Introduction to Pure Land Haiku: The Art of Priest Issa
David G. Lanoue
ICHI DAIJI: The One Great Thing
As a one-breath burst of language, a haiku must say everything it needs to say in that one breath. A haiku is immediate and experiential. \
おれとして白眼くらする蛙かな
ore to shite niramekura suru kawazu kana (162.11).1
locked in a staring contest
me . . .
and a frog
The above example is typical of the style of Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828)2, one of Japan’s most beloved and prolific poets of haiku. It is succinct yet resonant with meaning. In terms of form, it falls comfortably within mainstream haiku tradition, with seventeen sound units (onji) arranged in a 5-7-5 pattern, a season word (“frog” signifying springtime), and a cutting word (kana), which functions here as a sort of verbal exclamation point that adds resonance to the whole.3 Literally, it reads, “With me/ [it] does a staring contest/ a frog!” What makes the poem typical of Issa, so much so that informed readers, seeing it for the first time, will instantly suspect it is his work; are its comic structure and warm acceptance of a small creature as a peer. The image of a grown man crouched to frog level for a staring game is funny in itself, but like a master joke teller Issa initially misdirects our expectation, leading us to suspect that human contestants might be involved. In the punch line, however, we learn that Issa’s unblinking opponent is . . . a frog! Explication is hardly needed for one to “get” such a joke. Even a child can do so, effortlessly—and, over the centuries, many have. But herein lies a special challenge to Issa’s adult readers. It is tempting to dismiss him as merely a child’s poet, though to do so would be like reading Dante’s Divine Comedy as a mere travel adventure, overlooking its allegorical content. Issa’s many thousands of one-breath verses, though in a less linear way than Dante’s great poem, reveal and explore the cosmology and religious constructs of his culture. While Dante operates within the semantic universe of medieval Christianity, Issa describes a distinctly Japanese Buddhist way of being in, not “of,” the world. Though disarmingly simple, his haiku are replete with spiritual meaning and philosophical insight. Children may love him, but a child’s poet he is not.
Buddhism provides the subtext for Issa’s haiku comedies. His profound, lifelong Buddhist faith encompasses a way of perceiving, conceptualizing, and relating to the universe; his poetry, which is nothing but a record of encounters with that universe, naturally expresses such faith. Returning to our example, we find that the haiku appears in two poetic diaries: Hachiban nikki (“Eighth Diary”), of which it is an 1819, Second Month entry4; and Oraga haru (“My Spring”), also covering the year 1819 but compiled at some later point. In the first manuscript the haiku is prefaced simply with the phrase, “Sitting alone” (4.236), but in Oraga haru, a lengthy anecdote about the drowning of an eleven year-old child precedes it, predisposing the reader to view it in a certain light. Issa explains that he attended the child’s cremation and was so moved that he composed a waka, and old verse form of 31 sound units in a 5-7-5-7-7 arrangement. In it, he compares the boy to fresh, new grass turned to smoke so soon after itit then wonders out loud, “Will not even trees and plants one day become Buddhas?”5 He answers his own question immediately: “They, too, will acquire Buddha-nature” (6.137). What follows next in the journal is the phrase, “Sitting alone,” and the haiku,
locked in a staring contest
me . . .
and a frog.
In the context of Oraga haru, then, this humorous verse about a frog and a poet can be viewed as a continuation of Issa’s musings on death, loss, and Buddha-nature. Trees will acquire it, grass will acquire it, and even this frog, who, like Issa, sits alone as if rapt in meditation, will realize enlightenment. Issa’s frog is an ancient, fellow traveler: a peer on the path to awakening.
He called himself Issa-bô haikaiji—Priest Issa (一茶坊) of Haiku Temple (俳諧寺). His priestly way of life, and way of thinking about that life, naturally and profoundly influenced his art.6 He lived and professed the precepts of Shinran’s popular Jôdoshinshû (True Teaching Pure Land) sect but unlike the illiterate masses of its followers reveals a keen understanding of the seminal texts and subtle nuances of Shinran’s teaching. Issa’s dedicated reader should therefore become familiar with the key ideas of Shinran’s school of Buddhism to make sense of his haiku—as the Japanese critics Murata Shôcho and Kaneko Tohta have proposed. Priest Issa’s little poems often hinge on specifically Jôdoshinshû concepts of sin, grace, faith, and salvation, as the following example shows.
花桶に蝶も聞かよ一大事 h
ana oke ni chô mo kiku ka yo ichi daiji (167.4)
on the flower pot
does the butterfly also hear
Buddha’s promise?
