esejieng

The following quotes from D. T. Suzuki's Living by Zen help us gain a deeper understanding of the haiku moment:

"When time is reduced to the point with no durability, it is 'absolute present' or 'eternal now.' From the point od view of existential thinking, this ... is no abstraction, no logical nothingness; it is, on the contrary, alive with creative vitality."

It is not -- the haiku moment -- a hiatus where thought is suspended -- "a psychological state of utter blankness ... is (a state of) death. Eternity has a death aspect. too, as long as it remains in itself, that is, as long as it remains an abstraction, like other generalized ideas."

"Eternity to be alive must come down into the order of time where it can work out all its possibilities, whereas time left to itself has no field of operation. Time must be merged into eternity (to gain its meaning). Time by itself is non-existent very much in the same way as eternity is impotent without time. It is in our actual of living of eternity that the notion of time is possible ... To take hold of eternity, therefore, consciousness must be awakened just at the very moment when eternity lifts its feet to step into time -- the eternal now."

Haiku and Death

How can the thought of what will occur after death possibly be the subject of a haiku? Günter Klinge achieves this magical alchemy in the following:*

Today it struck me --
the thought of red suns setting
after I am gone.

The word "struck" provides the vital immediacy, and "red suns setting" is such a compellingly vivid image that the passivity of thought is transcended. The haiku is, above all, rich in sabi longing, yet without a shadow of self-pity.

In the haiku "echo," the two endings - of sun and a life - interfuse. The starting sense of being "struck" partakes of the soothing peace of sundowns. The reader is left not with grief that a life can end, but with a strong sense of the benediction of continuity: day-night, life-death, on into eternity. I am reminded of an Alan Watts exposition of aware as "the moment of crisis between seeing the transience of the world with sorrow and regret, and seeing it as the very form of the Great Void".**

*Drifting with the Moon, tr. by Ann Atwood

**The Way of Zen, p. 187