A Basho Bash

Basho & Sora

Basho, probably the most famous of the Japanese Haiku poets, was born as Matsuo Kinsaku in 1644 to a samurai family and died at the age of 50. This time period roughly coincides with the closing of Japan to the outside world, which was to last for almost 250 years. It was during this period the true Japanese character and culture emerged from the shadow of the Chinese influence.

The following is an excerpt from the book 'A Zen Wave' by Robert Aitken, which examines the influence Zen Buddhism had on Basho and his poetry. This specific section of the book, which looks at a small part of Basho's later life, strikes a chord with me as I will also be turning fifty just after I finish my 900 mile walk around Shikoku Island this Fall.

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Westeria Flowers, by Basho

Kutabirete

Yada karu koro ya

Fuji no hana

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Exhausted

seeking an inn:

wisteria flowers

Basho wandered on pilgrimages during the last ten years of his life, sometimes alone, but often with one or two companions, visiting famous places and meeting with fellow poets and disciples. He often traveled on foot, often in rather poor health. The context of the verse in his journal reads: "Most of the things I had brought for my journey turned out to be impediments, and I had thrown them away. However, I still carried my paper robe, my straw raincoat, ink stone, brush, paper, lunch box and other things on my back… quite a load for me. More and more my legs grew weaker and my body lost strength. Making wretched progress, with knees trembling, I carried on as best I could, but I was utterly weary."

At the very point of despair, Basho encounters the rich lavender wisteria flowers. We know from our own practice and from the our reading in the psychology of religion that suffering precedes personal liberation, and knowledge of this offers some comfort in the difficulties of work on our first Koan. Indeed, Basho seemed to seek such suffering. He once wrote:

Nozarashi wo

kokoro ni kaze no

shimu mi kana

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I am resolved

to bleach on the moors;

my body is pierced by the wind

Examining this determination to die on pilgrimage (which he actually did at last) together with the haiku on wisteria flowers, we can understand even better why it was that he made a pilgrimage to see. Not only concerned about the deepest implications of ordinary configurations, but also those implications seemed to well up in his practice of enduring to the limit. He was not sightseeing.

Sometimes it was the suffering itself that found expression:

Nomi shirami

uma no nyo suru

makuramoto

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Fleas, lice,

a horse pissing

by my bed

Here Basho was on his best-known pilgrimage… recorded in 'The Narrow Way Within'… at the northern turn of his travels. In a mountainous region, about to pass the barrier between two provinces, he was obliged by bad weather to spend three days at the home of a barrier guard. He counted himself lucky to have any accommodation at all in such a remote place, but the comforts were meager.

Most translators of this haiku interpolate some feeling of disgust. Donald Keene, who usually can be trusted to translate dispassionately, renders the verse:

Plagued by fleas and lice

I hear a horse stalling

what a place to sleep!

That is not what basho said or meant at all, for he was using that suffering; he was not used by it. Not a single syllable in his original words reflects self-pity. It was just Nip! Ouch! Pshhh!

How does one understand suffering? Our practice in the Diamond Sutra is not easy. But if there are the tears of sincere pain, they carry precious virtue. Self-pity sullies this virtue, and when self-pity is projected, we have needless dissension in the sangha, the community. The virtue itself shines forth with incisive spirit that drives through the darkness. The pain itself is just that pain.

I think that Paolo Soleri would understand Basho. In his essay "Relative Poverty and Frugality," he writes:

"The intent of relative poverty is not to suffer and to do penance for the sins of man and specifically for the sins of avarice, gluttony and covetousness. It is instead to glorify life through the lean, conscious exercise of one's energies in the face of odds which, when understood cannot but show themselves as "over-whelming." It is at its best to "perform the tragic sense of life itself," well knowing that is the only true sense and it is a sense of unfathomable depth. A sense of full of seminal particles, a sense that can give reason and scope to sufferance…. To impersonate the tragic sense of life is not, one must be clear, a morose and bleak prospect. It is a conscious development of the self along a path, irksome with the unexpected, the will-breaker, the mystifier, the barbaric, the blasphemous, the malicious."

Not to mention fleas. Basho did not use the pilgrimage simply as a means. It was his best form of life. Out of the life emerged his experience of the wisteria flowers. Out of that life emerges expression of the peaks of life, the nips, the pain, the horse pissing. These are the seminal particles that give reason and scope, that give jewels of imperishable haiku:

Ara toto

Aoba wakaba

Hi no hikari

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Ah how glorious

Green leaves, young leaves

Glittering in the sunlight

Hi no hikari, light of the sun, is a kind of pun, for the Japanese also pronounce the same Kanji as "Nikko" when they try to approximate the Chinese reading of the Kanji. Nikko is the name of a place, a tourist target in Basho's day as it is now. Famous for its natural beauty, it has been a Buddhist center since the eight century. Its association with Kobo Daishi (774-835) founder of the Shingon sect, and was followed by imperial patronage and, finally, just before Basho's time Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines were erected there in memory of two great Tokugawa shoguns, Ieyasu and Iemitsu. These later buildings are renowned for their elaborate design and decoration, the fullest expression of Japanese rococo. There is a saying in Japanese, "Don't say splendid (kekko) until you have seen "Nikko".

Basho didn't even say "nikko", though he went there. He was moved by the presences of Kobo Daishi , we may be sure. Toto means "noble" in the highest sense. But it was the glory of the young leaves in the light of the sun that evoked his "Ah!" experience.

Nowadays there is a freeway to Nikko, but in Basho's time he and other pilgrims had to climb there by foot. He mentions the arduous nature of the climb in his journal and "Ah!" is the jewel in the setting of sunlight and the pain of the climb.

Basho's poverty, like Thoreau's, was relative. He was burdened with necessary things, and could smile wryly at them. Nakagawa Soen Roshi once said to me: "You should carry your koan Mu lightly." I did not know what he meant. I was burdened to heavily with my anxiety to resolve it. I could not appreciate Mu for itself.

Use your pain; do not be used by it.

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Hopefully I will be able to find better accomodations than Basho did on his trek.