Matsuo Basho Quotes

Just washed, How chill The white leeks!

This snowy morning
That black crow I hate so much ...
But he's so beautiful!

In this world of ours,
We eat only to cast out,
Sleep only to wake,
And what comes after all that
Is simply to die at last.

Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.

Year's end still in straw hat and sandals

Learn about a pine tree from a pine tree, and about a bamboo plant from a bamboo plant.

Every moment of life is the last, every poem is a death poem.

Summer grasses,
All that remains
Of soldiers' dreams

Many things of the past
Are brought to my mind,
As I stand in the garden
Staring at a cherry tree.

Awakened at midnight
by the sound of the water jar
cracking from the ice

Should I hold it in my hand,
it will melt in my burning tears.
Autumnal frost.

Felling a tree and gazing at the cut end - tonight's moon

Year's end, all
corners of this
floating world, swept.

The fact that Saigyo composed a poem that begins, "I shall be unhappy without loneliness," shows that he made loneliness his master.

A thicket of summer grass / Is all that remains / Of the dreams of ancient warriors.

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.

He who creates three to five haiku poems during a lifetime is a haiku poet. He who attains to completes ten is a master.

Spring passes
and the birds cry out - tears
in the eyes of fishes

In the end, without skill or talent, I've given myself over entirely to poetry. Po Chu-i labored at it until he nearly burst. Tu Fu starved rather than abandon it. Neither my intelligence nor my writing is comparable to such men. Nevertheless, in the end, we ALL live in phantom huts.

Year after year
On the monkey's face:
A monkey's face.

Had I crossed the pass
Supported by a stick,
I would have spared myself
The fall from the horse.

Nothing in the cry
of cicadas suggests they
are about to die

This autumn-
why am I growing old?
bird disappearing among clouds.

On this road
where nobody else travels
autumn nightfall.

First snow-falling-on the half-finished bridge.

When a country is defeated, there remain only mountains and rivers, and on a ruined castle in spring only grasses thrive. I sat down on my hat and wept bitterly till I almost forgot time.
A thicket of summer grass
Is all that remains
Of the dreams and ambitions
Of ancient warriors.

Pausing between clouds
the moon rests
in the eyes of its beholders

Ballet in the air ... Twin butterflies until, twice white They Meet, they mate

A bush-warbler,
Coming to the verandah-edge,
Left its droppings
On the rice-cakes.

Do not resemble me-Never be like a musk melon Cut in two identical halves.

Not to think of yourself / as someone who did not count
/ Festival of the Souls.

A warbler singing - somewhere beyond the willow, before the thicket

I am one who eats breakfast gazing at morning glories.

Come, butterfly
It's late-
We've miles to go together.

Farewell, my old fan. / Having scribbled on it, / What could I do but tear it / At the end of summer?

A weathered skeleton
in windy fields of memory,
piercing like a knife.

Winter solitude- in a world of one colour the sound of the wind.

There is nothing you can see that is not a flower; there is nothing you can think that is not the moon.

Harvest moon: around the pond I wander and the night is gone.

Spring rain leaking through the roof dripping from the wasps' nest.

I hope to have gathered
To repay your kindness
The willow leaves
Scattered in the garden.

When your consciousness has become ripe in true zazen-pure like clear water, like a serene mountain lake, not moved by any wind-then anything may serve as a medium for realization.

Around existence twine, (Oh, bridge that hangs across the gorge!) ropes of twisted vine.

The universe and its beings are a complementarity of empty infinity, intimate interrelationships, and total uniqueness of each and every being.

Not knowing the name of the tree,
I stood in the flood
of its sweet scent.

The temple bell stops
But the sound keeps coming
out of the flowers

Days and months are travellers of eternity. So are the years that pass by. Those who steer a boat across the sea, or drive a horse over the earth till they succumb to the weight of years, spend every minute of their lives travelling. There are a great number of ancients, too, who died on the road. I myself have been tempted for a long time by the cloud-moving wind - filled with a strong desire to wander.

When I speak My lips feel cold - The autumn wind.

