Welcome at the first episode of a new month full of wonderful prompts for your inspiration. This month I will try to inspire you through the beauty of the stories written by one of my favorite authors, Paulo Coelho. This month will be maybe a little bit different than the other months, but I think this month will be a wonderful month full of spirituality and philosophy based on the novels by Paulo Coelho.
Here at CDHK I have used several of his novels, for example "Aleph" and "The Zahir". Coelho has written a lot of novels and a very big part of his oeuvre I have read and I can tell you ... his novels are really beautiful to read and in every novel Coelho gives us an insight in his thoughts and ideas.
This month all prompts are quotes taken from his novels, so you can say this whole month is "Use That Quote", that special feature I once started on one of our other weblogs.
Our prompt-list isn't ready for this month, but I will publish it this weekend.
The first novel I read of Paulo Coelho, was his most famous (and first, his debute) novel "The Alchemist". Let me tell you a little bit more about this novel, or ... it's more like a brief overview of the "theme" of this novel.
[...] Paulo Coelho's "The Alchemist," a fable about following your dreams, has sold more than 65 million copies worldwide in more than 50 different languages, making it an international bestseller.
It follows the story of a shepherd boy named Santiago who travels to Egypt after having a recurring dream about a treasure that awaited him there.
Wherein do you find happiness to where your heart calls you? Do you have dreams? You all will know the proverb "My home is where my heart is". I think that's the main theme in "The Alchemist". Santiago is following his dreams and finds what he needs ... his treasure. What is your treasure?
It may be a profession, a hobby, a place, a person, a pet or a lifestyle, but it's only when we stop and acknowledge what it is our hearts want that we will find our greatest treasures. These are the treasures that will bring joy and happiness into our lives; this is where the heart is.
I hope you did like this "maiden" episode of December 2017 and ... I hope I have inspired you to create Japanese poetry like haiku or sedoka.
This episode is open for your submissions tonight at 7:00 PM (CET) and will remain open until December 7th at noon (CET). I will publish our weekend-meditation later on. For now ... have fun!
Welcome at the last episode of our wonderful CDHK month about "The Rubaiyat" by Omar Khayyam. It was a joy and a honor to bring you these quatrains. They are all extraordinary beautiful and I hope that you all have found in some way satisfaction and appreciation for this great Persian poet.
As I told you yesterday the last episodes will be short, only the quatrain and my thoughts about it.
Here is our last quatrain for this month and maybe ... I will create another CDHK month about the poetry of Omar Khayyam. There are a lot of quatrains written by him so I think we can do another month about his poetry next year.
Here is our quatrain for today, I titled it "Moon of My Delight" and that title sounds like music in my ears, because my "big love" "the moon" is all present here.
This episode is open for your submissions tonight at 7:00 PM (CET) and will remain open until December 6th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode, the first of a new month, later on. For now ... have fun! And thank you for participating in this wonderful CDHK month about Omar Khayyam's "The Rubaiyat".
Yesterday I gave you a short episode and the upcoming episodes will be short too. Only the quatrains and my own thoughts about them.
A wonderful expression of how most of us feel!
This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until December 5th at noon (CET). I will publish (scheduled) our next episode later on. Have fun!
My excuses for the late publishing of this new episode. I had a very busy day so I hadn't time to create the episode. Now I have some spare time after a busy shift at work. I think I will make it myself easy this time.
I will only give you the quatrain by Omar Khayyam which I have selected from "The Rubaiyat". No background information also. Only the quatrain ... and maybe some own thoughts about it. Let me give you the quatrain to work with (this is quatrain no. 72 by the way).
Ah, whence, and whither flown again, who knows?
Than we see the up-bringing of the Nightingale, a wonderful bird that we have seen very often here at CDHK. In this verse it looks like the Nightingale is an image for youth, it's said that the Nightingale is the Bird of Youth. I couldn't find a reference to that idea, but to be honest I haven't search it for a long time.
