Before enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water. After enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water.
MATSUO BASHOYear by year, the monkey’s mask reveals the monkey.
More Matsuo Basho Quotes
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First snow-falling-on the half-finished bridge.
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Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.
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Summer grasses — all that remains of great soldiers’ imperial dreams.
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The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.
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A thicket of summer grass / Is all that remains / Of the dreams of ancient warriors.
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The moon is brighter since the barn burned.
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Seek not the paths of the ancients; Seek that which the ancients sought.
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Come out to view / the truth of flowers blooming / in poverty.
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Between our two lives there is also the life of the cherry blossom.
MATSUO BASHO -
He who creates three to five haiku poems during a lifetime is a haiku poet. He who attains to completes ten is a master.
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 -
With every gust of wind, the butterfly changes its place on the willow.
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Come, see the true flowers of this pained world.
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Year’s end, all corners of this floating world, swept.
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Awakened at midnight by the sound of the water jar cracking from the ice.
MATSUO BASHO