Hokku, Koan & Zen Buddhism

Falling leaves
lie on one another;
rain beats on rain
~ Gyōdai


It is a Hokku by Gyōdai. Hokku is the pre-modern form of Haiku.

Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki (1870 - 1966) and Reginald Horace Blyth (1898 - 1964) are the two important pioneers who studied Japanese philosophy, literature and culture. Their works on Zen and Shin Buddhism and the Hokku and Haiku forms of Japanese poetry are considered to be the authoritative introductions on the subject. It would be interesting to note that the Japanese Professor D.T.Suzuki mentored the English gentleman R.H.Blyth, who was almost three decades younger to him. Both of them became close friends and later they were buried next to each other in the Tōkei-ji Zen Temple (The Divorce Temple) which was built in the 13th century. While the works of D.T.Suzuki had a profound impact on C.G.Jung, the works of R.H.Blyth influenced the interesting Beats like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Out of their enormous body of work, I could read only the two works of D.T.Suzuki, An Introduction to Zen Buddhism (with a foreword by Carl Gustav Jung) and Studies in Zen; and only one work of R.H.Blyth, A History of Haiku (in two volumes - one from the beginnings to Issa and the other, from Issa to the middle of 20th century). The two books of D.T.Suzuki are indebted to the Jean Genet Project and the book of R.H.Blyth was a great discovery in the archaic shelves of The Asiatic Society of Mumbai some time ago. We shall dwell into the mysterious Jean Genet Project at some other opportune moment. Therefore, let us leave it that and get back to the Hokku and the Koan, as contemplated by our dear Anonymous.

What is Hokku?

R.H.Blyth explains it lucidly. It is not a poem and it is not literature! It is a way of returning to our moon nature, our cherry blossom nature, our falling leaf nature, in short, to our Buddha nature.

In Hokku, it is crucial to distinguish between what we see in Nature, and, out thoughts and ideas about what we see in Nature. Hokku stresses that our thoughts and words should not obscure the truth and the suchness of the thing we see in Nature. Things in nature should speak so loudly that we should not hear what the poets have said of them.

That is the fundamental distinction between a Hokku and a Haiku. In modern Haiku, the Poet, with a Capital P, is the most important thing, the inviolable sanctity of the will of the poet, the individual ego as embedded in the name of the poet is the pivot. Whereas in Hokku, Nature is the pivot. In Hokku, there are no poets. The writer is simply a mirror which reflects Nature. It is the duty of the writer to keep on cleaning the mirror from the dust of thoughts, words and self-will. The writer of Hokku should therefore reach a maturity and realisation of the dynamic of the Self, the words and the thoughts. Modern Haiku has never been able to achieve this because it is too much attached to the name, the will and the ego of the poet and to the writing of poetry. The pre-modern Hokku is then a remarkably humble and simple form of verse, where the writer disppears and the reader becomes one with the Nature and the thing which he experiences by reading about. It was Masaoka Shiki (1867 - 1902) who renamed the traditional Hokku which have started to incorporate the modern elements of the poet and the poet's individualised will in the process of writing, as Haiku. Theoretically then, we can say that there are elements of Hokku in the works of the Haiku masters Basho, Buson and Issa. Hokku predates these three Masters and the tradition continued through them, till it got fossilised into an opening stanza of the Japanese orthodox poetry, at the turn of the 19th century. There is no need to get confused between the theoretical distinctions between Hokku and Haiku, and suffice it to understand that though there are finer distinctions between the two, both the terms are being used interchangeably. As my beloved Tamil poet Achutan Aduka's beautiful poem says, The flowers keep blossoming and we keep naming them, it would be a rewarding exercise to experience the poetry than to get caught in the naming of it.

The very idea of the disappearance of the writer in Hokku, would be something totally incomprehensible to the rational, modern mind. This is radically different from the concept of automatic writing as espoused by the Surrealist Movement of the 1920s, from the post-structuralist concept of the Death of the Author as enunciated by Roland Barthes in 1967 based on the deconstructionist philosophy of Jacques Derrida and from the riposte of Michel Foucault in his essay What is an Author? published in 1969. They are a far cry from what Hokku calls for.

