"Bolstering Zoka Awareness"
"Bolstering Zoka Awareness"
by Janice Doppler
Matsuo Basho’s involvement with Zen Buddhism is well known, but that is only part of the picture. Like most haikai poets of his time, Basho valued Buddhist, Daoist, Confucian, and Neo-Confucian philosophy that had spread from China to Japan during the Heian Period (794-1185). Chan Buddhism (Zen in Japanese) was the product of a blend of Buddhism from India with Chinese Daoism. Neo-Confucian scholars melded Confucian and Daoist philosophy to refine the concept of cheng (makoto in Japanese) and connected it with the Natural which is similar to zoka. The concept of zoka first appeared in the Zhuangzi, a Daoist wisdom text written at about the time of Aristotle and Socrates in ancient Greece.
In the opening passage of Basho’s travel journal Knapsack Notebook (Oi No Kobumi, 1687), he encouraged poets to “follow zoka.” The intent of this essay is to bolster zoka awareness. It explores what zoka is from the perspective of ancient sages and Neo-Confucian scholars and proposes using poetic spirit as a vehicle for perceiving and communicating zoka. It explores possibilities for following zoka through makoto (sincerity or truthfulness) as understood by Matsuo Basho, Ueshima Onitsura, and Masaoka Shiki. It offers the views of twentieth-century haiku poet Ogiwara Seisensui as evidence of the relevance of zoka to modern haiku poets.
There is no equivalent for zoka in English so many westerners have never heard of it. Paradoxically, the dynamism of zoka can be intuited even if a poet is unaware it exists and many haiku poets have been unintentionally following it. Some might ask why bother with zoka if it can be intuited anyway. Could zoka awareness open a deeper, more enriching experience of nature? Can interpreting centuries old philosophy and poetics through the filter of our personal beliefs and experiences be a springboard . . .
