Matsuo Basho Quotes - Page 2

The basis of art is change in the universe.

the universe and its beings are a complementarity of empty infinity, intimate interrelationships, and total uniqueness of each and every being.

In this poor body, composed of one hundred bones and nine openings, is something called spirit, a flimsy curtain swept this way and that by the slightest breeze. It is spirit, such as it is, which led me to poetry, at first little more than a pastime, then the full business of my life. There have been times when my spirit, so dejected, almost gave up the quest, other times when it was proud, triumphant. So it has been from the very start, never finding peace with itself, always doubting the worth of what it makes.

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.

With every gust of wind, the butterfly changes its place on the willow.

From the pine tree, learn of the pine tree; And from the bamboo, of the bamboo

The moon is brighter since the barn burned.

Without bitterest cold that penetrates to the very bone, how can plum blossoms send forth their fragrance all over the world?

The journey itself is my home.

The haiku that reveals seventy to eighty percent of its subject is good. Those that reveal fifty to sixty percent, we never tire of.

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

Between our two lives there is also the life of the cherry blossom.

How I long to see among dawn flowers, the face of God.

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.

Winter solitude- in a world of one colour the sound of the wind.

Year by year, the monkey's mask reveals the monkey

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

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.

Plunge Deep enough in order to see something that is hidden and glimmering.

Winter garden, the moon thinned to a thread, insects singing.

A weathered skeleton in windy fields of memory, piercing like a knife.

How much I desire! Inside my little satchel, the moon, and flowers

Why so scrawny, cat? Starving for fat fish or mice... Or backyard love?

My body, now close to fifty years of age, has become an old tree that bears bitter peaches, a snail which has lost its shell, a bagworm separated from its bag; it drifts with the winds and clouds that know no destination. Morning and night I have eaten traveler's fare, and have held out for alms a pilgrim's wallet.

Mountain-rose petals Falling, falling, falling now... Waterfall music