'Shouji' (Leben-Sterben) - (Haiku)

«Kaum im Schnee erwacht /
mühsam meine Spur gemacht /
schon verweht sie sacht.»

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'Shōji 生死' (Leben-Sterben) by Itō Hotaru, Berlin February 02, 2021
A haiku that came to mind as I looked out my window on Candlemas (02/02) 2021.

The Japanese term 生死 (shōji) cannot be translated!
The term is almost 800 years old and comes from the Shōbōgenzō (正法眼蔵), the famous main work of the Japanese Zen master Dōgen Zenji (希玄). In this book, a whole chapter (the shortest) is devoted to this concept. 生 (shō) means “life” and 死 (ji) means “death,” so shoji means “life-death” (death and life at the same time). We have the words “life” and “death,” but Master Dogen did not recommend us to understand intellectually what our life and death are. He found value in our real day-to-day life itself. So in this chapter Master Dogen explained life-and-death as the real momentary state of our daily life in which life and death are combined.