HAIKU

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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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