[In the following essay, Sanders examines the importance of Buddhist enlightenment—called satori—to haiku poetry.]

Zen Buddhism, which came from India by way of China to Japan, has had a great influence on Japanese culture in general and Japanese art in particular. Suzuki points out that "the idea that the ultimate truth of life and of things generally is to be intuitively and not conceptually grasped is what Zen has contributed to the cultivation of artistic appreciation among the Japanese people."¹ At this very point we find the closest connection between Zen and haiku poetry, that is, in their intuitive rather than conceptual apprehension of life which is concentrated into one brief, yet atemporal moment. This is satori in Zen, or what Yasuda calls "the haiku moment,"² the aesthetic experience in haiku. Satori is enlightenment (similar to the concept wu in Chinese), a self-awakening, quite similar to the unio mystica of Christian mysticism. The haiku poet may also experience an enlightenment, which is seeing reality as it is, seeing "kono-mama" or "sono-mama" (similar to the Sanskrit thatata): the suchness, the is-ness of things, with no value judgments as to goodness, badness, or the comparative worth of objects, but accepting everything just as it is. A glimpse into the intrinsic nature of things is afforded by haiku, the seventeen syllable brevity of which allows us one swift image of the world en soi.

Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry which is generally characterized by three main elements: first, its form, usually consisting of seventeen syllables divided into the pattern 5-7-5; second, the use of a seasonal word or theme; and third, the restriction of the poem to one scene, experience, or image. The best haiku do not directly express emotions or ideas; a concrete picture is presented and its interpretation is left to the reader. As Otsuji indicates, "What is expressed in a haiku is a very small aspect of phenomena; yet what the poet experiences is the reality hidden behind what he expresses."³

Suzuki states that a haiku puts forward images reflecting intuitions. "These images are not figurative representations made use of by the poetic mind, but they directly point to original intuitions, indeed, they are intuitions themselves. When the latter are attained, the images become transparent and are immediate expressions of the experience. An intuition in itself, being too intimate, too personal, too immediate, cannot be communicated to others; to do this it calls up images by means of which it becomes transferable. But to those who have never had such an experience it is difficult, even impossible, to reach the fact itself merely through images, because in this case images are transformed into ideas or concepts, and the mind then attempts to give them an intellectual interpretation. Such an attempt altogether destroys the inner truth and beauty of haiku."⁴

The roots of haiku reach back to the very beginnings of Japanese poetry. Yasuda indicates that the characteristics typical of haiku: ellipsis, condensation, spontaneity, and nakedness of treatment, are already commonly found in the katauta form of poetry around 700 A.D. Related verse forms—sedoka, choka, and tanka—developed into the renga or linked verse, the opening stanza of which was called hokku and was written in the pattern 5-7-5. The hokku fulfilled a function similar to the use of the title in the West: it summarized the theme of the poem. From this hokku the haiku developed into an independent form as early as the fifteenth century.

The haiku has undergone very little change since its origin. The zenith of its evolution was undoubtedly reached in the seventeenth century with the poetry of Basho (d. 1694); since then there have been small peaks in the history of haiku, but the general trend in quality has been downward. In 1957 there were approximately fifty monthly haiku magazines being published in Japan and individual haiku appeared frequently in other periodicals. Henderson estimates that over a million new haiku are published each year, and innumerable others are written privately and enjoyed within a limited circle.⁵ These figures would perhaps suggest a haiku renaissance today. There is indeed a renewed interest in haiku, but it must be emphasized that this does not necessarily indicate a spiritual renaissance; many haiku are written by poets who have never experienced satori.

In order to understand where satori is to be found in haiku, we must examine the concept of satori more closely. Unfortunately, the best one can do is hint at its innermost nature because, as in the unio mystica of Christian mysticism, one can work all around the essence of the experience verbally without really approaching the heart of the phenomenon. Blyth referred a "spiritual orgasm".⁶ Suzuki explains has it as acquiring to satori as a new viewpoint for looking into the essence of things.⁷ He tries to define satori by enumerating its most prominent characteristics, and it is striking how similar they are to the features of unio mystica reported by Christian mystics. These eight traits are:⁸

1. Irrationality. Satori is not attained by a logical process of ratiocination, and it cannot be explained coherently.
2. Intuitive insight. Another name for satori is kensho, which means "to see essence or nature." One perceives the essence of reality; objects become transparent. Satori is the knowledge of an individual object and also of reality which is at the back of it.
3. Authoritativeness. Because the satori experience is direct and personal it cannot be refuted by logic; it is sufficient unto itself.
4. Impersonal tone. Satori is a highly intellectual state, not an emotional one.
5. Feeling of exaltation. One feels a calmness and mild exaltation at the overcoming of the individual being.
6. Affirmation. This is not seeing things in a positive or negative view, but accepting them as they are.
7. Sense of the Beyond. The experience of satori extends beyond the personal level, although it never embraces the concept of a personal God as Western mysticism may do.
8. Momentariness. Satori usually comes abruptly and unexpectedly and is a very brief experience.

