Unknown Haijin 3
Questions asked on behalf of Global Haiku News by Editor-in-Chief
THE UNKNOWN HAIJIN INTERVIEW - Part 3/3
(all rights unreservedly reserved)
jp: The Unknown Haijin is here again to complete the final installment of this fascinating interview series. How are you, buddy?TUH: That's a very good question.jp: Do g— TUH: Never felt better, thanks for asking.jp: You're wel— TUH: It's been a busy period, the last few weeks, what with one thing and another.jp: How s— TUH: Kylie and I have been doing a new online retail footprint. This is how it works.jp: How wha— TUH: The living wind has many levels of engagement. First, there are the newbies. These tend to get intermittency (or intermittentness, as we say in the trade). Now, you see them, now, you don't. When these pre-tadpoles are engaged, static tends to happen. A confusion of levels. To cut a long story down to haiku's virtual sensorium brevity, Kylie found a manga on the YouTube which shows this quite well...
jp: Think I get i—
TUH: Dissonance. The interference by learned behaviour with the reception of direct experience. Our natural state being bliss. Which, as Joseph Campbell, the great mythographer, encourages all to follow.
jp: Yep, tha—
TUH: This is why we endeavour to do our haiku correctly. To avoid dissonance's static.
jp: The living wind has a windbrak—
TUH: Exactly so.
jp: Sort of gradual, organic induction back to the gard—
TUH: If you like.
jp: Well, this raises as many questions as it answe—
TUH: Indeed.
jp: Will pond—
TUH: Just jump in, would be the advice to any trembling pre-tadpole, fresh out the jelly. Once this is done all the rest follows to a happy resolution, in the end. It's the hesitancy which can be problematic. Overweening hesitancy causes dissonance's static to flourish even more so. Once the leap of faith is made, all is in process towards enhancing clarity. Haiku, correctly done, is more than the spoor it leaves which we call--for lack of better understanding--'entertaining little poems'.
jp: Yes, Basho's frog haiku illustrates your explanati—
TUH: No better example...
old pond
a frog jumps in
water's sound
jp: Yep.
TUH: There's another thing...
jp: Do continue...
TUH: I have a list you might find interesting...
jp: Let's see it...
TUH: Your saturday girl, Kylie, showed me this list she'd been meditating with and I must say it hits the target more often than not...
jp: You two still an item, then?
TUH: When I'm in town.
jp: That's not what I heard...
TUH: It's all you're going to hear today, my friend.
jp: It's just that our readership find these human interest things a light relief is all...
TUH: Shall we press on?
jp: Yep.
TUH: Look, Kylie and I are simply good friends. We're also setting up a joint business - that's it.
jp: That's not what I heard...
TUH: Shall we press on?
jp: Go for it.
TUH: Fine. Now. Where was I?
jp: Something about a list that your lover, Kylie has dug up...
TUH: For pity's sake. Please stop this nonsense. You've had my testimony on the subject!
jp: So you say.
TUH: Here's the list. It is preceeded by a quote from a horse's mouth...
"The mind encounters 2 toll houses*: First is the one of the imagination, delusion. Do not imagine anything!
God was not imagined! Neither the Cherubim, nor the Seraphim! He does not have limited glory. Second
toll house is Reason at the heart's gate." — Elder Cleopa
The prayer of the lips.
The prayer of the mouth.
The prayer of the tongue.
The prayer of the voice.
The prayer of the mind.*
The prayer of the heart.
The active prayer.
The all-seeing prayer.
The contemplative prayer.
TUH: (We consider in a non-sectarian, correct haiku manner.) This list covers the levels of entry associated with engagement with the living wind. It begins with lip-service and ends in Haiku-vision+. Or, as we say; from pre-tadpole--fresh out of the jelly--all the way back to where it began. The final stage being, of course, post-frog. Then it repeats, or not. However, this is another discourse. Let's leave that for another day.
jp: Food for thought. Reminiscent of Basho's injunction to go to the pine. Anyway, erm, let's ponder that at our leisure. Earlier you mentioned a great hero of mine (and many, many others around the world), the beautiful Joseph Campbell (who walked his talk).
TUH: He did.
jp: OK. Let's finalise, then, with your words relating to haiku as an archetypal Alladin's Lam—
TUH: Yes, it is. However, we will need to clarify what we mean when we use the term 'archetype'.
jp: How would yo—
TUH: Any archetype is generated by an eternally unknowable source (numinous/wave) of a manifest entity (phenomena/particle). Take a salt crystal. We can only deduce the nature of the archetypal formative forces which govern the generation of salt crystals from the material at hand, that we can see and measure. Physicists retro-engineer what can be seen and measured. From these investigations the archetypal effects can be described mathematically, but this is not the archetype. It is an archetypal motif. So also our essential haiku form. It is as near as we can approach the ineffable archetypal source which is responsible for a true haiku's numinous vivacity and still achieve a coherent archetypal image. We can use that irreducible model of a true haiku to describe permissible true haiku variants, by the way. jp: My God, wha—
TUH: For example, if you go to Basho's ancient pond in a little haiku dream there's more to the experience than simply a frog going plop! Much more. Why? Because Matsuo managed to ink an archetypal scenario. There's no end to the permutations of symbols in his masterpiece as a result of this archetypal intimacy. There is plenty to say about that, but my time is quite short, momentarily.
jp: Is this to do with yugan, the mystery which surrounds a proper haiku and takes us far beyond a simplistic Imagist postcard effect?
TUH: Exactly so.
jp: Thank you.
Our next interview will be with Bob Dylan! Get a taste, here
Lorem Ipsum. . . .
"Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?"
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BONUS: DOUBLE FEATURE
— jp
[asking questions on behalf of Global Haiku News]
01-02-12
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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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TUH's tip for achieving adroitness with proper haiking (non-sectarian). . . .
"Seek and you will find." Matthew 7:7 The Bible
"Replace adjectives with injunctions." Merril Wolfe
"...Therefore the manifestation mantra (repeated constantly and keyed to
whatever the desire be) is: 'Find' —just that word, with your intent in mind,
sharply focused— otherwise you will be seeking and knocking, fruitlessly,
forever." The Unknown Haijin
sick on my journey,
only my dreams will wander
these desolate moors
Matsuo Basho
God luck ... !
"It can be a problem, as you say. Paddling in the ocean. So too this thing called enlightenment by those who read books. They sail, maybe. Or travel in submersibles. Or fly here and fly there in jet aeroplanes. Many wonders to behold. Then come the books, and yet more books, and more books again. People read all these books and write books about them. Let me tell you, one needs long legs to walk across the sea. And the sea, meanwhile, remains the sea. This is why we say little but quite often smile." The Unknown Haijin
Sound of Water is a living document and as such subject to upward mobility. Do bookmark your favourite items for future reference. . . .
