Short Story: A Story About the Inventor of Haiku Forms of Poetry

A story about Juddha Ripocje, the originator of the form of poetry known as Haiku poetry.

It was a cold and frosty day in sixteenth century Japan, and Zen master Juddha Ripocje was making his way gingerly along a well trodden grassy forest track, while walking with his small dog, Shibu.

His dog was of the breed, ''Shiba Inu,'' one of Japan's most ancient of dog breeds.

Juddha, being of simple mind, but of generous heart, had simply called his dog Shibu, after the name of the breed.

As he walked, slowly and methodically along, in the open air on this crisp spring morning, he was thinking about his poetry. He was endeavouring to come up with a new, and a more simpler form of poetry. He wanted to come up with one that could connect the reader's heart more directly to their mind, in some intangible, or almost unknowingly silent and intransient way.

He wanted a way into the heart that would reach past the impositions put into place by a restrictive mind, and without it even first knowing about it. In this way its defences would be jumped over, and its possible show of opposition would be thwarted.

He wanted something that would cause a disruption within someone's mind for a minute, and so suddenly drop them back into their hearts, before they had ever begun to realise what had really happened to them.

Juddha, wanted to capture their heart from out of their normally strongly defensive mind's grasp, and long held onto, and usually strongly protected position.

The mind and the heart of everyone seemed to him to be really always connected in some hard to see way. This was a part of the reality of the oneness of love that existed within every persons real lives, but that only became real for that person, when they were now living only from their hearts, as their real selves.

Juddha was thinking to himself that this new form of poetry must be constructed in such a way as to be logically connected and constructed, but remaining at the same time disconnected or disconnecting in its effect on the reader. The lines must all still be all linked, or intimately connected together in some other intangible way, or unseen way.

This must be felt in the heart, rather than seen from the mind.

He really wanted it to have the effect that if you were to read it properly, it would create in you, a deep breath of insightful clearness, to break through all of the rigidly logical constructs that we mostly all walk around under. He wanted the reader to be prompted or pricked into a greater awareness, and so to see for a at least a brief moment the way in which the world really works, and is really constructed.

Juddha wanted the reader to see that it actually all fits together by love, rather than by logic. Love is what makes the world go around, he now thought to himself. This would also make a good song to sing about, but my mind is on poetry right now, he further mused to himself, even as he still kept walking along.

Everything fits together by love, and only by love, because of the fact that love is never logical. Love is a oneness of itself acting within an infinity of illogical ways, that we try to all see as only logical. This is what fixes us all to our minds.

We need to break away from this logical caged position, and embrace the greater whole, that still includes logic of course, but which goes far past it, reaching out of its cage. This was seeing from out of the box, he thought, or from outside of the square. He seemed very happy with these little phrases, or clichés that his mind seemed to be inventing for him, as he continued walking slowly along on the path.

Juddha wanted this connecting oneness of love to reach right out from his poem, and from the very heart of the writing to touch the heart of the reader. He realised that this would happen only when they could put their own mind aside, and when they could take a deep refreshing renewing and re-energising breath from their own heart.

And so perhaps while making an unexpected sigh, or a deep ''aah'' sound, they would then feel the beauty that was hidden within the silence of the short construct of his new form of poetry.

He wanted his poem to be short, succinct and almost brutal in its point. It needed to be sharp enough to prick or to jolt the reader into a greater awareness of the love that surrounds him or her, and which fundamentally really makes them all up, right from the very core of their being, going outwards.

They would suddenly sense a most vivid snapshot of the true picture of real life, and this would happen so suddenly, that they would also then experience a glimpse into the meaning of true life through the poem. In this way they would be very deeply touched, and enormously moved within themselves by it all.

They would be touched in the same way as they should always be being, by life itself, by the shot of powerful love and riveting presence, that they can see that it always contains for them now, but which perhaps still remains deceptively well hidden for some other people at various times.

He wanted this truth to remain largely still hidden from some in his simple poems, until they too were ready to feel, and then to know, the power of the deeply imbedded love.

What a problem he thought, to himself. Just how on Earth could I ever do this, he kept thinking to himself, as he continued to walk peacefully along the cool, and partially shady forest track.

Whilst walking along with his small dog, he was sort of day dreaming a bit, and then he absentmindedly found himself looking up at the passing clouds. Quickly he now grabbed some passing thoughts to match the passing clouds, and immediately he put these lines together.

