Day 17 Waka Wisdom: Hear How Waka Was Meant to Sound
February 12, 2024Day 19 Waka Wisdom: Time to Move from Practice to Wholeness
February 12, 2024, Welcome to Day 18 of Waka Wisdom!
Here is your link to the Day 18 Waka Wisdom webpage.
DAY 18: The Spiritual DNA – When Two Sacred Traditions Become One
Today you’ll uncover the magnificent spiritual fusion that makes your waka practice so uniquely powerful: the ancient marriage between Shinto’s animistic reverence for kami (spirits dwelling in all nature) and Buddhism’s profound insights into impermanence, suffering, and enlightenment – creating poetry that simultaneously honors the sacred in cherry blossoms and seeks the deepest truths about human existence.
You’re now practicing within the same spiritual lineage as warrior-monk poets like Saigyō, who could find cosmic sadness in moonlight and transform personal grief into universal wisdom, proving that waka transcends mere poetry to become a pathway for processing the full spectrum of human experience through sacred verse.
Emperor Meiji’s deeply moving poem today brings this spiritual synthesis down to earth with perfect clarity: authentic sincerity begins not with grand gestures or mystical experiences, but with the heartfelt, filial care we show our parents – making your daily practice not just personal enlightenment, but a foundation for becoming genuinely sincere in every relationship and interaction.
x B
If you would like to connect with other Waka Wisdom participants, you can do so on the forum here.
