Haiku in the Morning from Basho
Whore and monk, we sleep
under one roof together,
moon in a field of clover.
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What’s in a name? I approach this Haiku from a nameless place so that the poem tells me its name. Whore and monk are just names, definitions from yesterday. Clothes from the past. We sleep together without names under one roof where names do not define us. Under the roof of the One there is no many, for the many require names. When there are no names, there is only the One.
The One is the moon and the many become a field of closer, all whores and monks lying in the same soil together as One clover.
Let this Haiku become your flesh and bones. Let this moment you are reading this become nameless. You know nothing. You are an empty moon. Everything is new. Everything is just born. Everything is fresh and full of Spring, ready to be named anew. What name shall you give this new world, Adam? This Garden is yours. What you name is going to be yours.
But do not cling to your names, for one named what you name is then dead. And you will look upon your new garden with dead eyes. The secret to this riddle is simple. The first name is the Name from which all other names come, and that First Name is the name by which you define yourself. You are not that Name for that name has been given to you by the world. Name yourself…but never define yourself, for every definition is a boundary behind which you are named forever as being the ill defined. To free your garden from its dead names you must first free yourself from the names….and there inside in your secret place you will be the unnamed forever.
It is okay that you do this because God will know your name…And that’s because God too is the Unnamed. You and God will be unnamed for all eternity. The Unnamed is the Moon in a field of clover…When you are unnamed, you are the One that has no second.
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