Lincoln

Lincoln’s Remorse, by lh

Like the headless Abe
America’s leadership:
worthless stone figure

Technorati Tags     haiku

Grizzley Views

A Clear View, by lh

From Buddha’s high perch:

How amusing those below,

caught in tangled webs.

Horn Gap Trail

Mountain Song, by lh

A nesting Jay sings:

alpine chill punctures blue sky,

piercing rush of air

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High Ridge Path

Unexpected, by lh

Their shelf life so short,

fallen snow flakes in repose:

a fresh Springtime storm

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A Lost Cause, by lh

Once ambitious life,

intent now long forgotten:

stuck in time and place

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Death Poems

I have been reading the very interesting book, "Japanese Death Poems", as shown above. It is a compiliation of hundreds of short poems by haiku poets and Buddhist monks, which provides a clear example of the difference between western and eastern attitudes towards death. The following is a small excerpt and a couple of example poems from the book;

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In Japan, as elsewhere in the world, it has become customary to write a will in preparation for one's death. But Japanese culture is probably the only one in the world in which, in addition to leaving a will a tradition of writing a "farewell poem to life" (jisei) took root and became widespread.

We might well ask ourselves, first, how the Japanese think about death and dying. When one studies the history of Japan, one cannot help but notice the great extent to which the events and changes of historical period contribute something of lasting value to the variegated whole which we call culture. Moreover, different traditions which take root first in only one class or rank of society eventually influence all other social levels.

As an illustration of this point I cannot resist mentioning the elderly landlady of the house in Kyoto where I stayed for several years. She had laid the foundations of her house in a ceremony conducted by a Shinto priest. The ritual fixed the orientation of the house in accordance with the dictates of Shinto gods, and heap of stones erected in her yard is a symbol of their presence. Though the woman herself had been married in a Shinto ceremony, her daughter was married in a Christian church, and her close relatives were buried in a cemetery of a Buddhist temple. On the wall of her room a Buddhist family altar (butsudan) is fixed, bearing the names of her dead ancestors. She brings rice and other offerings to them in small dishes, a custom with roots in Shinto. Once a month a Buddhist priest comes to her house to offer prayers to her ancestors in the belief that if their spirits remain at peace, they will influence her life to the good (also from Shinto). As one who respects her forebears both living and dead, and who thus fulfills the fires precept of a moral life (a Confucian concept), she hopes to be reborn after death in the Pure Land in the West, the Buddhist paradise. Every Sunday she goes to a nearby Christian church and offers a prayer to Jesus. And thus one elderly woman pays deep respect to each and every one of the many guests and residents that have made their way throughout history into the "open house" of Japanese culture – Shinto deities, various avatars of Buddha, Confucian ancestors, and the God of Christianity. It is precisely this generous spirit of the Japanese, who without qualms embrace one idea and its opposite at once, that reveals a deeper understanding, an understanding that life and death cannot be formulated in a single idea, because reality is more complex than any logic, and at the same time so much more simple.

In the Japanese language, use of the stark term "death" (shi) in reference to individuals is rare. The Japanese refer, rather to the particular kind of death: shinju, lover's suicide; junshi, a warrior's martyrdom for his lord; senshi, death in war; roshi, death from old age; etc. These expressions link the death to the kind of life led by the person and to the circumstances of his death. It is common to refer to the deceased as a Buddha (hotoke), a reminder of the belief that death purifies a person from the ignorance and lust that sully mankind.

Many Japanese prepare for death as soon as they feel their time is near. A will is written to settle the distribution of property and keepsakes among relatives and friends. For the most part, these arrangements take place in a atmosphere of serenity, with almost pleasurable expectation of the voyage to the next world. These preparation do not merely reflect a realistic attitude toward circumstances; they also inspire calmness in the dying, allowing them to settle spiritual accounts and to ask pardon for past misdeeds. Orthodox Buddhist about to die sometimes copy sacred scriptures, usually expounding the doctrine that the essence of all things is emptiness, or void. Many people, and principally those who have cared for poetry, then write their death poems, sometimes in the very last moments.

SAIMU, Died in 1679, Past the age of seventy

Yo no akete

hana ni hiraku ya

jodo mon

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Dawn breaks

and blossoms open

gates of paradise

In this poem, night, blossoms, and the gates of paradise are all linked by the verb hiraku, "to open," which can refer to the breaking of dawn, the blooming of flowers, and the opening of the gates of paradise.

HOKUSHI, Died on the twelfth day of the eighth month, 1718

Kaite mitari

keshitari hate wa

keshi no hana

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I write, erase, rewrite,

erase again, and then

a poppy blooms.

Hokushi's death poem is built around a pun. Keshi means "to erase" as well as "poppy" so the poem may be read "I write, erase, rewrite, / erase again, and then / a flower erases." However it is read, the poem's intent remains the same-that nature eventually overwhelms culture. The poppy blooms in Japan at the beginning of summer, the season of which, Hokushi died.

SquareSpace

I've decided to use a pretty cool online web building site called squarespace and have setup my Henro Tracks web page there. I was going to build my own from scratch but squarespace is really easy to get a good looking web page up quickly with lots different modules to create all kinds of pages and functionality.

So with the new site I just had to revise my logo and so…. Walla! business card revision 1;

So to get to my new web page just go to www.henro.squarespace.com.

One April

Grizzley Peak, 04/01/06

"Mountain Obscura", by lh

Could this be a trick:

budding flowers erupting,

ah.. foolish April!

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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.

Window View

"Patient Spring", by lh

a balancing act….

white ridges cap green meadows;

weak is winter's grip

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Go Faster

Tour of California, 2006

"Road Work", by lh

let go my ego:

burning quads pace chain-ring's spin,

a spring headwind blows

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