Carpe Diem #1290 spiritual way - Haiku's state of mind - zen

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Our celebration month is almost over, we have only three regular prompts to work with and two (this weekend, musical episodes. Our trip along memory lane has brought us into 2017. 2017 Was a year of changes. For example I decided to create a new feature "weekend-meditation" and I prolonged the time of responding. These changes were not only for me, but also for you. The "weekend-meditation" feature gave me the opportunity to take weekends off and the responding time prolonging was especially for you, but it gave me also more time to create new episodes and to visit you all.

And there was that new feature "Carpe Diem's Namasté, the Spiritual Way" in which I taught you all a little more about the spiritual background of haiku (and other Japanese poetry forms). Today's episode in our "trip along memory lane" brings us to the spring of 2017. To be precise ... to March. In one of the "weekend-meditations" I brought a "CD Namasté episode" about the state of mind of haiku Zen.

Let me quote myself:

[...] "To start with I have a haiku in which one of the most important issues of Zen Buddhism, Emptiness, is mentioned and with that haiku I hope to start this episode of Namasté and bring it to a great end.

an empty bowl
but in it is the spirit of emptiness -
the spring breeze

© Chèvrefeuille

This is the "heart" of haiku .... emptiness .... based on the ideas and thoughts of Zen Buddhism, but in haiku it's not only "emptiness" it is also "selflessness", "loneliness", "wordlessness", "simplicity" and "grateful acceptance". And of course there will be more to say, but that is not possible in the shallowness of this episode ..." [...]

logo CD Namasté 

I remember my first haiku book, it was a small anthology of my Dutch haiku, nice lay out and a few paintings by myself. That first haiku book was titled "Leegte" ("Emptiness") and it was not only because of the idea that haiku is emptiness, as in the Zen way, but in the lay out I also had chosen to create that "Emptiness" by printing only one haiku on every (A4) page. In that way I not onkly shared the "Emptiness" of the haiku, but also that Zen "Emptiness".

Emptiness ... I think every haiku (or tanka or other Japanese poetry form) needs that. It makes your poetry stronger and your reader will be feeling one with the haiku, because it's the only thing on a page he reads ... how much more stronger do you want to make the emptiness?

boundless world
the tranquil gardens of the temple 
I empty my mind
to make room for another thought
emptiness is cool

© Chèvrefeuille

rice straw

piece of straw
blown off into emptiness
a new beginning

© Chèvrefeuille

Two nice poems in which I have tried to bring in "emptiness", here is a last one, a redone "cascading haiku".

one empty bowl
thrown away in the sink
the faint scent of tea
as I empty the kettle -
time for coffee

© Chèvrefeuille

Well ... I hope you did like this trip back in the close by history of CDHK. And I hope it will inspire you to create your haiku, tanka or other Japanese poetry form.

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until November 2nd at noon (CET). I hope to publish our new episode, another nice piece of inspirational music, later on.