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No matter where your interest lies, you will not be able to accomplish anything unless you bring your deepest devotion to it.

Matsuo Basho

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.
MATSUO BASHO

Knowledge Learning Leaving Nature Wisdom Yourself
Not to think of yourself / as someone who did not count — / Festival of the Souls.
MATSUO BASHO

Count Festival Soul Thinking
The haiku that reveals seventy to eighty percent of its subject is good. Those that reveal fifty to sixty percent, we never tire of.
MATSUO BASHO

Goodness Hide Mystery Poem Reveal
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
Old dark sleepy pool… Quick unexpected frog Goes plop! Watersplash!
MATSUO BASHO

Dark Expectation Old Sleep Water
Come out to view / the truth of flowers blooming / in poverty.
MATSUO BASHO

Bloom Flower Poverty Truth
On a bare branch a crow is perched – autumn evening.
MATSUO BASHO

Autumn Evening
The journey itself is my home.
MATSUO BASHO

Home Journey Myself
Year’s end, all corners of this floating world, swept.
MATSUO BASHO

Age Float Time World
I hope to have gathered To repay your kindness The willow leaves Scattered in the garden.
MATSUO BASHO

Garden Hope Kindness Pay
Collecting all The rains of May The swift Mogami River.
MATSUO BASHO

Collection Rain River Water
Awakened at midnight by the sound of the water jar cracking from the ice.
MATSUO BASHO

Awake Ice Night Sound Water
The moon is brighter since the barn burned.
MATSUO BASHO

Bright Burn Moon One Liner
Plunge Deep enough in order to see something that is hidden and glimmering.
MATSUO BASHO

Enough Hide Order See
An autumn night – don’t think your life didn’t matter.
MATSUO BASHO

Autumn Life Night Thinking Yourself
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

No matter where your interest lies, you will not be able to accomplish anything unless you bring your deepest devotion to it.

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No matter where your interest lies, you will not be able to accomplish anything unless you bring your deepest devotion to it.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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