Nature as a muse, “the way of life, the way of haikai”
Why does traditional/classical ehi resonate with A-W readers? While meanwhile the actual creative process required to write it isn’t resonating with most poets today? I believe the reason for this imbalance is in part due to the fact that nature’s creative essence is not consciously being accessed as part of their creative process (zoka) when creating haiku. Meanwhile readers of ehi vicariously glimpse into a world that seems peculiar, esoteric, and enigmatic. I would argue that most haiku poets today have only to tap into the latent zoka awaiting to be awakened within them, while unified with nature. This can be accomplished simply by embarking on extended sojourns into, and more importantly as a part of nature. Though modern society does not lend itself to creatively writing haiku in conjunction with nature; and academia and literate society does not perceive nature as an element essential to, and intertwined with our intellectual and spiritual development. I believe creating or spending time in nature to be essential in the development of a haiku writer’s process. It can also be applicable in the development and process of many other intellectual, scholarly, artistic, and other art forms as well. I believe this type of interactive collaboration with nature to be essential to humanities continued development as an integrated part of our planets ecosystem. Without this kind of interaction with nature humanity will continue to act as a divisive force, one that continues to decimate the planet.
During a 2013 interview with WIRED MAGAZINE, the Icelandic musician and performance artist Bjork said this in regards to how she conceptualizes music. “European (musical) notation is not the only or proper way. (Musical) Notes are not just B&W, from a European point of view”. She then spoke of African and Japanese music as being equally valid forms of music. Again during a 1991 Charlie Rose Interview she spoke of sporadically having to return to nature alone in a tent, to replenish herself before returning to more urban settings.
I think embarking on sojourns into nature is something many feel compelled to do from time to time. The musician Bjork speaks of nature’s music, as many haijin do of nature's visual, auditory, and olfactory imagery. Bjork speaks of nature’s sounds, as sources she derives much of her musical inspiration from. She states nature played a key role in her development as a young vocalist, musician, and performance artist. It is not much different for haijin, we too find inspiration in nature, although instead of processing the visual and auditory stimuli we experience in nature vocally or musically, our process is to transpose these experiential stimuli literally if you will, in a style we call haiku. Haijin today much like Basho and his frog pond, visually leap, and auditor-ally kerplunk into the waters of our haiku. Only we need to engage with haiku with more intentionality, with the intent to unite as part of nature, rather than as detached neutral observers apart from it.
Today on our planet most all of us live in urban, suburban, or rural environments. Far fewer of us live in the backcountry of Alaska for instance. Very few of us intentionally spend extended time or live isolated in the woods. Think for a moment of Emerson, Thoreau or Whitman, and the way they spoke of their experiences of living or being in the woods, much like Basho, but in a more A-W or transcendental-ist manner. They did so from the perspective of perceiving the wonderment in nature, while still speaking as if apart from nature; which is opposed to haiku's idealistic perspective of speaking as if an integral part of nature and her cycles. To paraphrase Basho "The earth’s cyclical changes of Heaven & Earth are the seeds of Hokku Poetry". "The way of life and the way of haikai ... are inseparable". (Quoted to me by a Buddhist Monk in Sapporo, Japan) By the way of life he too, was referencing the cyclical ways of nature.
This way of life, this way of nature is what I experience as well. I experienced it, while working as an artist in residence in the forests of Northern Hokkaido (Japan), and again while staying at a monastery in Tibet, and once again "Up the Mtn" at my writers hovel in the Willamette National Forest in the Pacific Northwest, and yet again while hiking on the Pacific Crest Trail for months at a time, or while staying at forest lookouts. All of these experiences were characterized by simplistic living. I was living where life was dictated to me by my internal unification with the rhythms and cycles of nature, rather than by the externally projected uniformity of a clock. These experiences have played a key role in my development as a haikijin, tanka, and senryu poet. It is nature and her cyclical daily and seasonal rhythms that bring forth my innate ability, my embodied knowing and understanding. It is something we are all equally capable of innately tapping into. Even a trip out into the woods car camping can begin to produce similar results.
