Roshi Joan Halifax and The Way of Haiku

---

We are delighted to feature a collection of haiku kindly offered to The Dewdrop by Roshi Joan Halifax. Roshi Joan has spearheaded and guided the annual gathering of ‘The Way of Haiku’ for close to 15 years at Upaya, the Zen Center she established in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Thousands (more than 700 in this year’s program alone) have participated in this annual creative literary art form and spiritual practice. Roshi Joan and her cherished friend, Kaz Tanahashi, along with many literary luminaries such as Natalie Goldberg, Jane Hirschfield, and Pico Iyer, have been able to share their art and spiritual insights through The Way of Haiku; this creative expression at the intersection of Zen and art. Roshi Joan has sown ‘bodhi seeds’ kindly and peacefully throughout the world in many ways, and not the least of which has been through her generous and loving spirit of the way of haiku. Way is the operative word for Roshi Joan, as she embodied the Way throughout her life, and continually shows us the way forward by sharing the Dharma through creative expressions such as the spiritual practice of haiku, and her way of being in the world. The Dewdrop celebrates her enormous literary art and spiritual contributions to the world writ large. 

a painted rice cake?
or is it a super moon?
how delicious

hum of cluster flies
in a warm cabin kitchen
I regret autumn

autumn has arrived
hanging out quietly
ripened persimmon

santa fe plaza
ablaze with holiday lights
and roaring mufflers

Breaking through
brown dry ground
Brave little crocus

this late afternoon
shivering in the cold wind
an old dry rosebush 

Rev. Joan Jiko Halifax
Abbot, Upaya Zen Center
Santa Fe, NM