Well ... no haiku or tanka by myself this time, but I love to share with you our new CDHK logo. I like to create a specific logo for every month, but it takes to mauch time, so I have created a new logo which I will use at CDHK at the start of December 2017.
This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until December 5th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode later on. For now ... have fun, be inspired and share.
Okay ... I hope you all have had a wonderful weekend and I hope you will have an awesome week. I had a relaxed weekend, but of course I couldn't let go of CDHK. I have been very busy with the preparations for our next month. December we will (i hope) find our inspiration in quotes which I have extracted from several novels by Paulo Coelho. As you all know Coelho is one of my favorite authors and I have read a big part of the novels he has written. I think December will be a nice month. Of course in December we will have our weekend-meditations and our CDHK special feature "Seven Days Before Christmas" will be featured again, just because I like that feature.
As I read this quatrain I was pleasantly surprised because in this quatrain I sensed Omar Khayyam's spirituality. I have told you a few times this month that Khayyam wasn't 100% muslim, sufi or christian, but in this verse I sensed more christianity than in all the other verses we have read this month. In my opinion in this quatrain Khayyam shows us that he is a christian and that he finally dared to be open about that. Of course in his time there wasn't that "evil" fight between Islam and other religions, at least not that I know of.
At the other hand this verse can also tell us that all religions are the same, because Khayyam mentions also Islam and Judaism next to Christianity. Was Khayyam the first philosopher who dare to say that all Gods Are One?
Are those who fear hell and those who seek after heaven.
Heron-Allen’s note on the first line indicates that the references are specifically to a Christian cell or monastery; the school attached to a mosque; a collective monastery or cloister; and a Jewish synagogue.
I think this quatrain is a very strong verse in which one can sense the spirituality and the power of the gods.
Well ... as I said earlier, another challenging episode, for sure not an easy one to work on or to work with. So ... good luck!
This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until December 3rd at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode later on. For now ... have fun!
PS. At the left of our home-page you can read one of the "Seven Days Before Christmas 2016" episodes, just to give you an idea what this tradtional special feature means.
!! Open for your submissions next Sunday November 26th at 7:00 PM (CET) !!
Welcome at a new weekend-meditation here at Carpe Diem Haiku Kai. This weekend I have something new for you. This weekend-meditation has a twist in it. I will give you only a few themes to work with and you may choose your own Japanese poetry form that's why I titled it "free styling".
Well ... I think you have enough choices and I hope you will find inspiration to create your Japanese poetry ... go for it ... feel free ... go free styling ... let go of the classic rules ... feel free to choose.
This "free-styling" weekend-meditation is open for your submissions next Sunday November 26th at 7:00 PM (CET) and will remain open until December 3rd at noon (CET). Have a great weekend!
Several weeks ago I, Yozakura, the Wandering Spirit, asked you to help me to create the daisan of a renga I started creating together with my sensei Basho. This "challenge" was initiated by your host here at Carpe Diem Haiku Kai, Chèvrefeuille. Together with him I read and re-read all of your wonderful ideas about the daisan. There were several beauties, but the one created by Dolores Fegan was the most beautiful we thought.
As promised when I challenged you, the winner would be featured in a "Wandering Spirit Challenge Special" that Special you are going to find hereafter. Thank you all for your support and creativity. Thank you Dolores for your daisan.
Some time ago Yozakura, the Wandering Spirit, asked you to help him and as you all know it was Dolores Fegan's daisan he has chosen to use in the renga he started with Basho.
I think you all know Dolores (Ada's Poetry Alcove) from her wonderful poetry. She is a long time participant (family member) of Carpe Diem Haiku Kai. She also was the winner of our "prayers" kukai back in 2016. She was featured in September 2016 and she created a wonderful CDHK E-book titled "First Magnolia Bloom" (click on the title to read it).
