Unknown Haijin
Questions asked on behalf of Global Haiku News by Editor-in-Chief
THE UNKNOWN HAIJIN INTERVIEW - Part 2/3
(all rights unreservedly reserved)
jp: Thanks to The Unknown Haijin for finding time in his busy schedule to be with us this evening. Since our first meeting last year, around the time of the Rabbi Grebe uprising, it seems to me that you are somewhere else. How do you respond - or, is this too impertinent to ask? TUH: First, let me thank you for inviting me over to haiku crossroads for a look around. A refreshing experience, especially given the state of play in global haikai today. Indeed, very much so. Your lentil soup after the tour was delightful, I must say.jp: Thanks. Now about the first quest— click pic to ENLARGE TUH: Of course. (Would it be possible to have a bowl whilst we chat?) jp: Yeah, ok. If you carry on talking I'll pop into the Global Haiku News cafeteria and get some for both of us...
[At this point I went to get some lentil soup, leaving The Unknown Haijin to respond to my first question, on behalf of Global Haiku News and its exponentially growing international readership.]
TUH: Yes, that uprising. Amusing. No. Your question is certainly not impudent at all. Far from it. It could be said that I'm 'somewhere else'. Indeed, as we speak, so to are you.
It's in the nature of things to be in motion. If this were not the case then all would be motionless. In the absence of all motion we would not exist. Nor would any of the 10,000 things exist. In fact, there would be absolutely nothing to be.
So absolute would this nothingness be, that in and of itself it would not exist. However, we need to reference this complete absence of some-things ('somethingness') in order to approach the threshold of that non-condition of nothingness. We do this so that we may cease to exist, ourselves (absolutely or simply as a tourist) - which is, strangely enough, the purpose of existence.
[From the Global Haiku News caféteria I shout through my response.]
jp: Many would respond, I'm sure, by asking you what on earth use is this highly abstract information about nothingness and somethingness (with its '10,000 things' - the latter being a euphemism for the countless myriad elements which compose boundless manifestation)?
TUH: Good point.
[Still shouting through from Global Haiku News caféteria.]
jp: Thanks, but how do you answer that implicit charge of useless intel in an explanatory manner? Many would think you were talking gobbledygook. For example:
The consultants recommend deconstructed asset paradigm shifts.
My organisation believes in synchronised transitional projections.
It's time to revamp and reboot our four-dimensional management concepts.
TUH: I understand. (Your examples of the incomprehensible, or pompous jargon of specialists are funny.)
[Arrival back with steaming bowls of lentil soup from Global Haiku News caféteria.]
jp: So, what's the point?
TUH: Mmm.. Very nice lentil soup. Could I have the recipe?
jp: Maybe. It's actually a secret recipe. You'd have to promise not to publish it.
TUH: Of course. It would be in the strictness of confidenceness.
[We both laugh and TUH spills some steaming hot lentil soup on the Global Haiku News cat, which had been having a catnap under the Global Haiku News rafters. The cat scoots off quickfast and we continue sipping, swinging our legs and chatting.]
jp: So, getting back to this 'good point', please unpack more meaning fro—
TUH: If we can think about these things it forms a map. With the map we can deduce. This enlarges and fills in more details for our schemata, our map. With this paradigm, this cognitive blueprint, we can identify what is happening and what could happen when we do haiku.
jp: How do you mean?
TUH: When we do haiku, what are we doing?
jp: Haiku?
TUH: Exactly that. We are moving through the world, attending to experience, in a formal manner - not willy-nilly.
jp: Yes, on behalf of our readership, I can dig that. Do go on. . . .
TUH: We have entered a way of thinking that focuses our attention on perceptual reality in such a way that our apprehension of time slows down.
jp: I know what you mean. When I leave the house to go on a ginko my mind is full of the daily business. As I get into the haiku walk my mind clears (I work on this) and, before long, it's more or less empty of that incessant monkey-chatter, the data-stream, or at least all that amps down and relocates to the back-burner.
TUH: Of course it does. Moreover, I'd call this 'psyche', rather than 'mind'. If we broaden our definition more accurately we include all of our instrumentality and not simply the words and numbers part. Our 'heart' for example and our more primitive cerebral and somatic receptors, to consciously plug in to those instinctual understandings. Not to exclude our higher intuition and so forth, either. The whole package. The full monty.
jp: Quite a mouthful. Like some more lentil soup?
TUH: Have you any of your wonderful apple crumble - the pudding you make using apples from that old village apple tree, the one which has been recycling itself for over 100 years now?
jp: Yes, it is nice. No.
TUH: We'll have some cooking chocolate then. Here, one for you and one for me.
jp: Thanks.
TUH: Now, with the 'full package' of our psyche we address the world as we find it, on our haiku walk, our ginko. Because we have slowed down (and are slowing down even more as we deepen into our journey, or on pause, perchance to scan a particular item of haiku interest), we are increasingly engaging with what is (quite appositely) termed: The Living Wind.
jp: Copy that, wilco, we're flying, or surfing the breeze of the world in the forever silence and our clarity of perception is enhancing in direct proportion to our inner slowing downness [chuckles] and the clarity which this automatically evokes. Got it.
