Carpe Diem #434, Okubo-ji (temple 88)

Dear O-Henro ... Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Here it is, our last episode of Carpe Diem's Shikoku pilgrimage along 88 temples. It was a joy to go on this virtual pilgrimage with you all, with our haiku-community, our haiku-family, but this is it. Next month we will have another wonderful month of kigo (seasonwords), all modern ones based on "A Dictionary of Haiku" by Jane Reichhold, but before we enter this new month I love to tell you all about the last theme in the State of Zen in Haiku, courage.

The last of the manifestations of Zen is in the form of courage. Though not one of the virtues especially emphasized by the moralist, it nevertheless includes all the other twelve characteristics which came along in the last two months, selflessness, loneliness, grateful acceptance, wordlessness, non-intellectuality, contradictoriness, humour, freedom, non-morality, materiality and love. All these elements are in some way present when an act of courage is performed.

It may be difficult, however, to see how courage is an essential, even the most essential part of a poet. Courage is life, living. Life is change; change is suffering; the will to suffer is courage.
Without courage we shall never be able truly to grasp the fact that all things, all events are vehicles of something that is far above and beyond the rules of morality.

It takes courage to become a pilgrim, as we have seen the last two months. It takes courage to become a haiku-poet, because you have to say what you have seen in an eye-blink in three lines of 5-7-5 syllables. Courage to say in a minimum of words that short moment as short as the sound of a pebble thrown into the water.

the sound of water
resonates through the mountains
deepens the silence

(c) Chèvrefeuille

Okubo-ji (temple 88)

Maybe it takes courage to enter the last temple on our Shikoku Pilgrimage, but at the other hand ... it must be a joy to realise that we have made it to the last temple Okubo-ji, devoted to Yakushi Nyorai the Buddha of Healing and Medicine. Maybe that's what this pilgrimage has brought us Healing ... but that I can not say, because I don't know how you all have experienced this pilgrimage. To me it was just a joy and in a way very healing and I think this pilgrimage has transformed me into ... another strong loving being.

Well ... that concludes our pilgrimage along the 88 temples on Shikoku Island and now we will enter a new month of Carpe Diem in which we will celebrate spring and in which month we will have our first 'ghost-writer' week.
This episode is open for your submissions tonight at 7.00 PM (CET) and will remain open until April 2nd 11.59 AM (CET). I will (try to) post our new episode, the first of a new month of Carpe Diem, later on today. Than we will enter spring with Awe.

Namaste