The Art of Disappearing 7 - 2, August, 2009
World Haiku Review, Volume 7, Issue 2, August 2009
The Final Instalment
of Gabriel Rosenstock’s
Haiku, the Gentle Art of Disappearing: Part 7 & End
Is this a joke? An anthropologist interviewed an Irish lady, living in the shadow of a mountain. ‘Do you believe in the fairies?’ She thought about it. ‘Personally, sir, I don’t believe in them myself. But they’re there all the same!’
Poet and haikuist Cathal Ó Searcaigh grew up in an Irish-speaking area of Donegal, surrounded by invisible presences:
‘The other world was adjacent to us and had to be respected; it was necessary to care for the ethereal things and beings that inhabited it. According to my mother, this balance had to be maintained in order to steer us safely through destiny’s pitfalls. While she would take the dishwater outside, she would always pause at the threshold for a little while to give the fairies time to get out of the way …’
(Trasnú, 2003)
This cosmology is mirrored in Japan. If a boy was going to urinate in a river, he would first warn the river deities: ‘Kawa no kamisama doitokure!’
***
We see all though none sees us …The fairy literature of Ireland is a calling to the waters and the wild and to a timeless invisible world:
Lovely lady will you go
To that kingdom where stars glow?
Primrose there the colour of hair
Snow-white each body fair.
‘Yours’ and ‘mine’ are words not known yet,
Ivory teeth and brows of pure jet:
Foxglove the colour of every cheek,
The whole company radiant and sleek.
Every plain of purple hue,
The blackbird’s eggs flecked with blue,
The plains of Ireland will seem bare
After you have lingered there.
For Ireland’s beer you will not long,
The Great Land’s beer is twice as strong!
It is a land of purest gold,
The young don’t die before the old.
All round gentle streams entwine,
Mead is drunk, the best of wine;
The people have not learned to hate,
It’s not a sin to copulate!
We see all on every side
Though none sees us – we do not hide
But Adam’s sin has caused a cloak
Between us and ordinary folk.
Woman, if you come with me,
On your head a crown will be,
Fresh pork, the finest ale
Await us now beyond the pale.
( Trans GR, 9th century text in Treasury of Irish Love,
Ed. Gabriel Rosenstock, Hippocrene Books, New York, 1998)
***
Genius is not qualitatively different from mere talent. A genius is simply one who has gone beyond the pale of visibility, boldly into the invisible plain of infinite potential.
Have historians ignored imaginative literature and neglected the possibility of there being more than one Shangri-La on this earth? Morgan Llywelyn says of the fairy race, the Tuatha Dé Danann, that ‘they disappeared into the warp and woof of this island and interpenetrated the very soul of Ireland, never to depart.’ (Correspondence with author).
***
Did Einstein believe in fairies? Before rubbishing the invisible worlds, let us remind ourselves that Einstein, Pauli, Planck and others assure us that the visible tangible world is only a fraction of the universal drama. Einstein tells us: ‘The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science.’ What the literature of the Celtic Otherworld teaches us is nothing more than an elaboration or mythicisation of the haiku moment, namely the miraculous fusion of time and space.
How natural and yet how mysterious it was that the Hopi saw the Earth as being pregnant in Spring. So as not to cause her undue discomfort, they removed the steel shoes from their horses.
***
Be not discouraged … Let’s get back to the world we know …
The world we know? The haikuist must sometimes rub his eyes. Am I really seeing this?
rubbing my eyes
over and over again –
New Years’ morning
Toshio
(Version: GR)
illusion of bloom –
silvery sun
on each magnolia bud
GR
***
Many people become attracted to haiku – especially when they find out what true haiku really is and the difference it can make to our lives. Initially, it looks quite easy. They try their hand at it – as they should – and are satisfied with what it promises. Or they may attend workshops and polish their craft, or send haiku for professional assessment ,or are lucky enough to avail of and learn from a master’s editing and shaping of their work. But then, something happens. They become discouraged. Their haiku seems to stay on a mental level, not flowing as it should, not flowing every day.
