Kikaku: My snow

“My snow!” – when I think that,
it weighs almost nothing
on my umbrella-hat!

– Haiku by Kikaku, from An Introduction to Haiku by Harold G. Henderson

This is a beautiful haiku.

If I think of the snow on my hat as other, as something imposing on me, then it weighs heavily and is a source of annoyance or distress.

If I think of it as mine, as not separate from me, as part of life, then it weighs almost nothing.

Said another way…

If I see myself as primarily this human self¹, then what happens to this human self sometimes weighs heavily.

If I recognize myself as this awake space that forms itself into all content of experience², then this human self and the wider world happens within the same field. What happens is still there but weighs almost nothing.

Nuances may be lost in this translation, and, for all I know, I may be missing the point completely in terms of what Kikaku meant, but this is what seems to fit this particular translation.

NOTE

1. More accurately, these mental representations of me and I.
2. In one sense, I am this human self in the world. And I find I am more fundamentally what all content of experience happens within and as. I am what a thought may call consciousness, and the consciousness I am forms itself into my experience of this human self and the wider world and any other content of experience. All content of experience is one seamless field. This human self lives his own life just like everything else.