It is said that if you can understand this haiku, you understand the heart of Japan. I don�t know about that, but to me this poem explains what 6th century Chinese Ch'an (Zen) Buddhist philosopher Chih-i was trying to do. And it paints a nice mental picture too. But then again, I like frogs. And ponds. And the sound of water. So there you go.

Chih-i developed a way to reconcile ultimate reality (Emptiness) and conventional reality, which he called �dependent� reality. Chih-i�s thing was the Reality of the Middle Way. It mapped Emptiness and conventional reality together so that the idea that nothing is real (Emptiness) and the obvious fact that everything is real could be understood at the same time without being a contradiction.

This poem demonstrates how he did this. �Old Pond� represents Emptiness -- deep, still, old and unchanging. �Frog jumps in� represents conventional reality. Into this peaceful scene of an old pond, not a ripple on the water, bursts a big ol� bull frog � and Plop!! right into the water. The frog disturbs the scene in an in-your-face way that cannot be denied. The frog is real. The frog is there.

�Sound of water� is the line that maps Emptiness and conventional reality together. It�s an example of the Reality of the Middle Way. It can be easily understood how a sound is both Empty and real at the same time. The sound is there, you hear it, you can�t deny it. Yet it is made up of nothing at all. It is undeniably Empty. A sound is just a vibration in the matter that surrounds it. Sound is created by the jostling of matter, and transmitted by the jostling of more matter around the sound wave, but this matter is not part of the sound. The matter that makes and transmits the sound does not belong to the sound. Sound is made of nothing at all.

Sound is undeniably Empty, and obviously, undeniably real at the same time.