October 25, 2019 - Found this in a long list of items to put on cuke.com. I received it on March 19, 2004. Please excuse the delay.

I thought I would pass on the Suzuki story

below, which comes to us by way of a small anthology

of Haiku poetry we are putting together.

Dennis Maloney

White Pine Press

10-26-19 - Informed Dennis Maloney that the poem is posted. He wrote that the book name is The Unswept Path:Contemporary American Haiku - dc

*******************

Christopher Herold

*******************

Haiku is many things to many people. We come to it

through a great

variety of books, groups, teachers, and the internet.

Our Western

understanding of haiku, especially over the past forty

years, has

evolved considerably, yet it’s potential is far from

being realized.

Despite the proliferation of internet resources which

has led to a

rapid

increase in the number of knowledgeable haiku poets,

the vast majority

of people who have come into contact with haiku know

precious little

about it.

Over the past twenty-five years or so, my own

understanding and

practice

of haiku has undergone many changes and refinements.

I’ve learned

countless valuable lessons from fellow haiku poets.

Even so, I find it

difficult to find words that adequately describe the

overall effect

this

miraculous form of expression has had in shaping my

life. As an

alternative, I’d like to share two episodes that

illustrate basic

states

of mind that, to me,  seem essential for appreciating

haiku moments.

Neither episode involves haiku directly but both

nudged me towards the

awareness from which haiku naturally arise. Each

involved a teacher.

Both were Japanese. Neither was a haiku poet.

Episode One

The year was 1968. I was twenty years old and the

youngest student

attending a training session at Tassajara, the first

Soto Sect, Zen

Buddhist monastery to be established in the United

States.  The

grueling

five-day initiatory period was finally over and new

students were

assigned various jobs. Mine was to dig rocks out of a

large plot of

ground destined to become the monastery vegetable

garden. It was next

to

that rocky field that the first teaching took place.

A few days earlier, I’d unwittingly penned my first

haiku, at least

that’s what the head monk told me it was.  To me, what

I’d written was

simply a verbal response to a heightened state of

consciousness. The

subsequent lesson didn’t have to do with my poem and

my teacher had no

intention of instructing me on some essential aspect

of wordcraft. What

I learned had to do with paying close attention.

The teacher was Shunryu Suzuki, Roshi, the founding

Abbot of San

Francisco Zen Center and Tassajara. He was also an

avid gardener. Even

in the last few years of his life, as his health was

failing, Suzuki

could be found pruning, weeding, or even wrestling

large stones into

place by his cabin.

My job didn’t require a gardener’s aesthetic know-how.

Removing rocks

from the soil is just hard work, but I was expected to

apply myself to

the task whole-heartedly, with attention fully

focused. Roshi (which

means venerable old teacher and is how everyone

addressed Suzuki)

would occasionally walk past while I was sweating away

with a pick or

shovel. He’d always smile and nod. As brief as those

gestures were, he

was completely present in them. I sensed his

appreciation and

immediately felt invigorated. Once, I was so grateful

for Roshi’s

spirit-boosting smile that I wanted to give him

something, anything.

Looking down, I spotted a shiny green acorn, still

snug in its brown

cap. There were thousands lying around but I picked

that one, trotted

over to Suzuki, bowed, and handed it over. He gazed at

it for what

seemed to me a couple of minutes. Twenty seconds was

probably more like

it. We both studied the acorn intently. What at first

I took to be a

common nut began to reveal distinct characteristics.

Every detail stood

out as though viewed under a magnifying glass--slender

striations in

the

smooth green surface, the regular pattern of scales on

the cap, a small

brown streak along one curve. I also became acutely

aware of the

acorn’s

potential: the tree within it.

Suzuki carefully put the acorn in a pocket inside his

robe. We then

bowed to each other and he walked away. I went back to

digging. No

words

were spoken, nevertheless a dialogue took place. What

was communicated

is still with me today. I was just one of many

students at Tassajara,

one acorn among many. I was also unique and special.

In the same way,

haiku are at their best when the words are transcended

and we go

directly to the extraordinary nature of ordinary

things. In order to

better appreciate what we find in this world we must

take the time to

pay close attention.

Episode Two

Twenty-five years and several occupations later, my

Tassajara lesson

was

reinforced from a different perspective. The year was

1993. My new

teacher was a Japanese nurseryman. I had begun a small

business as a

landscaper and gardener. One afternoon, I was

painstakingly picking

through a stack of flagstones at a local nursery,

trying to find just

the right sizes and shapes for a project. The

nurseryman strolled over

to watch me make my selections. After a while he asked

how I was

planning to use the stones. I told him they were for a

path I was

building from a client’s front garden to the tea house

in her back

yard.

He considered this for a moment, then shook his head.

A garden path

should never do that, he said. It shouldn’t lead

from here to there.

It should lead from here to here, to slow people down

so they can

appreciate what is right here, right now.

I’m fairly certain that the nurseryman misread the

expression on my

face. To him, my blank look probably meant that I

hadn’t understood

what

he’d said. I did understand him, however, and very

much appreciated

what

he had to say. What startled me was the tantalizing

notion that I’d

come

face to face with the reincarnation of haiku master,

Bashô. As the

story

goes, Bashô’s  Zen teacher was perturbed by his

student’s devotion to

haiku. He felt poetry to be a distraction from

meditation practice. One

day his teacher (Butcho) asked Bashô to tell him what

was so special

about haiku. Bashô responded that it is simply what

is happening in

this place, at this moment. Butcho was deeply

impressed, and so was I

when the nurseryman’s made his comment. It was then I

realized that,

although I’d practiced meditation and haiku for years,

and had read

untold numbers of books on those subjects, I still

wasn’t living my

life

in accordance with what I knew. The nurseryman’s brief

lesson was yet

another wake up call.

*****

It’s an interesting coincidence that both of these

lessons took place

in

the context of garden work--the first while I was

involved with

removing

stones, the second while I was in involved with

placing them.

Both the nurseryman and Shunryu Suzuki helped teach me

that, to

appreciate a garden, a haiku, or anything else in

life, it is important

to ease my grip on goals, to slow down and take

notice. I placed those

stepping stones so that they not only led from one

place to another but

from here to here. Seven years later, I arranged the

haiku in my book,

A

Path in the Garden, with the same intention. Each

haiku is an

invitation

to pause and to take a look around. For me, haiku is

more than a form

of

written expression, it’s a practice that helps me to

wake up and live

more abundantly.