“Can you haiku?”, Yes, you can. If you have an effusive heart which feels others’ pain, beholds the beauty around and discern the Almighty within, you can haiku.
Whatever is scribbled here are neither literary findings nor notes on how to write haiku, but an aide-mémoire to tell you how I learnt and still learning the art of haiku. You can find many in-depth articles about it on Google, quite informative and accurate. However, whatever you get here would be hard to find, as I’ve assimilated a drop of knowledge from a scholar of Zen philosophy. my university professor, the late Dr. Uday Shankar Rukhaiyar. Only words are mine, rest all, the credo, the ideology and the wisdom came from the lore I heard and learnt.
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Haiku is a Japanese poetic from, an unrhymed and un-rhythmic micropoem told in a syllable count of 5-7-5 respectively in 3 lines. This syllabic pattern should be strictly followed as in Japanese or Zen philosophy everything needs to be done conscientiously. There is no escape from this syllable scheme if you wish to write a traditional haiku.
Unlike a platter full of delicacies, haiku offers a soul satiating morsel, a canapé of appeasing taste. Like a glimpse of the Almighty when you are in oblivion, like a transitory encounter with your imaginary muse during creation.
Haiku portray the beauty of nature. It’s nature’s abundance encapsulated, genesis and evolution in a nutshell. However, when nature unfurls into human emotions, a Haiku evolves into a Senryu.
Haiku is considered an arrow pointing towards a mountain top. It just starts the mind, makes the gears turn and forms its own conclusions . Calling it a simple poetry is like calling Bible a storybook. It’s much more than poetry. It’s a ‘Tori’ a gate to infinity! It’s like a finger pointing towards the moon! Merely a medium and not the target! People try to make sense in those 17 syllables and invariably fail. For them haiku turns out to be…
Haiku is a skill
to serve your readers something
when nothing to say
My above micro-verse could be an unerring haiku in terms of technique and rules. However, is it really the one what Japanese used to inscribe? I don’t think so. It lacks soul, spiritual inklings failing it to be discerned as a haiku.
The 17 syllables are simply a key, which unlocks the vast world of mysticism! Rather than the words, we should pay heed to the emotions it evokes.
Since its beginning, haiku are used as a coded way towards spirituality. It dates back to 2nd Circa and was a requisite to Samurai, the Japanese soldiers. The samurai used it all the time, from romance to ceremony to death poems. Apart from weaponry and warfare tactics, a samurai was expected to be proficient in the fine arts of ikebana, music, cha-no-yu and haiku so that they may fit in the society during those few moments of peace in those turbulent times. Haiku was a 17 syllables poem, in three irregular lines of 5-7-5 syllables. Like all things Japanese, it was shrouded in mysticism and minimalism. A haiku was not the open sky. It was a stamp size window, giving a glimpse of the infinite sky. It was not the moon, but was a finger pointing to the moon. Not a destination, but a narrow pathway towards it. A haiku wasn’t a thought. It was a hint towards a thought, which produced different results in different individuals.
Haiku, the stamp size window, ajar, opens towards the vast expanse of divinity. It’s the ‘OM‘ of Zen. As, in Hindu mythology it is considered that chanting ‘OM’ enables the salvation of your soul and incorporates all the prayers and submissions in it. So is haiku. This minuscule verse evokes immense emotions and their expressions. It’s too evocative, a telltale of all that remains unsaid, a whisper that reveals a million words’ story.
Haiku is induced
for volumes of emotions
served as a canapé
It’s again, a descriptive haiku by me, not a proper one. So, my haiku, my window to divinity would be like this…
Devoid of your light
my umbra gets darker than
the kohl of dark night
In thy utmost search
my soul became enlightened
but skin got besmirched
Your fragments, I grabbed
by swapping up my whole, Ah!
Found you in my soul
This haiku set (actually Senryu, because it speaks of human emotions) is called “Renga” or “Renku” in Japanese. In it, the second verse starts from where the first ends, and so on. Samurai, Japanese soldiers used to write Renga during war intervals for their amusement. A Bushido, the head Samurai used to begin with a haiku and the rest carried the league forward, like a baton race. Isn’t it like the fun game “Antakshari” played at our Indian households? Well, that’s the oriental allusion after all. Buddha was ours, still his Zen is Japanese.
“Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam”
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