In the moonlight a worm... (Haiku Reference Section)
Zen Buddhism is centred on the practice of meditation. In meditation the trainee stills the hectic surface activity of the mind: the constant planning, speculating, fantasising, hoping, dreading, assessing, recalling, self-congratulation, self-doubt and so on, to which we humans are prone. When a measure of control over the runaway mind is established, a calmer space appears.
As the trainee attends to the life-rhythms of this calm space, he or she begins to experience the things mystics of all religious traditions have always said are true of the ultimate reality: its unity, love, boundlessness. The calm space beneath thought has various names, but the sort of words that have been used traditionally for describing it are 'stillness,' 'silence,' 'emptiness,' 'nothingness,' and 'void.'
You might imagine, from this list, that Buddhism was a form of nihilism, but that is not the case. The 'nothingness' is not barren. Zen master Lin-chi said, 'It is vibrantly alive, yet has no root or stem. You can't gather it up, you can't scatter it to the winds. The more you search for it the farther away it gets. But don't search for it and it's right before your eyes, its miraculous sound always in your ears.' (The Zen Teachings of Master Lin-chi translated by Burton Watson, Shambhala Publications 1993 p.58). Poets are struggling to convey the inexpressible, to find images for the 'miraculous sound' in the heart of the silence. Zen poets hear the sound of the life-force emerging from emptiness to fill everything:
