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HAIKU



Many of Western philosophy’s greatest texts have run to hundreds of thousands of words. Some of the deepest works of Zen philosophy have been written in the form of three-line poems. Haikus, as these are known, contain three parts, two images and a concluding line which helps to juxtapose them. The best-known haiku in Japanese philosophy is called ‘Old Pond’, by Matsuo Bashō: 'Old pond / A frog leaps in / Water’s sound.' It is all (deceptively) simple – and yet contains, when one is in the right frame of mind, a gracious call to redemptive reverie. Here is another by him: 'Violets / how precious on / a mountain path.' Bashō believed that poetry could ideally allow one to feel a brief sensation of merging with the natural world. One might become – through language – the rock, the water, the stars, leading one to an enlightened and prized frame of mind known to Zen Buddhist philosophers as muga, or ‘a loss-of-awareness-of-oneself’.

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