Haiku 12: Hole in the Shoji

Here is today's haiku:

うつくしやしようじの穴の天の川

And in romaji:

utsukushi ya shoji no ana no ama no gawa

And English: "Beautiful! In the hole in the shoji, the river in the sky."

This is a haiku by Issa, and it is another one of my favorites. I am very pleased with my English translation too because it reflects the use of the の particle three times, just like in my translation: in the hole in the shoji, the river in the sky (ama-no-gawa / kawa). Literally translating the description of the "river in the sky," I lose the English equivalent of "Milky Way" for "river in the sky," but that's okay: I'd rather keep the word-pattern of Issa, and the idea of "river in the sky" is very appealing. I like the way that even if you are inside, you can still catch a glimpse of the infinite outside... and so maybe, too, inside your mind, so to speak, you can still get a glimpse of the infinite.

art by FuyuTiger

My vocabulary for today:

川
かわ
"river"

Proverb 12: Tanuki Not-Yet-Caught

Here is today's proverb:

捕らぬ狸の皮算用

And in romaji:

toranu tanuki no kawa zanyo

And English: "Counting the skins of tanuki not yet caught."

I was excited to find a proverb about tanuki because I am such a fan of folktales about the tanuki, a great trickster and shape-shifter. You can read about the tanuki, or raccoon-dog, at Wikipedia.

This proverb is a great lesson about not living in the future: you don't know what the future brings, and you haven't caught those tanuki yet! There are similar sayings in cultures around the world. In English compare "counting your chickens before they're hatched," or, even closer to the tanuki saying, "Don't sell the skin till you have caught the bear."

Live in the present instead.

And watch out for those sneaky tanuki!

painting by Choho

My vocabulary for today:

狸
たぬき
"tanuki"

Parable 12: The Donkey in the Lion Skin

There was once a merchant who used a donkey to carry his wares. To avoid having to pay for the donkey's fodder, the merchant put a lion-skin on the donkey and then turned the donkey loose in the fields. The villagers were afraid of this “lion” and thus the donkey was able to eat his fill.

A wise farmer, however, heard the “lion” braying like a donkey, so the villagers then beat the donkey and stole the lion-skin.

The merchant later found the donkey's body in the field. “That foolish donkey should have kept his mouth shut!” he said sadly.

~ ~ ~

This is another of the Buddha's past-life stories or jataka tales; this story is the Sihacamma Jataka. It is also one of the jatakas that is found also in the fables of Aesop. 

The Buddha used this to rebuke a false teacher, someone whose unworthiness became apparent as soon as he opened his mouth, just like the donkey in the story. After telling the story, the Buddha identified his previous birth as a the wise farmer who recognized the donkey for what he was. He did not say anything about the deceitful merchant; that is a distinctive feature of this version of the story, but it didn't figure in the Buddha's interpretation. 

When we are seeking teachers, we need to find lions, not donkeys. :-)

illustration by John Batten

Haiku 11: Along the shore...

Here is today's haiku:

磯ぎはにざぶりざぶりと波打ちて

And in romaji:

isogiwa-ni zaburi-zaburi to nami uchite

And English: "English"

This is a haiku by Issa, and it features onomatopoeia, which is one of my favorite things in Japanese (or any language): ざぶりざぶり"zaburi-zaburi" (with the particle と "to" afterwards, which apparently makes the onomatopoeia into an adverb). I went ahead and said splash-crash instead of splash-splash because waves are just so big; they are doing more than just splashing, right?

art by Katsushika Hokusai

My vocabulary for today:

波
なみ
"wave"

Parable 11: Drawing God

A little girl was drawing intently; scratch scratch scratch went her pencil. 

Then her brother walked into the room. "Hey," he said, "what are you drawing? Show me!"

She hunched down over the paper. "No! It's not ready yet!"

"Well, at least tell me what it is!"

"I'm drawing a picture of God," she said.

"You're drawing... God?" Her brother burst out laughing. "That's just silly!" he said. "Nobody knows what God looks like!"

The girl gazed up and smiled at her brother. "Well," she said confidently, "they will once I finish my drawing!"

Scratch scratch scratch went her pencil. 

~ ~ ~

This is not a Zen parable per se, but when I read it in Robin Gill's book of New Year haiku (The Fifth Season), I couldn't stop thinking about it. So much of religion, so much of seeking, so much of meditation is about something ineffable, but at the same time there is so much writing about it, teaching about it, singing about it, painting about it, and on and on. We can't help but be like that little girl in what we do, even if we are also her little brother at the same time. 

