Don’t imitate me / we are not two halves / of a muskmelon.
MATSUO BASHOA weathered skeleton in windy fields of memory, piercing like a knife.
More Matsuo Basho Quotes
-
-
Farewell, my old fan. / Having scribbled on it, / What could I do but tear it / At the end of summer?
MATSUO BASHO -
The desire to break the silence with constant human noise is, I believe, precisely an avoidance of the sacred terror of that divine encounter.
MATSUO BASHO -
Come, butterfly It’s late- We’ve miles to go together.
MATSUO BASHO -
Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.
MATSUO BASHO -
Nothing in the cry of cicadas suggests they are about to die.
MATSUO BASHO -
With every gust of wind, the butterfly changes its place on the willow.
MATSUO BASHO -
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.
MATSUO BASHO -
Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.
MATSUO BASHO -
Every moment of life is the last, every poem is a death poem.
MATSUO BASHO -
Sadly, I part from you; Like a clam torn from its shell, I go, and autumn too.
MATSUO BASHO -
I am one who eats breakfast gazing at morning glories.
MATSUO BASHO -
Why so scrawny, cat? Starving for fat fish or mice… Or backyard love?
MATSUO BASHO -
Between our two lives there is also the life of the cherry blossom.
MATSUO BASHO -
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.
MATSUO BASHO -
The fact that Saigyo composed a poem that begins, “I shall be unhappy without loneliness,” shows that he made loneliness his master.
MATSUO BASHO