Dolores is an awesome haiku poetess, but she also writes wonderful haibun and other poems. The daisan she created shows her skill as a haiku poet and her daisan fits the renga that Yozakura started to create with Basho. I will first give you her daisan and than I will give you the first three (including the daisan) of the renga by Yozakura.
You can find several more beautiful poems by Dolores in her above mentioned CDHK E-book "First Magnolia Bloom".
I hope you enjoyed this "Wandering Spirit Challenge Special".
This month we are reading "The Rubaiyat" by Omar Khayyam. One of the themes is "wine", the joy of life. And in today's quatrain this theme returns in a very rare way, but also in a wonderful way. In this quatrain Omar Khayyam "becomes completely one with wine" in a certain kind of way.
I am not a drinker of wine, I am more of beer and bourbon, not to much and certainly not every day. Of course I like a cold beer so now and than, after a busy day at work for example, but only if it is the last day of work before a few spare days. I never drink as I have to work.
Okay ... back to "The Rubaiyat", sorry for leaving the path for a little while. I think the following quatrain is one of the most beautiful quatrains of "The Rubaiyat", in my opinion of course.
In a way this verse is somewhat morbide, but it also describes a wonderful funeral. Khayyam says literaly that he wants a funeral in the way of how his life has been.
Let me give you the background on this quatrain I have praised.
The meaning is: let me drink Wine while I live, and when I die, wash my body in Wine, give me a Vine Leaf for my shroud, and bury me in a nice Garden somewhere.
See that my shroud be made of the leafy vine.
And scatter my ashes at the door of the tavern.
Turn not away from me, for I am a suppliant.
FitzGerald used several sources himself to create his translation of "The Rubaiyat" by Omar Khayyam. Of course that's okay, but as we have seen / read, sometimes his translation is very different of other translations. Maybe that has to do with the difficulty of translating Persian to English.
We are running towards the end of this wonderful CDHK month. There is just one week to go, so I am busy with the preparations of December 2017. That month will be an awesome month full of quotes taken from the novels by Paulo Coelho, one of my favorite authors (as you already know), in which he shares a lot of his knowledge and insights. His novels all have a certain kind of spirituality and philosophy in it, of course in every novel you can sense his presence. December will be really an awesome month I think. Of course I will bring the weekend=meditations too and our traditional "Seven Days Before Christmas" feature. More to come soon!
This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until November 30th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new weekend-meditation later on.
Welcome at a new episode of our Haiku Kai were we are exploring Omar Khayyam's "The Rubaiyat" an anthology of quatrains he wrote during his life time. It's incredible that these beauties became known 100 years after his death. Until than no one knew about this artistic background of this great scholar.
Here at CDHK we are gathered all through that same art ... we are all poets, writers, photographers, painters, sculptors and haijin. In the quatrain for today it's all about "writing" and I will try to explain the background of this quatrain together with Bob Forrest, a connoisseur of Omar Khayyam. He wrote a verse to verse essay about "The Rubaiyat", a great source of knowledge which I have used this month. Next to his ideas I also have my own ideas about the meaning of the quatrains.
This is my idea about this quatrain's meaning: In this quatrain Omar praises the beauty of writing, but also the "dark side" of writing, because what is written can not be changed and can be explained in several ways. Isn't that what we are seeking for with our haiku? Writing it and hoping it will be great and don't needs revisions?
As you know I write my haiku mostly "impromptu", but I also have revised several haiku that I created, not because of tears that washed out the lines, but because I tried to make them better, maybe more complex, maybe to challenge myself to make the haiku more pure, more transparent, more satisfying. Recently I started to create haiku, the experimental way, to paint with a minimum of words. Sometimes I succeeded in that goal, but it isn't easy to "experiment" with haiku.
