Felling a tree and gazing at the cut end – tonight’s moon.
MATSUO BASHOGo 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.
More Matsuo Basho Quotes
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Around existence twine, (Oh, bridge that hangs across the gorge!) ropes of twisted vine.
MATSUO BASHO -
April’s air stirs in Willow-leaves, a butterfly Floats and balances.
MATSUO BASHO -
From all these trees, in the salads, the soup, everywhere, cherry blossoms fall.
MATSUO BASHO -
Come, see the true flowers of this pained world.
MATSUO BASHO -
The sea darkens And a wild duck s call Is faintly white.
MATSUO BASHO -
There is nothing you can see that is not a flower; there is nothing you can think that is not the moon.
MATSUO BASHO -
First snow-falling-on the half-finished bridge.
MATSUO BASHO -
All my friends / viewing the moon – / an ugly bunch.
MATSUO BASHO -
Clapping my hands with the echoes the summer moon begins to dawn.
MATSUO BASHO -
A flute with no holes is not a flute.
MATSUO BASHO -
Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.
MATSUO BASHO -
Traveler’s heart. Never settled long in one place. Like a portable fire.
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 -
Awakened at midnight by the sound of the water jar cracking from the ice.
MATSUO BASHO -
From the pine tree, learn of the pine tree; And from the bamboo, of the bamboo.
MATSUO BASHO