"Basho ... alone outside during a frigid winter night ...he saw a thread-thin moon, a scene that can be cold, stark, or beautiful, depending on a person's frame of mind ... he was watching nature sculpt his surroundings and thoughts. ... The changes of heaven and earth are the seeds of poetry ... He was watching zoka with his five senses" (paraphrased from Makota Ueda's "Basho and His Interpreters")
Nature is key in my creative process too, when creating haiku. Simply sitting quietly in a forest can begin one's transformation of readily sensing and becoming one with nature’s impermanence. That intangible creative artistic force intertwined in natures own unique way. We are all born with this innate capacity to artistically create in unison with nature, though most of us get in touch with it in more man made or mukigo/senryu like ways. As a janitor, scholar, garbage person, athlete, parent, artist, prisoner, homeless person, etc, all of us develop methods of creatively working and living, though usually not in and as a part of nature.
Haiku’s natural essence transcends western transcendentalism and eastern embodied knowledge. It does so with natural imagery, auditory symbolism, tactile sensations, and olfactory tangibility. When we naturally interacting with and learn from them, the haijin can personify nature’s essence when they put pen to paper. An thus they begin the process of "becoming the bamboo, to speak of the bamboo".
Embodied intuition and finite scientific truth
I believe what Basho and to a lesser extent Shiki were trying to address was the possibility of realigning ourselves with our latent embodied knowledge, which we are all innately capable of accessing. This creative force can be ignited and transformed into poetry or most any other creative endeavor. It is what I too have experienced as a martial artist for over twenty years. This is a process that does not require any scholarly knowledge. It is just that as our society advances, our ability to artistically co-create with nature is impeded, and our embodied intuition begins to seem more and more enigmatic in nature, as opposed to being something we realistically endeavor to develop in ourselves
So how do we write with kigo as the theme of our haiku? Well it's a task that’s ideally pursued in solitude amidst nature. Learn about the "pines from the pines and about the bamboo from the bamboo". (Masako Hiraga, Eternal Stillness”)
"Haiku exists in what one sees and what one hears. The sincerity of haiku is to put what a poet feels directly in the verse". (Sanzoshi, in ibid., pp. 157-158)
"Pivotal to Matsuo Basho's teachings on the composition of hokku (haiku) is his belief in the essentialness, of the infinity of following zoka, while in the moment, letting go the finite teachings determined as truth by science." (a paraphrasing from Robert D. Wilsons online essay “The Colonization of Haiku”).
"Dharmic Philosophy conceptualizes time, like the cosmos, as being infinite, without beginning or end, whereas Abrahamic Philosophy conceptualizes time as starting upon the creation of this one-and-only finite universe that will terminate at the forthcoming End Times." (paraphrased from Malhotra, Rajiv’s Being Different). If we want to become more accomplished at writing haiku, I believe we have to open ourselves to the infinite possibilities that our unified interactions with nature can cooperatively create.
This is the challenge for all of us, to acknowledge and accept rather than tolerate the cultural contributions all of us make. In doing so we become acquainted with other Ways of being, thinking, and artistically creating; these ways that are equally valid and worthy of us all, as members of our planets intersectional and multicultural world.
For example, I’ve been taught by A-W scholars how to write Italian and English sonnets. Yet I do not try to redefine them or try to replace a sonnets A-W essence, its rhyme scheme of stressed and unstressed syllables with haiku’s syllable or onji/mora counting. I do not try to, appropriate octav (propositioning) with haiku’s mid verse cutting, or sestet (questioning) with haiku’s end verse cutting, and then outright eliminate a sonnets volta all together. To do so and no longer call it a sonnet is one thing. Yet to do so and still characterize it as a Japanese Sonnet is no different then what many do when they call English senryu haiku. This is also what is known as cultural reappropriation, and we have to stop doing it.
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