anecdote illustrates the Zen adept's avoidance of dialectic. Sosan went right to the heart of the problem. Who bound him? The disciple wanted to philosophize. He was seeking an excuse for his faults in his imagined lack of liberty. He was devious and unenlightened. The master of Zen, on the other hand, condemns convoluted thinking. For him, ordinary, everyday life and behaviour are the real way of Zen.
Lastly, a monk asked Joshu, "Has a dog Buddha-nature or not?" The monk answered: "Mu." The answer mu or wu is the prefix "non" or "no," but it also imitates the "woof" that a dog might answer if asked the question. This mu or nothingness is the road to enlightenment.
While meditating on koan such as the anecdote of Joshu's dog, the monks used haiku, haiga (haiku pictures) and other arts as disciplines to foster enlightenment and awareness of essences; according to Asano Nagatake, Director of Tokyo's National Museum, "a new kind of artistic endeavor was born as disciples tried to express spiritual concepts in objective form."11 Earle Ernst explains the nature of existence as taught in Japanese Buddhism:
Existence consists in the interplay of a plurality of elements whose true nature is indescribable and whose source is unknown. Combinations of these elements instantaneously flash into existence and instantaneously disappear, to be succeeded by new combinations of elements appearing in a strict causality. . . . The only concrete reality is the moment, which like the image from a single frame of motion picture film is. . . followed by a new and different frame and image. The visible world is therefore flamelike, shifting and evanescent, possessed of no durable validity.12
It must be stressed that the Japanese artist, too, regards the world of perception as having no permanence, only brief flashes of actuality. He merely records; he does not interpret. He concentrates on single moments of time and space.
Bushido (the way of the warrior), based on Zen and Confucian principles, stresses frugality of life, benevolence and righteousness. Bushi means "samurai, warrior"; do means "way." Bushido is "the way of the samurai" or simply "chivalry." Loyalty to the warrior's lord is more important even than loyalty to the laws of the country or to the duties towards the family. If a conflict arose between the two, the duty to the lord should be performed, followed by seppuku (suicide by disembowelment) to atone for the offense against the law or against family ties. In modern Japan lifelong loyalty and service to one's employer go far beyond anything found in Western countries. Thus Basho, a young man from a samurai family, first became interested in haiku out of loyalty to his young lord, a haikai-lover who died at an early age. The Zen frugality and simplicity of living arrangements; the mingled sense of pride and tragedy flowing from the spirit of sacrifice epitomized by samurai suicides; these are the chief contributions of bushido to haiku.
The Zen Buddhist concept of life as a succession of moments, whose meaning is to be captured by openness to the significance of each event as it occurs, gave birth to many new arts. One of these is cha no yu (the tea ceremony). According to Asano, its purpose was "to look quietly into oneself and to appreciate nature while meditating within a rustic teahouse."13 Each part of the teahouse is a work of art having a certain symbolism. The overhang of the roof above the entrance indicates the changeability of the weather and of human life. The opening is small (three feet square), so that the guest must humble himself by stooping. Outside the house the stepping-stones, the water basin and the stone lantern indicate a willingness to be used: the stones to be trodden upon; the water to remove the dirt of the hands and mouth in the ceremonial purification; the wick of the lantern to be consumed. The teahouse itself is small and simple (nine feet square or smaller) suggesting refined poverty by the simple materials chosen carefully. The founders of the tea ceremony emphasized harmony and respect among the guests and utensils, cleanliness and the tranquillity flowing from the unhurried handling of aesthetically beautiful articles mellowed by long and loving use. If enlightenment is not attained within the teahouse, at least the guest is reminded of the proper spirit in which to meditate and his whole being is opened to the workings of events.
Ikebana, flower-arranging, demands a steady concentration on nature, a union with it, and a reduction of its complexity by a limiting of its profusion of material to the point where its true nature is shown. The components of a classical flower arrangement represent seven elements—the mountain peak, a waterfall, a hill, the foot of the mountain, the town and the division of the whole into in (shade) and yo (sun). In and yo also represent yin and yang, passive and active, the female and male principles of Taoist philosophy. The three branches in some arrangements are called shin (truth), soe (supporting) and nagashi (flowing). Their asymmetric form suggests the universe. The principle of compression of nature as found in ikebana is an aid to Zen enlightenment. It is similar to the compression of haiku, which records an image of nature at a significant moment.
The discipline of concentration and economy of means which characterizes ikebana is also found in Noh, where the isolation of a significant moment is the visual climax in a performance. Stillness represents a perfect balance of opposed forces. Stillness also represents movement; for example, the actor, in slowly raising one still hand to within a few inches of the eyes, represents passionate weeping. There is a strange contradiction between the reality of the feelings and the conventionality of the acting. The dream world is yet the real world.14 Noh represents a series of important single moments in the wheel of life, in contrast to the Western emphasis on flow shown in the actor's face.
In all these varied activities, satori is the element constantly sought. In the examination of Zen arts, four things have been noted—contemplation of nature, meditation on koan, bushido and artistic expression—in poetry, visual art, the theatre, flower arranging and the tea ceremony. In all these the constant element was the search for, or expression of, satori, the end and aim of Zen life. Satori gives man a new viewpoint, a new way of seeing the ordinary things of life.
Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, the great Zen scholar, has pointed out that two men can look at the same thing, one without the viewpoint of Zen, and one with this viewpoint:
The object of Zen discipline consists in acquiring a new viewpoint for looking into the essence of things. . . . You and I are supposedly living in the same world, but who can tell that the thing we popularly call a stone that is lying before my window is the same to both of us? You and I sip a cup of tea. That act is apparently alike to us both, but who can tell what a wide gap there is subjectively between your drinking and my drinking? In your drinking there may be no Zen, while mine is brim-full of it. The reason for it is: you move in a logical circle and I am out of it.15
The man without satori is too logical. Satori is "intuitive looking-into, in contra-distinction to intellectual and logical understanding; it is the unfolding of a new world hitherto unperceived."16 Satori cannot be taught; it must be sought without strain and found by each individual himself. A master, scorning books, can help a disciple orally, in a person-to-person contact, but actual satori can be reached and experienced by the individual only. When the conditions necessary for satori are in the mind ready to mature, a simple thing like the sound of a pebble hitting a tree, a stumble, the fragrance of a flower, the flash of colour in a bird will bring about enlightenment. Reality itself is perceived, Self is attained and the ordinary world is seen more clearly. Because satori makes life more enjoyable and meaningful, because it broadens man's horizon to include the whole universe, it is, in the opinion of the Zen Buddhist, well worth striving for.
To summarize, Zen Buddhism has grown from a centuries-old tradition of Mahayana Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. Many Japanese arts have thrived under and by its influence. Behind the deceptively simple haiku lies the long history of an important line of Eastern thought. Zen illuminates the thought of Basho, Buson, Issa, Shiki and others and provides the essential key to the meaning of many haiku. Since the Zen content of haiku is often little understood by English would-be writers of haiku, aspects of Zen found in Japanese and English haiku will be examined in more detail in the next chapter.
III THE HAIKU MOMENT