I was curious how this story circulates online, and I see that it has been greatly popularized by Sir Ken Robinson!

Proverb 11: The frog's child is a frog.

Here is today's proverb:

蛙の子は蛙

And in romaji:

kaeru no ko wa kaeru

And English: "The frog's child is a frog."

I like this saying! Mostly just because I like frogs. I'm not quite sure how to give it a Buddhist twist: maybe I can think about this like karma and its fruits, karma and karmaphala.

illustration by Frederick Richardson

My vocabulary for today:

蛙
かえる
"frog"

Parable 10: The Food of Death

The Buddha was born as an ox. His name was Big Red, and he had a brother named Little Red.
They lived on a farm together with other animals, including a pig.
The oxen worked hard, but the pig didn't work; the pig just ate.
And ate.
And ate.
Little Red was jealous, but Big Red told him, "That pig is eating the food of death; they are fattening him up for a wedding."
Red was right: when the wedding day came, that was the end of the pig, and Little Red recognized the wisdom of the Buddha's words.

~ ~ ~

This is another of the Buddha's past-live stories known as jatakas. He tells this story to admonish a monk who is "passion-test" by love for a woman. In his past life, the monk was a pig, while Buddha was the ox named Big Red. Alas, speaking for myself, food is the bigger test for me, so it is the story of the pig that hits home rather than the story of the monk. Muṇika is the name of the pig, hence the name of this Jataka: Munika Jataka. 

illustration by Ellsworth Young

Haiku 10: This road...

Here is today's haiku:

この道や行く人なしに秋の暮れ

And in romaji:

kono michi ya yuku hito nashi ni aki no kure

And English: "This road — there goes... nobody; autumn twilight."

This is one of my favorite poems by Basho. The Japanese is very simple, but it's hard to get the word in order which is one of my main goals in rendering a haiku into English. Also the negating なし nashi and the particle に ni don't function quite like English words, and 行くyuku can mean coming or going — and "going/coming person not in" just won't do for a translation, but that's the idea. 

Anyway, the reason this is one of my favorites is because of a little game I play on my balcony: I can see a major road from there, including a stoplight at an intersection, and I "win" the game if there is not a single car or pedestrian in sight. Usually this only happens in the evenings or on weekends or holidays: my moments of solitude-in-the-city.

art by Tsuchida Bakusen

My vocabulary for today:

道
みち
"road, way"

Proverb 10: The weasel's last fart.

Here is today's proverb:

イタチの最後っ屁

And in romaji:

itachi no saigo-ppe

And English: "The weasel's last fart."

I had to include this proverb because... weasel! The proverb means using a desperate last resort when you are in trouble, just as the weasel can emit a terrible smell to escape from an enemy. Weasels are notoriously stinky; I don't know if they have especially stinky farts. I also wanted to include this one because of the great Buddhist story about the "fart that blew Su Dongpo across the river." You can read that story here, and I'll retell it someday here at the blog too.

art by Hashimoto Kansetsu

My vocabulary for today:

屁
へ
"fart"

Parable 9: Bird's Nest

There was once a monk who spent all his time in a tree, perched high in the air; his nickname was the "Bird's Nest."
Having heard of this great teacher, the district governor came to visit and was shocked when he saw the monk so high up in the tree.
"Living in a tree is dangerous!" the governor shouted. "You could easily fall! Come down here on the ground where it's safe."
"Is it safe down there, on the ground?" replied the monk. "Your life in the emperor's court is far more dangerous than my life here in the tree."

~ ~ ~

I like this type of wise-fool story, where the seemingly foolish person gets you to think about things different. You can read this story in 108 Zen Parables and Stories by Olga Gutsol. The story also appears in one of Suzuki's talks on Buddhism. 

The name of the governor in the story is Hakurakuten, also known as Bai Juyi, who lived during the Tang dynasty; he was also a poet and scholar. This source does not give the name of the monk, but from other sources I learned that he is Niaoge Daolin, who was famed for sitting in and teaching from the top of a pine tree; his nickname was Zen Master Choka, or Bird Nest.

It reminds me of a joke (was this a medieval fable? I'm not sure) about the man who refused to get into bed. When the people asked him why, he said, "My father died in bed, and so did my mother, and my grandfathers, and my grandmothers. Beds are dangerous places!" And... they are! In other words, no place is safe, not really.

detail from The Zen Priest Choka by Tawaraya Sotatsu

Haiku 9: This is our night!

