[Rich Note: Companion image may be viewed at rfhay333.gather.com.]
(Zen Garden 8 Photograph)
Zen Garden 8 © 2002 RFHay; A favorite image from a Zen Garden located in Narita, Japan, that feels particularly appropriate to today's dialogue; Companion haiku: Accompanying.
Smart Bombs to Target
Deeply Embedded Patterns of
Self-Centered Thought.
[Rich Note: In addition to today’s “reprise haiku,” I thought I’d offer the following response to a discussion that arose in the comments section of the “Seeking Ends” offering. In this regard, I felt it worthwhile to clear the air (but probably no once and for all), at the level of a post, what haiku and senryu technically are in their classical forms; and how “hay-ku,” which is a play on words used in an attempt to differentiate the “haiku-like insights” being offered (which are predominately intellectual in nature and presented in 5-7-5 syllable format) from their more orthodox kin, normally referred to as haiku and senryu.]
“Thank you, Michelle -- You tickle both of my Hearts (the Big as well as the Little One)”!
This on-going conversation has called to mind a favorite little book of haiku; one by a Kenneth Verity (how fitting is that name) called "Awareness Beyond Mind," (ISBN 1-85230-819-2), a title which is itself an extraction from the following haiku:"
Awakening to
The Awareness beyond mind --
Only now is real.
Shinri (1931- )
Which is a poem (a senryu actually) which pretty much says it all about “What It’s All About”, while both affirming and underscoring Michelle’s last comment to the Seeking Ends offering about Being “Now.”
However, in addition to its synoptic title, what I like best about Kenneth's book (not to mention the 39 page abbreviated history of Eastern Philosophy, as it relates to the development of both haiku and senryu) are the "near-perfect characterizations" of what haiku and senryu actually are and truly aim at offering. Some of favorite characterizations from the book follow:
(1) "Haiku is Zen-inspired verse-philosophy wholly relevant to life today. It has the directness, clarity and precision essential to good communication." (flyleaf)
[Rich Note: Given this criteria, haiku, senryn and (hopefully) hay-ku are exactly the same thing.]
(2) "The haiku catches that brief moment between perception and realization, making it available to every one." (flyleaf)
[Rich Note: Same here. Although the “haiku and senryn” tend to deal with “outward, worldly or natural” perceptions; while “hay-ku” tends to deal with “inward, mental or intellectual” perceptions.]
(3) “In one sense haiku and senryu have a single subject matter – realization of the moment ‘now’; in another sense, the true subject of the verse is the reader.” (Forward, pg ix)
[Rich Note: Once again, “spot on” with respect to what haiku, senryu and hay-ku as they all have the same "Subject Matter" and "Ultimate Intent."]
(4) “As we read, we are taken to the writer’s moment of experience without needing an explanation or rationalization to share the insight of that moment.” (Forward, pg ix)
[Rich Note: This is where some true difference begin haiku and hay-ku enters with respect to the particular “insight of the moment” shared; as a “hay-ku” insight is more often than not relates to the “nature of the mind and relative thought” (instead of Physical Nature); and, as such, appear in the form of a logical explanation of same.]
(5) “The mark of a fine writer of haiku and senryu is the precision with which the experience is conveyed to the reader and the awakening that results.” (Forward, pg ix)
[Rich Note: Although the nature of the “experience” being conveyed appears to be “conceptual or mental vs. natural," the general criteria would still seem to hold for hay-ku.][Rich Note: By the way, why do we consider conceptualization “unnatural” if it is “natural for mankind” and “mankind is part and parcel” of the Nature?)
(6) “The haiku is free from the rules and restrictions which bind orthodox waka, but it does have canons of good taste –- unwritten rules to which its voltaries conform with common consent.” (pg 33)
[Rich Note: The “…free from rules and restrictions which bind orthodox (haiku)…” fits “hay-ku” perfectly; but seldom meet “the canons of good taste or unwritten rules” criteria of Japanese haiku suggested below.]
(7) “For example, a true haiku should be a simple and direct ..sometime an exclamation) of pure response to a glimpse or scene in life, with no intervention from the logical intellect. The good haiku is a picture in words, rich in suggestiveness – not explanation or argument.” (pg 34)
[Rich Note: Well, hay-ku again meets the criteria up to the point of being “a glimpse or scene in life,” for an “intellectual conception or insight” is just as much a “scene in life,” abet a mental one, as anything else. Admittedly, however, it hay-ku are “intellect Insights into the Nature of Being; thought, perhaps, not Natural Being as normally defined.]
(8) “Its severity suggests that the ego-reflecting mirror of the poet has been shattered by a Zen-like impact, leaving un-obscured that universal mirror which reflects the Natural World.”
[Rich Note: Although hay-ku offer direct insights from the Heart (the Universal Mirror – Direct Light of the Heart versus the Self-Reflective Light of the Head)and not the “mental constructs” of “Rich Hay’s” relative, egoic state of mind and consciousness, "Ego-less-ness," in this particular case, is not being claimed.
(9) “To summarize the difference, a haiku expresses a moment or insight into the world of nature; a senryu is a satirical statement on the nature of the world.” (pg 36)
[Rich Note: Hay-Ku would also seem to meet both these criteria (although skewed toward senryu) if one concedes that the “world of man’s mind and intellect” are necessarily an “integral part” of the “World of Nature.]
(10) Several examples of Mr. Verity’s senryn that “I find" particularly enlightening” and which may actually fall into the “hay-ku” category follow:
Peering out through our
Eye-windows, pretending that
We are inside ourselves.
Religion, ever
Maintaining duality
And separation.
The “not knowing” of
Knowing, is non-conceptual
“Knowledge of Being.”
[Rich Note: The quotes from Mr. Verity’s book are used under the Fair Use doctrine of the copyright laws in the hopes they might help expanded the collective understanding of a Subject that is Near and Dear to All Hearts.]
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