Autumn wind –
unless written
words fade away
Asuka Nomiyama
(Japanese Haiku 2001, Modern Haiku Association)
***
It can be the same with anything, with martial arts:
‘Gurukkal Govindankutty Nayar and his advanced students flowed like a river when they performed their serpentine, graceful, yet powerfully grounded movements. It seemed an unapproachable state of embodiment. When I began my own training in 1976, my body did anything but flow …’(When the Body Becomes all Eyes: South Indian Martial Art, Phillip B. Zarrilli, Oxford University Press, 1998).
go further on
says a guide-post
in a withered field
Yamaguchi Soku
(Haiku International 1995)
**
Wisdom of doubting … Even those who have written haiku for a number of years – according to Basho-, you are a master if you have written ten good haiku in a lifetime – even such people can be distracted by doubt. What’s the point of it all? Am I fooling myself? Is this for real?
There’s nothing wrong with doubt. It’s quite natural. Here’s a Zen saying to comfort you: ‘Great doubt gives rise to great awakening; small doubt, small awakening; no doubt, no awakening.’
***
Mind to breath … Believing that haiku is easy is a mistake. Thinking that disappearing is easy is a mistake. To approach haiku with the mantra ‘First thought, best thought!’ is not a bad approach, but it’s not quite as easy as it looks. To concur with our opening remarks about ‘effortless action’ being the key to happiness and success is not far off the mark. But, paradoxical as it may seem, effortless action may require some effort – at first. Reviewing Spontaneous Mind: Selected Interviews, 1958 – 1996 by Allen Ginsberg (HarperCollins 2001) William Deresiewicz reminds us that spontaneity isn’t always as effortless as it may appear. “‘First thought, best thought” was his governing principle: no heed to the high-modernist idea of poem as patiently constructed artefact, but an equally strenuous discipline, for it was only with hours of daily meditation that he maintained his wide-open path from mind to breath … (New York Times Review of Books, April 8, 2001).
Q& A: a brief self-dialogue …
Q: You have written a book called Haiku Enlightenment. Do you consider yourself to be enlightened?
A: Who is asking the question?
Q: Well, actually, the questioner/responder – you, as it happens.
A: You should know by now that I don’t listen to you.
Q: Why not?
A: Why should I? You are the Ghost of Duality Past.
Q: Look at the question again, please …
A: If you insist. I’m looking … It starts by saying, ‘You have written a book …’ I haven’t.
Q: You haven’t? Who wrote it then?
A: It must have written itself. With the help of cosmic intelligence.
Q: How?
A: How? Why? What? For whom? Why are you always asking questions?
Q: Because –
A: Just shut up and listen for a while.
Q: To whom?
A: To what, you mean. Listen to anything. There are many sounds in the universe. Listen to whatever you hear now.
Q: I’m listening …
A: To the sound of your own voice! Are you sure you are listening?
Q: It’s you that’s asking the questions now.
A: Funny, isn’t it?
Q: Should I laugh?
A: If it helps you to relax, yes. Please do.
Q: Look, answer the question.
A: Who is asking?
Q: Oh, I give up.
A: That’s a start.
Q: Hold on! Just a minute! There’s also this sequel, Haiku, the Gentle Art of Disappearing. Have you ever actually disappeared?
A: I’m disappearing now …
Q: You are? Hello?
A: Oh, good! So are you! See you around!
Q: ?
A: !
IN
THE
WORDS
OF
PAPAJI:
In order to be born as a baby you have to spend nine months getting bigger and bigger. For Enlightenment you have to get smaller and smaller until you disappear completely.”
***
Disappearing! How is it done? There is a word in haiku aesthetics which means slenderness. It is hosomi, a delicate quality much favoured by Basho-. It is something we can develop in ourselves and in our work, allowing us to enter thin spaces, to follow the spider into its crevice, the bee into its hive, the wren into its nest, the wisp of cloud into a misty lake.