The silence of the passing clouds.
A clap of thunder,
Lightning joins the two, asunder.

not bad he thought, but how about another even shorter version.

He wanted something short, but that which never needed any further explanation. It had to be all equally and vitally relevant, and with absolutely no extra superfluous irrelevance in it, at all. He really didn't want it to contain any distracting clever rhyming words either.

Silence of the clouds.
A loud clap of thunder.
Lightning joined in too.

No, not quite the right rhythm that I was wanting, he was still thinking, and feeling to himself.

So he tossed it around in his mind a bit more, and he altered it around just a little bit more, and so then he came up with this.

Silence beyond clouds.
Thunderously claps thunder.
Lightning so reveals.

Well that seemed nearly right now, he pondered, chuckling loudly, as he knew that nobody else was within easy earshot.

Letting his heart now connect to his mind he began changing it all around even a bit more, playfully to himself, and really rather amusing both himself, and his dog Shibu, as they both walked along.

This was because he was reciting his poetry out aloud for all to hear. That's if there was anyone to hear, but for only his dog and himself, and of course for the other forest creatures on this isolated forest track in these still chilly and frosty days after winter, and which had only just so recently ended.

Clouds showing silence,
Thunder displaying its noise,
Lighting lights it all.

He kept walking now down and towards his favourite spot of all, to the old fishing pond, still thinking repeatedly about all of these differing lines over again and again to himself, and also to the rest of the World at large.

Juddha was trying to feel how he could write a new type of poetry that would join and bring together a deep love and reverence for nature, with the deeper glimpses of truth and inner nature that had been discovered by himself, over his seventy nine long years, spent already here on this earth so far.

He hadn't of course found all of the answers quiet yet, but he had found a deeper love that was now settled deeper within him, and he was not really needing any answers anymore to anything in particular.

Questions no longer arose in him, and answers that before were always so demandingly necessary, and continuously sought after, no longer bothered him.

He no longer searched for anything, except for his searching now for this new form of poetry, he laughed self consciously now to himself, as he thought about this seeming paradox. That was a bit unlike him, he thought to himself again.

He never worried anymore about questions or answers, until they first found him, and he trusted completely that they would come to him only as, and if they were really needed, or really required, for him on his spiritual journey at that time.

He realised that otherwise he had always access to all knowledge at all times.

He was experiencing this life all though some type of constructed artificial time warp that ordered his experiences into him in such a way that made him at first think that they were actually all needed before he could love fully.

Juddha now knew, that no answers were ever necessary. He knew that life was just more about acquiring the wisdom about what he already knew as his own truths, from living love in ever new ways, from within his own self, through his own truths being revealed to him from love.

We acquire wisdom only by filling our own truths from God's infinite oneness of love. We are all adding to God's great wisdom pool, and which will go on building itself and expanding itself forever.

And so finally he arrived at the old pond, and he sat down on a mossy old rock next to the pond, and he threw in some grains of old rice that he always carried in a leather pouch, tied around his waist. Then next he threw in a line of string, with his small hook attached to it, and he waited.

While sitting patiently his mind drifted away again, and then again, and now some more words began to cross over his mind and into his heart, or was it really the other way around. Who can be sure, of anything really he contemplated to himself now.

All is a oneness just being itself in infinitely new ways.

Fish sit in the pond.
I sit here waiting, waiting.
Hake you, they say!

And then he heard a loud plip, plop sound in the water beside him, and peering closely into the water, he saw a fish swimming close by, and very close by indeed to his lure.

Knowing his fish, and the different breeds of fish in this pond, somewhat intimately now from years of trying to catch them, but mostly from watching them only, Juddha saw instantly that it was a Japanese hake, or what was better known as a common dogfish.

He had very rarely caught a fish in the past, but then again he never really seemed to care one way or another whether if he ever did, or not. He just ever liked to sit on his rock, and let life fritter silently away, as he watched the shimmering, rippling waters of the small pond, creep restlessly towards where he sat still, and Buddha like, there on his rock.

Fish dwell in the pond,
Plip, plop goes my restless mind.
Hake, our old friend!

Juddha was indeed a very great master, and from this same very short poem, that came to him then from the fish, in his fish pond, he later constructed the word, haiku.

This was the name that he gave to his new form of poetry, named after of all things, a type of fish.