The revelatory phrase is the third: ichi daiji, which literally denotes, “one great thing.” In Jôdoshinshû belief, the “one great thing” that the haiku refers to is the “original vow” (hongan: 本願) of Amida Buddha (Sanskrit: Amitâbha) to rescue all sentient beings who sincerely invoke his name, insuring their rebirth in his Western Paradise, the Pure Land—a mythic place as well as a metaphor for enlightenment. Here, Issa wonders if the butterfly also hears the good news of salvation, a universal salvation that applies to it as much as it does to the human poet and to his readers. Its stillness implies attentiveness. The butterfly on the flower pot embodies a Pure Land Buddhist ideal: innocent, natural, non-calculating piety.
The French translator, Titus-Carmel, renders the third phrase, “la Grande Unité” (31), transforming “one great thing” into “the Great Unity.” It is a deft solution to a translation problem, but a vague notion of cosmic unity is not the precise focus of the poem. Issa and his butterfly are contemplating a quite specific “great thing”: Amida Buddha’s promise to enable their rebirth in the Pure Land.
As with our staring frog example, again the diary context helps us probe deeper into Issa’s meaning. According to its prescript in the two diaries in which it appears, it was inspired by a memorial service that the poet attended (Kobayashi Issa 2.467; 9.222), suggesting a temple but unlike the illiterate masses of its followers reveals a keen understanding of the seminal texts and subtle nuances of Shinran’s teaching. Issa’s dedicated reader should therefore become familiar with the key ideas of Shinran’s school of Buddhism to make sense of his haiku—as the Japanese critics Murata Shôcho and Kaneko Tohta have proposed.7 Priest Issa’s little poems often hinge on specifically Jôdoshinshû concepts of sin, grace, faith, and salvation, as the following example shows.
花桶に蝶も聞かよ一大事
hana oke ni chô mo kiku ka yo ichi daiji (167.4)
on the flower pot
does the butterfly also
hear Buddha’s promise?
In this original version, the butterfly reposes on an offering shelf, a shrine displaying an image of the Buddha along with offerings of water and flowers. In both versions, Issa celebrates simple, trusting faith. Without intent or calculation, the butterfly has landed in the lap of Buddha’s mercy. The question, “does the butterfly also hear?” is rhetorical for Issa. Of course the butterfly hears Amida Buddha’s promise! \
Just as some readers and scholars dismiss Issa as a mere child’s poet, others, perhaps because of this first perception, question the depth and seriousness of his Buddhism. Among the Japanese, the most notable figure to have held this view is the great Buddhist scholar, D. T. Suzuki. In his book, Shin Buddhism, a study of Jôdoshinshû belief, he dismisses Issa as a “worldly” and “spiritually poor” poet whose Buddhism is marred by a whining obsession with his personal lack of money. As evidence of this, Suzuki cites this haiku: “nanigoto mo/ anata makase no/ toshi no kure,” which he paraphrases: “I, being at the end of the year, having no money whatever to pay my accounts, have no alternative but to let Amida do his will” (62). The haiku in question is the concluding poem of the Oraga haru.
ともかくもあなた任せのとしの暮
tomokaku mo anata makase no toshi no kure
Come what may
trusting in the Buddha
the year ends
The notion that Issa is throwing up his arms to Amida Buddha for crass financial reasons is not at all supported by the text of the haiku nor by its diary context. Early in that journal he indeed mentions his poverty, describing his “trashy hut” (kuzu-ya: 屑家) as a ramshackle structure that, he fears, a strong wind might blow away at any minute (6.136). But in the same passage, he goes on to describe himself as one “covered with the dust of worldliness” (zokujin ni uzumorete: 俗塵に埋れて), and so, he concludes, he has no recourse but to trust in the saving power of Amida Buddha (anata makase: あなた任せ; 6.135-36). This is exactly the proper attitude that one must cultivate vis-à-vis the “Other Power” of Amida, according to Shinran. There is no reason to suspect that Issa’s invocation of the Buddha’s grace in this early passage or in the final haiku of the journal—the one cited by Dr. Suzuki—are the laments of a “spiritually poor” individual.
Anyone who has read much of Issa’s work soon discovers that his often-mentioned trashy hut stands as a metaphor for the poet himself: a comic, self-deprecating image. With its corners unswept, spiders can rest easy—not only because of the owner’s Buddhist compassion but more importantly because, as he repeats often, he would rather do nothing. On New Year’s Day, others diligently sweep and decorate their gates with pine-and-bamboo arrangements, but Issa’s hermitage remains “just as it is.” His detractors take such comic self-irony at face value, viewing the poet as merely lazy, but in doing so they overlook the fact that this attitude of kono mama, being “just as I am,” is appropriate for the practice of Jôdoshinshû Buddhism. Shinran urges that one not strive or calculate to attain enlightenment but, instead, simply accept Amida Buddha’s saving power kono mama: just as he or she is, sinful and human.
