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I suppose when I set about writing this book, "Ólann mo Mhiúil as an nGainséis" ...
that I felt at the time that there was a gap in the market, as the writers and the publishers, say ...
that is, that there weren't that many travel books available in Irish.
There are now, thanks be to God, that gap is being gradually filled ...
but, at the time, I felt, really, that nobody had written much, really, about India and about Japan.
And my wife and I had won a travel prize ...
and, we remortgaged the house, and we took off for three months.
And, I said to Cló Iar-Chonnacht that I would be hitting the road ...
and that I would keep a travel diary and would they have any interest in a travel book when the whole thing was over ...
and, they agreed. And, I'm pleased that we took that approach because often ...
in the Irish language world, there's often no discussion or preliminary discussion between writers and publishers ...
and often suitable or new material is not being commissioned by publishers.
There should be a much greater relationship between writers and publishers, and between writers, publishers and the public ...
and ... "Look, what do you want? What would you like to read? Is there a demand for a gardening book? No. Alright.
" Is there a demand for a travel book? Yes, to an extent. Alright, we'll do it."
It's more than a travel book to the extent that it's a sort of pilgrimage as well.
I was knowledgeable about India since I was a student but I had never been there ...
and I had a certain knowledge of Japan as well. I had been writing haiku ...
since I was a university student but I had never, as you'd say, been to the cradle of the haiku itself, Japan.
I had read the great Indian philosophers and gurus ...
from Vivekananda to, let's say, Meher Baba Rashnish, Krishnamurti, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj ...
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. A big group of them. But it wasn't until I reached India ...
that I understood that I had no guru or philosopher or teacher or adviser ...
but that maybe India itself would be my guru, and ...
from the first time we visited India, my wife and I have returned a dozen times or so.
And it's not any specific teaching or religion - Hinduism or Buddhism or anything like that which lures me there ...
but India itself, an ancient country which reminds me of how ancient Ireland is as well.
That is to say, I like making the connection between ancient cultures ...
and I like the attempted renewal of that ancient heritage as well.
There are haiku scattered throughout the book and that's a trick I learned from the Japanese ...
because there's a genre of literature there called haibun.
And, haibun is writing, travel writing, often, with the poet or the monk on a pilgrimage to some monastery ...
or to a place famed for its beauty.
And, perhaps he'd be climbing a mountain or walking beside a lake or the like, and ...
there would be a break in the account, and ...
and he would have a haiku there. Maybe he would reach the top of the mountain and the sun would be rising ...
and that's the end of the prose and there would be a haiku then ...
to express that start, that wonder. And that's what I've done as well and, really, ...
I was riding on a mule in the Himalayas ....
and, suddenly, the mule started drinking from the Ganges and, at the same time ...
I saw the sun rising above the mountains and that was the haiku:
The sun above the Himalayas - my mule drinks from the Ganges
And, a line from that haiku is the title of this book, "Ólann mo Mhiúil as an nGainséis".
Nobody was writing haiku in Irish. It happened that I was sharing a house with a man called Roderick Campbell ...
when I was a university student in Cork, and he had a great collection of books, and of music records.
And I learned more from Roddy than from the university professors.
And one of the books Roddy had was "A History of Haiku" by a man called R.H. Blythe, Reginald Horace Blythe ...
who was a lecturer in Japan and who was teaching English in the Imperial Court as well.
But Blythe took a great interest in the haiku and the influence that Zen, Buddhist-Zen, had on the haiku and ...
at the end of Blythe's volumes about the Haiku, he asks:
Could the haiku could blossom outside of Japan?
And he looked around and he saw that this man in America had won a haiku prize. There was a big haiku competition ...
sponsored by Japan Airlines, and I don't remember how many people entered, a couple of hundred thousand people or something like that.
But this man, Jim Hackett, won the competition ...
and when Blythe read the winning haiku by Hackett, he said ...
whatever there is to a haiku, this man has it. And when I saw that ...
I said to myself, "Is he still around? Could it be that this man, Jim Hackett is still alive. I'd love to meet him.
I found out that he was still alive and living in California ...
and I invited him to come to Ireland, and, if you like ...
to be my haiku master. He agreed, he arrived and I translated thirty-something or fifty-something haiku bu him to Irish.
And when you make contact with a master like that, and he is a master ...
when you make contact with a living master ...
if you're lucky he is able to give you that flame so that you will carry the flame after him.
And, I have written, composed two large books about haiku ...
as, not just art, but as a way to spend your life.
And those two books are "Haiku Enlightenment" and, the second one, a companion to the first, "Haiku: The Gentle Art of Disappearing".
Because, I found out, while writing haiku, that it's more than a literary form ...
it's a trick to get rid of yourself, that is to say ...
a person's ego is so terribly strong the whole time ...
and thoughts and desires are like dictators in us ...
demanding this, that and everything the whole time.
But I have found a trick in the haiku to erase a person's ego for a moment.
It comes back again but, for a short time, you seize the moment and you are submerged, drowned, ablaze in that moment ...
and you're not there any more, at this moment, there's only the haiku.
And that's why it's so short, why it never goes over seventeen syllables ...
You'd have a poem then or a sonnet and the tension would be gone from it but ...
with three lines, you can squeeze something and force something in which has so much energy in it ...
that there is nothing except for it.