I was fascinated with Ralf's explanation regarding the compresion of
information in the language, i.e., that the same information generally
requires more syllables in Japanese than in English. Compression of
information is generally a fascinating subject anyway, since it is at the
core of computer technology, encryption, etc. It also deals with human
cognition, and gathering the "information" presented to us.
Well, going from a serious and fascinating subject to the somewhat
ridiculous, I decided to try an alpha-numeric haiku, i.e., using only
letters and numbers to represent words. I include a translation for those
unfamiliar with the art form:
nvds b Invidious bee
n nvs lfn; An envious elephant;
4n pno Foreign piano
(Hint: It may help to imagine someone with a strong Swedish accent.)
Well, forgive me, but it is my first effort. It does follow the 5/7/5 rule.
Does the "bee" satisfy the season rule?
----Original Message Follows----
From: Ralf Muhlberger <ralf@muhlberger.com>
Reply-To: Shakuhachi@communication.ucsd.edu
To: Shakuhachi@communication.ucsd.edu
Subject: meditation and haiku was Re: Chikuzan
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2002 11:15:33 +1000
>Regarding the 5-7-5 "rule," you've all shown that it can certainly be done
>in English, but I was reading some translations of Issa and they didn't
>follow the rule at all.
The difference is that in English 17 syllables carry more
information than they would in Japanese. Thus to be closer
to the brevity of concepts it is normal to write around
12 syllables in a short/longer/short style for English
haiku. 5-7-5 certainly has that very distinct haiku sound
to it though, and following the rule doesn't hurt. :-)
For some shakuhachi related content, I wonder how many
of you use shakuhachi for meditation with groups? I had
the great comment from someone recently that they could
not meditate until they came to a group where I started
breath meditation with 5 minutes of shakuhachi, letting
it fade out into the stillness that then followed. He
finally recognised what the peace of calmness felt like,
and now can grasp it at will easily.
I'd love to hear other insights into our instruments of
bamboo, breath and silence.
Ralf
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