Here is today's haiku:

痩藪も己が夜也なく蛙

And in romaji:

yase yabu mo ono ga yoru nari naku kawazu

And English: "Even in a scrawny clump of grass, "This is our night!" cry the frogs."

This is a haiku by Issa, one of his many sympathetic poems about the frogs. Of course, our world, like the frog's scrawny clump of grass, is ultimately just a scrawny place, a place that won't last long, but we still claim the time as ours, as the frogs claim the night.

art by Kawanabe Kyōsai

My vocabulary for today:

蛙
かわず
"frog"

Proverb 9: Mochi drawn in a picture.

Here is today's proverb:

画に描いた餅

And in romaji:

e ni kaita mochi

And English: "Mochi drawn in a picture."

This is like English "pie in the sky" (which has a very surprising origin story of its own) or an "air castle" — a pretty picture, something desirable, but it is not real and will not become real no matter how long you wait and watch.

mochi

My vocabulary for today:

餅
もち
"mochi, rice cake"

Parable 8: Monkeys in the Garden

The royal gardener wanted a vacation.

There were some monkeys living in the garden, so the gardener decided to put the monkeys in charge while he was gone.

“Make sure you water all the plants!” he told the monkeys.

“We should inspect the roots first," commanded the chief of the monkeys. "The deep roots need lots of water; the shallow roots not so much.”

So the monkeys inspected the roots carefully, pulling them up out of the ground to look at them.

The gardener came back from vacation to find all the plants were dead, uprooted by the foolish monkeys.

~ ~ ~

This is another one of the past-birth stories of the Buddha; this one is the Ārāmadūsaka-Jātaka. When someone tells the Buddha that a boy had pulled up the roots of the plants in a garden, the Buddha noted that this was not the first time he had done so; it had happened before in the boy's previous life as a monkey!

One of the lessons of this story is that even when intentions are good and your plan even appears to be "logical," there can still be bad results: it's all about skillfulness. We need to treat plants with skill, and we need to be able to treat ourselves with skill as well, not just acting impulsively or repeating bad habits, or any of the other foolish things we might be doing, like those foolish monkeys.

(illustration by W. Robinson)

Proverb 8: Biting your navel.

Here is today's proverb:

ほぞを嚙む

And in romaji:

hobo wo kamu

And English: "Biting your navel."

This is a physical impossibility, and I chose to include this proverb because it reminded me of the paradox of meditation: striving to not strive can seem as impossible as biting your navel.

The Japanese proverb is traditionally applied to two kinds of absurdities, either future or past: worrying about something that has not happened yet OR regret for something that happened in the past which you cannot change.
When I first found this proverb, it was written with 噛, the simplified form, but I've put the traditional form here: 嚙

This child might be pondering a nibble on the navel... but it's not going to happen!

My vocabulary for today:

嚙
かむ = 噛む
"bite, chew, gnaw"

Haiku 8: ... all haiku.

Here is today's haiku:

秋風や眼中のもの皆俳句

And in romaji:

aki kaze ya ganchū no mono mina haiku

And English: "Autumn wind: the things on my mind, all haiku."

This is a haiku by Takahama Kyoshi. Today the weather almost felt like fall, so I wanted to choose a fall poem. It was a little hard to translate because there's not really a verb here: ganchū no mono is a noun phrase, and mina haiku just has an implied verb. I did finally come up with an English version that is all nouns. And I do sometimes get in that frame of mind when I'm outdoors, and everything does seem like haiku, just unwritten.

detail from painting by Sakai Hohsen

My vocabulary for today:

秋
あき
"autumn"

Parable 7: The Fool and the Salt

A foolish man went to visit a friend, and his friend offered him some food.

"Ugh!" said the fool. "This food has no taste!"

The host apologized and added some salt to the food.

"Now that's good!" exclaimed the fool. "Thank you!"

When the fool got home, he kept thinking about the salt and how tasty it was. 

The next day, he went to the market and bought a bag of salt. He then went home, poured the salt into a big bowl and began to eat it.

The poor fool had never been so sick in all his life!

~ ~ ~

This story comes from a wonderful collection of parables from India, translated into Chinese as Baiyu Jing 百喻經 Sutra of a Hundred Parables. This is the first parable in the collection, and you can find the whole book online at the Internet Archive in an English translation by Li Rongxi, A Garland for the Fool. You can also find the Chinese text and another English translation online. 