On a bare branch a crow is perched - autumn evening

Sick while traveling
dream of a withered field
wandering around

I felt deeply in my heart both the sorrow of one that goes and the grief of one that remains, just as a solitary bird separated from his flock in dark clouds, and wrote in answer:
From this day forth, alas,
The dew-drops shall wash away
The letters on my hat
Saying 'A party of two'.

Learn the rules, and then forget them.

Here is a greedy man who keeps to himself
The beautiful pears ripe in his garden.

夏草や
兵どもが
夢の跡

The summer grasses -
For many brave warriors
The aftermath of dreams.

- Donald Keene, Travelers of a Hundred Ages, New York, 1999, p. 316 (Translation: Donald Keene)

At the ancient pond the frog plunges into the sound of water

静けさや
岩に染み入る
蝉の声

The deep Stillness
Seeping into the rocks
The voice of the Cicadas

An autumn night - don't think your life didn't matter.

Just as a stag's antlers
Are split into tines,
So I must go willy-nilly
Separated from my friend.

Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine, or to the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo. And in doing so, you must leave your subjective preoccupation with yourself. Otherwise you impose yourself on the object and you do not learn.

Go to the object. Leave your subjective preoccupation with yourself. Do not impose yourself on the object. Become one with the object. Plunge deep enough into the object to see something like a hidden glimmering there.

Skylark sings all
day, and day
not long enough.

Ganjin of Sho ¯daiji Temple endured seventy adversities in his attempts to come to Japan from China. He is said to have lost his sight due to the salt wind blown into his eyes. Worshipping at his sacred image:

with a young leaf
I would wipe the tears
from your eyes

It is only a barbarous mind that sees other than the flower, merely an animal mind that dreams of other than the moon.

The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.

Old dark sleepy pool ... Quick unexpected frog Goes plop! Watersplash!

Real poetry, is to lead a beautiful life. To live poetry is better than to write it.

From all these trees, in the salads, the soup, everywhere, cherry blossoms fall.

From the pine tree, learn of the pine tree; And from the bamboo, of the bamboo

No matter where your interest lies, you will not be able to accomplish anything unless you bring your deepest devotion to it.

The moon is brighter since the barn burned.

Operating superficially, the mind is random in its activity and stale in its insights and images. However, with practice and experience the mind is freed from the skull, and the fresh and new can appear as though for the first time. It

Traveler's heart. Never settled long in one place. Like a portable fire.

Dying cricket -
how full of
life, his song.

The haiku that reveals seventy to eighty percent of its subject is good. Those that reveal fifty to sixty percent, we never tire of.

I'm touched
by this chrysanthemum
it weathered the typhoon

In this poor body, composed of one hundred bones and nine openings, is something called spirit, a flimsy curtain swept this way and that by the slightest breeze. It is spirit, such as it is, which led me to poetry, at first little more than a pastime, then the full business of my life. There have been times when my spirit, so dejected, almost gave up the quest, other times when it was proud, triumphant. So it has been from the very start, never finding peace with itself, always doubting the worth of what it makes.

Sabi is the color of haikai. It is different from tranquility. For example, if an old man dresses up in armor and helmet and goes to the battlefield, or in colorful brocade kimono, attending (his lord) at a banquet, [sabi] is like this old figure.

When composing a verse let there not be a hair's breath separating your mind from what you write; composition of a poem must be done in an instant, like a woodcutter felling a huge tree or a swordsman leaping at a dangerous enemy.

Fresh spring! / The world is only Nine days old - / These fields and mountains!

What is important is to keep our mind high in the world of true understanding, and returning to the world of our daily experience to seek therein the truth of beauty. No matter what we may be doing at a given moment, we must not forget that is has a bearing upon our everlasting self which is poetry.

Sadly, I part from you; Like a clam torn from its shell, I go, and autumn too.

Temple of Suma
hearing the unblown flute
in the deep shade of trees
sumadera ya / fukanu fue kiku / koshitayami

The sea darkens And a wild duck s call Is faintly white.

Poverty's child -
he starts to grind the rice,
and gazes at the moon.

Twilight whippoorwill ... Whistle on, sweet deepener Of dark loneliness