The Pocket Haiku (Shambhala Pocket Library)

Soon this short verse sprang free from renga and began to articulate aesthetic qualities, such as a sense of beautiful aloneness (sabishisa) and restrained elegance (furyu).

As in the tea ceremony, the way of elegance in haiku involves highly focused attention to detail as revealed through Zen practice. This constantly attentive state, and the discipline of writing, becomes for the poet a means of self-cultivation and a source of enlightenment.

In just three lines totaling seventeen syllables (5–7–5), a haiku presents a brief meditation in which the reader or listener is invited to participate, using imagery drawn from intensely careful observation.