I am a big fan of jokes used as parables, where you still get the humor of the joke, along with something to think about, as here: just how much "salt" is enough? You have to figure that out for every single aspect of your life! With salt, it's pretty easy to figure out how much is enough, provided that you are not like the fool in this story, but for other things, well, it's hard to say how much is enough and when more becomes too much.

Public Domain Pictures

Proverb 7: The fisherman's profit.

Here is today's proverb:

漁夫の利

And in romaji:

gyofu no ri

And English: "The fisherman's profit."

This proverb is the punchline to a story, much like the way proverbs coexist with Aesop's fables. Here is the story, which is a story about, literally, grasping: A snipe found a clam on the beach, and its shell was open! Hungrily, the snipe stuck its beak and grabbed the clam, intending to eat it, but the clam snapped its shell shut. The snipe wouldn't let go of the clam, and the clam wouldn't let go of the snipe. Then a fisherman came along and he captured both to the snipe and the clam. Their loss; the fisherman's profit.

I thought this made a nice little Buddhist parable about grasping: snipe grasping! clam grasping! And nothing but loss to show for it.

My vocabulary for today:

漁
ぎょ
"fishing" (and so: 漁夫, fishing-man = fisherman, ぎょふ)

Haiku 7: Being alive...

Here is today's haiku:

生て居るばかりぞ我とけしの花

And in romaji:

"ikite iru bakari zo ware to keshi no hana"

And English: "Being alive, just me and the poppy flower."

This is a haiku by Issa. Issa is famous for his empathic poems about animals, but here you see him feeling a deep, living connection with a poppy flower, けしの花, keshi no hana, the poppy's blossom. Me: alive! The poppy: also alive!

I learned from the wiktionary that keshi originally referred to tiny mustard seeds and the mustard plant that produces them (the meaning of the kanji in Chinese), but then starting around the 1400s, it referred to the poppy plant and its tiny seeds.

art by Katsushika Hokusai

My vocabulary for today:

花
はな
"flower, blossom"

Parable 6: The End of the World

Rabbit slept under a coconut-tree, and a coconut fell on his head.

"The sky's falling!" Rabbit shouted. He jumped and ran.

"What's wrong?" Deer asked.

"End of the world! The sky's falling!" shrieked Rabbit, and Deer ran with him.

They met Fox. "What's wrong?" she asked.

Rabbit panted, "Sky falling! End of world!"

Now Rabbit, Deer, and Fox were running.

Monkey, Leopard, Elephant... all running!

Lion stopped them. "Who says it's the end of the world?"

They pointed at Rabbit, and Rabbit took Lion to the tree.

"A coconut fell down!" Lion roared. "It's not the end of the world."

~ ~ ~

You might recognize this story as "The Sky Is Falling," a folktale told around the world (lots of examples here)... and which was also told by the Buddha as a story of one of his past births. As the Buddha explains at the end of the Daddabha-Jataka, he was the lion in this story, and he uses the story to mock some ascetics who are following a path without virtue or merit. They need the Buddha to enlighten them, just as the Rabbit needed the Lion. 

Of course, the world is ending; it is always ending... but the coconut falling is not the end of the world, even if "everyone" thinks that it is. There are always coconuts falling, some much louder than others; just go online and read the news — you'll find a lot of rabbits and coconuts, but not so many lions, alas.

illustration by Ellsworth Young

Haiku 6: Clouds coming-and-going...

Here is today's haiku:

雲をりをり人をやすめる月見かな

And in romaji:

kumo ori ori hito-o yasumuru tsukimi kana

And English: "Clouds coming-and-going give people a rest; moon-watching."

This is a haiku by Basho. Metaphors about the clouds that come and go are my favorite for thinking about the mind and meditation, with thoughts that come and go. So of course I like this saying! And the idea here is a very lovely one: of course watching the moon is a beautiful experience, but it's exhausting after a while; even if you don't know it, you need the clouds to give you a break.

art by Watanabe Nobukazu

My vocabulary for today:

雲
くも
"cloud"

Proverb 6: Old man Sai...

Here is today's proverb:

塞翁が馬

And in romaji:

sai-ō ga uma

And English: "Old man Sai (lost) his horse."

