World of Dew - Hopeful Impermanence Via Japanese Haiku - Part II on Kobayashi Issa

The world of dew
is the world of dew.
And yet, and yet —

露の世は露の世ながらさりながら

Kobayashi Issa

Wandering

Born 1763 in a small mountain village in central Japan, Yataro Kobayashi, who later in life adopted the pen name "Issa," was surrounded by nature from an early age. The son of a farmer, his mother passing away when he was two years old, Issa was raised primarily by his grandmother. He studied with a calligraphy and haiku master while attending the village school but encountered familial tension with his new stepmother and was sent away after his grandmother's death when he was 14 years old to train as an apprentice for hire at the capital in Edo.

The next ten years of Issa's life are largely unknown, but by age 25, he had begun publishing poems under a haiku teacher through the Katsushika school, known for stylistic references to animals and the natural world, which would soon populate Issa's poems.

After his master's death, Issa was promoted, but again faced tensions with his fellow poets and resigned by 29, departing on less than ideal terms. He traveled alone to visit his father before moving onward, wandering the countryside for ten years on a pilgrimage to Pure Land Buddhist temples across Japan before returning to his childhood home to tend to his father on his deathbed. Dividing the family property in half, Issa lived side by side with his stepfamily and married but lost all of his three children shortly after their births before finally losing his wife and their fourth child. Issa remarried several times but died before the birth of his one and only daughter, whom he never met. Her family was still living at the Kobayashi property into the 1950s and perhaps later.

Issa's story represents another all too human pattern. In a sense nothing special, he encountered the same sorts of conflict and loss that characterize any of our lives. In our second installation of a series on Japanese poetry, we feature here one of Issa's many poems as a reflection on transience, a both painful and hopeful theme that weaves its way into the present pandemic as much as the environmental crisis and other such events. And yet, and yet...

Cup of Tea

Issa (一茶), whose pen name means "a cup of tea" with the added implication of "a single bubble in steeping tea," saw the bubbles of transience, the tides of change, sweep over his eyes on countless occasions, often bearing misfortune. Yet being a child of the farm, a wandering man of the countryside, he also witnessed nature's impermanence at every step, perceiving beauty, even if mournful, in the transient nature of existence. His haiku on dew conveys these perhaps mixed feelings.

"The world of dew" (露の世) he writes at the outset, thereby setting the scene for his readers. Deeply influenced by Buddhism, particularly its Pure Land doctrine of salvation in the divine abode of the Buddha of light, Issa saw the world as a dewdrop perched precariously on a blade of grass, gone in an instant, vanished in a flash. Upon losing his infant daughter to smallpox, Issa composed this poem, mourning her death through creation.

World of Dew

For Issa, this world of dew symbolized the fleeting joys of life. Despite their transience, Issa saw them as no less joyful while they were present. Their loss, however, was heart-wrenching for him. His early childhood encounter with death through the loss of his mother at age two, followed by the loss of his grandmother who had been his primary caretaker at age 14, foreshadowed the blows dealt to him later by mortality with the passing of multiple infant children and his first wife. Issa also lost his father in the midst of this whirlwind of death. He grieved deeply. Bearing strong resemblance to each other, another of Issa's poems reads:

A world of dew
and in every dewdrop
a world of sorrow.

露の世の露の中にてけんくわ哉

Kobayashi Issa

Indeed, the world of dew is an image that finds itself repeatedly interwoven throughout his poetry. The Pure Land school to which he belonged laid particular emphasis on the desperately fleeting nature of worldly existence, offering relief through the grace of Amitābha, the Buddha of light. By chanting Amitābha's name, some semblance of peace was restored in the hearts and minds of devotees, who were promised rebirth in a heavenly paradise known as the Pure Land. Many have since attempted to establish such a Pure Land on earth, an effort that becomes all the more pertinent in the face of pandemic and climate change with its feverish symptoms which plague the planet. Issa no doubt invoked the pure light of Amitābha throughout his encounters with death and loss.

