East West

In meditation, possession, and the Japanese haiku poem

Dr..

Kamal Abdul Malik

01 July 2022

The haiku is a traditional form of Japanese poetry;

It is three lines rhymed with 17 syllables, 5-7-5.

Sensory language is used to capture a feeling or image that is often inspired by an element of nature, a moment of beauty, or a poignant experience.

The haiku, which is associated with Zen Buddhism, was developed by Japanese poets, adopted as a form and adapted as theme in almost every modern language, including our Arabic.

Common themes written in haiku are nature and the human psyche.

The secret of writing a great haiku is for the poet to be alert to all the beauty of nature.

The haiku poem traditionally focuses on the details of the human condition who meditates and conveys a sense of what one sees without using any instrument of evaluation or analysis.

When you see or notice something that makes you want to say to the other, "Look at that," the experience may be a perfect fit for a haiku.

Japanese poets have traditionally used haiku to capture and distill a fleeting natural image, such as a frog jumping into a lake, rain falling on a tree, or a flower bending in a strong wind.

Many poets would go on picnics just to find new inspiration for their poetry.

As an introduction to understanding the difference between two different views of the beauty of nature, let me use as an illustration two poems about the picnic of two different poets in time and place: one is a haiku by the Japanese poet Basho (1644-1694), and the other is by the English poet Lord Tennyson (1809-1892).

Each poet describes a similar experience: his reaction to a flower he sees while walking.

The difference is amazing.

Tennyson interacts with the flower with a desire to have it.

He desires to 'pluck', 'uproot' and 'possess', and ends his poem with intellectual speculations about the possible function of a flower, which is for him to gain insight into the nature and power of the Creator and the sublimity of man, a creature contemplating the beauty of nature.

But, alas, we see man, possessed by the greed of possession, here kills the flower itself.

Tennyson, as we see in the poem, can be compared to the Western scientist who searches for scientific truth by dismembering life and dissecting the bodies of living beings.

Basho's reaction to Venus was completely different.

He wants to capture it.

He approaches her but does not touch her.

We can imagine the scene thus: Basho was walking along a country road when he noticed a neglected object approaching him, and took a closer look at it, and found that it was nothing more than a wild plant, somewhat insignificant to passers-by.

This is a clear fact written in the poem that ends with two syllables that can be considered what the Japanese call “kana”, which is a punctuation mark frequently associated with a noun, adjective, or adverb and denotes a feeling of admiration, praise, sadness or joy, we can consider it opposite the exclamation mark (! ) and consider that the words of the current haiku end with this sign.

Tennyson seems to need to possess the flower in order to understand people and nature, and by having it, the flower is destroyed.

On the contrary, we find that what Basho wants is to look and meditate, not only to look at the flower, but to be united with it, which requires letting it live.

The beauty of the contemplative flower (by opening the meme) and the contemplative human being (by breaking the meme) overlap so that nature overflows around us with beauty and our world is getting brighter.

What Basho wants is to look and meditate, not only to look at the flower, but to be united with it, which necessitates letting it live.

Visiting Scholar at Harvard University  

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