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He who creates three to five haiku poems during a lifetime is a haiku poet. He who attains to completes ten is a master.

Matsuo Basho

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Matsuo Basho
Age: 50 †
Born: 1644
Born: January 1
Died: 1694
Died: November 28
Artist
Poet
Writer
Vaxjo
Matsuo Basho
Bashō
Bashô
Basho
Matsuo Bashou
Master
Ten
Lifetime
Masters
Completes
Poet
Attains
Five
Haiku
Three
Poems
Creates

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A weathered skeleton in windy fields of memory, piercing like a knife.
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April's air stirs in Willow-leaves...a butterfly Floats and balances
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Sabi is the color of haikai. It is different from tranquility. For example, if an old man dresses up in armor and helmet and goes to the battlefield, or in colorful brocade kimono, attending (his lord) at a banquet, [sabi] is like this old figure.
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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.
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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.
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Orchidbreathing incense into butterfly's wings
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What is important is to keep our mind high in the world of true understanding, and returning to the world of our daily experience to seek therein the truth of beauty. No matter what we may be doing at a given moment, we must not forget that is has a bearing upon our everlasting self which is poetry.
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Every moment of life is the last, every poem is a death poem.
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The desire to break the silence with constant human noise is, I believe, precisely an avoidance of the sacred terror of that divine encounter.
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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.
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Felling a tree and gazing at the cut end - tonight's moon
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On a bare branch a crow is perched - autumn evening
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A flute with no holes is not a flute.
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Friends part foreverwild geese lost in cloud
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Farewell, my old fan. / Having scribbled on it, / What could I do but tear it / At the end of summer?
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Mountain-rose petals Falling, falling, falling now... Waterfall music
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Twilight whippoorwill... Whistle on, sweet deepener Of dark loneliness
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Plunge Deep enough in order to see something that is hidden and glimmering.
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Around existence twine, (Oh, bridge that hangs across the gorge!) ropes of twisted vine.
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