The fact that Saigyo composed a poem that begins, “I shall be unhappy without loneliness,” shows that he made loneliness his master.
MATSUO BASHOWhen 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.
More Matsuo Basho Quotes
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Winter solitude- in a world of one colour the sound of the wind.
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On a bare branch a crow is perched – autumn evening.
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Awakened at midnight by the sound of the water jar cracking from the ice.
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The haiku that reveals seventy to eighty percent of its subject is good. Those that reveal fifty to sixty percent, we never tire of.
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Poverty’s child – he starts to grind the rice, and gazes at the moon.
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For this lovely bowl let us arrange these flowers since there is no rice.
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Fresh spring! / The world is only Nine days old – / These fields and mountains!
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Don’t imitate me / we are not two halves / of a muskmelon.
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Spring rain leaking through the roof dripping from the wasps’ nest.
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I am one who eats breakfast gazing at morning glories.
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Learn how to listen as things speak for themselves.
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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.
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He who creates three to five haiku poems during a lifetime is a haiku poet. He who attains to completes ten is a master.
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Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.
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An autumn night – don’t think your life didn’t matter.
MATSUO BASHO