The Essence

In our culture, thick books are written around thin ideas. Once, in a library, I came across a book about food waste. It made a worthy point: for the sake of manipulating prices, a huge quantity of food is destroyed each year, which is terrible not only because the poor are not fed, but also because the Earth’s resources are wasted. It was ironic, though, that, between its hard covers, that book had almost six hundred pages! I could not but think about waste of the Earth’s resources that the author caused himself. If our egos would be smaller, we could take less space for ourselves, and if our craving for money would be less intense, we could, very often, produce an article instead of a book. Or even a haiku instead of a book.

I was thinking about this while reading Basho’s haikus, delighted with his ability to offer a tiny crack through which we peek, and, suddenly, a wide perspective opens. And I tried to imagine how much one needs to be emotionally and spiritually developed in order to be able to pour out so much substance with such a small number of words. Because, immersed in the modern world, we don’t have time for such ripening, but still may long for it, the seventeenth century haikus by Basho easily find a way to our hearts.

“A sound so crystal / it pierces constellations. / Someone beating clothes.” The sound is so pure and sharp that it resembles a crystal. In something that is so powerful that reaches the Universe and leaves a significant trace on it, we suddenly recognize something that is so down-to-earth: a trivial everyday activity, someone doing a chore. It makes us think about here and very-far-from-here, low and the highest, unimportant and of the utmost importance. And we wonder over the possible connections between small things of our lives and infinity.

“No moon / not even flowers, so I drink sake / alone.” His pot among the flowers, the eighth century Chinese poet Li Bo drank wine with the moon and complained that it does not know how to drink (“Drinking Alone with the Moon”). Basho’s alcohol is stronger, his loneliness deeper. Without moon, without even flowers, he is utterly alone. But there is no sense of bitterness here; loneliness is not a burden for a poet. It is more that Basho reveals himself in this haiku. All of a sudden, we know so much about him: if there were moon or flowers, he would drink with them – he is that kind of person. We imagine and may not but want him for our pal!

“Cicada shell; / it sang itself / away.” Only the hollow shall has been left of a cicada. The whole life, the energy of one being to the very last has been spent. On what? On a single, clearly defined purpose: to sing! Ah, the blessed creature: to know your purpose without doubt and to be able to live your life in so centered and passionate way that no energy is wasted! We see the whole being turned into a song, everything that it’s inside holds given out to the very end. What’s that but a poet’s dream?! And not only a poet’s: every meaningful work arouses such a longing.

“Basho’s Death Poem: I fall sick traveling, / but through withered fields / my dream still wonders.” The poet fell sick traveling: he was active, fallowing his cause, advancing on his path, and improving himself until the very end. And when he reached the end, the movement has been stopped and continued at the same time. The body has been stopped in its travelling because of sickness; the dream still wonders, though through withered fields. If the poet would still be alive, the fields would still be able to bring crops. But they withered through his death. Yet, a piece of his being captured in his dream or poetry is preserved and continues the journey. Writing is “[r]evenge of a mortal hand,” the Polish poetess Wislawa Szymborska would say (“The Joy of Writing”).

Everything that is said in these haikus is said in the present time – the only time that we live in. All the emotions and insights that these short lines reveal are so timeless that they could be written on this very day. The time spent with Basho makes us wonder about the brimming jug of the modern life complexities: is not what he captured the universal core of human life on earth and everything else just a distraction from our ripening?