black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.

Matsuo Basho

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

Deep Learning Listen Nature Talk Wisdom
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
When your consciousness has become ripe in true zazen-pure like clear water, like a serene mountain lake, not moved by any wind-then anything may serve as a medium for realization.
MATSUO BASHO

Clear Conscious Purity Realize Service Water Yourself
Year by year, the monkey’s mask reveals the monkey.
MATSUO BASHO

Animal Character Deep Face Reveal
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
Around existence twine, (Oh, bridge that hangs across the gorge!) ropes of twisted vine.
MATSUO BASHO

Existence Plant Rope Twisted
Don’t imitate me / we are not two halves / of a muskmelon.
MATSUO BASHO

Fruit Imitation Myself
The moon is brighter since the barn burned.
MATSUO BASHO

Bright Burn Moon One Liner
An autumn night – don’t think your life didn’t matter.
MATSUO BASHO

Autumn Life Night Thinking Yourself
Before enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water. After enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water.
MATSUO BASHO

Carry Enlightenment Water Wood
Farewell, my old fan. / Having scribbled on it, / What could I do but tear it / At the end of summer?
MATSUO BASHO

End Fan Myself Old Summer
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
The basis of art is change in the universe.
MATSUO BASHO

Art Change One Liner Universe
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

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.

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Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.

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