Pure Land Haiku: The Art of Priest Issa
Introduction/ ICHI DAIJI: The One Great Thing
As a one-breath burst of language, a haiku must say everything it needs to say in that one breath. A haiku is immediate and experiential:
おれとして白眼くらする蛙かな
ore to shite niramekura suru kawazu kana
locked in a staring contest
me...
and a frog
The above example is typical of the style of Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827), one of Japan's most beloved and prolific poets of haiku. It is succinct yet resonant with meaning. In terms of form, it falls comfortably within mainstream haiku tradition, with seventeen syllabets (onji) arranged in a 5-7-5 pattern, a season word ("frog" signifying springtime), and a cutting word (kana), which functions here as a sort of verbal exclamation point that adds resonance to the whole. Literally, it reads, "With me/ [it] does a staring contest/ a frog!" What makes the poem typical of Issa, so much so that informed readers, seeing it for the first time, will instantly suspect it is his work; are its comic structure and warm acceptance of a small creature as a peer. The image of a grown man crouched to frog level for a staring game is funny in itself, but like a master joke teller Issa initially misdirects our expectation, leading us to suspect that human contestants might be involved. In the punch line, however, we learn that Issa's unblinking opponent is...a frog! Explication is hardly needed for one to "get" such a joke. Even a child can do so, effortlessly—and, over the centuries, many have. But herein lies a special challenge to Issa's adult readers. It is tempting to dismiss him as merely a child's poet, though to do so would be like reading Dante's Divine Comedy as a mere travel adventure, overlooking its allegorical content. Issa's many thousands of one-breath verses, though in a less linear way than Dante's great poem, reveal and explore the cosmology and religious constructs of his culture. While Dante operates within the semantic universe of medieval Christianity, Issa describes a distinctly Japanese Buddhist way of being in, not "of," the world. Though disarmingly simple, his haiku are replete with spiritual meaning and philosophical insight. Children may love him, but a child's poet he is not.
Buddhism provides the subtext for Issa's haiku comedies. His profound, lifelong Buddhist faith encompasses a way of perceiving, conceptualizing, and relating to the universe; his poetry, which is nothing but a record of encounters with that universe, naturally expresses such faith. Returning to our example, we find that the haiku appears in two poetic diaries: Hachiban nikki ("Eighth Diary"), of which it is an 1819, Second Month entry; and Oraga haru ("My Spring"), also covering the year 1819 but compiled at some later point. In the first manuscript the haiku is prefaced simply with the phrase, "Sitting alone," but in Oraga haru, a lengthy anecdote about the drowning of an eleven year-old child precedes it, predisposing the reader to view it in a certain light. Issa explains that he attended the child's cremation and was so moved that he composed a waka, an old verse form of 31 syllabets in a 5-7-5-7-7 arrangement. In it, he compares the boy to fresh, new grass turned to smoke so soon after it had sprouted. He then wonders out loud, "Will not even trees and plants one day become Buddhas?" He answers his own question immediately: "They, too, will acquire Buddha-nature." What follows next in the journal is the phrase, "Sitting alone," and the haiku:
locked in a staring contest
me...
and a frog
In the context of Oraga haru, then, this humorous verse about a frog and a poet can be viewed as a continuation of Issa's musings on death, loss, and Buddha-nature. Trees will acquire it, grass will acquire it, and even this frog, who, like Issa, sits alone as if rapt in meditation, will realize enlightenment. Issa's frog is an ancient, fellow traveler: a peer on the path to awakening.
He called himself Issa-bô haikaiji—Priest Issa of Haiku Temple. His priestly way of life, and way of thinking about that life, naturally and profoundly influenced his art. He lived and professed the precepts of Shinran's popular Jôdoshinshû (True Teaching Pure Land) sect but unlike the illiterate masses of its followers reveals a keen understanding of the seminal texts and subtle nuances of Shinran's teaching. To make sense of Issa's haiku his dedicated reader should therefore become familiar with the key ideas of Shinran's school of Buddhism, as the Japanese critics Murata Shôcho and Kaneko Tohta have proposed. Priest Issa's little poems often hinge on specifically Jôdoshinshû concepts of sin, grace, faith, and salvation, as the following example shows.
花桶に蝶も聞かよ一大事
hana oke ni chô mo kiku ka yo ichi daiji
on the flower pot
does the butterfly also hear
Buddha's promise?
The revelatory phrase is the third: ichi daiji, which literally denotes, "one great thing." In Jôdoshinshû belief, the "one great thing" that the haiku refers to is the "original vow" (hongan) of Amida Buddha (Sanskrit: Amitâbha) to rescue all sentient beings who sincerely invoke his name, insuring their rebirth in his Western Paradise, the Pure Land—a mythic place as well as a metaphor for enlightenment. Here, Issa wonders if the butterfly also hears the good news of salvation, a universal salvation that applies to it as much as it does to the human poet and to his readers. Its stillness implies attentiveness. The butterfly on the flower pot embodies a Pure Land Buddhist ideal: innocent, natural, non-calculating piety.
