Unity

[DavidGrayson]

The creation story in the Hebrew Bible is well known: God created the heaven and the earth in six days. Curiously, there is a second creation story in Judaism, this one from the Kabbalistic tradition. When God created the world, He needed to make space to do so; after all, God was everything. In order to make the world, then, God withdrew "in all directions away from one point at the center of its infinity, as it were, thereby creating a vacuum. This vacuum served as the site of creation."(1)

Of course, God did not withdraw completely. The divine presence remained ubiquitous, tying everything together. Underneath the surface distinctness of things, an essential unity is the immutable reality. The Koran says, "Wheresoever you turn, there is the face of Allah."(2) Buddhists bring their palms together to represent overcoming surface duality.(3)

downpour:
my "I-Thou"
T-shirt (4)

Raymond Roseliep

Grounded in the natural world, the interdependence of all things—living and non-living—is a theme of many contemporary haiku.

out of the hermit thrush
out of the valley
one song (5)

Laurie Stoelting

As K. Ramesh notes, we sometimes become aware of this reality in the most unlikely of places.

dusk—
a chatter of frogs outside
the teacher's house (6)

R. H. Blyth wrote that haiku is imbued with "that state of mind in which we are not separated from other things, are indeed identical with them, and yet retain our own individuality and personal peculiarities."(7) Haiku offers us—as readers and poets—the joy of experiencing this reality. We appreciate and delight in the unique ways that other poets experience this—and reflect on the ways that we ourselves do.

Is the idea of interdependence or unity important for your appreciation of haiku? In my reading of haiku, this idea is usually grounded in an experience of nature, as we see in the examples from Laurie Stoelting and K. Ramesh. Have you seen this concept approached from other avenues?


Notes

1 Daniel Matt, The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995), 15.

2 James Fadiman and Robert Frager, eds., Essential Sufism (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999), 228.

3 Huston Smith, The World's Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), 388.

4 Cor van den Heuvel, ed., The Haiku Anthology (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999), 163.

5  Laurie Stoelting, Light on the Mountain: Selections, ed. Vincent Tripi (Greenfield, MA: Tribe Press, 2008).

6 K. Ramesh, Soap Bubbles: Haiku (Winchester, VA: Red Moon Press, 2007).

7 R.H. Blyth, Haiku: Eastern Culture (Hokuseido, 1960), iii.

[Gael Bage]

For me feeling this unity tends to result in ready made instant haiku, and yes usually nature inspired. It seems to be more generally spiritual than any particular religious idea.

[DavidGrayson]

Hi Gael,

Yes, I think this feeling of "at one-ness" will be a general feeling, not necessarily tied to the religious concept of it (from any tradition). I think that it's only after we experience it that we then try to understand or explain it conceptually.

[Mark Harris]

"Is the idea of interdependence or unity important for your appreciation of haiku? In my reading of haiku, this idea is usually grounded in an experience of nature, as we see in the examples from Laurie Stoelting and K. Ramesh. Have you seen this concept approached from other avenues?" -David Grayson

Hi David,

After reading your last post, three haiku came to mind. The first two trans. by R. Hass


      Sound of a saw;
poor people,
      winter midnight.

              Yosa Buson


      A poor box;
four or five pennies,
      evening rain.

            Kobayashi Issa


wind-borne seed
     I have
     my doubts

            Peggy Willis Lyles

[DavidGrayson]

Mark,

Wow. I love all three of these; it's been a long time since I've read the first two. For me, too, these perfectly convey that interdependence. Also, your first two examples have got me thinking: poverty is actually another subject where I've often seen the idea of unity in haiku. It may be that confronting poverty leads to empathy (there but for the grace of God go I), which is a short step toward that sense of oneness. On that note, this haiku by H. F Noyes came to mind:

homeless beggar—
the itch of his clothes
all down my spine

 

[Mark Harris]

Thanks David, those haiku came to mind because they are among my favorites. As for poverty, I live in a wealthy nation in which the jobless and homeless are sometimes reduced to wandering the streets. It may be that confronting their poverty leads to empathy...wish it would happen more often. As your example of the Noyes haiku shows, the homeless are closer to nature whether they like it or not.

