Eccentric Zen-Haiku Master.

Santōka, Eccentric ZEN-HAIKU MASTER:
New versions in English and Irish transcreated by Gabriel Rosenstock WITH COMMENTARY OF A CURIOUS NATURE.
“My pilgrimage is into the depths of the human heart.”
                                                                    (Santōka)
Taneda Santōka (1882-1940) is one of the most remarkable figures in the history of haiku. Let’s look at a few aspects of his life, beliefs and art.

Mother throws herself into the family well, unable to suffer a sham marriage any longer. Her husband, once well off, begins to lead a life of fecklessness and debauchery that will end in ruin. The eleven year old Santōka fights his way through a curious crowd that has gathered and witnesses his dead mother being taken from the well, his father somewhere else in the arms of one of his fancy ladies. Years later he writes in his diary:

                Mother is not to blame. No one is to blame. If  one has to blame anybody, one has to blame everybody. It is the human condition  that must be blamed . . . Oh my mother! What  a memory.

Studies literature at Waseda University, Tokyo (1902). Suffers a nervous breakdown and various other drink-related mishaps. Translates Chekhov and Maupassant. An arranged marriage in 1909 ends in divorce eleven years later. The son he abandons, Ken, haunts him in a haiku we shall see later.

He becomes a follower in 1913 of Ogiwara Seisensui (1884 -1976), pioneer of free-style haiku whose ideas met with a lot of opposition in his day. As they still do today!

Santōka’s brother kills himself, while he himself tries to commit suicide repeatedly, once by standing before a speeding tram. Or was this just another of his drunken pranks? Anyway, he is miraculously saved and brought to a monastery.

Filling his head there (or emptying it) with Zen, he teaches in a small temple for a year (1925) but is too self-critical, too scrupulous; takes to the road, the haiku road, an ordained priest.

Thus begins his great walking meditation, as opposed to zazen, sitting meditation. And that’s what we have in this unpublished book. Walking. Sleeping. Waking. Haiku. Sakè. Weeds. Haiku. Rain. Snow. Walking. Sleeping. Waking. Unpaid sakè tabs. Loneliness. Hunger. The seasons. Clouds. Mountains.

Walking – ‘a drifter without purpose’ as he says himself.  Haiku. (We’ll jumble up the seasons in this selection, just to be unorthodox, so that all the leaves don’t fall at once and we’ll move easily from a configuration of three lines to two lines to one).

somehow
the sound of swallowing sakè
seems very lonely
(Translation:  Stephen Addiss)

Eventually, some devotees build a hut for him and he settles down, more or less, in 1932; intermittent walking; another cottage in 1939, a year before he dies in sleep of apoplexy:

         “My life has been a continual waste. I pour sakè.  Out of it are born my haiku.”

Does an overarching death wish describe the haunted life and art of Taneda Santōka? Yes and no.

not wishing to die

not wishing to live

the wind blows over me

Not long after his brother hangs himself, his grandmother dies, in poverty. It was she who raised him after his mother’s death:

in the sweet taste

of a ripe persimmon too

I remember my grandmother

(Translation: Burton Watson)

So much sadness, such trauma and yet his lean haiku contain a strong wish to live life to the full, even if frequently risking death in doing so:

これが河豚かと食べてゐる

              kore ga fugu ka to tabete iru

this is pufferfish!  I am eating it.

Fugu, pufferfish, or blowfish, can be poisonous – over a thousand times deadlier than cyanide. Santōka certainly had periods of great remorse and misery in his life but also moments of intense luminosity and ecstatic translucence. For Seisensui, haiku was a poetry of enlightenment and we can take it that his follower, Santōka, endorsed the sentiments expressed in an important essay on this topic:

“We must not miss this flash of lightning. We must capture the sensations of this valuable instant. We must constantly strive to deepen our perception and gain a greater enlightenment by recording and expressing our feelings of these moments. The haiku     form is short, sharp, and intense because it aims to  record the rare glowing moments at which our life radiates rays of light.” (Quoted in Modern Japanese Poets and the Nature of Literature, Makoto Ueda, Stanford University Press)

Seisensui’s philosophy of haiku is as relevant today as it ever was as rogue WASPS (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, no less) unable or disinclined to fathom Zen, do their damnedest to de-Zennify haiku.