TUH: Ok. This is how we haiku. Everyone haiku's like this; some more so, some less so, some with self-awareness of the process, some without self-awareness of the process.
jp: OK. Moving on. What would you say is the single most important consideration when we become students of haiku? For example, you are often quoted in the haiku media as saying:
"When one follows one's bliss one is bountiful in the gaps."
— The Unknown Haijin
TUH: Yes, it seems to have caught on that catch-phrase.
jp: So—
TUH: It's all about clarity of awareness - the pursuit of this as a hard-wired requirement of being. Many people mistake haiku for poetry. The reason for this is that there is no category in literature elsewhere to pop it. Even in literature haiku is a black sheep.
jp: How—
TUH: We can approach your question as to what is the most important consideration for a student of haiku by addressing the problem of glamour—
jp: Glam—
TUH: Yes, glamour. Not in glamour's fashion sense, as employed by young breeder-women to entice genetic input through demure ploys and the shadow of this to invoke youth in age.
jp: Glam—
TUH: Glamour in the fuller meaning of becoming bequiled by circumstance. All very natural, of course, but a drag on the evolving soul's velocity through The Mycelium.
jp: Glam—
TUH: Glamour is the very soul of the mycelium, in fact. The composite soul of the 10,000 things. God.
[Jet aeroplane passes overhead.]
jp: By 'mycelium you're talking The Matrix, like that movie, innit?
TUH: In a manner of speaking, that is correct. However, the fruiting bodies of the fungal entity are a useful idea to point out the illusion of our apparent separateness.
jp: Wooooooo ... ! Yeah. Got it, i-toadstool. Nice job.
TUH: Thank you. Returning to this question of the most important consideration when we do haiku. We mentioned glamour. What is this?
jp: Glam—
TUH: Enchantment is what glamour does.
jp: Glam—
TUH: We get fixated, hypnotised.
jp: Glam—
TUH: What to do?
jp: Glam—
TUH:
When confronted by an enchantment (compulsion) the best thing to do is address its opposite. This would typically be a horrible, desolate feeling and therefore easier to objectify through detachment (vairagya). The lesson to learn is that:
The space in-betwixt is the place to be.
This is middle way, balance of opposites, centre of cyclone, aesthetic ma, and so on. From this neutral position at the see-saw's pivot we move out and engage with circumstance. When the job's done we can then withdraw back into our/Its nucleated silence of perfect emptiness in motion, the ground of All. Moreover, we can deepen into mystic and approach the first of the 10,000 things and, as Buddha insisted, beyond even that into not-self and, deeper still, nothingness. Shocking as this may seem to some, the sole purpose of incarnate existence is to cease to exist. This is the primary dynamic of the yin yang idea (some thing ness). By way of a sugar-coating, the primary non-dynamic of nothingness is to exist. These are teachings which are more meataphysical [sic, chuckles] geometry's domain than haiku theory (hairon). So, let's hang with the glamour aspect. . . .
jp: Glam—
[At this point The Unknown Haijin had to fly. Part 2 on Boxing Day. Part 3 on Imbolc, February 1st 2012]
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The Unknown Haijin lives in the wnd (he says). More bio would be nice but that's all we can glean
a
t time of press. We have the distinct impression that TUH is someone else in his day job. We will press him on this during part-3 (penciled in for release around Imbolc - Feb 1st, 2012). The general impression of his character, though, here at Haiku Crossroads' busy front office, is quite positive. He seems to be the real deal. In fact, our saturday girl has a teenage crush on him which we all find quite amusing, especially when she insists on fetching multiple soups! One thing is clear, we've had more mail about this interview than all of our other ones put together (including the clairvoyantly mediated Basho's ghost transcript - which outlined the genesis of Mat's ubiquitous frog thing) :The Matsuo Bashō Interviews #1: Frog & Rice Cake
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— jp
[asking questions on behalf of Global Haiku News]
14-10-11
BONUS ITEM. . . .
When we do haiku most of us agree that the 'moment' of the 'now' is the source of our material. Some may require that moment to be sketched from nature direct (and quibble over whether urban landscapes count). Others may proclaim their subjectivity to figure as part of the present's objectivity. But, what actually is: NOW? The dictionary informs us that the immediate is the now. '"The momentary present" - WordWeb. This seems fair enough - at least until we start to ponder what that actually means. . . .
One of the questions in the next interview section will endeavourto unpack this:
"Sitting still and facing a wall is fine, but walking is just as good - especially on ginko with a packed lunch that includes cooking chocolate." - The Unknown Haijin
(Why cooking chocolate?)
jp
Sound of Water is a living document and as such subject to upward mobility. Do bookmark your favourite items for future reference. . . .
