A few words on Haiku
Historically haiku came from the twelfth century renga, ‘linked verses’, in which poets ‘improvised connecting stanzas to create long poems of up to 10,000 verses. Renga were interlocking chains of 17 syllables (5-7-5), preceded or followed by 14 syllables (7-7) with each tercet and couplet producing a poem itself’ (Bowers, 1996: vii).
In the sixteenth century, the traditional arts became popular among the common people. According to Bowers, haikai, was ‘meant as unusual or offbeat’ and is translated as ‘vulgar’, or ‘comic linked verse’,and spoke in the everyday language. Known for its satiric tone, haikai demonstrated humour and obscenity. In the second half of the seventeenth century, thanks to Matsuo Bashō and his disciples, haikai began to be appreciated and treated with more respect. This is when the first stanza of renga called hokku became independent, leaving three lines of 5-7-5.
Bashō himself never used the term haiku; this term became popularised in the twentieth century. Hai translates as ‘unusual’ and ku means: stanza, verse or lines. Bashō the most quoted haiku happens also to be his first Zen poem:
‘Old pond
A frog jumps into,
The sound of water’.
To Zen adepts this haiku represents the satōri, the sudden enlightenment. The pond is the ‘unenlightened mind', while the frog leaping into the water represents the ‘attainment of a sudden and brief state of enlightenment’, represented by the ‘sound of water’ (Clarke, Buddha Weekly. Available at: URL). In the spring of 1689, Bashō spend more than two and a half years on the road and this is when he composed ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’. During his travels he was ‘seeking a vision of eternity in the things that are, by their own nature, destined to perish’ (Yuasa, 1966: 37).
‘Many haiku poets took a deep interest in Zen, some to the point of putting a robe and wandering around Japan, begging rice from door to door, after the manner of Zen monks poets’ (Hoffmann, 1986: 17).
Kaga no Chiyo (1703-1775) was a well-known poet and her name changed to Chiyo-ni after she became a nun. When Chiyo wanted to join the nunnery, a Zen master, who believed poetry was a “worldly attachment”, ‘asked her how haiku could be Zen-worthy (have a thousand meanings in a single thought)’ (Bower, 1996: 49) Chiyo answered his question with a haiku, and the master satisfied by the response, and the multitudes of the three lines, accepted her into nunnery:
‘A hundred different grounds
From the mind
Of one vine’ (Bowers, 1996: 49).
Responding to a question asked by a Zen master in a form of haiku was a popular way to express living in the moment. Ujeima Onitsura (1661-1738) once he was given a koān by a Zen priest who asked “What is haikai?” Onitsura replied with this well-known verse:
‘In the garden, see
Near us, blossoming whitely,
The camellia-tree!’ (Bowers, 1996: 39).
The white colour represents the absolute purity or enlightenment (satōri) and it is also the colour associated with death. A true haiku arises spontaneously and it allows the reader to experience the here and now without the duality between subject and the object.