You've made a couple of mentions about schools of mysticism on the two Religio threads, and you quote Blyth, who was inspired by his understanding of Zen when he wrote, "that state of mind in which we are not separated from other things, are indeed identical with them, and yet retain our own individuality and personal peculiarities."

However, unity and interconnectedness don't preclude hierarchy. In the first creation telling that you reference above, we find something close to the following words: God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." A world view at odds with the one usually communicated through contemporary elh?

[AlanSummers]

Mark quoted:
God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." A world view at odds with the one usually communicated through contemporary elh?

I'm always intrigued when God is quoted.  Who was there to report this verbal?  I must say it's a dandy for corporate organisations and property developers to abuse for their own ends. ;-)

I don't have any religious haiku to post, but there are a large body of haiku and haibun writers in the States and the U.K. who write from their Christian beliefs.  It would be great to see some here.

Perhaps it takes a ELH to redress the balance?


Chanting the sutras,
I receive the rice;
The shrikes sing.

Santoka translation from:
http://www.terebess.hu/english/haiku/taneda.html

all my best,
Alan

[Mark Harris]

Alan Summers wrote, "I'm always intrigued when God is quoted."

Agreed. Before we go any further, though, let me clear up any potential misunderstandings. Those were not my words. And I'm neither Christian nor Jewish. I should have made better use of punctuation. The quote from the Hebrew Bible is, "God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.' "

[AlanSummers]

Hi Mark,

No, you were perfectly clear, and the reply from me wasn't to you insomuch as how people during the editing of the various bibles from all the religions could have possibly overheard God.

I sometimes wonder if it isn't the scientists, in all their atheism, aren't more open to what God has said or is still trying to say.  Perhaps God didn't say anything, because God is a doer, and perhaps we just don't listen to the constant message(s).

I'm not religious as I don't believe many of the Teachers and Prophets followed or wanted to follow or create religion, but I'll do my best to write some haiku that directly refer to the big miracle that is this universe.   

all my best,

Alan

[Mark Harris]

thanks for the compliment, Alan


         perfectly clear


now how to stay in the zone... :)

[Mark Harris]

and David,

Your claim that "The constellation of our ethics and values; sense of community; understanding of the meaning and purpose of the world; perception of reality and time; and much more are grounded in the religious-cultural heritage of the society in which we have been raised" is true, I think, and useful to keep in mind going forward.

Peace

[merlot]

Basho heard a frog leap into a pond, his enlightenment being made in the frog's image.

[snowbird a/k/a Merrill Ann Gonzales]

Alan's remark about "maybe GOD..." reminds me of an old Hebrew saying..."Why did GOD create man?  A. Because GOD loves stories!"....   And perhaps that's why we're created in the image of GOD?  This is getting very interesting!   ;)

[DavidGrayson]

Hi Mark - Good point about the first creation story (the "seven days" version) as being a more hierarchical version. I agree; the story is from what some have termed the exoteric tradition as opposed to the esoteric (or mystical) version. Regarding mysticism, I am reminded of one interpretation I read that goes something like this: In the pagan/aboriginal world, early humans experienced the world as one. In the later monotheistic tradition, humans felt themselves as separate from nature and the world (i.e. a dualistic and hierarchical world). Mysticism seeks to bridge, or repair, that separation and return humans to that first experience of one-ness with nature and the world.

If I've correctly understood, I agree with both you and Alan that most ELH poets approach the world (or endeavor to) from the non-hierarchical point of view. However, as I argue in the introduction, most people in the West grew up within the Abrahamic tradition and so the hierarchical view remains in our outlook to some degree, whether we are aware of it or prefer it or not.

[hairy]

..confronting poverty leads to empathy (there but for the grace of God go I), which is a short step toward that sense of oneness. On that note, this haiku by H. F Noyes came to mind:

homeless beggar—
the itch of his clothes
all down my spine


Dave: I can relate:

       

        wrong turn
 down a dead-end street
a beggar's outstretched hands


I was feeling lost, forelorn when I made that "wrong turn" (but was it really?)  and encountering the beggar I felt some kind of affinity (empathy..by the grace of God..)  and ended up giving him  a gift of $$$--and felt much better when I hairpinned back.



Al