Follow the fall of a dewdrop. Flow! And ‘be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear’ (Shelley). With hosomi we can become creatures of the elements, of the air, of light. Follow the rabbit into its burrow. What is stopping you? You may say, ‘But I am not a world philosopher such as Nishida, an eccentric monk such as Ikkyu or a medieval holy woman or holy man such as Hildegard von Bingen or Jan van Ruysbroeck. ’ Maybe not. But nobody expects you to be a philosopher or saint.
Are you essentially any different from haikuists who have been blessed with the haiku moment, whether Japanese, American, Irish, Croatian, Romanian … or those who call themselves citizens of the world? Of course not! We have outlined the dynamics of the haiku moment in Haiku Enlightenment. Complete the story. Disappear!
***
Lifting the veils of the self … In a fantastic interview with Jean Houston we read about something which could apply to haiku enlightenment: ‘I’d say it’s an extraordinary effort of reweaving the self in body, mind and spirit that can be accomplished by a depth of loving, by a giving over of the local self to the godstuff. It is the honing of one’s inner and outer perceptions so one is able to see, hear, touch, taste, feel and intuit the immensity of what is really there. The veils of the self are lifted …’* Worth pondering that!
*©Moksha Press, 1999. This interview first appeared in the Spring/Summer 1999 issue of What is Enlightenment? Magazine, entitled “The Self Masters: Are They Enlightened?” and appears by permission of the publisher. For more information about What is Enlightenment? Magazine, please visit www.wie.org
**
The (w)hole story … Meditating on the holed sculptures of Barbara Hepworth, the writer Jeanette Winterson had this to say: ‘A Hepworth hole is not only a connection between different kinds of form, or a way of giving space its own form – it is a relationship with the invisible. Since human beings began their journey towards consciousness, we have sought a relationship with the invisible …’
Put in another way, when the mind is purged of everything else but the intuitive, interpenetrative perception of the Ding an sich, the mysterious, pulsating thing-in-itself, the haiku moment of disappearance occurs. For one precious instant, there is no room for you or your thoughts. The rose, the moon, the steaming dunghill fill the world in full flow. John Muir says: ‘Everything is flowing – going somewhere, animals and so-called lifeless rocks as well as water. Thus the snow flows fast or slow in grand beauty-making glaciers and avalanches; the air in majestic floods carrying minerals, plants, leaves, seeds, spores, with streams of music and fragrance … While the stars go streaming through space pulsed on and on forever like blood … in Nature’s warm heart.’
bleak February morning
a white cat declares itself
in silence
GR
***
Elusive silence … We can disappear in silence, when the chattering mind falls silent, when the haiku moment emerges, when we no longer have opinions.
All of us seem to have an opinion on this and that, whether we know all the facts or not. Most of us give too much weight to opinion. We look to the so-called opinion formers in society; our idle chatter and our serious conversations and debates are riddled with opinions.
We seem to forget that our opinions are bound to change and that we, in time, will question their validity. What were those opinions we once had? Who was the person who held to them? The opinionated self disappears on the haiku path.
For Angelus Silesius, the ten thousand things become one, disappear in the All:
So many droplets in the sea, in bread so many grains;
So too of our multiplicity, nothing but God remains
(Version: GR)
It comes as a relief, along the haiku path, to be opinionless. Silesius says:
Die Meinungen seind Sand, ein Narr der bauet drein
Du baust auf Meinungen, wie kanstu weise sein?
Opinions are sand, a fool builds on such lies
You build on opinions, how can you be wise?
(Version: GR)
Forget ‘Meinungen & Deinungen’, forget mine and thine’. John W. Sexton dropped his opinion-forming mind to become completely free of opinion in this haiku:
sunlit street
a jackdaw shadow
passes through me
(Shadows Bloom, Doghouse, 2004)
***
Time to disappear …
about to vanish
in the morning sky
orphaned moon
GR
After all, how long does visibility last before returning to the void?
Autumn morning –
river-mist rising
and sheep’s breath
Norman Darlington
(World Haiku Review 2003)
And for us, too - for all of us, you and I, the cat and the moon, the buffalo’s breath in winter, the sheep’s breath in autumn - will come a time …
empty fleeting years all gone
now quivering and frail
I must fade away
Ryokan
finally the maple leaf
is at one