THE GENTLE ART OF DISAPPEARING, PART TWO
Gabriel Rosenstock, IR
We are pleased
to present Part Two in our serial feature from Gabriel
Rosenstock’s new book: Haiku, The Gentle Art of Disappearing. Rosenstock is a
regular contributor of World Haiku Review. In this new series, he explores the
seemingly strange phenomenon whereby the better haiku poems are the more they
seem to disappear in a multitude of senses. This series is a journey Rosenstock
invites the reader to join him to walk together and experience these interesting
experiences.
Gabriel Rosenstock is the author/translator of over 100
books, including 12 volumes of poetry in Irish and a number of volumes of
bilingual haiku. Born in Kilfinane, Co. Limerick in 1949, he studied at
University College Cork. A former chairman of Poetry Ireland, he is a member of
several international haiku associations, and holds an honorary life membership
of the Irish Translators' and Interpreters' Society. He lives in
Dublin.
In Haiku, The Gentle Art of Disappearing, Rosenstock tries to
show that the reason why many haiku are superficial and unmemorable is very
often because of the intrusion of the haikuist and the accompanying baggage of
the grosser aspects of ourselves. He sees in sublime haiku no trace of
coarseness found in lesser poems because we can actually disappear! It is as
Dogen says: only when the self retreats can the true glory of our multi-faceted
earth appear to us. The more we become conscious of the fact that we can
disappear in what we do, the more the mind and sensibility is trained to
experience an extra dimension to our lives. He believes that we must surrender
every vestige of our being to that cloud, that rising moon, that lone star.
Sometimes even a photograph of an enlightened being, such as Ramana Maharshi, is
enough to help us to focus on the now in the eternal and to disappear.
"Seeing truly is not merely a change in the direction of seeing, but a
change at its very centre in which the seer himself disappears ..." (Ramesh S.
Balsekar)
LONGING TO DISAPPEAR… There
seems to be a deep longing in the human spirit to disappear—that is to say, to
know its own nature. The great Portuguese poet FERNANDO PESSOA says, ‘Fly,
bird, fly away, teach me how to disappear!’ This longing becomes manifest early
on, in the games of childhood, in hide and seek. Do we miss those games as
adults? Did we ever truly understand their significance? ‘Nature loves to hide,’
said HERACLITUS.
A red crab
Hiding in the sand—
Pure
waters
FUKUDA KODOJIN
(Old Taoist: the Life, Art and Poetry of Fukuda
Kodojin (1865–1944) STEPHEN ADDISS with JONATHAN CHAVES, Columbia
University Press,
1999)
a winter
squall
hid in the
bamboos
and lost
itself
BASHŌ
(Version: GR/NG)
PLAYFUL
INNOCENCE …The haiku moment is a disappearance into the playful,
innocent world of childhood. One may ask, was it ever that innocent? Did it not
always suggest the possibility of pain and fear, reinforced by fairy tales that
bristled with ogres and wolves? Is the innocence we associate with childhood
some form of intense longing in mankind for an Eden, a Utopia, that may or may
not have existed? One way or the other, the innocence of childhood has
always been threatened, by slave labour, by sexual and other forms of abuse, by
hunger and disease and even, in parts of the world today, by children’s armies.
And yet, it is possible to restore lost innocence, by disappearing into the
haiku moment, the spirit which is endless, unborn,
eternal.
only a
half-squawk
from the
crow—
but what a chorus it sets
off
GR
A second before, or a second afterwards, and this haiku moment would
not have existed. But such haiku moments can happen frequently, several times a
day. And as we dip into their purity— their singularity or the concatenation of
events which they can fire—are we not momentarily released from the burdens of
responsibility and rationality, from sins real or imagined, and plunged,
fearlessly, into the cleansing flow of things? We never really lost our ability
to be delighted and surprised by the colour, taste, sound, odour and texture of
things. We may think we did, we may feel we did, but the haiku moment brings it
all back. We begin to see again, as we once
saw:
around the
eyes
of the old
fisherman
permanent
ripples
GEORGE
SWEDE
(Almost Unseen, Brooks Books 2000)
For many people, the
desire to disappear is mere escapism. Take, for instance, the largest group of
foreigners in Japan, Koreans known as Zainichi. They are under constant pressure
to conform. Their cultural and linguistic identity becomes brittle. (See
Japanese Society by YOSHIO SUGIMOTO, Cambridge University Press, 1997). One of
these Koreans, KIDONG KANG, uses haiku to express his desire to flee the very
home of haiku
itself:
swallow left
behind
makes me want to
fly
Zainichi
me
(quoted in Modern Haiku, Winter-Spring 2004)
BOB
DYLAN says he likes to disappear because it’s not good being too
conspicuous. He says CHRIST was too conspicuous and they crucified him.
