Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Mr. Issa poem regarding springtime noises

A sermon at a crossroads;
A lot of gibberish,-
But this also is spring tranquility.
-Issa

Says R.H. Blythe:

A monk is giving a sermon to some people at the crossroads. He is telling them of Amida’s vow, carried away with his own eloquence. The peasant people listen respectfully, saying Namuamidabutsu at appropriate places. Issa also stands there and listens. What the priest says is all nonsense. The people stand there half-hypnotized with it. But Issa feels no contempt for them at all, no self-superiority. This also, these good people and this perspiring monk, are part of the calmness of the spring day. He feels a warm, peaceful love of them and the stone Jizo standing by, the clouds sailing in the sky, the breeze that occasionally ruffles their hair and garments.

Mr. Blythe does a good job of explaining this poem but it reminds me of an idea I had a while ago while I was sitting in a work meeting listening to people talk.  It was a big room and we were all sitting in a circle, so that I could hear the voices coming from different parts of the room. Even though it was a drab, dull room lit with florescent lights, I suddenly got the idea that there was not all that much different between this space and any other space, these noises and any other noises.  I stopped trying to listen to the words people were saying and instead just listen to the sound of their voices as sounds without meanings.  When I did this, I noticed that the human voices were just one more of nature’s sounds, like rain hitting the window or leaves rustling. 

I do not think it is possible to do this all the time, because there is a reason to be able to understand that words have meanings, but it is an idea at least, that we people are not separate from nature and that the sounds we make and the actions we do are no more or no less natural than a those of, say, a tree.  This is maybe why Mr. Issa was able to see the whole situation as simply another part of the day, rather than something he needed to get involved in.