This saying relates to the parable I shared yesterday: That Will Pass. The parable was about how everything, good or bad, will pass. This saying is similar but different; it is about the paradoxical alternation of good and bad. You think something is good, but it turns out to be bad; you think something is bad, but it turns out to be good... almost like the universe is having a joke at our expense. This proverb alludes to a story about a man whose horse ran away (bad), but then it came home bringing some wild horses (good), but when his son rode one of those horses and broke his leg (bad), but then when government officials came to conscipt soldiers for the army, the son was not taken (good). Even if that is where the story ends, you know it just goes on and on: good and bad, bad and good. It's life! This famous saying/story has its own article at Wikipedia.

art by Takeuchi Seiho

My vocabulary for today:

馬
うま
"horse"

Parable 5: That Will Pass

A student began meditating.
Sitting straight and tall.
Following the breath.
In. Out. In. Out.
Just sitting. Just breathing.
"But the meditation isn't working," the student complained. "My back hurts, and I can't stop thinking about things. Sometimes I fall asleep! I don't know what to do."
"That will pass," replied the teacher, smiling.
The student kept on meditating.
Sitting straight and tall.
Following the breath.
In. Out. In. Out.
Just sitting. Just breathing.
Several weeks later, the same student reported, "My meditation is going great! I'm completely at ease; it feels wonderful!"
"That will pass," replied the teacher, smiling.

~ ~ ~

This one always makes me laugh! You can read this story in 108 Zen Parables and Stories by Olga Gutsol. I reminds me of the proverb about Sai's horse; I should do that as a proverb next time!

CC0 image from rawpixels

Haiku 5: O snail, climb...

Here is today's haiku:

かたつぶりそろそろ登れ富士の山

And in romaji:

katatsuburi soro-soro nobore fuji no yama

And English: "O snail, climb Mt. Fuji, slowly, slowly!"

This is another haiku by Issa, and it is one of my favorites. I certainly feel like a snail climbing Mt. Fuji as I learn Japanese... slowly slowly. I had to change the word order in the translation: in the Japanese the "soro-soro nobore" そろそろ登れ is such a great sound-play, but the "slowly" and the "climb" do not echo each other like that in English, so instead of sound-play, I opted for the fun surprise of "slowly, slowly" at the end. And I suppose everything would benefit by being done even more slowly, right? One of my favorite kinds of meditation, for example, is the walking meditation, and the slower, the better, at least for me.

painting by Nishiyama Hoen

My vocabulary for today:

山
やま
"mountain"

Proverb 5: Even a dog...

 Here is today's proverb:

犬も歩けば棒に当たる

And in romaji:

inu mo arukeba bo ni ataru

And English: "Even a dog walking about runs into a stick."

I've now read two very different interpretations of this saying: one says that it is some kind of bad luck for the dog (being hit by a stick?), but the other interpretation, and the one I like better, is about how a dog can have good luck and run into a stick, i.e. find something that it wants. There is a similar English saying, "The dog that trots about finds a bone." The "bone" in that English saying makes it less ambiguous: that's good luck! In either case, the meaning I take away from this is that a dog has to walk, and we do too; you do not know what you will find when you go walking... so you just have to walk and see! You will certainly find something.

Wikimedia

My vocabulary for today:

犬

 いぬ  — "dog"

Parable 4: The Boastful Beetle

There was once a tiny beetle who one day wandered into a place where people had enjoyed a wild party the night before.

Seeing a puddle of liquor on the ground, the beetle started drinking, and soon he was drunk.

"I am so mighty," he yelled, "that the world cannot bear my weight!"

An elephant wandered by.

"I'm going to fight you, elephant!" the beetle boasted. "We'll see who is the most mighty!"

The elephant laughed as he pooped and peed on top of the beetle, killing the insect instantly.

The elephant then ran into the forest, trumpeting in triumph.

~ ~ ~

This is one of the hundreds of stories you can read in the Jataka Tales, a collection of Pali stories in which the Buddha teaches the monks with tales of his past lives. Each story begins with an incident involving the Monks, and then the Buddha tells a story which provides a lesson that is relevant to the incident. After he finishes telling the story, the Buddha then identifies the characters in the story as past incarnations. You can see how that works here, in a literal translation of this jataka story by W. D. Rouse: Gūthapāṇajātaka. You can read another translation here.

art by Utagawa Yoshimori

Haiku 4: The chicken looking at something...

Here is today's haiku:

秋の風鷄の見るもの我に見えぬ

And in romaji:

aki no kaze tori no miru mono ware nimienu

And English: "Autumn wind; the chicken looking at something I can't see."

This is another haiku by Kato Shuson. I really like the idea of how we all see the world in our own way: the chicken sees its world, I see my world... and we also share the world, during all the seasons of the year. The bird, 鷄 or 鶏, tori, doesn't have to be a chicken, but I like imagining it as a chicken.

shamo chicken

My vocabulary for today:

鷄
とり
"chicken; bird"

Proverb 4: Even monkeys...

