Kobayashi Issa

(all the time I pray to Buddha)
By Kobayashi Issa
Translated by Robert Hass

All the time I pray to Buddha
I keep on
Killing mosquitoes.

I don't understand this poem fully but I can understand the irony that it seems to have. Buddhists as a rule do not pray. They meditate which is very different from praying. I would have liked to have seen other translations of this poem. It should read:

All the time I meditate (on the Buddha?)
I keep on
Killing mosquitoes.

Maybe Issa meant to use 'pray'. Buddha never thought of himself as a god and said many times that he was not a god but awake. Killing or destroying life is something that Buddhists try not to do, but I will kill a mosquito if it is in my room although I normally don't as they don't bother me very much. This sounds odd which is OK since my name is not on this blog, but there was this fly that was in my room for about a week. I tried not to kill it and it did bother me. Finally, it just disappeared. I missed it a little and never did find its "body". I was sick with the flu and it was my only visitor. It reminded me of the moth that was in the cockpit of Charles Lindbergh when he crossed the Atlantic Ocean.

Issa maybe telling us that we can be zen-like and meditate in our lotus position but mosquitoes still bother us and we all reach up and slap them when they bite. There are stories of masters who would meditate and nothing would disturb them. Gandhi was in deep meditation while on a train that was derailed and he never woke up until people shook him awake. This was an accident that killed many people. Most of us, however, are not holy men or women with deep powers of concentration and we tend to notice the discomforts of life.

Issa was a Japanese poet also known as Kobayashi Yataro and Kobayashi and took the pen name of Issa which means roughly a "cup of tea". He lived from 1763 to 1828.