If a picture is worth a thousand words, a haiku poem should be worth at least two or three hundred. Being able to express profound emotion and clear perception in no more than seventeen syllables, this traditionally Japanese short poetic form has for decades had its own place in the vast world of English literature. Haiku poems bear a great resemblance to photographs. Similarly, they can recreate an impromptu reflection of reality, of the world, seen through the eyes of the poet instead of having been recorded by a camera. In this sense, the poet's own self becomes lost in this observation,...

The focus of Zen, its main purpose is to take us back to that long forgotten state of mind where the present moment becomes the primary one again, and everything else secondary, if of any importance at all. This shift of consciousness is nothing more than returning to our natural way of perceiving the world around us, the way we used to when we were little children. Back then we had very short past, hence not much of a conceivable future either, this way being able to live our lives with a certain sense of presentness, something we have managed to forget somewhere along the way.