 Here is today's proverb:

猿も木から落ちる

Here it is just in hiragana:

さるもきからおちる

And in romaji:

saru mo ki kara ochiru

Literally, "Even monkeys fall from trees."

The idea is that someone can be a complete expert, as monkeys are experts in climbing out in trees, but even an expert can make a mistake, as monkeys can fall from trees. I can relate this to meditation practice because of the "monkey mind" that is always distracting us... and monkeys have monkey-minds too! They are very good at climbing trees, of course, but when they fall down, I wonder if it is not because they let their own monkey-mind distract them!

monkeys in a plum tree

My vocabulary for today:

猿
さる
"monkey"

Haiku 3: The frogs cry: this rain...

Here is today's haiku:

蛙なくやとりしまりなき草の雨

And in romaji:

kawazu naku ya torishimari-naki kusa no ame

And English: "The frogs cry: this rain on the grass is out of control!"

This is a poem by Issa, one of many haiku by this poet about animals — and on that topic, see the brilliant book by David Lanoue, Issa and the Meaning of Animals: A Buddhist Poet's Perspective. Here is his comment about とりしまりなき: "The phrase he uses to translate their croaks, torishimarinaki, is an old expression for being "negligent" or "lax," especially in the sense of lax government. Issa humorously portrays the frogs as citizens protesting a state of anarchy in the weather." Of course, the weather is always out of control; the weather is one of my favorite metaphors for letting go and not trying to control things... because you cannot control the weather.

My vocabulary for today:

雨
あめ
"rain"

Parable 3: The 84th Problem

A farmer came seeking the Buddha. "I have so many problems," she said.

Then she explained: the lack of rain, the endless work, corrupt officials, her lazy husband, her ungrateful children.

Finally she paused, and the Buddha replied, "I cannot help you. You might fix one problem, but another will come. Life will disappoint, your family will die. You too will die. So many problems. We all have 83 problems, and there's nothing you can do about that."

"Then what good is your teaching?"

"The teaching can help with the 84th problem."
"What's that?" 

"Wanting not to have any problems."

~ ~ ~

I've seen this story retold widely, specifically with the numbers 83 and 84, although I do not know the origin of this story or those numbers; I most recently encountered it in a wonderful collection of dharma talks by Katherine Thanas: The Truth of This Life: Zen Teachings on Loving the World as It Is. I suspect it is a modern story, which is fine of course: we need the old stories, and we need new ones too.

Buddha statue

Proverb 3: Covering your head...

 Here is today's proverb:

頭隠して尻隠さず

And in romaji:

atama kakushite shiri kakusazu

And English: "Covering your head, but not covering your butt."

This is like the ostrich with its head in the sand: if you cover up your head but leave your butt sticking out, that's not good; you are not protected that way. I suppose I could relate this saying to the general foolishness of the human condition: we worry about so many material things, while neglecting the path. And the satirical sense of having your butt sticking out has a nice Zen bite to it I suppose! The head as illusion; the butt as reality.

I wasn't sure what image I could use for this, but when I googled the saying in Japanese, lots of images came up: this must be a popular saying in Japan! And there are other people, like me, who obsess about cat images ha ha. Here's one I found as an illustration for this proverb... the page has lots of cute pictures, but I liked this one best:

My vocabulary for today:

頭
あたま
"head"

Haiku 2: Killed an ant...

Here is today's haiku:

蟻殺すわれを三人の子に見られぬ

And in romaji:

ari korosu ware-o sannin-no ko-ni mi+rarenu

And English: "Killed an ant. Seen! My three children were watching."

This is a haiku by Kato Shuson. The English translation is a bit awkward while the Japanese is so clear and simple: the poem pivots around the ware-o, "me" — the children were watching me. Other translations I've seen add another verb: I see, I realize, etc. But there is no verb like that; it just says, "the children were watching me," but putting the "me" first, which we just cannot do in English. So, I opted for "seen!" in the sense of "I was seen."

I thought this was an important to include because of ahimsa, and all the insects and other living beings we kill, on purpose (as here) or inadvertently. Or the other things we do that we would only do in secret, with no one watching — as if that makes any difference in our action, especially when it is an action we have chosen intentionally.

The saying also reminded me of a brilliant anecdote I read in a Buddhist book recently about a fly in a cup of tea: Cherish Every Being.

art by Hitoshi Kiyohara

My vocabulary for today:

蟻
あり
"ant"