Hansha's frog
old pond
a frog jumps in
the sound of water
Basho
Upper Hutt, New Zealand Married Knows English
Māori, Latin, Samoan ----- Born on Sept 17, 1949
Hansha has good makoto. Here he speaks some frog-ku things (abstracted from a comments thread and printed with his k-nd permission). . . .
Hansha Teki This ku defies conscious understanding so the chances of expecting to clarify its power through translation and interpretation may seem a little vain.
As with all 'peak' spiritual experiences (and this IS a peak spiritual experience being evoked), between the envisioned image of the first section and the sensory awareness of the second part, something akin to a wormhole for the spirit is created.
This is at the heart of haiku - not aha, not a haiku moment, this is an evocation of a critical change in one person's life where he encounters the fullness of life's mystery. For Basho it was in a zen context perhaps, but the experience is universal yet so few experience it.
I, with Robert D. Wilson, like the depth revealed in how Basho enters the seen and the unseen, the said and the unsaid.
I have discovered that haiku, as practised by the Japanese masters, and those who have chosen to learn from them instead of imitating them, has power to enter the mystery that will never be able to be domesticated.
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"Does ambiguity make for depth?
What can we learn from Old Basho ?"
Q.1 - It can increase depth perhaps but only deep things have depth in my experience.
Q.2 - To be attentive to the winds blowing around and through our own spirits just as old Basho was. See how he was able to evoke his experience with such concision.
Yugen and vagueness are completely different animals. The latter is more expressive of spiritual impoverishment while the former is filled with a richness beyond words
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There will be more to come about Basho's famous haiku, I tend to use it as a discussion example quite a lot (plop: 'frog', in this site's search option). . . .
jp
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13-10-11