Higher Rebirth

On the first morning bus I sit beside an old monk. We smile, note the frost on the window. In a whiff of juniper and butter lamp smoke, he gathers his maroon shawl around his knees and settles down to doze.

A blue bottle fly alights on his half-opened mouth. Undaunted by the monk's snorts and grunts, it seems intent to invite itself in. Should I nudge the monk awake? I fan the fly away. It heads straight for the monk’s mouth. Should I swat it? Would I not free it from its maggot existence for a higher rebirth?

It wrings it legs and wanders in. The monk moves his lower jaws and splutters out a dark blob.

newly built temple –
on a giant concrete lotus
Lotus-born Guru

A beast shakes Japan

Saturday, 12th March, 2011.

2:46, it says on an old Seiko clock on his mantel. The man has returned to sift through the remains of his house in Ishinomaki town.  He moves out of the way of a camera crew.

'That was the local time, when the earthquake struck,' an English news reporter says in a voice over.

I feel a cold shiver. Memories return of another earthquake.

It is a warm sunny noon (2:53) on 21st September 2009 when a long rumble (6.1 on the Richter scale) shakes Tashigang, easter Bhutan.

Office workers in Tokyo flee as rubbles rain around them.

A young monk is pulled out of the debris of a monastery, his face covered in blood. Women clutching children flee as their houses collapse. Seven, long aftershocks follow. The tremor is felt in Bangladesh and Tibet.

In Iwate and Miyagi Prefectures in Sendai severe aftershocks prevent rescue work.

Watching the news, my 60 years-old neighbour says,' It is a beast that shakes the earth.'

The beast that has thrown Japan into its darkest hour is a formidable one. We light butter lamps.

old plum tree
tangled in the prayer flag
week of the big wave

Hope and Faith

Journal entry: 3rd December, 2008.

Today, 

Hope, the conjoined twin died in Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, London, during an operation to separate her from her sister, Faith.
'Her lungs were weak and she was being supported by Faith,' the operating surgeon said to the news reporter.

December sky -
rare occultation over*
Venus and the moon.

Reading about the twins across thousands of miles, I am struck by how Faith seems stronger than Hope, even as a concept or emotion. Hope is fragile, perhaps desperate, more easily shattered than steady, stable Faith.

early snow -
still in full leaf
young oaks

Notes:

*Rare occultation: The waxing moon and Venus were in a rare planetary occultation on the night of December 1, 2008 in a display of celestial hide-and-seek over much of Europe including the UK. 

Born and brought up in the Kingdom of Bhutan. Sonam Chhoki first came to know about the haibun on the site  http://contemporaryhaibunonline.com.  The Japanese forms of  haibun, haiku and tanka are quite close to her own Tibetan Buddhist culture. Her haibun have been published in CHO,  Haibun Today and Frogpond. A haibun of hers won the Kikakuza 2011 Za Prize (Highly Commended).