Ethnic labeling can be distasteful but we might as well call a WASP a WASP. WASPS would like to get rid of all traces of Shinto and Dao as well, if they could. But Seisensui’s credo is central to haiku as a way of life and keen aspirants will not be tempted by alternative, cosier, lazier, rootless routes.

Those ‘rare glowing moments’ that Seisensui alludes to – and passionately so – nothing but such glowing moments matter, in life and in haiku. Our haiku must interface with the glow or we are only fooling ourselves and others.

Santōka’s sharp, intense haiku speak for themselves with wonderful authority. The experiences they describe cannot be faked and are a testament to the unique ability of Zen haiku to shuffle off body and mind, a phenomenon known as shinjin datsuraku. The phrase goes back to Dogen (1200-1253), founder of the Soto School of Zen to which Santōka belonged.

Let’s follow him on his quixotic excursions, through thick and thin, through loneliness and exultation, through drunkenness and sobriety, through annoyance with himself and others, through tranquillity:

on the stillness of the mountain

the stillness of rain

(Translation: Gabi Greve)
Not knowing whether he is sober or tipsy, we are struck by his experiences which may be hallucinatory or not:

the mountain becomes dark

I listen to its voice

(Translation: John Stevens)

These versions, or transcreations, have been cobbled together from existing versions and translations, found in published books and versions on line, such as those on Temps Libres, a valuable haiku resource.

As we savour his peripatetic haiku, let us call to mind the words of one of his friends, Oyama Sumita:

“Santōka did not think of yesterday or of tomorrow, but lived each day as it came on him. In  Zen, every single breath is appreciated to the full.  Santōka gave full justice to each breath, each moment, each day, as if it was his last. Each step, each movement, each haiku formed a consummate whole in his life.”
We mustn’t deify him, of course. He was as human as the rest of us with all the weakness, longings and desires that flesh is heir to:

This straight road, / full of loneliness.

(Translation: John Stevens)

There are times when despondency sets in:

No more houses to beg from; / The clouds cover the mountains.

(Translation:  John Stevens)
as I grow old,

I yearn for my native place:

tsukutsukuboshi!

(Translation: R. H. Blyth)

The tsukutsukuboshi is a type of cicada which you might hear in the dying days of summer. Lafcadio Hearn, that bewitched and bewitching half-Irishman, compared its sound to the singing of a bird.

Haiku’s gift to the human spirit radiates in unadorned lines such as the monostich below, a return to what Irish poet Seán Ó Ríordáin called ‘aigne an linbh’, the mind of a child:

lunch today / sitting on the grass / two tomatoes

(Translation: Burton Watson)

What more is needed? That’s enough!

If you’d like some more haiku, in English and Irish – and new Dutch versions commissioned from the inimitable Geert Verbeke – proceed with caution!

                         

 cockroach

such long whiskers . . .

just like mine

ciaróg dhubh

féasóga fada uirthi . . .

mo dhála féin

 

kakkerlak

zulke lange bakkebaarden

zoals de mijne …

 

red piss –

can I carry on

much longer?

 

fual dearg  . . .

an leanfaidh mé orm

i bhfad eile?

 

rode pis  . . .

kan ik veel langer

doorgaan?

 

alone at dawn . . .

my body heating up

in a thermal spring

 

breacadh an lae

i m’aonar . . . teas ag teacht ionam

i dtobar teirmeach

 

alleen bij dageraad . . .

mijn lichaam warmt op

in een thermale bron

 

The phrase ‘alone at dawn’ captures the bare essence of Santōka. The utter sparseness of the phrase, the wakefulness behind it: confronting the vastness of a new day, the vastness of self; and then normal consciousness returning as the body warms up in a thermal spring.