Although nearly everyone agrees with some of Suzuki's points, many experts would omit some of his characteristics and add some that he has not mentioned. A briefer listing of traits, yet one which is preferred by some, is the following:⁹

1. Illumination.
2. Thoughtlessness yet awareness. Non-distinction or jijimuge is the "unimpeded interdiffusion of all particulars."¹⁰
3. Elimination of dualism. There is no perceiver, no "perceived," no subject, no object. "The perceiving I is in one sense unaltered," explains Humphreys. "It still sees the morning paper that it knows so well, and the bus to the office remains unaltered, but the perceiver and the perceived have merged into one, and the two-ness of things has gone. The undifferentiated totality of things is, as it were, understood from inside."¹¹
4. Stoppage of breathing.

Satori may be either a sudden or a gradual achievement. It may be totally unexpected or it may come after a series of steps or stages designed to lead one up to enlightenment, such as the koans provide. However, even using the gradual stages provided by meditation on the koans, satori comes abruptly and often when one least expects it. Also, there are various degrees of satori, depending on the depth of the experience.

To achieve satori is to overcome the dualistic way of thinking; it is to become conscious of the unconscious. Only the experience which evolves from a person's inner being can be truly his own. His innermost being opens up its deep secrets only when he has passed beyond the realm of conceptual thinking to the sphere of the unconscious, of mushin, no-mind, which means "going beyond the dualism of all forms of life being and non-being."¹² The mind is empty of thought as Takuan (d. 1645) demonstrates in this poem:

To think that I am not going
To think of you any more
Is still thinking of you.
Let me then try not to think
That I am not going to think of you.13

In a state of mushin one may become egoless; the unconscious may go beyond a personal unconscious, or even a collective unconscious, to a sort of cosmic unconscious.¹⁴ Hisamatsu calls satori "recognizing the real noumenon of a person, his original feature… [It is becoming] one who is unhinderedly free, released from all chains, one who recognizes himself truly, being no longer attached to the forms of matter and of spirit, one who faces the present world of existence and non-existence, life and death, good and evil, pro and con." ¹⁵

Eugen Herrigel calls satori "jumping into a new dimension."¹⁶ The first characteristic of the new way of seeing, he asserts, is "that all things are of equal importance in its sight.… They all seem to have acquired an absolute value." Haiku underscores the basic equality of all things when the body of a dead dog or a "horse pissing" near the poet's ear are not better or worse, no more or less important than Basho's frog or the cherry blossoms at Yoshino. Blyth correctly maintains that in haiku "man has no dignity, nature no majesty."¹⁷ The truth of the universe is expressed in one small intuitive image. Let us look more closely at Basho's famous frog haiku:

The ancient pond.
A frog jumps in.
Plop!

This is not just a serene landscape interrupted by a frog plunging into the water. It is this, but it is also much more: it opened a new perspective of reality for Basho. A Christian would say that Basho saw God in a frog as frog. The sound of the water "was heard by Basho as filling the entire universe. Not only was the totality of the environment absorbed in the sound and vanished into it, but Basho himself ness." Basho from his was ceased altogether being effaced²⁸ the old Basho; he conscious- heard the plop of the frog in the water and was enlightened. He saw the suchness, the is-ness of things; he beheld the world with new eyes. Reality became transparent for him in this experience of satori. Basho was not unprepared for this, for he had attained mushin, the state of no-mind, having gone beyond consciousness to the cosmic unconscious. In the middle of his selflessness, the sound of the water cut across his tranquility and caused him to perceive reality from a new point of view.

Satori is impersonal in that the Self has been overcome and an unconscious level below the ego has been reached. Haiku, too, must be egoless. The poet must not project his philosophy, ideas, or purposes into the poem; he is merely the person giving expression to the intuition. An example of haiku which is rather poor because it speculates against speculation was written by Basho:

When the lightning flashes,
How admirable he who thinks not—
"Life is fleeting."

