What is a haiku?
Two concepts that William Scott Wilson suggests underlie the nature of haiku are concepts from Zen Buddhism, which arrived in Japan in the 12th century A.D. The first is "No depending on words or letters", the idea being "...not only the fewer words the better in true communication, but less of any physical material in any art would bring the mind into closer contact with the true spiritual or psychological intent of that art". The second is "Directly pointing to the mind of man, which Wilson suggests "...meant getting away from wordiness and the "over-think" in general, relying more on intuition and practice than reasoning, and general emphasis on, again, simplicity and frankness."
So what is haiku?
Wilson states it well:
"Haiku is the poetry of simplicity and frankness, an almost wordless verse - the sound of an unstrung zither, in the parlance of Zen - that resolves the seeming paradox of Confucius' necessity of the knowledge of words, and Zen Buddhism's non-reliance on words and letters. Haiku encapsulates the mundane and the ordinary, finding in them significance rather than meaning....to quote the Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitaro "A pure experience", noting "A truly pure experience has no meaning whatsoever. It is simply a present consciousness of facts as they are."
This pure experience is the essence of haiku. There is (very rarely) any judgement of the experience because if there were, it would become one of meaning rather than experience."
Or, as also quoted by Wilson and provided by the late 19th century haiku poet Masaoka Shiki, was shasei, or "describing a living situation not unlike a photograph."
The idea of a photograph resonates with me: the concept that a photograph freezes a moment in time without necessarily any explanation of the photograph inherently existing. It just is, a visual spot in the time stream captured for us to see them as they are.
Think back to the haiku last week from Matsuo Basho:
古池や蛙飛び込む水の音
furu ike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto
Old pond,
If I close my eyes, I can see this scene perfectly: I have seen it 100 times walking along a creek edge or a pond. A frog leaping in is an unremarkable event, likely something we pass over looking at something else on our walk. I can see it in my mind if I let myself drift for a minute.
A moment. A point in time of images with sounds and smells, now frozen.
A verbal photograph.
This is haiku.
Sources cited:
Wilson, William Scott. A Beginner's Guide to Japanese Haiku: Tuttle Publishing, New York: 2022.
With apologies TB, Old pond,
ReplyDeleteman falls in,
water's cold.
I hope, my dear friend,
Deletethis haiku is just a test
and not a true tale.
Fireflies in the maple tree
ReplyDeleteThe dark woods at night
Hot tea on the porch
Flecks of cinnamon
Deletein my hot tea dance slowly:
Fireflies darting.
W. in CA
ReplyDeleteThe photograph analogy works perfect! I see you have some new entries. Maybe more will join in also.
Little red squirrel
munching his acorn on guard.
Watching warily.
W - It certainly clicked for my brain as well.
DeleteThe acorns of fall:
a cornucopia of
fine squirrel dining.
"A verbal photograph."
ReplyDeleteWithout exaggeration, this is the first time I've had any explanation of haiku make sense. Not the, "Ah, those are the words, ok," kind of sense, but the quiet "... Oh," of long-belated comprehension.
I've heard that some (most?) Japanese practices value efficiency and succinctness, and speech is often included in that; the less words one uses to get a point across, the more weight the message itself carries, in rough effect. "Knowing" this and considering haiku, the proverbial math was checking out, though it still didn't quite click in my very Western brain.
Thank you very much for this moment of enlightenment, TB.
P_P - To be 100% completely fair, this realization is new to me as well - but it completely makes sense when you consider it a bit. Traditional haiku (at least not the ones I wrote in grade school) are pictures made of words.
DeleteThe background of Zen was very helpful for me to understand - as you point out, this infuses all of traditional Japanese culture (and even language, to some extent) - as well as my own practice in the martial arts. Miyamoto Musashi said it as well in his Earth Chapter of A Book Of Five Rings: "Do nothing that is of no use."
"Significance rather than meaning. . . A truly pure experience has no meaning whatsoever." Something in me is saying this is profoundly important. It is so opposite of the modern mindset, which seeks to assign meaning to everything and judge it accordingly. So often that just doesn't make sense to me. I've tried to explain it to Dan as a difference between being and doing. Some things just are. They require no opinion from us.
ReplyDeleteLast year I listened to The Book of Tea by Kakuzō Okakura. From it, I got a glimpse that the tea ceremony is not just a polite social ritual, but the appreciation of a seemingly mundane moment. After all, most of life is simply a string of mundane moments, yet we tend to rush past them in search of something else.
Ah, and here's a wonderful example; Silicon Graybeard's post, "Jeff Bezos taunts Elon Musk with a turtle picture?"
DeleteLeigh, it is a profound statement (thankfully I actually found it the second time reading the book). And you are right, we demand meaning from everything; nothing is simply allowed to "be", as it were. I do not wonder if it is a result of becoming so focused on ourselves that we demand everything be about us.
DeleteI have often played with the idea of learning Cha-no-yu, or the Way of Tea. That book sounds amazing (as he goes out to add it to his purchase list). And it is very much true of the ceremony, from what I know of it: It is truly meant to be a thing in that moment, something that at the time (and now) we take for granted, the preparation of a drink.
Japanese cinema has this as well. If you can find them, the movies Every Day A Good Day and Perfect Days really reflect this mindset.
Review of Every Day a Good Day: https://gjtea.org/tea-film-every-day-a-good-day/
Perfect Days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Days
P.S. That is a splendid haiku by SiG, even if unintentional.