Matsuo Bashō (芭蕉) was a wandering Zen hermit of the Edo period, as well as an accomplished poet. Popularly considered the father of modern haiku, many of his verses are accepted as teaching in Zen circles today. The readily-memorised haiku format may drive some of this posterity, but there's no denying that Bashō's work often encodes palpable koanic insight.
Interestingly, his status as a self-trained free-range monk is rarely mentioned in our discussions of him, though we're happy to claim Bashō as the "Zen one" of Japan's Four Great Haikunists.
Thus do conservatives lay claim to the dissenters of yore.
Yet the eremitical nature of Bashō's practice is clearly evident in much of his work. Particularly his most famous poem, which is not merely lauded as Bashō's best, but in fact as the most awesomest haiku ever written, by anyone.
Feel up to it?
OK, clear your mind.
Ready?
the old pond
a frog jumps in
plop
That's it.
That's the poem.
Stuff to Notice
To begin with, this translation (Alan Watts, this time) is only one of dozens if not hundreds available; about which, more later. But I especially value Alan's take, emphasising as it does the humour that's central to Bashō's perspective.
Note also that while haiku – at least the classic kind – is supposed to contain references to nature, this one has nature coming out of its ears. I mean, there's no moonlight or cherry blossoms or summer rain or drifting snow. Nothing pretty, you dig. But nature? Yeah. It's got that in spades.
In his sardonic hermit way, Bashō seems to be saying, "I got yer nature, RIGHT HEAH!"
And then there's the Zen.
You may be thinking, "Big deal. Frog jumps in water. There's a noise. Nothing to see here."
And you may be right. I mean, you can get that kind of stuff anywhere, for cheap or free. Nothing unique is going on here. Nothing special.
Scared frog jumps in water, goes splash; not a headline you're likely to see in the Times.
Meanwhile, concentric circles are expanding in the water, lapping at the edges, returning through other circles approaching from behind. Frog resurfaces, climbs out. More circles. Wet frog drips, log gets wet, water runs off into pond.
The concentric circles expand and retract forever. The whole pond is implicated. And also its environs. And their environs. And all the environs beyond that.
And that's just one possible response. Maybe there's some suchness in there. Maybe some satori. Some admirers see all seven Zen principles of composition in these three banal lines.
Which is why they're sometimes called the most perfect haiku ever penned.
But not by its author, of course. We should also bear that in mind.
Language matters
While we also remember language.
To start with, Bashō never wrote the poem reproduced above. And if by chance he had happened on it, none of that chicken scratch would have meant a thing to him. Because his text (per this source) was actually this:
古池や
蛙飛こむ
水の音
Which works out to:
furuike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto
You don't need any Japanese to feel the visceral difference between this and literally anything it might have inspired in English. In fact, if you want to see just how thoroughly we anglophones can mess something up, check out the 32 translations catalogued here.
Robert Aitken's commentary on that page is also well worth the read, as is his stab at the source material:
The old pond has no walls;
a frog just jumps in;
do you say there is an echo?
And if you really want a plunge into the abyss, try Geoffrey Wilkinson, who starts with an acerbic comment on this whole frog thing, and then… well…
Go see for yourself. By the time Wilkinson's done he's taken you on a fascinating street tour of the haiku form and this one in particular, including several parodies by Japanese monks and poets over the past 500 years.
For example:
Old pond—
Bashō jumps in
the sound of water
– Zen master Sengai Gibon, 1750–1837.
Master Bashō,
at every plop
stops walking
– Anon, 18th century.
...while fellow hermit Ryōkan (1758–1831) had this to add:
The new pond—
not so much as the sound of
a frog jumping in
To say nothing of the fellow who wrote a limerick. (Yes, really.)
So if you're a fan of haiku, or hermits, or haiku-writing hermits, take a good surf into the lore of Bashō's frog. By the end of the evening you will have visited many corners of Zen, Japan, poetry, and history, and learned a great deal about the practice value of small bodies of water.
(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)
Simple things aren't simple when you live outdoors.
The brother who drove me out on the last day of ango also brought my camera so I could take some photos of the place where I'd just spent 100 days alone. By then it was late summer, so the rainfly was furled, revealing the door and mosquito netting of the walls behind it. Equally telling is the fact that the entire world is no longer dark and sodden, as it was when I wrote the following entry.)
BEDTIME ORYOKI:
1. Unzip the tent fly, then the tent door, just at the bottom, so as not to let bugs in, and slide the rolled blue foam mat, orange Thermarest, and journal case through the slit.
2. Zip back up, return to Tyvek [meditation shelter] and [secure it] for the night. (Mostly hanging stuff up and blowing out the candle after thanking it.)