The French translator, Titus-Carmel, renders the third phrase, "la Grande Unité," transforming "one great thing" into "the Great Unity." It is a deft solution to a translation problem, but a vague notion of cosmic unity is not the precise focus of the poem. Issa and his butterfly are contemplating a quite specific "great thing": Amida Buddha's promise to enable their rebirth in the Pure Land.
As with our staring frog example, again the diary context helps us probe deeper into Issa's meaning. According to its prescript in the two diaries in which it appears, it was inspired by a memorial service that the poet attended, suggesting a temple scene wherein the faithful might be chanting the nembutsu ("Namu Amida Butsu"), the Pure Land prayer that invokes the name of Amida Buddha in celebration of his saving vow. Or, as R. H. Blyth visualizes it, a priest might be preaching a sermon before an image of Amida. Either way, the clearly indicated temple setting with its ritual focus on death and the beyond imbues the delicate, still butterfly with particular religious significance. Once a caterpillar, it not only hears Amida's "One Great Thing" but also palpably stands for the rebirth and transformation that this great thing, this original vow, promises.
The haiku, it turns out, is a revision of an earlier piece:
あか棚に蝶も聞くかよ一大事
aka tana ni cho mo kiku ka yo ichi daiji
on the offering shelf
does the butterfly also hear
Buddha's promise?
In this original version, the butterfly reposes on an offering shelf, a shrine displaying an image of the Buddha along with offerings of water and flowers. In both versions, Issa celebrates simple, trusting faith. Without intent or calculation, the butterfly has landed in the lap of Buddha's mercy. The question, "does the butterfly also hear?" is rhetorical for Issa. Of course the butterfly hears Amida Buddha's promise!
Just as some readers and scholars dismiss Issa as a mere child's poet, others, perhaps because of this first perception, question the depth and seriousness of his Buddhism. Among the Japanese, the most notable figure to have held this view is the great Buddhist scholar, D. T. Suzuki. In his book, Shin Buddhism, a study of Jôdoshinshû belief, he dismisses Issa as a "worldly" and "spiritually poor" poet whose Buddhism is marred by a whining obsession with his personal lack of money. As evidence of this, Suzuki cites this haiku: "nanigoto mo/ anata makase no/ toshi no kure," which he paraphrases: "I, being at the end of the year, having no money whatever to pay my accounts, have no alternative but to let Amida do his will." The haiku in question is the concluding poem of the Oraga haru:
ともかくもあなた任せのとしの暮
tomokaku mo anata makase no toshi no kure
come what may
trusting in the Buddha
the year ends
The notion that Issa is throwing up his arms to Amida Buddha for crass financial reasons is not at all supported by the text of the haiku nor by its diary context. Early in that journal he indeed mentions his poverty, describing his "trashy hut" (kuzu-ya) as a ramshackle structure that, he fears, a strong wind might blow away at any minute. But in the same passage, he goes on to describe himself as one "covered with the dust of worldliness" and so, he concludes, has no recourse but to trust in the saving power of Amida Buddha (anata makase). This is exactly the proper attitude that one must cultivate vis-à-vis the "Other Power" of Amida, according to Shinran. There is no reason to suspect that Issa's invocation of the Buddha's grace in this early passage or in the final haiku of the journal—the one cited by Dr. Suzuki—are the laments of a "spiritually poor" individual.
Anyone who has read much of Issa's work soon discovers that his often-mentioned trashy hut stands as a metaphor for the poet himself: a comic, self-deprecating image. With its corners unswept, spiders can rest easy—not only because of the owner's Buddhist compassion but more importantly because, as he repeats often, he would rather do nothing. On New Year's Day, others diligently sweep and decorate their gates with pine-and-bamboo arrangements, but Issa's hermitage remains "just as it is." His detractors take such comic self-irony at face value, viewing the poet as merely lazy, but in doing so they overlook the fact that this attitude of kono mama, being "just as I am," is appropriate for the practice of Jôdoshinshû Buddhism. Shinran urges that one not strive or calculate to attain enlightenment but, instead, simply accept Amida Buddha's saving power kono mama: just as he or she is, sinful and human.
Refuting Suzuki's dismissal of Issa as a Buddhist is not reason enough for the present book. Issa passed on long ago, so it makes no difference to him whether pundits of later time label him as "spiritually poor" or praise him, as I have done, as a consummate Buddhist artist. It is not for his sake but for his readers today that the present study will, I hope, have value. Our understanding of Issa goes deeper when we consider his immense canon of haiku—a lifetime production of over twenty thousand—in light of the Buddhist themes that meant so much to him. These themes include: (1) travel as pilgrimage, (2) human feeling expressed in the bodhisattva ideal, (3) worldly conditions in the Latter Days of Dharma, (4) transience, (5) spontaneity, (6) the doctrine of karma, (7) prayer, and (8) Amida Buddha's grace.
about the book ©2004 by David G. LanoueAlso by David G. Lanoue...
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