"It is as if you are dissecting the body of a man – by the time you have succeeded in dissecting the body of the man the spirit is gone. Whatsoever you find will be a dead corpse. And you were searching for the man, not for the dead corpse. The man is in the unity, so is the poem.

"If you dismember poetry you will find sentences; if you dismember the sentences you will find clauses; if you dismember the clauses you will find words; if you dismember the words, then the alphabet is left. But where is the poetry – the poetry that has thrilled your heart? Where is that beauty that has touched your being, that has given your wings? Where is that vision? In the alphabet there is nothing.

"How did it disappear? Your approach was basically wrong. Your approach was basically destructive, violent. You dissected it. Poetry has to be seen in its totality. It has to be grasped as a whole. If you can grasp it as a whole then each word contributes to it; if you cannot grasp it as a whole then words don't constitute it. Words constitute only the body of a poem, not the heart of it. Yes, the heart cannot exist without the body but the heart is not the body.

"Man cannot exist without the body, certainly, but man is not just the body. Man is far more. Man is far superior. Man is far higher. He is tethered to the body, living in the body, but not the body itself. The body is the temple and man is the God in it. Yes, if you destroy the temple the God will not have any abode; it will disappear, evaporate.

"So disappears a poem. The poem is the God that resides in the words, the rhythm, the meaning, the beauty

"Listen to a small haiku of Basho, the greatest master of haikus. It is a very small haiku, a few words.

"The ancient pond….

"When I say it, visualize it, because a haiku has to be visualized. It is a picture-poem. Only in visualization will you understand.

The ancient pond
A frog jumps in
Plop.

"