3. Pee.
4. Lay [walking] stick outside tent door. Unzip the tent and sit in it with feet still outside on the ground. Take off the road [right] sandal, then the heart [left] sandal, and leave them outside, on the heart side, under the fly.
5. Brush off feet with gloved hands if wet, or by rubbing them together if not, and lift them into the tent.
6. Switch on the tent light and place it in the attic [small net hammock overhead]. Turn off the flashlight and store it there as well.
7. Pull the stick inside, clean off the [dirty] end, and lay it along the door sill. Zip up the door.
8. Take off specs and put them in the attic.
9. Untie the blue mat and unroll it along the door side, beside the stick. Store the tying string in the attic.
10. Reinflate the Thermarest and lay it on top of the blue mat, at [the] head end.
11. Spread the [sleeping] bag out on the mats, zipper to the heart (inboard) side. Spread the [cotton sleeping bag] liner on top of the bag.
12. Take off the [monk] robe and lay it next to the bedroll on the floor, interior down, knife [worn on the robe's belt] to heart side, mala [also on the belt] road side, collar headward.
13. Remove needed articles (hand sanitiser, toilet paper, gloves) from cargo pockets of trousers and lay them on the floor against the standing [back] wall, chest-high [when lying down].
14. Take off trousers, roll them up, and place them on the rain poncho against the standing wall, at about knee height [when lying down].
15. Roll up [a] pillow from un-needed clothes and other fabric items. Place at head-level, on heart side.
16. Remove underwear and place on trousers.
17. Snake into liner [first], and then into the bag.
18. Spread the robe over the sleeping bag as a blanket, interior down, collar at chin level.
19. Tuck robe's roadside hem corner, belt end, and sleeve under the blue mat (not the orange one), to keep it anchored during the night.
20. Mount night guard [a plastic device I wear at night to protect my teeth].
21. Turn off the light, lie back, find and place pillow.
And pleasant dreams.
This process is very time-consuming. But there's no other way to do it so you meet all your needs: warm, dry, as comfortable as possible, properly positioned on the ground, able to find stuff you might need during the night, especially emergency stuff such as you might need during an attack of Giardia or something threatening outside the tent, like a bear.
(Altocumulus undulatus clouds.
The tree in the foreground is a sequoia [Sequoiadendron giganteum]. It's not native here, but introduced specimens are spotted fairly often in older Olympia neighbourhoods. This is because in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the area absorbed a wave of incomers who arrived via Northern California, where the species is iconic.
This one occurs in the backyard of a house I lived in when I was 7. As I never noticed it then, it must have been much smaller.
Happens a lot these days. May I age as gracefully as my sister has.)
Appearing also on My Corner of the World.
(Feral apples are almost always the best-tasting, and you can't beat the price. With all the former farmland around here, the scrumping this time of year is great.)
Appearing also on My Corner of the World.
A lifetime sitting with the central tenet of Islam has led me to accept it.
You must submit.
Islam means submission in Arabic. A muslim is a person who has submitted.
Specifically they submit to Allah. He's also the only thing worthy of submission. If your orders come from anywhere else, you waste your life marching into a dead end.
Most religions recognise this truth, though they express it differently.
Buddhists call it acceptance of the Dharma. You don't get enlightenment from your teacher, your religion, or even the Buddha.
It comes directly from the Dharma.
This may seem fanatically reductive, especially when the people shouting it at you are really referring to themselves when they say "Allah" or "Dharma".
But taken at face value, I'm convinced it's exact.
Because Allah isn't just the only authority qualified to lead you.
He's also the only one you can trust.
(Photo courtesy of Muh Rifandi and Wikimedia Commons.)
(Here's another bullfrog [Rana (Lithobates) catesbeiana], rather better lit and differentiated from her background. She's a whole handful, likely weighing about a pound; I found her sitting zazen in the middle of a local bike path on a cool autumn day.
Literally just sitting, untroubled by bikes, dogs, or walkers, as one seldom finds her kind.
Frogs play an outsized role in Zen, but I'll temper my monastic impulses and guess that my sister's equanimous demeanour was down more likely to being zombied out on incipient hibernation, and heading to a winter bed in the muddy lake some yards away.)
Appearing also on My Corner of the World.
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Matsuo Bashō (芭蕉) was a wandering Zen hermit of the Edo period, as well as an accomplished poet. Popularly considered the father of modern haiku, many of his verses are accepted as teaching in Zen circles today. The readily-memorised haiku format may drive some of this posterity, but there's no denying that Bashō's work often encodes palpable koanic insight.