Everything today is far too conspicuous, in one’s face. A million times less
would be too much. We can learn from the old
fox:
concealing his
tail
among heads of
barley
old
fox
TESSHI
MAD MONK
DISAPPEARS … Boating is also conducive to the gentle art of
disappearance. As THOREAU reflected: ‘Sometimes as I drift on Walden Pond I
cease to exist and begin to be …’ The eccentric monk IKKYU compressed incredible
energy into astounding poems and beautiful haiku. This energy came from
disappearing into the void. He too was drifting, on Lake Biwa, near Kyoto, when
suddenly—Caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw!—a crow shatters the silence and IKKYU disappears in
boundless satori. The same crow might have had no effect whatsoever on
him a few seconds earlier or a few seconds later. Disappearing happens
unexpectedly, out of the blue. It’s a type of spontaneous combustion. Another
lake, combining stillness, movement and
sound:
across the still
lake
through upcurls of morning
mist—
the cry of a
loon
(The Haiku Anthology, Ed. COR VAN DEN HEUVEL,
W.W. Norton,
1999)
And nowhere is the poet, O. MABSON SOUTHARD, to be
seen!
* *
*
LAKES, MOUNTAINS, RUINS …
Lake districts are not strictly necessary for haiku poets. Sure, some of them
like to hang around ruins or disappear in strange
landscapes:
bluebells among
ruins
the nameless
fields
beyond
SEÁN MAC MATHÚNA
The poignancy of history emerges here, memory
and loss of memory. With language shift (from Irish to English,) and with
massive emigration, considerable areas of landscape lost or changed their
identity and name; and lost, too, was all the lore and legend surrounding
the names. Paradoxically, the above haiku also shows us life amid decay; the
last word of the haiku seems to bring us to an area that transcends the
vicissitudes of time and history. We disappear into the ‘beyond’.
We
cannot see the whole world. We see it in haikuful
glimpses:
aşteptând
eclipsa
un pahar cu vin
roşu
pentru
fiecare
awaiting the solar
eclipse
a glass of red
wine
for
everyone
ION
CODRESCU
(Mountain
Voices, Ami-Net 2000)
We see the world—in Catalonia (where the
Romanian haikuist was at the time) or, next, in Japan—in its
moment-to-moment
becoming:
water
spiders
big and little
rings
may be a
family
FUJINO SUANO
(Haiku International 1995)
A becoming world of
miraculous
interconnectedness:
persimmons getting
soft
day by
day
more
birds
IWAKOSHI
SEIFU
(ibid.)
* * *
MORE
BIRDS … Our haiku would be limited or deficient in many ways if we
saw birds as mere pleasant, aerial acrobats, their singing nothing but
sweetness. Birds are also rapacious. The BUDDHA'S quest for enlightenment really
began not when he first witnessed those things previously veiled from him -
pampered prince as he was—namely suffering, disease and death; his quest
subconsciously commenced on witnessing the royal ritual of spring ploughing,
birds of various species squabbling for food, for worms and grubs that
were invisible before the red earth was turned. So, in haiku, all aspects of
nature, and our own, are revealed. And becoming-ness is celebrated for its
mystery:
how a
brook so
small
becomes in its
wanderings
a pathway for
stars
FOSTER
JEWELL
(Passing Moments, 1974)
* * *
You can disappear
anywhere! CHANG ChIU-CH’EN was in the toilet when he heard the
croak of a frog piercing the universe, turning the whole world into a
single family!
* * *
The transparency of pure haiku can enter our lives, informing and
transfiguring the invisible warp and woof of our
selves:
some of the
sails
become
transparent
in the spring
mist
KONAGAI
KAZUKO
(ibid.)
* * *
ANGELIC
MOMENTS …We disappear because pure haiku are not authored by us:
they are mediated through us once we become invisible. Each pure haiku
that arises from a deep, genuine haiku moment is an unravelling of our
physicality, through the seen towards the unseen, from the part to the whole,
from little details to the invisible order that holds the universe together.
These angelic moments do not simply describe cute or pretty scenes found in
juvenile pseudo-haiku. Nor are these angelic moments some sensitive re-imagining
or re-fashioning of works of nature by the fanciful mind. These angelic moments
are what they are—an experience of the freedom, the swiftness, the grace and the
wisdom of angels. This grace reflects the light of seasons, the moods of
seasons, the time of the day … in the play of light itself, nature in its
frolicsome state, in wistfulness, in all its grandeur of sights and sounds and
in its immense silence.
Everything that is out there is also
within. One might say there is a cosmos without and a cosmos within. In the
haiku moment they are drawn together as one, each and every time. And, over
time, the distinction becomes less and less. What a great gift is this grace we
call haiku. Do accept it.