Let me go back to the idea of revision, as you maybe can remember Basho revised several of his haiku. There are several haiku by Basho known with the same scene in several versions. Maybe you can remember our CDHK month in which we followed in his footsteps ... We walked his "Narrow Road" with joy and the beauty of his haiku. "Narrow Road" however took Basho five years of revision before he was satisfied with it. So ... revising your haiku, tanka or other poem isn't a bad thing. It shows you as the poet who loves to create his / her poems. The poet cherishes the scene he / she loves to share, the poet becomes one with it. Finally the poem is ready ... your poem will whisper that to your heart.
Okay ... back to the background of this quatrain.
This verse is an excellent example of how FitzGerald takes ideas from Omar Khayyam, and then creates something new and powerful from them which at the same time preserves the essence of the original.
This quatrain, incidentally, became the subject of a sermon delivered by a Reverend E.F. Dinsmore, later published in the form of a booklet, The Moving Finger of Omar Khayyam (1909). Rev. Dinsmore approached the verse from a moralistic point of view, arguing that though one could not wash out the errors of the past, by leading a good Christian life one could minimise the errors of the future, and thus to some extent control the Moving Finger.
Dinsmore made a small booklet of his sermon and used the following illustration by Vedder for its cover.
Let your inspiration flow like the ink of a pen, like a finger writing in the sand ... be inspired.
This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until November 29th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode later on. For now ... have fun!
I hope you all have had a wonderful inspirational weekend. I had a busy weekend at work, so I hadn't time to publish this regular episode on time. We are going on with our exploration of "The Rubaiyat" by Omar Khayyam. As I was preparing this episode that I have titled "A Game of Chess" a haiga I created a while ago came in mind. I love to share that haiga here with you, maybe you can remember it.
What has this to do with the inspirational quatrain for today? Well ... in this quatrain Omar Khayyam describes life as a game of chess. Let me give you today's quatrain and than we start "talking" about it.
Life is here likened to a game of Chess or Checkers, the black and white squares of the Chess-board being likened to Nights and Days. Destiny is the player who captures (slays) pieces in the course of the game, removing them from the board and putting them back in the storage box (Closet.) It is Destiny too, who finishes the game – “mates” in Line 3 is “Check Mate” – the term for the end of a Game of Chess. The overall idea is that Destiny kills us all off, one by one.
The related image of Death playing Chess with Mortals to decide where and when they will die is probably best known to most people through Ingmar Bergman’s film “The Seventh Seal” of 1957. What is less well known is that Bergman got the idea for this image from a wall-painting in the medieval church of Täby in Stockholm, dating from the latter half of the 14th century!
The idea that human life is a game of the gods is ancient. Thus, as Canter notes in his article “Fortuna in Latin Poetry”, the goddess Fortuna “delights in mockery and in making man the victim of her sport." Thus, Virgil, in The Aeneid talks of Fortuna mocking mankind by knocking them down then picking them up again, as fancy takes; Horace, in his Odes, talks of Fortuna pursuing her wanton sport by deliberately switching her favours from one person to another; and Juvenal in his Satires talks of Fortuna raising men from the gutter to high office just to amuse herself.
Saying it is Chance Medley rules the world.
Was one time made a beggar.
Omar Khayyam was very lyrical about death and it seems to me that he accepted the idea of "death belonging to life", as we also saw in the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche, (The theme of our first CDHK Theme-week).
I hope you liked this episode and that it will inspire you. This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until November 27th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode later on.
Carpe Diem Weekend-Meditation #7 Tan Renga Challenge "the last colorful leaves"
!! Open for your submissions Sunday November 19th at 7:00 PM (CET) !!!
Welcome at a new weekend-meditation here at Carpe Diem Haiku Kai, the place to be if you like to write and share Japanese poetry.
This weekend I love to challenge you with Tan Renga, that nice tanka-like poem created by two poets. The goal is to write the second stanza towards a given haiku, to create a Tan Renga. This weekend however I have one with a twist for you too.
So let me give you a brief explanation for this weekend-meditation. The goal is to complete two Tan Renga. One by completing the first stanza with a second stanza and the other Tan Renga you have to complete by putting the first stanza of three (3) lines towards it.