And Yet

We turn now to the concluding lines of Issa's haiku, "And yet, and yet —"...

Left with a sense of inconclusiveness, perhaps spaciousness and hopefulness, Issa ends on open terrain. While in his other poem, he concludes with reference to the world of sorrow, here the possibilities are endless. The Japanese phrase "ながらさりながら" (nagara sari nagara) rolls off the tongue with the sense of sauntering onward.

In light of the various waves of impermanence sweeping the globe, whether environmental or epidemiological, it remains uncertain what, precisely, lies on the horizon. While pained by these ongoing traumas, if we can find even the slightest opening, the faintest glimmer of hope, then perhaps behind the darkness, beneath that crack in our armor, lies a wellspring of light. "And yet," writes Issa, "and yet —"...

To be continued.

Rain Falls - Filling the Ruts Via Japanese Haiku - Part I on Buson

rain falls on the grass,
filling the ruts left by
the festival cart.

草の雨祭の車過てのち

Buson

Rain Falls on the Grass

A poet-painter of Edo period Japan, Buson was aesthetically-inclined in ways that bridged the ecological and the contemplative. An era now understood as a Japanese renaissance of sorts, Edo Japan saw widespread stability and flourishing of the arts, making it ripe with creative energy. In Buson's pieces, both painting and poetry, we often find minimalism packed full of complexity and nuance, vividly portraying the world in its process of continually coming into being.

Although not much is known of his early life, Buson likely lost both parents at a young age. He is believed to have ventured at age 20 to the then-capital of Edo (now Tōkyō) where he studied painting and poetry for six years with the famed composer of haiku, Hayano Hajin, until Hajin's death. Buson then wandered northward for ten years in didactic pilgrimage, documenting his travels in a journal that came to be known as the Narrow Road to the Far North (Oku no Hosomichi).

In many ways, Buson's life mirrors the mix of challenges and privileges faced by those of us living through the present pandemic, bearing witness to sickness and death while attempting to forge our way ahead. Buson enjoyed a life of contemplative arts, though not without enduring hardship, loss, and upheaval. Such themes are reflected in his poems, one of which we feature here for contemplation. Thus begins our short series on Japanese haiku.

Filling the Ruts

Though brief, haiku is an art suffused with meaning. Each syllable contains within it an entire world of subtle meaning and vivid nuance. Strung together, these bead-like syllables paint a portrait of society and nature at large.

In Buson's haiku, we are invited into the rain. Quite viscerally, the very character for rain, 雨, illustrates the formation of individual droplets that leak from heavy clouds overhead. Via haiku, Buson paints this rain falling onto the grass below, where instead of a smooth and even surface, we find gouges — ruts — carved into the earth, creating miniature channels, collecting rainfall.

Falling on the grass, filling the ruts, the rain offers an implicit metaphor for the functioning of the human mind, both individually and collectively. Some degree of previous scaffolding exists in the form of habituated patterns of cognizing the world. The coarse byproducts of these cognitions are our behaviors. Incoming sense perceptions, like rain, fill the ruts already carved in us.

The haiku, though brief, evolves in layers, turning momentarily to a portrait from the past.

Left by the Festival Cart

In this portrait, Buson paints a scene much different than the empty, grassy field receiving the rain. Formerly, the very same field was home to a bustling festival. The ruts chiseled into the earth, now collecting rain, were left by the festival cart as it made its rounds through this party.

Such imagery reflects the ways the earth has been scarred by human activity, particularly in recent decades. The fun and games humanity has indulged, including rapid industrial progress for the sake of comfort and convenience at the expense of the environment, have left their indelible mark. A character that in other contexts can connote sacrifice, 祭, is here used to refer to this festival, in some sense reflecting the trade-off entailed in industrial activity. As it weaves its way across the field to provide goods, luxuries, and other pleasantries, this societally-driven, on-demand festival cart presses its full weight into the earth. Its tracks serve as gouge-like imprints, so that as the rain falls, it disproportionately fills these ruts.

