Where there are flies, there are also Buddhas...

人有れば蝿あり仏ありにけり
hito areba hae ari hotoke ari ni keri

where there's people
there's flies
and Buddhas

Kobayashi Issa *
1823

This is a Zen (Chan) Buddhist haiku by 19 century haiku-poet Kobayashi Issa. I have always enjoyed his simple, rural haiku, filled with irony, humor and undistilled Zen...
This haiku came up to my mind at one point of my recent Tibet journey. At one of the last points of the itinerary of the trip, in the very remote Sakya, there were so many flies that one had to wave ones hands all the time to avoid their landing on food, etc. Sakya is most notable (and named after) the famous monastery of one of the 4 most important Tibetan Buddhist sects, Sakya sect.Our objective of visiting Sakya was of course the famous monastery there...
Issa's haiku suddenly came up in my mind.

At this very remote, and very very poor place, I remembered Issa's haiku, which in an amazing and 'acurate" way described the whole trip...
People, flies and Buddhas.
I had a sort of revelation.
In Mahayana Buddhism EVERYONE has the potential to be a Buddha. Everyone. People, dogs, flies...Me, you.

I choose this paraphrased sentence of Issa's haiku, i.e. "Where there are flies, there are also Buddhas..." as the title of my Tibet's trip posts...I actually very much hope I can be able to organise a photographic exhibition in my hometown in the upcoming September with this title...Keep your fingers crossed!

Meanwhile. These past few days I have been caught in the net of having to do (and think) about other things which prevented me from initiating the posts about the Tibet trip...Another reason is my incapability to upload any pictures, which greatly upsets my plans for artfully/beautifully presented posts...The censorship's grip has become even tighter, lately it's hard to figure a way to go past it...

Meanwhile, at least titlewise I managed to outline some basic starting points of my recount of the trip...Actually I was very excited about the conceptual idea of putting my experiences, obsrvations and thoughts together...Kind of a project...
Anyway I will try to organise the upcoming Tibet trip related posts more or less in the following order:

The Itinerary
Altitude, Nature and Views
The Colonization of Tibet
Pilgrim's Path
Monasteries, Temples and Stupas
Buddha, Dharma and Sangha
Monks
Nuns
Khadags, prayer flags, butter tea and tsampa
No-harming of Sentient Life
Discussions, Debates and Raised Questions
Daily Needs
Lhasa, Towns and Villages
Museums
Photography Moments and Shots
Fellow Travelers
The Perpetually Weeping Bodhisattva



Chödröl
....


* Kobayashi Issa is without doubt one of my most favourite poets. His rural Zen Buddhist "sudden enlightenment" poems are one of the reasons why I find myself here in Asia, studying It's languages and cultures...From October based in Kyoto,I will do my best to learn Japanese if not for other reason then at least to be able to fully appreciate his (and other haiku poets') poems in original...
Here is a link to Kobayashi Issa haiku if you want to check out more of his poems. On this site there are more than 9,000!
http://haikuguy.com/issa/index.html