* * *
HAIKU AND NON-HAIKU …Strictly speaking, there are no
bad or mediocre haiku. There are only excellent haiku – and non-haiku. A woman
is pregnant or she is not. A haiku is pregnant or it is not. Strictly speaking,
there are no first prizes, simply haiku that qualify and those that do not.
Haikuists who understand this are incapable of envy or jealousy: good haiku,
from whatever source, fill them with amazement and admiration, be the subject a
mouse or a mountain. Squabbles in the haiku community—or in any community—are
indicative of not enough disappearing going on!
* *
*
DISAPPEARING IN THE GAME … There should always be a
certain playfulness and sprightliness in our lives, if we are to disappear. The
word play itself is hidden in the word haiku. Hindus speak of Leela,
cosmic play. In the West we speak of Homo Ludens. Haiku can be our game. Not a
competitive game, mind you. Think of it in terms outlined by MEHER
BABA:
‘To penetrate into the essence of all being and significance, and
to release the fragrance of that inner attainment for the guidance and benefit
of others, by expressing in the world of forms—truth, love, purity and
beauty—this is the sole game that has any intrinsic and absolute
worth.’
DISAPPEARING WITH THE
BIRDS … In a profile of larger-than-life travel-writer REDMOND O’
HANLON (The Guardian, Review, 8. 11. 03), ANDREW BROWN says of
bird-watching: ‘To watch them with the right devoted attention brings on a sort
of ecstasy in which the unwinged world recedes.’ Yes indeed, and the haikuist
who brings ‘the right devoted attention’ to his craft discovers a pristine
quality in the living world in which, Adam-and- Eve-like, things are seen and
named for the first
time:
on the tip of
the
newly sprouted bamboo
…
a baby
sparrow
ISSA
(Trans.
David G. Lanoue)
Yes, the successful haiku is truly a fine
balancing-act!
sitting in
air
a crow on
something
snowed
on
RAYMOND
ROSELIEP
(Global Haiku, Twenty Five Poets World-wide,
Ed. GEORGE
SWEDE & RANDY BROOKS,
Iron Press & Mosaic Press, 2000)
By
‘right devoted attention’ to haiku we mean a pointed attentiveness which,
paradoxically, is also an emptying of the mind, allowing the thousand things –
as DOGEN refers to phenomena – to enter our sphere of
consciousness:
the alchemist
bee
nothing on its
mind
but liquid
gold
GR
STEPPING BACK … It is when the self steps back,
withdraws unconditionally, in the haiku moment - and in that moment’s
spontaneous, immediate (or subsequent)recreation in words - only then does the
universe begin to appear. We must disappear to allow its appearance.
Naturalist W H HUDSON reminds us: ‘Unless the soul goes out to see what we
see we do not see it; nothing do we see, not a beetle, not a blade of grass.’
Every haikuist worth his salt knows this from
experience.
a church spire
only
through the
mist
a wingless
silence
GR
* * *
THE WAY OF
UNOBTRUSIVENESS …With so much violence, poverty, hunger and
injustice in the world, with languages in decay and all their accumulated
treasures of songs and sayings dying with them, species after species being
wiped out, so many broken homes, broken hearts, what gives us the right to
enjoy quiet moments with haiku? This: haiku teaches us to be unobtrusive, to
walk lightly, invisibly, in this world. It may not be too fanciful to claim, as
some do, in relation to the rise of global haiku on the internet and the
proliferation of haiku exchanges via e-mail, that such activity performs a
virtual harae or cleansing of the world’s kegare or pollution; such purification
has always been an integral part of Shinto ritual.
By its very size, the
haiku cultivates an empathy with all things similarly small, all things
struggling to live and to breathe and to flower. (If asked to opt
for THOMAS JEFFERSON'S “bigger is better” or E. F. SCHUMACHER'S “small
is beautiful”, what would you say?) By flowering in haiku consciousness, we
contribute to a fragrance which makes the world bearable and our lives
liveable. The act of haiku is uncompromisingly
compassionate.
leaving them
alone
moonlight
on
roses
AI LI
(Cold Morning. An International haiku anthology,
ed. MARGARET
SAUNDERS,
hamilton haiku press, Canada, 1998)
* * *
SANTŌKA
saw beauty even in a miserable coin thrown his way, a small coin of hardly any
purchase
value:
the
glint
from a little
coin
thrown my way
The dynamic of the successful haiku is such that choice
language matches succinctness of form, creating just the right touch, the right
tone, to escape the clichéd, chocolate-box cover it could so easily have been.
By using the intrusive ‘I’ as seldom as possible, the haikuist can
become spectral, invisible, universal, of the same essence as the moonlight, the
glint of a thrown coin.
Read Part One of the
serial feature, Haiku, The Gentle Art of Disappearing by GABRIEL
ROSENSTOCK