Today starts the My Haiku Pond Academy Contest Troiku, I will be the Judge of this contest. You can find this CONTEST HERE.
This weekend-meditation is open for your submissions next Sunday November 19th at 7:00 PM (CET) and will remain open until November 26th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode around 7:00 PM (CET) next Sunday. For now ... have fun!
It's a little bit sad day today. I failed an exam I had today, but well it's not something to worry about. I will make it again on another day. Now I only have my thoughts at this episode. What can I tell you about this quatrain? It's the sequel of the verse of yesterday. These two verses are connected and I will try to explain that with a little help of bob forrest, who wrote a verse to verse explanation of "The Rubaiyat". It's that explanation I used this month already in all the episodes. Before I had heard about "The Rubaiyat", I really hadn't a clue what a quatrain was or who Omar Khayyam was so I just needed a suitable source of information. It took me some time to find the verse to verse explanation, but I am glad that I found it. "The Rubaiyat" is a wonderful compilation of quatrains with a whole lot of hidden layers, without the verse to verse explanation I couldn't make this month.
“The Vessel” here is the earthen bowl of the previous verse. The lip of the bowl becomes the lip of someone once living, and thus once capable of giving kisses.
The idea that, on death, we return to earth or clay from which can be made a Vessel/ Cup/Bowl is but one idea. Another idea is that our clay may become that of simple building bricks. Thus, for example, Hafiz wrote that “this ruined world is resolved, when we are dead, to make only bricks of our clay!” (from Ode VI in the translation by Cowell).
It's a joy to read again a "note" to an other Persian poet, Hafiz, in this explanation. Hafiz is one of my favorite Persian poets and I even think he is also the most loved Persian poet all around the globe. In the poems by Hafiz we found also several hidden layers.
In Christian tradition the phrase “ashes to ashes, dust to dust”, is common use in the tradition of a funeral, but it isn’t a phrase in the Holy Scripture it is based on Genesis 3:19, Genesis 18:27, Job 30:19, and Ecclesiastes 3:20. Those passages say that we begin and end as dust.
So is there also a reference to Christian belief in this quatrain by Omar Khayyam? Maybe it is, maybe it is not. I don’t know. However I like the idea that we can find references to Christian belief in a Persian compilation of verses.
This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until November 23rd at noon (CET). I will publish our new "weekend-meditation" later on. For now ... have fun!
Welcome at a new episode of our Haiku Kai were we are exploring the beauty of Omar Khayyam's "The Rubaiyat" as translated by FitzGerald. "The Rubaiyat" is a compilation of 100 quatrains, but as I told you earlier this month, "The Rubaiyat" is just a small part of Khayyam's quatrains, he created around 2000 quatrains.
Today's episode I have titled "The Secret Well of Life". In my opinion "the secret well of life" is similar with the "Elixer of Life" as was the goal for the Alchemists. They not only were searching for the "Stone" to create gold, but also for the "Elixer of Life". If this is true for this quatrain we will see.
As I was preparing this month I read "The Rubaiyat" and there were several quatrains in which Khayyam uses "earthen bowls" or "pots". In this quatrain that's also a theme.
Drink ! - for once dead you never shall return.
Over a thousand lives like thine has rolled.
The voices of dead kings speak through the clay?
Kobad, Bahman, Djemshid, their dust is here.
'Gently upon me set thy lips!' they say.
What man can tell where Kaus and Kai have gone?
Scatters the dust of Djem's imperial throne?
Dyeing the desert red with his tears.
The Persian love-story about Ferhad and Shirin is similar with that tragedy created by Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet. It's a forbidden love, because Shirin is a princess and Ferhad is just a low-ranked man. As Ferhad dies, Shirin takes her own life, because she cannot live with Ferhad.
The title of this episode is extracted from the quatrain used and it can also refer to that strong love as mentioned in the story of Ferhad and Shirin. Isn't love the secret well of life?
This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until November 22nd at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode later on. For now ... have fun!