Refuting Suzuki’s dismissal of Issa as a Buddhist is not reason enough for the present book. Issa passed on long ago, so it makes no difference to him whether pundits of later time label him as “spiritually poor” or praise him, as I have done10, as a consummate Buddhist artist. It is not for his sake but for his readers today that the present study will, I hope, have value. Our understanding of Issa goes deeper when we consider his immense canon of haiku—a lifetime production of over twenty thousand—in light of the Buddhist themes that meant so much to him. These themes include: (1) travel as pilgrimage, (2) human feeling in relation to the bodhisattva ideal, (3) worldly conditions in the Latter Days of Dharma, (4) transience, (5) spontaneity, (6) the doctrine of karma, (7) prayer, and (8) Amida Buddha’s grace.
Travel as pilgrimage. Issa refers to himself not only as a priest but as a “Cloud-Water” wanderer (unsui: 雲水), claiming his place in a long and revered tradition of itinerant artist-monks. As we will see in Chapter 1, the kind of travel he describes in prose and in haiku is, in conception and practice, a spiritual exercise.
Human feeling, worldly conditions, transience. Though the importance of his Buddhism to his art was forgotten by readers in later, more secular times; those of the pre-Meiji period in which he lived universally appreciated “Priest Issa” in priestly terms. In 1851, twenty-four years after his death, his Oraga haru was published. Two postscripts were appended, written by Seian Saiba and Hyôkai Shisanjin. In the first postscript, Seian notes Issa’s humor, but declares that “Sarcasm [hiniku: 皮肉] is not the main object of this priest . . . his writing also contains loneliness, laughter, and sadness; and it expresses human feeling [ninjô: 人情], worldly conditions [setai: 世態], and transience [mujô: 無常]” (6.165). The author of the second postscript, Hyôkai, adds, “Though it has a bit of jest in it, [Issa’s poetry] visits well the way of Buddhism . . . boldly not loathing the dust of this world and filled with human feeling [ninjô: 人情]” (6.157). In Chapter 2 we will see how Issa’s “human feeling” relates to Buddhist compassion and the tradition of the bodhisattva, the enlightened saint who returns to the world of suffering for the sake of others. In Chapter 3, haiku reflections on worldly conditions, particularly the Pure Land Buddhist belief that the present age is depraved and fallen, will be explored. And Issa’s treatment of one of Buddhism’s most essential themes, transience, is the topic of Chapter 4.
Sin and spontaneity. Strangely, these concepts are intimately related in Issa’s Jôdoshinshû construction of reality. In these depraved, “Latter Days of Dharma,” sin is an inevitable part of the human condition. Even those who would escape sin by doing good works and obeying religious precepts, according to Shinran, are doomed to fail. Ego-tainted reliance on “self-power” (jiriki: 自力) is not enough. The answer, Shinran proposes and Issa concurs, is to trust absolutely in the saving grace of Amida Buddha, cultivating an attitude of jinen (自然): non-striving spontaneity. Without calculation, the devotee emulates Nature’s own non-forcing and lets salvation come “of itself”—the literal translation of jinen (modern pronunciation = shizen). This sin/spontaneity relationship as it plays out in Issa’s poetry will be Chapter 5’s focus.
Karma. We have already noted that Issa’s treatment of nonhuman beings as peers and fellow travelers is a widely recognized hallmark of his style. In his compendious study, Issa no kenkyû (1949), Japanese critic Fujimoto Jitsuwa enumerates and provides examples of forty-two aspects of Issa’s style, and topping his list, not surprisingly, is “personification” (gijinhô: 擬人法), the “human” depiction of animals (415). While Fujimoto correctly stresses personification in Issa, he fails to situate the poet’s egalitarian approach to animals and even plants in the context of his Buddhist vision of the universe with its constituent doctrines of reincarnation and karma—our theme for Chapter 6.
Prayer and grace. The related concepts of prayer and the saving power of Amida Buddha definitely deserve examination. Issa, from time to time, lampoons his fellow Buddhists who rattle off the nembutsu prayer as if it were a mere incantation to guarantee their rebirth in the Pure Land. Contrary to this popular notion, the chant Namu Amida Bustsu (“All Praise to Amida Buddha!”) does not ensure salvation—nor is it a request to do so. As we will discover in Chapter 7, it is more accurately understood as a hymn of gratitude for a favor already bestowed. The Other Power (tariki: 他力) of Amida Buddha’s saving grace provides the guiding principle for Issa’s life and haiku. \
He was no child’s poet, nor was he, as Suzuki claimed, a shallow Buddhist. When we examine his haiku in connection with Pure Land Buddhism, we arrive at a richer and more semantically grounded understanding of what “Priest Issa of Haiku Temple” was about as an artist and as a man.
http://haikuguy.com/pureland.html