He had seen the deeper inner meaning to what had outwardly taken place for him within his life. This was that fish come to you as you come to them, and all of life works in much the same way.

Bring yourself to life, and life will perform for you. Withdraw from life, and life will seem to withdraw from you.

It's all only ever about the way that you see things from your own inner attitude.

This determines whether you then respond from this inner awareness that is coming to you from within your heart, or if you filter it first through the negative constraints of your own ego, or mind. Alternatively you might be being influenced by your subconsciously held beliefs, or from the habitual conditioned automated responses of your mind.

Haiku, this new form of poetry that Juddha created, and which he so aptly named after a Japanese fish is meant to first grab you, and then to immerse you back holus bolus into the fullness of life. It achieves this by connecting to you from outside of your mind.

Haiku reaches to the real you within your heart, and so it acts to bypass the logical, by connecting your life back to real life, and your currently held idea of love back to a fuller love, and bringing you back again to the real you.

Haiku is the hook that he had constructed that day whilst fishing in that old pond not just to catch a fish, but to catch you, and all of his other old friends.

Juddha saw that everyone else on Earth was also connected to himself, and this is why he always referred to everyone, as being an old friend.

Even each one of you are one of his dear friends, my friends.

The Japanese term, ''haiku'' is actually today, said to be a compound word, that is formed from the Japanese word, ''hai,'' meaning ''amusement,'' and ''ku,'' meaning, ''sentence, verse, or poem''.

Juddha had certainly amused himself on that day, hundreds of years ago, and by doing so, he had invented or created a whole new form of poetry, and he will forever be remembered for it.

But is this just another tall tale, or another fictional fishy story?

Did the word ''Haiku'' really originate from Juddha, when he was trying to catch a Japanese fish called a hake, and it seemed to be saying to him, ''Hake, our old friend?''

A Haiku poem is a wonderfully intricately and delicately constructed short poem written in a certain syllabic rhythmic manner, consisting of usually only three short lines in its total length.

The instant image that is created, suspends our mind, and so our heart is then lifted over our mind, to allow us a glimpse of our soul once more again.

After a glimpse like this, you are forever after on the path towards enlightenment, and you will never be quiet the same, ever more again. The bigger and the deeper that this initial glimpse is, the quicker might be the enlightenment.

Sometimes it is spontaneously instantaneous, but perhaps the right connections had already been prepared by our soul for us, exactly for this special culminating moment, and so they have probably already all been made across many of our former lives, and through our many other experiences.

A Haiku poem has some simple common features, but they can become quiet complex at times, as well.

Simply put, the most common form of Haiku is only three short lines. The first line will usually contain only five syllables in English, or five sounds or phonetic units, in the Japanese language. The second line contains seven syllables, and the third line will again only contain five syllables once more.

As a rule, Haiku poetry never ever rhymes.

A Haiku must paint a mental image in the reader's mind, but establish a connection to the truth of the picture, or to the meaning behind the picture in the reader's heart.

This then is the real challenge of Haiku - to put the poem's meaning and imagery in the reader's mind in only a brief 17 syllables, and over just three small lines of poetry!

It is said that the real secret of Haiku is never to make it an intellectual challenge for the reader. It's meaning must spontaneously emerge from the picture that your heart sees, before your mind catches up, and corrects your initial feeling and interpretation.

The poetry of Haiku is then all about helping you to jump back into your own heart, to gain a glimpse of something greater than what our mind can hold or ever see.

Our heart holds something that our mind can never know. This is the truth about love. Love can never be understood from our minds, but must be felt and known from within our hearts.

This works for us, because our minds always tend to move too fast in seeing what they think that they are seeing, and so we then think that that is all there is to see, but our minds then miss the full picture, and which is only ever truly seen completely and perfectly from our heart.

Juddha Ripocje was amongst the most famous of ancient sixteenth century Zen masters, and his real name and life details are mostly lost to the mists of time for now, but it could have been Jiddha Ripocje, or maybe Juddha Ripocje.

We often can find that the ''J'' has been rendered has a ''H'' in some later translations of his name. That is why it then sometimes becomes Jiddha Ripoche.

Who was he really?

I guess we'll never know for sure, but for sure, his ''Haiku'' will forever live on, forever after him.

Here is his most famous Haiku.

Silence of a pond.
Hake greet the sky upwards.
Downwards drops our mind.