| |
tickling and laughter. But it happens ... you are sitting very silently, absolutely serious, and somebody starts tickling you. And suddenly all your seriousness is gone and at first you laugh because you have been tickled, but then you laugh because there is no reason for you to be laughing.
The Zen poet Shiki has written:
SUCH SILENCE;
SNOW-TRACING WINGS OF MANDARIN DUCKS.
The Zen poets have created a totally different category of poetry called haiku. It does not have many words as other poems have many words. A haiku is a very small piece, but very existential. You don't have to read it, you have to see it.
SUCH SILENCE ... now don't listen to the words `such silence', but feel it, experience it.
SUCH SILENCE; SNOW-TRACING WINGS. Such high flight that it leaves traces OF MANDARIN DUCKS on the eternal snow of the mountains. Seeing this miracle, you fall into a deep, undisturbed peacefulness.
The haiku is not a song to be sung, it is a song to be experienced and seen. You have to visualize it.
Another poet:
HERE AMONG THE PLUM TWIGS,
DRY, YET BLOOMING,
THE ORIOLE'S SILENT SONG!
In fact haiku cannot be translated. These words are only approximate. Chinese and Japanese are non-alphabetical languages. They have a totally different world. For example: HERE AMONG THE PLUM TWIGS. You have to use the alphabet, ABC, but in Chinese or Japanese or Korean, it is not letters that are used. You will see pictures of plum twigs, you will see the picture for `here'. Everything is a picture. So when you read a Zen poem, remember that it is pictorial.
HERE AMONG THE PLUM TWIGS,
DRY, YET BLOOMING,
THE ORIOLE'S SILENT SONG!
Here it is possible, in this silence, to understand. This silence is not just a word. You are drowned in it. It is showering on you like rainfall. And suddenly in this silence, a cuckoo starts singing or crickets start their songs. It becomes a haiku.
Poetry has been lived for the first time in haiku. In other languages, poetry has been written but it has not been lived. And the difference is Gautam Buddha's experience, which opens a new
|
|
|