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BUDDHIST SYMBOLISM 37
subjective aspect of the incident except the little particle, ya. Indeed, the presence of ya is the key word to the whole composition. With this the haiku ceases to be an objective description of the frog jumping into the old pond and of the sound of the water caused thereby.
So long as the old pond remains a container of a certain volume of water quietly reflecting the things around it, there is no life in it. To assert itself as reality, a sound must come out of it; a frog jumps into it, the old pond then proves to be dynamic, to be full of vitality, to be of significance to us sentient beings. It becomes an object of interest, of value.
But there is one important observation we have to make, which is that the value of the old pond to Basho, the poet and seer (or mystic), did not come from any particular source outside the pond but from the pond itself. It may be better to say, the pond is the value. The pond did not become significant to Basho because of his finding the value in the pond's relationship to anything outside the pond as a pond.
To state this in other words, the frog's jumping into the pond, its causing the water to splash and make a noise, was the occasion — intellectually, dualistically, or objectively speaking — to make Basho realize that he was the pond and the pond was he, and that whatever value there was in this identification, the value was no other than the fact of this identification itself. There was nothing added to the fact.
When he recognized the fact, the fact itself became significant. Nothing was added to it. The pond was a pond, the frog was a frog, the water was water. The objects remained the same. No, it is better to express the idea in this way: no objective world, so called, at all existed with its frogs, ponds, etc., until one day a person known as Basho came suddenly to the scene and heard "the water's sound." The scene, indeed, until then had no existence. When its value was recognized by Basho this was to Basho the beginning or the creation of an objective world. Before this, the old pond was there as if it were not in existence. It was no more than a dream; it had no reality. It was the occasion of Basho's hearing the frog that the whole world, including the poet himself, sprung out of Nothingness ex nihilo.