About 500 years ago the Japanese poet Basho wrote a haiku that can be translated roughly as:
Old Pond
Frog jump in
Ploop!
One of the many possible interpretations of this poem is that the old pond is our awareness and the frog represents anything moving in our awareness – thoughts, imaginings, emotions, appetites. So we imagine a completely still pond, and a single frog jumping in; we imagine a completely still mind, and a single thought moving through it.
Most of the time, though, our mind is full of ploop. Frogs leaping everywhere. How do we quiet these frightened, horny frogs? How do we calm our awareness? How do we get to that old pond, our original mind?
Ploop!
Interesting. I never thought of that interpretation before. To me, it expressed the wonderful awareness of that joyful sound - ploop! But maybe that's why I'm not a Buddhist anymore...
ReplyDeleteOn a side note, does Blogger let you provide readers with an option to subscribe by email? I would really like to get email notifications of your posts as they come out, but I don't see a way to do that.