FLOWER OF RAKUSHISHA, haibun

Dimitar Anakiev
FLOWER OF RAKUSHISHA, haibun



After I had made the decision to leave my job in which I had invested considerable time and study, I was aware that I was beginning to resemble a rotten fruit fallen from a tree. At that time I was not yet familiar with Kyorai’s story of fallen persimmons, which his hut was named after. However, as an expression of that awareness, I drew a self-portrait with a moustache and a cigar between my fingers and signed it in English: "the emergence of a beggar."
Kyorai’s "Rakushisha" (House of Fallen Persimmons) - located in the part of Kyoto called Saga-Arashiyama - is itself a metaphor for an ideal of a self-imposed exile from society. Gathering in and around the hut were rotten windfalls, poets, entertainers and the occasional Buddhist monk.

Living in a hut,
I am but a firefly feeding
on smartweeds
- - - Kyorai

Besides Kyorai another rotten windfall, was Bashô, a poet teacher of many fallen fruits. Bashô lived the life of a windfall, travelling constantly. He stopped by Rakushisha twice: the first time in May, 1691, when he stayed for 16 days and wrote the Saga Diary.

Long summer rains--
poetry cards now peeled off,
traces on the wall
- - -Bashô

A short time before his death, Basho revisited one of his favourite disciple Kyorai at Rakushisha. This time he sojourned for three weeks.

River Katsura
no dust in the ripples
summer moon
- - - Bashô

During his stay Bashô then visited the Zen temple Daihikaku (Great Mercy of Kannon) in the hills above the Hozu river, and wrote a haiku which seems to say that the meaning of life is not in surrendering to sensual pleasures – such as the adoration of cherry blossoms in spring - but that only a small effort is needed in order to live in the immense grace of spiritual life of a Kannon.

Mountain cherry
blooms-two hundred meters higher
Kannon's Great Mercy.
- - - Bashô

And not far from the spot where Bashô composed this instructive haiku, crossing the Katsura river via the Togetsu-kyo bridge (‘Moon-crossing Bridge’), gathered some present day's admirers of the dropped persimmon, each of us bearing some facet of a fallen fruit: Stephen from England, Hisashi a.k.a. Kamesan from Osaka, Branko from Serbia and yours truly, Kamesan from the Balkans. Encouraged by our enthusiasm, tipping my hat to Bashô, I jotted down the following haiku:

Mountain cherry
blooms – finding friends
a great mercy.

Now I sit in the backyard of Rakushisha, my thoughts swarming. Here the past and the present meet. In front of Rakushisha is the former rice field, and above it, on Mt. Ogura, I had seen upright stones that Stephen calls the Dragon's Claw Rocks (龍爪 岩). He suggests this place, located across from the above mentioned Daihikaku monastery on Mount Arashiyama, had probably been a location of ancient harvest rituals. Between Arashiyama and Ogura runs the Katsura river, which in the mountains ran under a different name – the Hozu. Human spirituality has been rooted in this region since ancient times, and whether by chance or not, it is precisely here that, our small society of fallen fruits had gathered.

Tourists have left Rakushisha, and suddenly I am left to its peacefulness.

Flower of Rakushisha:
shishi-odoshi's sudden
sound, silence again.




11th April, 2019 Kyoto/Radovljica

(Translated from Serbian by Branko Manojlović, Stephen Gill and Dimitar Anakiev)