Hokku signifies the art of putting sensory experiences of various seasons of Nature and making the reader to experience it without the interference or the interpretation of the writer. It is also not a way to make a name for one's individual self as a poet. It is a way of life, a profound spiritual path in which all the clutter and dust of the mind gradually disappears. And the writing and the living becomes unified and holistic without any difference the two. Hokku and Haiku are both actually the processes of a lifetime and cannot be extricated out of its historic and cultural moorings, to be aped at one's own whim and will.

Descending geese -

their cries pile on one another;

The cold of night

~ Kyoroku

Falling leaves
lie on one another;
rain beats on rain

~ Gyōdai

These two Hokku by Kyoroku (1655 - 1715) and Gyōdai (1732 - 1793) are similar in their tonality though they are different in their tenor. By their very nature, a Hokku or Haiku, would demand each reader to be a poet. Without cultivating the art of evocation, it would be difficult to decipher out what gets succintly recorded in poetry from an observation of nature, in which certain truths and beauty of life gets subtly revealed.

Let me restrict myself to muse on Gyōdai's poem alone.

In autumn, the leaves would keep falling from the trees. The season of autumn and the withering of leaves are associated with the feelings of loneliness and melancholy. The falling of leaves from a tree symbolises the withering away of life. The following lines from Rainer Maria Rilke's poem Autumn Day would sum up the experience of such an autumn:

Who now is alone, will remain so for long,

will wake, and read, and write long letters
and back and forth on the boulevards
will restlessly wander, while the leaves blow.

That is autumn and that is falling leaves.

The feelings and emotions that are evoked while observing the falling of leaves would be at stark contrast to what happens when one looks at the falling of flowers from a tree. In this poetry of Gyōdai, it does not stop with the falling of the leaves. Instead, the falling leaves then lie on one another, bringing a totally new dimension to it. At this juncture, two important elements get embedded to the poetic experience : a companionship and an ancestry. The newly falling leaves lie on the already fallen leaves which is a movement in the temporality of life. In Zen Buddhism, it is called the being-time amidst the flow of change. This bestows a deeper meaning of continuity and a wider sense of time to the whole phenomenon. The poem then ends with a metaphorical reference to the rainy season, when the rain drops beat on rain to merge into unison. Rather it expresses a longing for such a confluence in time and space.

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

~ A Zen Koan

A Koan is a riddle or a perplexing question, a dialogue or a statement, or just a story which can never be comprehended by the rational or logical mind. It gets unravelled only by intuition and wisdom. In Zen Buddhism, Koans are used as a meditative tool for the awakening of the inner self. The Zen Masters use Koans to probe the students in order to validate the authenticity of their insights (Kensho and Sartori) and fathom the depth of their realisation. The Koan, What Is The Sound Of One Hand Clapping?, propounds the fundamental question as to whether the object and the subject of relentless seeking are one and the same. It is a way of Zen meditation to realise that the self seeks the self not directly but under the guise of the Koan itself. When this realisation is achieved, the two hands become one and that is the sound of one hand clapping!

Does it sound too weird?! Some of us might dismiss Koan as a simplistic bit of cleverness or a sheer waste of time in mental gymnastics. It does not seem to be so. Am yet to read the famous 13th century book The Gateless Gate which is supposed to be having a compilation of important Koans along with their commentaries. I've been searching for this book everywhere and not yet found one. But the fundamental issue is not about reading this or that book.

It is about meditation..

Let me conclude, with my favourite poem of Naojo, a female poet of medievel Japan and a beautiful Huna Koan, which is based on the ancient Hawaiian system of metaphysics :

Naojo ~

A shame to pick it -

A shame not to pick it -
The violet flower


A Huna Koan ~

What is the sound of one person loving?