It is the same with the next haiku, a dawning of reality and a return to the physical:

a flash of dawn –

I sharpen

the sickle

 

splanc mhaidneachain –

cuirim faobhar

ar an gcorrán

 

een flits van de dageraad –

ik wet

de sikkel

 

warmth of autumn –

my begging bowl

fills up with rice

 

teas an fhómhair –

mo bhabhla déirce

á líonadh le rís

 

najaarswarmte –

mijn bedelkom

gevuld met rijst

 

the winds of autumn

blow and blow –

I pick up a stone

 

gaotha an fhómhair

ag séideadh leo –

ardaím cloch

 

de herfstwinden

blazen en blazen –

ik raap een steen op

 

Sometimes there’s a whole hidden narrative involved. The reader arrives on the scene in media res. A dog has given him a scrap to eat which he politely declines!

night in autumn –

giving to the cat

what was given me by a dog

 

oíche fhómhair –

tugaim don chat

an méid a fuaireas-sa ó ghadhar

 

nacht in de herfst –

geven aan de kat

wat mij werd gegeven door een hond

 

in the midst of autumn

in the midst of weeds

I sit myself down

 

i lár an fhómhair

i lár na bhfiailí seo

buailimse fúm

 

midden de herfst

midden het onkruid

zet ik mezelf neer

 

autumn sky –

clouds drift away

from my loneliness

 

spéir an fhómhair –

néalta ar fán

ó m’uaigneas

 

herfsthemel –

wolken drijven weg

van mijn eenzaamheid

 

a patter of raindrops –

it too begins to sound

old and creaky

 

mionchnagaireacht báistí –

nach sean díoscánach

mar fhuaim í!

 

gekletter van regendruppels –

dit begint ook oud en krakend

te klinken

 

If you are a WASP and would like to detoxify or deWASPify yourself, what is to be done? Lose the ego. That’s all. How? Try the Ashtavakra Gita.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbH1chO7D-g&t=61s

The following two haiku could be said to be closer to the Native American Weltanschauung than that of the WASP. Indeed, we have an interesting and convincing coalescing of haiku and Chippewa dream songs in Gerald Vizenor’s Favor of Crows (Wesleyan University Press, 2014).

Vizenor tells us that it’s only a hundred years or so ago since a dream singer in Minnesota uttered these words, ‘With a large bird above me, I am walking in the sky’. Such consciousness is alien to the WASP which is why he excels much better in building railways and insurance companies, with military precision, than in matters of the unfettered spirit.

 

midnight . . .

a tippler dances

for the Milky Way

 

meán oíche  . . .

pótaire ag damhsa

do Bhealach na Bó Finne

 

middernacht

een pimpelaar danst

voor de Melkweg

 

my old village –

I walk the rain-soaked streets

in bare feet

 

an fóidín dúchais –

siúlaim na sráideanna fliucha

cosnochta

 

mijn oud dorp –

ik loop door verregende straten

blootsvoets

 

Early summer, 1933. His once-prominent family home is gone. Who is this hobo with his raggedy kasa (straw hat) and begging bowl? ‘Beggar! Beggar!’  He is jeered by the children of his home village.

steady rain –

birds have nothing at all

to eat

 

síorbháisteach –

faic na fríde le n-ithe

ag an éanlaith

 

aanhoudende regen –

vogels hebben helemaal niets

te eten

 

filling a bucket

with rain –

enough for today’s needs

 

buicéad

á líonadh le huisce na spéire –

dóthain don lá inniu

 

een emmer vullen

met regen –

genoeg voor vandaag

 

END OF PART ONE. MORE TOMORROW.

Gabriel Rosenstock’s latest volume of haiku is Stillness of Crows.

A YouTube presentation of his haiku philosophy is available here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmj54hpqMyo&t=72s

 

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