DNA
The main thing to work on in this life, I feel, is distinguishing stimulus from response. Discrimination. My thesis is that between the two is the silence. The ma-space in its fullness. Haiku develops this 'emptying' of the inner Noh dramas. It's tempting to think that DNA is doing a covert evolutionary operation with little haiku, streaming it out of old Japan onto the stage of the world.* And this in many ways...
For example, I've come across an astonishing copy of a detailed and extensive military type report. Haiku is the subject. How haiku consciousness training can be utilised in a military context. It appears to be exhaustively researched and this from countless points of view. Samurai. It might have been sponsored at the UN by Haiku Herman? I'll be subjecting it to a careful study - being that autumn deepens, as we speak, over here in rainy England.
Yes, there's much more to haiku than meets the eye. Maybe the pressure gets to some of us, sometimes.
*Google Search—
Haiku: About 39,800,000 results (0.19 seconds)
jp
31-08-11
Why can't haiku be defined by examples alone?
Are rules really necessary?
Think of it in the sense of DNA. Or a recipe for apple crumble compared with a recipe for disaster. Without criteria all we have is chaos. People are kidding themselves through lack of a proper understanding of what a haiku is. This needs sorted out. To sort it out we need gudelines. After all, a snowdrop is not a thistle, although they are both frogs.
01-09-11