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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

Seek not the paths of the ancients; Seek that which the ancients sought.
MATSUO BASHO

Journey Path Seek Wisdom
This autumn- why am I growing old? bird disappearing among clouds.
MATSUO BASHO

Autumn Disappear Growth Myself Old
How I long to see among dawn flowers, the face of God.
MATSUO BASHO

Face Flower God Myself See
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
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
Awakened at midnight by the sound of the water jar cracking from the ice.
MATSUO BASHO

Awake Ice Night Sound Water
Winter garden, the moon thinned to a thread, insects singing.
MATSUO BASHO

Insect Old Pond Sing Winter
Come, see the true flowers of this pained world.
MATSUO BASHO

Flower Pain See True World
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
For this lovely bowl let us arrange these flowers since there is no rice.
MATSUO BASHO

Flower Food Love Poverty Togetherness
Summer grasses — all that remains of great soldiers’ imperial dreams.
MATSUO BASHO

Dreams Greatness Summer
Come out to view / the truth of flowers blooming / in poverty.
MATSUO BASHO

Bloom Flower Poverty Truth
Fresh spring! / The world is only Nine days old – / These fields and mountains!
MATSUO BASHO

Age Fresh Mountain Nature Spring Time World
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
From the pine tree, learn of the pine tree; And from the bamboo, of the bamboo.
MATSUO BASHO

Knowledge Nature Tree Wisdom
There came a day when the clouds drifting along with the wind aroused a wanderlust in me, and I set off on a journey to roam along the seashores
MATSUO BASHO

Day Journey Myself Sea Wind

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Matsuo Basho Quotes