Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Tattoo

So I thought that I’d kick off this blog with a tribute to/explanation of the title, “and yet and yet…”

“and yet and yet” is itself a reference to my favorite (only) tattoo, pictured below. The translation of the poem is


The world of dew

Is the world of dew (indeed),

And yet, and yet…


The haiku poem was written by Kobayashi Issa (1763 ~ 1828), one of the four master Japanese haiku poets. Kobayashi was born a peasant but later became Buddhist monk, husband, father, and of course poet. His life was marked by sharp vicissitudes, starting with the sudden loss of his mother when he was 3 years old, followed by his grandmother at age 14, and in later life his first three children and first wife. It was after all these hardships that he composed the above poem.


“The world of dew” is an allegory for Kobayashi’s Buddhist worldview. Water is a very apt metaphor for change as it constantly shifts shape, composure, and responsibility. In the Buddhist view, life is impermanent and so “the world of dew” is Kobayashi’s way summating this in as succinct a way as possible. Five syllables, to be exact. To make a long story short, from this worldview Buddhism derives its key tenets, most importantly that attachment to the impermanence of the world causes suffering and therefore detac

hment from all things worldly is necessary for enlightenment. As a monk, Kobayashi strived to achieve this his entire life.


The second line is a confirmation of the first line, with a twist. If you can imagine the “is” as an “equals” sign, Kobayashi has basically written that “Change equals change”. However, this carries an inherit paradox as two things in constant flux or impermanence cannot be said to be equivalent. The combination of these first two lines is in fact the true expression of Kobayashi’s faith because it is at once a confirmation of his belief’s and an admittance that maintaining such a view is in fact an attachment and thus contradictory. There are of course many more layers and explanations to these first two lines, but I would only butcher them and so I refer the curious reader to better religious scholars than myself.


The poem really comes alive in the last line, “and yet and yet”. After enduring misfortune after misfortune throughout his life, Kobayashi wonders what all his dedication to faith has really gotten him. As a scholar and academic, he understands intellectually that the lives of all those he lost were impermanent anyway and as a good monk he ought to remained detached from his emotions for them. And yet, as a son, husband, father and friend, how can he possibly deny his very real and visceral emotions for his loved ones? It would be tantamount to denying his

humanity.


The summation of his poem, therefore, is in effect Kobayashi’s tortured struggle, not to achieve Buddhist enlightenment, his purported life’s calling, but rather between his faith and his humanity, his intellect and his emotion, the corporeal and the ephemeral, etc.


So why is this painted on my back? Well I’m certainly no Buddhist, but then I don’t put much stock in any religion. I do, however, think

that Kobayashi’s struggle can be extrapolated and applied quite universally, whether or not it’s in a religious context. His is a beautiful concise way of describing those ineffable thoughts which come closest to constituting what might be called Kevin’s personal philosophy.


As for a quick note on the artistry, I gave the poem to Mo-chan, a friend of mine who is also a calligrapher extraordinaire, he drew up several samples and I picked my favorite one. For

anyone with some background in Japanese, I thought this rendition was the best visual representation of the spirit of the poem: look first at the つゆ, first written kanji and then in hiragana, a nice visual representation of change. The same can be said for , where the first kanji bends up and the second bends down, a literal visualization of the ups and downs of the world.