black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

Matsuo Basho

Without bitterest cold that penetrates to the very bone, how can plum blossoms send forth their fragrance all over the world?
MATSUO BASHO

Bone Cold Deep Fragrance Nature Perfume World
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

Deep Enough Gide Leaving Object Subject Yourself
The fact that Saigyo composed a poem that begins, “I shall be unhappy without loneliness,” shows that he made loneliness his master.
MATSUO BASHO

Beginning Lonely Master Myself Poem
All my friends / viewing the moon – / an ugly bunch.
MATSUO BASHO

Friendship Moon Ugly View
Calm and serene The sound of a cicada Penetrates the rock.
MATSUO BASHO

Calm Rock Serene Sound
The moon is brighter since the barn burned.
MATSUO BASHO

Bright Burn Moon One Liner
Sadly, I part from you; Like a clam torn from its shell, I go, and autumn too.
MATSUO BASHO

Autumn Break Up End Leaving Myself Relationship Yourself
Come, see the true flowers of this pained world.
MATSUO BASHO

Flower Pain See True World
Breaking the silence Of an ancient pond, A frog jumped into water – A deep resonance.
MATSUO BASHO

Break Deep Frog Resonate Silence Water
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.
MATSUO BASHO

Breathe Compose Dangerous Enemy Fall Hairs Mindset Tree Writing
Fresh spring! / The world is only Nine days old – / These fields and mountains!
MATSUO BASHO

Age Fresh Mountain Nature Spring Time World
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

Avoid Believe Break Desire Divine Human Myself Noise Silence Sound
The universe and its beings are a complementarity of empty infinity, intimate interrelationships, and total uniqueness of each and every being.
MATSUO BASHO

Empty Intimate Relationship Unique Universe
How I long to see among dawn flowers, the face of God.
MATSUO BASHO

Face Flower God Myself See
The oak tree: not interested in cherry blossoms.
MATSUO BASHO

Flower Interest Tree
There is nothing you can see that is not a flower; there is nothing you can think that is not the moon.
MATSUO BASHO

Flower Moon Nature See Thinking Yourself

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

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

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