In the moonlight a worm... (Haiku Reference Section)

In the moonlight a worm... (Haiku Reference Section)

Lao Tsu was the original archetype of The Sage. He lived five hundred years before Christ and wrote The Book of The Way (Tao Te Ching). So references to paths, roads, ways and so on are always resonant. Living the religious life of meditation practice has been known in the East as following 'The Way' or 'The Path' from the time of Lao Tsu, more than a thousand years before Buddhism came to China. By extension, the arts through which people express their meditative understanding are also known as The Ways: flower arranging, archery, tea ceremony, acting, dancing and poetry are among them. Since meditation is essentially something one can only do focused on the inner life, even when many people meditate together, the references often have a lonely quality - even more so in the case of Basho, who struck out on his own poetic path:

My way -
no-one on the road
and it's autumn, getting dark
(Basho, trans. Marsh)

Beyond the crossroads
deep into autumn
the hillroad disappears
(James Norton)

The acceptance of an essential loneliness in the human condition is a characteristic of the Buddhist meditator. It is a loneliness that we recognise in others, too:

The scarecrow in the distance;
it walked with me
as I walked
(San-in)

The long night –
made longer
by a dog’s barking
(Santoka, trans. Stevens)

An octopus pot –
inside, a short-lived dream
under the summer moon
(Basho, trans.Ueda)

To Basho the road was not just a literary or religious metaphor. He was a traveller, walking the open road on journeys the length and breadth of Japan. In the twentieth century another Zen Buddhist haiku poet followed in his footsteps. Santoka Taneda lived as a wandering mendicant monk, a 'gentleman of the road.' For him the lonely path was a daily reality:

There is nothing else I can do;
I walk on and on.
(Santoka, trans. Stevens)

Going deeper
And still deeper -
The green mountains.
(Santoka, trans. Stevens)

Wet with morning dew,
I go in the direction I want.
(Santoka, trans. Stevens)

The road is a palpably real experience to Santoka and Basho, as well as a metaphor for one's chosen life-path. Fish do lie facing the current; gulls do soar on the wind adjusting the angle of their beaks; and snow does take the features from the landscape. Haiku imagery is always first and foremost a real observation. It never merely illustrates an idea. It is not simile. The poems that have the most resonance and power, however, are those that are observations which have a symbolic after-taste. The symbolic dimension is an echo of the primary meaning, uniting the particular detail which is being noticed - often natural - with a human significance.