Welcome at a new episode of our Haiku Kai. This month it's all about "The Rubaiyat" by the Persian poet and scholar Omar Khayyam. In this 'book' we read quatrains, say about 100 of them, but Khayyam wrote more than 2000 quatrains, however this month we will only look at "The Rubaiyat". The translations I use are by FitzGerald, who published the first English edition of "The Rubaiyat" in the 19th century. FitzGerald gave this selection the title "The Rubaiyat" which means "quatrains".
Todays quatrain (no. 32) is the sequel to the verse of yesterday. Today's episode I have titled "No Key", because it refers to the essence of this verse.
Maybe you can remember that we read "Aleph" by Paulo Coelho while on the Trans Siberian Railroad. In "Aleph" Paulo is on a quest to find his former life. He dreams sometimes of a place with several doors. Those doors cannot open cmpletely, or even not opened at all. There is No Key. "No Key" is something we see and hear regular in spirituality. "No Key" to open the door, the path and more.
The Door and Veil are metaphorical barriers which prevent us from seeing the answer to the riddle of human Death and Fate. The idea seems to be that while the mysterious voices behind these barriers talk about us, we live; but once they stop talking, we must die. It is interesting that in Islam, “…death is believed to be a door to the realm of the afterlife, which according to Islamic tradition starts with the grave.” It is interesting, too, that “the Veil” is a term commonly used by Spiritualists to describe the supposed barrier that exists between the spirit world and the land of the living.
As I look at this background (source: Bob Forrest) then something is coming to my attention. Omar Khayyam, was not only a poet and scholar, but also a philosopher. In this quatrain he shows us who he looks at the spirit world. As a mystery, something that we can not catch. Another thing which caught my attention is that in the Qu'ran, as it seems, there is also an idea about the afterlife. It is seen as a realm, but that realm we only can reach through opening the door to the grave. That's also the idea about afterlife in Christian tradition. As I was reading this quatrain I thought immediately that Khayyam had questions about the afterlife, he shows that through the use of "the veil" in this verse. "The Veil" between life and death. Can it be that he questioned the afterlife, if that was really the end? Or was he thinking that there had to be something else ... reincarnation for example.
The Veil? The ethereal 4th dimension? Afterlife? Reincarnation?
This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until November 21st at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode later on.
As I was preparing this month, by reading the entire "Rubaiyat" there were several quatrains I didn't understand. Those quatrains sounded magical and mysterious. Today's quatrain is such a quatrain which I couldn't understand at first, but after reading the background on this verse it became very clear what the meaning was of this quatrain. This quatrain gives you in words a visual of the Universe as was thought about in the time of Khayyam.
Nowadays we know that the sun is the center of our Universe, but in the time of Khayyam everyone thought that the Earth was the center of the Universe. Omar Khayyam as an astronomer however had already ideas about our Universe ... in his idea the sun was the center of the Universe, so he was far ahead of his time.
Let me give you the verse for today ... it's again a nice one, but the choice of words sounds magical and mysterious in my opinion.
Above I already gave a kind of explanation of this quatrain. I think this background (source: Bob Forrest web) will give you all a better explanation of this quatrain.
At the time of Omar Khayyam, the Earth was generally believed to be at the centre of the universe, and surrounded by seven spheres associated with the then known seven planets. In order of distance from the Earth, the spheres were those of: (1) The Moon, (2) Mercury, (3) Venus, (4) the Sun, (5) Mars, (6) Jupiter, (7) Saturn. The sense of this verse is that the Poet ascended to the outermost sphere of the universe so that he could view the whole “from the outside”, and though this journey made many things clear to him, he could still not see the answer to the riddle of human Death and Fate.
Let me give you a brief explanation of this haiku. We humans are always searching for answers, we have thousand questions, we want to know everything, but birds never question their existence and praise their Creator every day again. Isn't that awesome ... !?
This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until November 20th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode later on.