Matsuo basho quotes
Explore a curated collection of Matsuo basho's most famous quotes. Dive into timeless reflections that offer deep insights into life, love, and the human experience through his profound words.
The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.
Collecting all The rains of May The swift Mogami River.
Without bitterest cold that penetrates to the very bone, how can plum blossoms send forth their fragrance all over the world?
The fact that Saigyo composed a poem that begins, "I shall be unhappy without loneliness," shows that he made loneliness his master.
This autumn- why am I growing old? bird disappearing among clouds.
At the ancient pond the frog plunges into the sound of water
Calm and serene The sound of a cicada Penetrates the rock.
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.
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.
Now the swinging bridge Is quieted with creepers ... Like our tendrilled life.
Even in Kyoto/Hearing the cuckoo's cry/I long for Kyoto
The oak tree: not interested in cherry blossoms.
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
Twilight whippoorwill... Whistle on, sweet deepener Of dark loneliness
A thicket of summer grass / Is all that remains / Of the dreams of ancient warriors.
Real poetry, is to lead a beautiful life. To live poetry is better than to write it.
I hope to have gathered To repay your kindness The willow leaves Scattered in the garden.
I felt quite at home, / As if it were mine sleeping lazily / In this house of fresh air.
Mountain-rose petals Falling, falling, falling now... Waterfall music
The moon is brighter since the barn burned.
For this lovely bowl let us arrange these flowers since there is no rice.
Harvest moon: around the pond I wander and the night is gone.
Along my journey / through this transitory world, / new year's housecleaning.
From all these trees, in the salads, the soup, everywhere, cherry blossoms fall.
My body, now close to fifty years of age, has become an old tree that bears bitter peaches, a snail which has lost its shell, a bagworm separated from its bag; it drifts with the winds and clouds that know no destination. Morning and night I have eaten traveler's fare, and have held out for alms a pilgrim's wallet.
Felling a tree and gazing at the cut end - tonight's moon
Winter garden, the moon thinned to a thread, insects singing.
Learn how to listen as things speak for themselves.
Not to think of yourself / as someone who did not count -- / Festival of the Souls.
The journey itself is my home.
Poverty's child - he starts to grind the rice, and gazes at the moon.
O cricket from your cherry cry No one would ever guess How quickly you must die.
Come, see the true flowers of this pained world.
Year's end, all corners of this floating world, swept.
Why so scrawny, cat? Starving for fat fish or mice... Or backyard love?
Farewell, my old fan. / Having scribbled on it, / What could I do but tear it / At the end of summer?
Do not resemble me-Never be like a musk melon Cut in two identical halves.
Old pond, leap-splash - a frog.
Sadly, I part from you; Like a clam torn from its shell, I go, and autumn too.
A weathered skeleton in windy fields of memory, piercing like a knife.
Fresh spring! / The world is only Nine days old - / These fields and mountains!
All my friends / viewing the moon – / an ugly bunch.
On a bare branch a crow is perched - autumn evening
I am one who eats breakfast gazing at morning glories.
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.
Breaking the silence Of an ancient pond, A frog jumped into water - A deep resonance.
An autumn night - don’t think your life didn’t matter.
Learn about a pine tree from a pine tree, and about a bamboo plant from a bamboo plant.
Before enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water. After enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water.
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.
Spring rain leaking through the roof dripping from the wasps' nest.
There is nothing you can see that is not a flower; there is nothing you can think that is not the moon.
A flute with no holes is not a flute.
Seek not the paths of the ancients; Seek that which the ancients sought.
Summer grasses — all that remains of great soldiers' imperial dreams.
First snow-falling-on the half-finished bridge.
When I speak My lips feel cold - The autumn wind.
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.
Clapping my hands with the echoes the summer moon begins to dawn.
Ballet in the air... Twin butterflies until, twice white They Meet, they mate
No matter where your interest lies, you will not be able to accomplish anything unless you bring your deepest devotion to it.
Orchidbreathing incense into butterfly's wings
Don't imitate me / we are not two halves / of a muskmelon.
Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.
The basis of art is change in the universe.
The moon and sun are travelers through eternity. Even the years wander on. Whether drifting through life on a boat or climbing toward old age leading a horse, each day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.
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.
Seek on high bare trails Sky-reflecting violets... Mountain-top jewels
Between our two lives there is also the life of the cherry blossom.
Plunge Deep enough in order to see something that is hidden and glimmering.
The haiku that reveals seventy to eighty percent of its subject is good. Those that reveal fifty to sixty percent, we never tire of.
Every moment of life is the last, every poem is a death poem.
Learn the rules, and then forget them.
Year's end still in straw hat and sandals
Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.
Come, butterfly It's late- We've miles to go together.
Friends part foreverwild geese lost in cloud
the universe and its beings are a complementarity of empty infinity, intimate interrelationships, and total uniqueness of each and every being.
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.
Just washed, How chill The white leeks!
April's air stirs in Willow-leaves...a butterfly Floats and balances
Year by year, the monkey's mask reveals the monkey
With every gust of wind, the butterfly changes its place on the willow.
He who creates three to five haiku poems during a lifetime is a haiku poet. He who attains to completes ten is a master.
Old dark sleepy pool... Quick unexpected frog Goes plop! Watersplash!
If I had the knack I'd sing like Cherry flakes falling
Come out to view / the truth of flowers blooming / in poverty.
Make the universe your companion, always bearing in mind the true nature of things-mountains and rivers, trees and grasses, and humanity-and enjoy the falling blossoms and the scattering leaves.
From the pine tree, learn of the pine tree; And from the bamboo, of the bamboo
Spring rain conveyed under the trees in drops.
How I long to see among dawn flowers, the face of God.
Winter solitude- in a world of one colour the sound of the wind.
Old pond, frog jumps in - plop.
The desire to break the silence with constant human noise is, I believe, precisely an avoidance of the sacred terror of that divine encounter.
Awakened at midnight by the sound of the water jar cracking from the ice
Nothing in the cry of cicadas suggests they are about to die
Traveler's heart. Never settled long in one place. Like a portable fire.
There came a day when the clouds drifting along with the wind aroused a wanderlust in me, and I set off on a journey to roam along the seashores
The old pond, ah! A frog jumps in: The water's sound.
Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.
Around existence twine, (Oh, bridge that hangs across the gorge!) ropes of twisted vine.
The sea darkens And a wild duck s call Is faintly white.
How much I desire! Inside my little satchel, the moon, and flowers
