this “self” that obscures the unity of man and Nature. And it is also this “self” that causes the dichotomy in writing between verses in which the writer is a clear mirror reflecting Nature (a mirror that thus becomes invisible, removing the distinction between subject and object) and verses that are written with “thinking,” that is, with abstraction, commentary — intellection in general.
Torrential discourse!
I just want to mention, Jack, that I used the term “renku” because Ueda does. He also uses “haiku” to describe Bashō’s standalone verses. I don’t attach a lot of importance to this subject.
Also: Yes, I’ve been a practicing Theravada Buddhist for some time and studied vipassanā meditation in Thailand. I agree with your general point that “Nature was not the Buddha’s subject”–but there is, in fact, quite a bit of nature imagery within the Pāli canon. In the verses of The Dhammapada, for instance, there are haunting images such as:
“The mindful apply themselves; they cling to no abode. Like swans flying from a lake, they leave their home” (7.91).
“As a felled tree grows back as long as its roots remain, so suffering will return again and again until craving is rooted out” (24.338).
These are metaphorical images, of course, but they connect human nature with nature. And there are many more like them, all attributed to Gotama. It’s not really that hard to see how they could develop into something like haiku, especially with the implicit understanding that “you are that”.
There are also a number of passages that advise one to seek contact with nature:
“Sitting alone, resting alone, walking alone, unwearied, taming oneself, one finds delight in the forest” (21.305).
So, participating as part of nature is within the tradition from the start.
(Btw, these are my own versions of the verses, based on nine translations I consulted of The Dhammapada.)
Later Buddhist-inspired nature poetry, I feel, builds from such “foundations” as well as from key concepts such as impermanence, selflessness, mindfulness, and so on, all of which have applications to nature in a broad sense. Mindfulness, in particular, leads to the kind of “wordless” expression Michael describes quite well: “words…become so transparent and invisible that you go directly to the image or experience, and see or feel that as directly as possible.”
Interesting discussions…
Allan (with 2 ls)
Sandra, you quoted these two poems from Ginya and offered them as “wordless” poems:
Haiku 1:
“Xyz?”
“Abcdef,
xyz!”
Haiku 2:
FFFFF -
YYYYYYY
IIIII
Actually, I’d say that they couldn’t be more wordful, as opposed to wordless. They don’t have to be actual words for this to be the case. The point here is that the poems are pointing at LANGUAGE rather than at experience. A wordless poem points at image or experience.
Of course, you did caveat your mention of these poems by saying that they are perhaps a “too literal” example of wordlessness, but of course only when thinking of these poems as not using actual words. But that isn’t what is meant by “wordlessness” in Watts or Amann.
Also, John Cage’s 4’33″ isn’t really equivalent to the wordlessness I’m talking about, no more than other composition of his might be. He uses silence in that piece, but silence is not equal to wordlessness. Wordlessness is when the words (you still need to use words!!!) become so transparent and invisible that you go directly to the image or experience, and see or feel that as directly as possible.
Michael
I thank you, Alan, for the reference to Basho’s renga in Ueda. I might have a look at it when I have time. Unfortunately, I once owned the book, read it too many years ago to remember much of it. And, that goes for almost all of my books, including almost all on the subject of haiku. I was under the belief that it would be best, after reading so much, to put books away and experience directly (although I’m afraid it didn’t work out as planned, probably because in my opinion all things are mediated and there’s no way to avoid that-except perhaps Buddhism, but I didn’t find that to “clear” my mind either.).
I also thank you for your other reference to DT Suzuki on nature and Buddhism.
I would point out that if you’ve read what’s called the Theravadan sutras, you will never find the Buddha discussing nature per se. Nature was not the Buddha’s subject. In fact, while we are naturally a part of nature, a part of the whole flow,as you say, the practice of emancipation from suffering may lead to an initital sense of the one-ness of self and non-self,but enlightenment beyond that is something else.
But, I personally could use a bit more groundedness and it might not be a bad idea to participate again as part of nature,instead of being so incredibly occupied with the contents of my mind.
Well said, David. And, in the spirit of Buddhism, well intentioned.
Nice talking with you.
Jack
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