While this precise meaning may not have been Buson's intention while painting the scene, it nonetheless foreshadows the Meiji restoration that followed immediately after the Edo period, ushering in an era of industrialization that forever changed Japanese society. It further reflects our present predicament, characterized by the threat of ecological, economic, and epidemiological collapse. In order to disperse the rain evenly over the field, we must fill the ruts left by the festival cart to whatever extent is possible.

Re-Filling the Ruts

What might we do, or undo, for the sake of re-filling the ruts and leveling the land? While we pause here for the time being, our forthcoming explorations of Japanese haiku will further probe this question, among others. To be continued.

Sowing Seeds - Teachings of Jesus Christ on the Parable of the Sower

He taught them many things by parables, and in his teaching said:
"Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed..."

Mark 4.2-3

The Parable of the Sower

With Good Friday and the coming of Easter Sunday, while the pandemic continues to simmer, we take this time to reflect here on an ecologically-themed passage from the New Testament, ripe as it is with contemplative parables. Known as the Parable of the Sower, this passage from the Book of Mark, also appearing in Matthew, Luke, and the Gospel of Thomas, mirrors an activity of the mind that occurs in ongoing cycles, across myriads of situations, in all times and places. Its message bears as much significance for our present circumstances as those of bygone years.



While but one of a rich handful of such parables, known collectively as the Seed Parables of Jesus, the Parable of the Sower depicts in lucid detail the process of sowing seeds in the unconscious. Although referring specifically to the teachings of Christianity and the word of God, such seeds may also stand broadly for any experience and its imprints on the mind. We thus draw on the Parable of the Sower to investigate one of many contemplative elements of ecology seeded throughout the Bible and Christian contemplative practice, with implications for sustainability and resilience in times of crisis.

Let Them Hear

Contextually, the Parable of the Sower is a sermon delivered by Jesus from a boat on the Sea of Galilee to an immense crowd gathered on the shore. The parable begins by illustrating this scene for us, then diving into the ecological metaphor.

Again Jesus began to teach by the lake.
The crowd that gathered around him was so large that he got into a boat and sat in it out on the lake, while all the people were along the shore at the water’s edge.

“Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed.

As he was scattering the seed,
some fell along the path,
and the birds came and ate it up.

Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil.
It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow.

But when the sun came up,
the plants were scorched,
and they withered because they had no root.

Other seed fell among thorns,
which grew up and choked the plants,
so that they did not bear grain.

Still other seed fell on good soil.
It came up, grew and produced a crop,
some multiplying thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times.”

Then Jesus said, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”

We thus witness an array of growing conditions for the sowing of seeds. Depending on where such seeds land, their fate differs substantially. Interestingly, the parable is left as it is, unelaborated, for the lay audience gathered at the shoreline. No further commentary is provided in their presence.

The Farmer Sows the Word

Only slightly later does Jesus explain the meaning of the metaphor to the disciples, explaining his intent in using parables. Knowing that the masses will not fully "hear" the depths of his message, struggling to grasp its deeper purport, he dresses his teachings in parables they will find accessible. At the very least, they will carry these stories with them, even if they do not fully comprehend them. Thus a seed is planted in their minds, which if provided with the proper growing conditions, will flourish into a mature contemplative comprehension of the message of God.



To a private audience of his disciples, Jesus provides commentary on the seed metaphor. In unpacking the parable, he proceeds meticulously through each image, relating each growing context to a type of person with qualities and conditions either conducive or not to understanding the word of God. "The farmer sows the word," he clarifies.

Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown.
As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them.

Thus, Jesus explains that seeds are like the word of God. They will inevitably resonate with some and not with others, depending on various extenuating circumstances. The first class of people he describes are like seeds that land on a path and not the field itself. Because they are exposed to birds and other creatures, they will be taken away and eaten before they have any chance at growing.

Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy.

But since they have no root, they last only a short time.
When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away.

Next are those who gladly receive the word of God but lose faith and stagnate due to hardship. They are likened to seeds sown on rocky terrain, without opportunity to reach the soil and establish roots. Adversity overcomes them as a result of unfavorable growing conditions.

Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word;
but the worries of this life,
the deceitfulness of wealth
and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful.

Likewise, some people may have faith but deviate from the contemplative path due to stressors and temptations, like thorns that choke budding sprouts after the seeds have been sown among them.

Others, like seed sown on good soil,
hear the word, accept it,
and produce a crop—
some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times what was sown.”

However, those whose conditions are ripe will wind up reaping a bountiful harvest with fruits far exceeding what was originally planted. They are like seeds sown in abundantly rich, healthy soil, the ideal growing conditions for fruitful outcomes.



Adding to its relevance, the Parable of the Sower occurs following upon Mark's depiction of a growing sense of hostility toward Jesus by the Pharisees. While this contextual piece is omitted from the other books in which the parable occurs, it provides a clue about possible reasons for Jesus to have chosen such a parable. It further sets the stage for several additional seed-based parables that follow immediately after it. Such pieces of the puzzle appear to point toward the importance of sustainable faith and joy in order to support the longevity of the teaching of Jesus, despite relentless opposition.

Sowing Seeds

Extending the metaphor to our present circumstances, broadening it beyond its original scope, several questions emerge. For instance, how might we ensure our seeds, the words and values by which we intend to live, fall on good soil? What can we do to support their growth in times of crisis? What conditions, within our range of influence, may we sculpt through our own volition in order to reap a fruitful harvest? Such questions apply equally to contemplative practice as they do to the wider context of local and global sustainability.



In order to endure our current pandemic and various other forms of adversity that will inevitably continue to plague us in the years to come, we must sow our seeds wisely, under sustainable conditions. Faith in the process, confidence that we will be capable of enduring hardship and will emerge on the other end with fresh eyes, a transformed perspective on our relationships in this world, will assist us immensely in these times of difficulty. Such faith is experiential, sustained by contemplative practice itself.

Source:

The Holy Bible, New International Version. Grand Rapids: Zondervan House, 1984.

Regenerative Remedies of the Lotus Sutra - Diverse Herbs Receive the Same Rain

Suppose in the great manifold cosmos there are mountains, rivers, valleys, and plains where many kinds of grasses, trees, shrubs, and herbs of different names and colors grow.

Dense clouds thoroughly cover this great manifold cosmos and rain falls at the same time everywhere, moistening the small, medium, and large roots, stems, branches, and leaves of all the grasses, trees, shrubs, and herbs.

Regenerative Remedies

An influential, core scripture of Mahāyāna Buddhism, the Lotus Sūtra is perhaps best known for its use of parables. It is also among the strata of Buddhist texts responsible for introducing the doctrine of the "single vehicle" (ekayāna, 一乘) describing the sole path to liberation upon which all beings ride to awakening. This single vehicle, depicted through diverse contemplative metaphors, comprises an all-inclusive path of regenerative remedies for social and ecological disease.

While not always immediately evident in the Lotus Sūtra due to its frequent parables and analogies, the path to awakening is intended to be as inclusive as possible. As such, the parables of the Lotus Sūtra, including the chapter on "grasses, trees, shrubs, and herbs of different names and colors," draw out, through analogy, the diversity of beings who are included on the single vehicle as it winds its course. During times of divisive rhetoric, growing separation due to panic, pandemic, and pandemonium, and, sadly, mistrust of that which is deemed "other," such teachings of inclusivity are especially pertinent.

We therefore examine the implications of the Lotus Sūtra and its discussion of diverse herbs for our present circumstances, finding a place for unity in plurality in forging ecologically and socially regenerative remedies for our present ills.