Humor is an essential element in Zen Buddhism and may also find a place in haiku, but wittiness certainly does not belong there. In haiku the poet must submerge himself in an object until its intrinsic nature becomes evident. Witty or speculative haiku come from without, not from within; they contain no Zen and certainly are never representative of a poet's satori. There cannot be such a thing as a haiku with a point; this device merely drags the poem down to the level of an epigram. Sokan's haiku does not succeed, in my opinion:

If to the moon
One puts a handle—what
A splendid fan!

In haiku, just as in the Christian unio mystica or the Buddhist satori, there is a central point of silence, a sanctum silencium, which can never be touched by words. That is why haiku merely points, suggests, indicates; it never explains. In haiku as in most good poetry, the half is better than the whole. Moritake (d. 1549) goes a bit too far in making an obvious comparison:

A morning-glory!
And so—today!—may seem
my own life-story.

The brevity of the haiku poem is by no means an accident. Kenneth Yasuda, Herbert Read, and Igarashi explain it as being the average length of the breath a person draws, and thus the length of the haiku is determined by the number of words one can utter in a normal breath. Yasuda calls this the duration of the state of "ahness."¹⁹ That is, when one is moved bya scene, say the first spring crocus, the duration of one's wonder, as expressed by a drawn-out "ahhhhhhhhh," is the length of a breath. So too the experience works in haiku. This act of perception is explained by Read: "All art originates in an intuition, or vision.… This act of vision or intuition is, physically, a state of concentration or tension in the mind.… The words which express this vision are arranged or composed in a sequence or rhythm which is sustained until the mental state of tension in the poet is exhausted or released by this objective equivancle.²⁰ Blyth agrees with this interpretation of the length of haiku: "The philosophic significance of 5, 7, 5 in Japanese syllables, may be this. Seventeen such syllables are one emission of breath, one exhalation of soul. The division into three gives us the feeling of ascent, attainment and resolution of experience."²¹

Blyth, in his authoritative four-volume work on haiku, sums up the spirit of Zen Buddhism in Japanese haiku: "A haiku is the expression of a temporary enlightenment, in which we see into the life of things.… Each thing is preaching the law [Dharma] incessantly, but this law isnot something different from the thing itself. Haiku is the revealing of this preaching by presenting us with the thing devoid of all our mental twisting and emotional discoloration; or rather it shows the thing as it exists at one and the same time outside and inside the mind, perfectly subjective, ourselves undivided from the object, the object in its original unity with ourselves.… It is a way in which the cold winter rain, the swallows of evening, even the very day in its hotness and the length of the night become truly alive, share in our humanity, speak their own silent and expressive language."²²

¹ D. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture (New York, 1959), p. 218.

²K. Yasuda, The Japanese Haiku (Rutland, Vermont, and Tokyo, 1957), p. 24.

³Otsuji, Otsuji Hairon-shu (Tokyo, p. 24. 1947), p. 131.

⁴Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture, pp. 240-241.

⁵H. Henderson, An Introduction to Haiku (Garden City, New York, 1958), pp.1-2.

⁶R. H. Blyth, Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics (Tokyo, 1942), p. 176.

⁷Suzuki, Introduction to Zen Buddhism (Kyoto, 1934), P. 127.

⁸Suzuki, The Essentials of Zen Buddhism (New York, 1962), pp. 163-168.

⁹C. C Chang, The Practice of Zen (New York, 1959), pp. 152-3.

¹⁰C. Humphreys, Zen Buddhism (London, 1949), p. 115.

¹¹Ibid., p. 116.

¹²Suzuki, Essentials, p. 441.

¹³Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture, p. 112.

¹⁴Ibid., p. 110.

¹⁵S. Hisamatsu, "Zen and the Various Acts," Chicago Review, vol. 1958.

¹⁶E. Herrigel, The Method of zen (New York, 1960), p. 46

¹⁷Blyth, A History of Haiku (Tokyo, 1964), vol. 1, p. 28.

¹⁸Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture, p. 228.

¹⁹Yasuda, p. 31.

²⁰H. Read, Form in Modern Poetry (London, 1953), pp. 44-45.

²¹Blyth, History of Haiku, vol. 2, p. 350.

²²Blyth, Haiku (Tokyo, 1947-52), vol. 1, pp. 270-271.