Asking the Clergy: Celebrating poetic inspiration

April is National Poetry Month, a time to celebrate a literary form that can also offer deep spiritual insight for people of faith. This week, we asked three more religious leaders from Long Island to discuss the impact poetic lines from the tradition of haiku, mantras and biblical psalms have had on them.

Nitin Ajmera

Chair, Board of Trustees, Parliament of the World’s Religions

In my childhood, I was fortunate to grow up in the Jain faith, and went to a Christian Missionary School. As such, there are two prayers that are very dear to me. Jains recite the Namokar Mantra on a regular basis. It is considered to be the originator of all mantras and has been in existence since times immemorial. This prayer, in its first two lines, pays our respect to the Arihants and Siddhas, the enlightened souls who have attained salvation. In its third, fourth and fifth lines the mantra pays respect to all who are following the path to attain salvation — namely the head of the ascetic order, the teachers and the monks. From the Christian Faith, I love Psalm 23. “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. . . . ” gave me comfort and direction in times of my weakness and trouble and gave me hope, for He is with me. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil” (Psalm 23: 4) gave me solace through all difficult times, so that I am always hopeful of a better tomorrow.

Parveen Chopra

Founder, alotusinthemud.com, President, American Center for Wellness & Spirituality, Hicksville

American writer J.D. Salinger created a saintlike hero, Seymour Glass, who could write haiku in original Japanese. That sparked my interest in haiku, the 3-line, 17-syllable poetry format. Many that I read in translation from the Japanese, mainly in “Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings” (Tuttle, 1998) by Paul Reps, I found deeply spiritual. My personal favorite is by Issa: “O snail!/Climb Mount Fuji/But slowly, slowly.” To me, it means that you cannot evolve spiritually overnight. Another haiku by Mizuta Masahide can be narrowly read as seeing a silver lining in every negative incident. “Barn’s burnt down./Now I can see/The moon.” But it could as well be the poet discarding the last vestige of attachment and seeing the eternal light. Many non-Japanese have tried their hand at writing haiku in English. As for Salinger, he shares with us only one haiku by Seymour. “The little girl on the plane/Who turned her doll’s head around/To look at me.” Some critics find it macabre. I read it as a moment of extraordinarily intense awareness, directly seeing the “isness” of things and getting Zen.

Bob Yugi Festa

Zen practitioner

‘The snow of yesterday/That fell like cherry petals/Is water once again.” This is a typical haiku poem in the Classical Zen tradition. Haiku poems contain themes that are simple to understand but give the reader new insight into a well-known experience or situation. Most of the essence is attained with the least possible means. The haiku poem consists of three phrases composed of 17 phonetic units, which are similar to syllables, in a 5, 7, 5 pattern that includes a seasonal reference. The philosophy of haiku has been preserved since the 17th century. It focuses on a brief moment in time; a use of provocative, colorful images; an ability to be read in one breath; and a sense of sudden enlightenment, intensity and directness of expression. Arguably the best known haiku in the English language is by Basho. He made it almost impossible not to hear the sound of the frog splash into the pond. “Breaking the silence/Of an ancient pond,/A frog jumped into water—/A deep resonance.”