Among these hundred bones and nine orifices there is something. For now let’s call it ‘gauze in the wind.’ Surely we can say it’s thin, torn easily by a breeze. It grew fond of mad poetry long ago and eventually this became its life work (the opening of “Knapsack Notebook” translated by Barnhill).
What is this “something” that Basho locates in his body? His word is Furabo. On p. 79 of Qiu (Basho and the Dao), we learn that Furabo is Basho’s name for Zhuangzi’s True Lord, the principle of the Dao. Fu, wind; ra, thin silk; bo, priest or boy. “Furabo is a creature that is easily broken, that is devoid of worldly values, and that willingly submits to nature’s force, the wind,” says Qiu.
Notice Basho doesn't say: I grew fond of mad poetry and it became my life work. IT -- the Zhuangzi's "True Lord" -- grew fond of mad poetry. What is this "it"?
Chuang Tzu says of the True Lord: “ . . . Whether I succeed in discovering his identity or not, it neither adds nor detracts from his Truth.” This indicates the nature of Basho’s “search.” He is searching for his identity, his inner identity as Furabo, the existence of which is beyond doubt but the exact nature of which is perhaps beyond knowing, it doesn’t matter.
For me, Furabo is “inner form”: it is the principle of the self’s composition of itself through creativity, and the creativity is analogous to cosmological creativity, or Zoka, which is always trying out new transformations (evolution bears witness to that) given new circumstances, nor can it be understood apart from context.
So my “True Lord” is this inner act of composition: try the pun Esse/Essay. To do “thy Will” is “To Be” and “To Be” is to “essay” – to attempt to understand, to search. In terms of Christian theology, this “inner act” exists by analogy with God, who is Act, Esse (to be). This is why I can’t “know” it in the positivistic sense.
Depart from the barbarian, break away from the beast, follow the Creative, return to the Creative (Basho, Knapsack Notebook, trans. Barnhill). To search is to follow and return to the creative but unknowlable Beyond, the light Dante in Purgatorio 3 calls the un non sapeva che bianco (“a something of I-did-not-know pure white” Fitzpatrick trans.) Yes, that light. An unimaginable light.
In that light, each of us is “mankind,” and it is the nature of mankind to search for the self of itself this way.
