Zen Buddhist Walks into a Bar

I love haiku, I may have mentioned this before. But it's very easy to tell the difference between an actual haiku and some random thought jotted down in 17 syllables. Haiku is so Zen, in the strictest definition of the word: simple yet incomprehensible, an expression of the self which strives to overcome and negate the self, at its finest an image of living in a real moment in a real world. 


Which is not this, propitious though it may be:

TSA Haiku

Chris Sanner

senseless rules and gropes
airlines safe at last for all
people stop flying





That's just a thought, slightly humorous, slightly angry, put into haiku form. It doesn't have what old masters called "the stink of Zen." Real haiku packs a wallop, putting a pebble into your head that rattles around for days or weeks, popping up when you're not expecting to think of it. 


As these demonstrate, they can be great one-liners, too, the setup and the punchline all in three quick phrases. But to get the full effect, I'll let the translator explain more fully in footage of a reading.

Selected Haiku

Issa, Trans. Robert Hass

    Don’t worry, spiders,
I keep house
    casually.




    New Year’s Day—
everything is in blossom!
    I feel about average.




    The snow is melting

I wait for him now

Like he waited for me, then

He missed. I won’t.

-Bryan Hill

and the village is flooded
    with children.




    Goes out,   
comes back—
    the love life of a cat.




    Mosquito at my ear— 
does he think   
    I’m deaf?   




    Under the evening moon
the snail
    is stripped to the waist.




    Even with insects—
some can sing,
   some can’t.   




    All the time I pray to Buddha
I keep on
   killing mosquitoes.




    Napped half the day;
no one   
    punished me!