鬼と成り仏となるや土用雲
oni to nari hotoke to naru ya doyo-gumo


becoming a demon
becoming a Buddha
midsummer clouds


—Issa
(Tr. David LaSpina)

_{("Yashima in Summer" by Koichi Okumura)}

Child-like Issa is playing the old game of watching the clouds and seeing what he can see. Who hasn't done this? Everyday when I ride my son to school he looks up at the clouds and tells me what he sees.

There is a little more to it, though. In seeing opposites, Issa is making a sly reference to the Taoist idea that opposites define each other and, in fact, are made of the same stuff. As the Tao tells us:

being and non-being create each other
difficult and easy support each other
long and short define each other

Without evil, what is good? Without good, how can we know evil? There can be no demons without Buddhas and no Buddhas without demons.

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Don't miss other great haiku in the Haiku of Japan series!

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101. Firefly Night
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	David LaSpina is an American photographer lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time. More?

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