Diverse Herbs

An image by no means exclusive to Buddhism, we find in the parable of the herbs an elaborate plant-based illustration of society and ecology at large. Though only a handful of pages in length, the parable describes in vivid detail the social and ecological plurality that characterizes a flourishing global community, which given our present circumstances, is placed under dire threat.

As a collective human organism embedded in the plurality that is our ecosystem, we must adapt and evolve, especially given rapidly accelerating societal and ecological disruption. Due to long-coming, on-going environmental degradation and the recent outbreak of the novel coronavirus, we presently inhabit what may appear to be sheer chaos. Offering a contemplative metaphor for the broad means by which our climate crisis and the coronavirus pandemic may be resolved, however, the Lotus Sūtra situates us among a world of diverse herbs. Especially striking are the chapter's verses:

Everywhere, equal, and immeasurable
The rain pours down and moistens the earth.
Grasses, herbs, large and small trees,
All kinds of crops, seedlings, sugarcane, and grapes
Growing in the depths of the mountains,
In rivers and in precipitous valleys,
Are all watered and completely nourished by the rain.
The dry earth is moistened everywhere
And the herbs and trees grow up thickly.
Out of this cloud the same rain
Waters these grasses, trees, and shrubs
Each according to their capacities.
All the trees, small, medium, or large
Are able to grow in accordance with their capacities.
The luster and colors of the roots, stems,
Branches, leaves, and flowers
Are all freshened by the same rain.
Each of these, although receiving the same moisture,
Reaches a greater or lesser size
In accordance with their different
Dispositions, characteristics, and natures.

Each being, whether plant or animal, is metaphorically one of these crops. Each must be handled according to their growing conditions. Indeed, in addition to its multifaceted ecological and social parables, the Lotus Sūtra also consistently interweaves the theme of "skillful means," from the Sanskrit upāya, rendered 方便 in Chinese. Such skillful means are an essential pedagogical tool, an adaptable teaching device, intended to wisely package and compassionately deliver much-needed lessons in a context-appropriate manner, suited to the audience and setting.

In order to effectively apply skillful means, one must have cultivated a refined contemplative discernment. The same teaching, packaged and delivered in the same way, will not be equally effective for all beings. Given their unique conditions, the amount of rain and sun each requires in order to flourish must be adapted accordingly. Multiple routes to regeneration exist. Rather than a "one size fits all" vehicle, there exist countlessly diverse iterations and adaptations, varied grasses, trees, shrubs, herbs — all included on-board the single vehicle — quite viscerally, a form of unity in plurality.

The Same Rain

Perhaps most significantly, the Lotus Sūtra invokes rain as the necessary ingredient — a panacea — for the flourishing of all herbs.

Such rain falls equally on all. Even so, while all receive the same rain, the diversity of beings receive it in different quantities, by different means, and grow to different sizes. We may perhaps conceive of rain as medicine, a remedy for the ills that afflict us, leaving us parched and brittle like dried plants. Medicinally, rain restores our vitality. This, then, begs the question: What in our present situation offers us medicinal rain?



Our present circumstances offer an invaluable training ground for regenerative efforts and ongoing lifestyle adaptations in preparation for forthcoming existential shocks, which will inevitably continue in the years to come. These regenerative remedies, in their various forms — including contemplative varities of inner and outer cultivation, both of psychosocial mindscapes and bioregional landscapes, both of which are detailed in the Lotus Sūtra — serve as sources of rain and relief, crafting the conditions for a sustainable future. For such a future to even be possible, we must undergo a global, societal, ecological paradigm shift in every act of body, speech, and mind in the days, weeks, months, and years to come, which the Lotus Sūtra and other classics anticipated well in advance of our present crisis, describing the means to do so at length.

Although brief, we hope these reflections, inspired by the Lotus Sūtra — whose name itself conveys the potential for infinite beauty to emerge from the most putrid and muddy of conditions — will contribute to ongoing efforts at seeding the solutions through a plurality of regenerative revolutions.

To be continued.