SOURCE: "Zen Buddhism and the Japanese Haiku," in Anagogic Qualities of Literature, edited by Joseph P. Strelka, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1971, pp. 211-17.

In the following essay, Sanders examines the importance of Buddhist enlightenment—called satori—to haiku poetry.

Zen Buddhism, which came from India by way of China to Japan, has had a great influence on Japanese culture in general and Japanese art in particular. Suzuki points out that "the idea that the ultimate truth of life and of things generally is to be intuitively and not conceptually grasped is what Zen has contributed to the cultivation of artistic appreciation among the Japanese people."¹ At this very point we find the closest connection between Zen and haiku poetry, that is, in their intuitive rather than conceptual apprehension of life which is concentrated into one brief, yet atemporal moment. This is satori in Zen, or what Yasuda calls...