SEEING

SEEING

When you see something—a pine tree, a white horse, a metal chair—do you really perceive the thing? Or do you see something the way you would like it to be? An oak tree, a brown horse, a wooden rocker?

Do you accept something for what it is, or do you re-shape it in the image that suits you? Do you re-constitute life itself based on your personal likes and dislikes?

        A Zen saying declares, “To see what is here, without the need to alter our view of things.”

        Are you able to stop fiddling around mentally, and take notice, to stop spending time doing small things that are not important or necessary?

        Is that pillow green, or would you rather it be some other color?

To quote a haiku composed by Teijo Nakamura:

        Ah, in the corner

        Look again,

        Winter chrysanthemum, red.                     

        The key to haiku—and to life—is attending to what is there. Nothing more, nothing less.

        That means dropping the self-absorption of thought, of analysis, of trying to make sense of something, when all that something requires is seeing.

        Imagism was a movement in early 20th-century English and American poetry that sought clarity of expression through the use of precise images. The movement derived in part from the aesthetic philosophy of T. E. Hulme and involved Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Amy Lowell, and others.

I will close with another verse—not a haiku—by William Carlos Williams titled “The Red Wheelbarrow.”

So much depends upon

a red wheelbarrow

glazed with rainwater

beside the white

chickens.