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An autumn night – don’t think your life didn’t matter.

Matsuo Basho

Why so scrawny, cat? Starving for fat fish or mice… Or backyard love?
MATSUO BASHO

Cat Love Starve
Around existence twine, (Oh, bridge that hangs across the gorge!) ropes of twisted vine.
MATSUO BASHO

Existence Plant Rope Twisted
Harvest moon: around the pond I wander and the night is gone.
MATSUO BASHO

Moon Myself Night Water
Make the universe your companion, always bearing in mind the true nature of things-mountains and rivers, trees and grasses, and humanity-and enjoy the falling blossoms and the scattering leaves.
MATSUO BASHO

Companion Humanity Leaving Mindset Mountain Universe Wisdom Yourself
Come, see the true flowers of this pained world.
MATSUO BASHO

Flower Pain See True World
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
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
Winter garden, the moon thinned to a thread, insects singing.
MATSUO BASHO

Insect Old Pond Sing Winter
An autumn night – don’t think your life didn’t matter.
MATSUO BASHO

Autumn Life Night Thinking Yourself
First snow-falling-on the half-finished bridge.
MATSUO BASHO

Bridge Fall Snow
Nothing in the cry of cicadas suggests they are about to die.
MATSUO BASHO

Cry Death Flower
Learn how to listen as things speak for themselves.
MATSUO BASHO

Deep Learning Listen Nature Talk Wisdom
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
A weathered skeleton in windy fields of memory, piercing like a knife.
MATSUO BASHO

Memories Skeleton
Plunge Deep enough in order to see something that is hidden and glimmering.
MATSUO BASHO

Enough Hide Order See
Before enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water. After enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water.
MATSUO BASHO

Carry Enlightenment Water Wood

An autumn night – don’t think your life didn’t matter.

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An autumn night – don’t think your life didn’t matter.

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