Been awhile since I dropped by to see you and say hi.
Actually this is the first time! So I've be net running here,
and there; and doing a lot of constructions elsewhere -
and finally got a moment - in all the mad rushing - to sit down
and check vox out a bit.
Here is a piece I was thinking of putting on another site
but I think this would be good. Has some interesting stuff
and some not so interesting stuff...
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387. Si quis hominem liberum casum facientem nolendo occiderit, conponat eum, sicut adpretiatus fuerit, et faida non requiratur, eo quod nolendo fecit.
388. Et hoc addimus ac decernimus, ut causae, que fenitae sunt, non revolvantur. Quae autem non sunt fenitae et a presente vigesima secunda diae mensis huius novembris indictione secunda incoatae aut commotae fuerint, per hoc edictum incidantur et finiantur. Et a hoc generaliter damus in mandatis, ne aliqua fraus per vicium scriptorum in hoc edictum adibeatur: si aliqua fuerit intentio, nulla alia exemplaria credatur aut suscipiatur, nisi quod per manus ansoald notario nostro scriptum aut recognitum seu requisitum fuerit, qui per nostram iussionem scripsit.
Explicit edicto rothari
GRIMVALD
http://www.oeaw.ac.at/gema/lango_leges3.htm
Furu ike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto
Old pond — frogs jumped in — sound of water.
Translated by Lafcadio Hearn
The old pond,
A frog jumps in:
Plop!
Translated by Alan Watts
Listen! a frog
Jumping into the stillness
Of an ancient pond!
Translated by Dorothy Britton
pond
frog
plop!
Translated by James Kirkup
There once was a curious frog
Who sat by a pond on a log
And, to see what resulted,
In the pond catapulted
With a water-noise heard round the bog.
Translated by Alfred H. Marks
The old pond;
a frog jumps in —
the sound of the water.
Furu ike ya Old pond!
kawazu tobikomu frog jumps in
mizu no oto water’s sound
THE FORM
Ya is a cutting word that separates and yet joins the expressions before and after. It is punctuation that marks a transition — a particle of anticipation.
Though there is a pause in meaning at the end of the first segment, the next two segments have no pause between them. In the original, the words of the second and third parts build steadily to the final word oto. This has penetrating impact — “the frog jumps in water’s sound.” Haiku poets commonly play with their base of three parts, running the meaning past the end of one segment into the next, playing with their form, as all artists do variations on the form they are working with. Actually, the name “haiku” means “play verse.”
In Bashô’s haiku, a frog appears. To Japanese of sensitivity, frogs are dear little creatures, and Westerners may at least appreciate this animal’s energy and immediacy. Plop!
“Plop” is onomatopoeic, as is oto in this instance. Onomatopoeia is the presentation of an action by its sound, or at least that is its definition in literary criticism. The poet may prefer to say that he became intimate with that sound. Thus the parody by Gibon Sengai is very instructive:
The old pond!
Bashô jumps in,
The sound of the water!
Hsiang-yen Chih-hsien became profoundly attuned to a sound while cleaning the grave of the Imperial Tutor, Nan-yang Hui-chung. His broom caught a little stone that sailed through the air and hit a stalk of bamboo. Tock! He had been working on the kôan “My original face before my parents were born,” and with that sound his body and mind fell away completely. There was only that tock. Of course, Hsiang-yen was ready for this experience. He was deep in the samadhi of sweeping leaves and twigs from the grave of an old master, just as Bashô is lost in the samadhi of an old pond, and just as the Buddha was deep in the samadhi of the great ocean.
Samadhi means “absorption,” but fundamentally it is unity with the whole universe. When you devote yourself to what you are doing, moment by moment — to your kôan when on your cushion in zazen, to your work, study, conversation, or whatever in daily life — that is samadhi. Do not suppose that samadhi is exclusively Zen Buddhist. Everything and everybody are in samadhi, even bugs, even people in mental hospitals.
Absorption is not the final step in the way of the Buddha. Hsiang-yen changed with that tock. When he heard that tiny sound, he began a new life. He found himself at last, and could then greet his master confidently and lay a career of teaching whose effect is still felt today. After this experience, he wrote:
One stroke has made me forget all my previous knowledge.
No artificial discipline is at all needed;
In every movement I uphold the ancient way
And never fall into the rut of mere quietism;
Wherever I walk no traces are left,
And my senses are not fettered by rules of conduct;
Everywhere those who have attained to the truth
All declare this to be of highest order.
On a withered branch
a crow is perched:
an autumn evening.
Kare eda ni Withered branch on
karasu no tomari keri crow’s perched
aki no kure autumn’s evening
The Japanese language uses postpositions rather than prepositions, so phrases like the first segment of this haiku read literally “Withered branch on” and become “On [a] withered branch.” Unlike English, Japanese allows use of the past participle (or its equivalent) as a kind of noun, so in this haiku we have the “perchedness” of the crow, an effect that is emphasized by the postposition keri, which implies completion.
Bashô wrote this haiku six years before he composed “The Old Pond,” and some scholars assign to it the milestone position that is more commonly given the later poem. I think, however, that on looking into the heart of “Crow on a Withered Branch” we can see a certain immaturity. For one thing, the message that the crow on a withered branch evokes an autumn evening is spelled out discursively, a contrived kind of device that I don’t find in Bashô’s later verse. There is no turn of experience, and the metaphor is flat and uninteresting. More fundamentally, this haiku is a presentation of quietism, the trap Hsiang-yen and all other great teachers of Zen warn us to avoid. Sagara mudra samadhi is not adequate; remaining indefinitely under the Bodhi tree will not do; to muse without emerging is to be unfulfilled.
Ch’ang-sha Ching-ts’en made reference to this incompleteness in his criticism of a brother monk who was lost in a quiet, silent place:
You who sit on the top of a hundred-foot pole,
Although you have entered the Way, it is not yet genuine.
Take a step from the top of the pole
And worlds of the ten directions will be your entire body.
The student of Zen who is stuck in the vast, serene condition of
nondiscrimination must take another step to become mature.
Bashô’s haiku about the crow would be an expression of the “first principle,” emptiness all by itself — separated from the world of sights and sounds, coming and going. This is the ageless pond without the frog. It was another six years before Bashô took that one step from the top of the pole into the dynamic world of reality, where frogs play freely in the pond and thoughts play freely in the mind.
The old pond has no walls;
a frog just jumps in;
do you say there is an echo?
http://library.princeton.edu/
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http://www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/passages/basho-frog.htm
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http://clickass.org/
