The only substantial
collection in English
of Basho's renku, tanka,
letters and spoken word
along with his haiku, travel
journals, and essays.
The only poet in old-time
literature who paid attention with praise
to ordinary women, children, and teenagers
in hundreds of poems
Hundreds upon hundreds of Basho works
(mostly renku)about women, children,
teenagers, friendship, compassion, love.
These are resources we can use to better
understand ourselves and humanity.
Interesting and heartfelt
(not scholarly and boring)
for anyone concerned with
humanity.
“An astonishing range of
social subject matter and
compassionate intuition”
"The primordial power
of the feminine emanating
from Basho's poetry"
Hopeful, life-affirming
messages from one of
the greatest minds ever.
Through his letters,
we travel through his mind
and discover Basho's
gentleness and humanity.
I plead for your help in
finding a person or group
to take over my 3000 pages of Basho material,
to edit and improve the material, to receive 100%
of royalties, to spread Basho’s wisdom worldwide
and preserve for future generations.
Quotations from Basho Prose
The days and months are
guests passing through eternity.
The years that go by
also are travelers.
The mountains in silence
nurture the spirit;
the water with movement
calms the emotions.
All the more joyful,
all the more caring
Seek not the traces
of the ancients;
seek rather the
places they sought.
6 Basho renku, 1 haibun, and 1 conversation about ki
Legend:
Words of Basho in bold
Words of other poets not bold
Basho told Doho:
Make renku ride the Energy.
俳諧は気にのせてすべし. Haikai wa ki ni nosete subeshi.
Ki is the Energy of Oriental medicine and martial arts, the "life force" or "energy flow" or as George Lucas called it: "The Force." Basho speaks of the poets in linked verse “riding” this energy, as one rides a horse to greater speed and power. To ride the energy is to go with the flow, to become the flow. Those who ride horses, play a musical instrument, surf the waves, fly a kite, or practice a martial art or may best understand Basho’s meaning.
Doho gives us the conversation in which Basho spoke the words in bold font:
Entering the Truth through Poetry, we can nurture the energy, or kill it. Once we kill the energy, we cannot ride it. The master said,
“Make renku poetry ride the energy. If you get the timing wrong, you ruin the rhythm.”
Haikai wa ki ni nosete subeshi. Aizuchi ashiku hyoushi o sokonau. 俳諧は気にのせてすべし。 相槌あしく拍子をそこなう。
This is to damage and kill the energy. At another time, he said
“If you must suppress your own energy to write a poem, good.”
All that he taught was to coax, enliven, and nurture the energy.
Doho, who was an Instructor in the martial art of the spear, uses the word “kill” a lot; Basho never uses it.
To “suppress” the energy is not to stop or interfere with it, but to control it so it does not flood,
but still flows with rhythm, life and power.
Basho was the great master of 'riding the energy' in renku, following with a stanza that gets the timing right to "coax, enliven, and nourishs" the energy of the previous stanza, yet flows on to another aspect of reality.
To see how Basho himself rode the Energy in poetry, consider these two stanzas from the first of 300 sequences in which Basho participated. The year is 1666 and Basho is about 22. The first poet offers an elegant image of Japanese classical dance, and Basho takes that feeling into the world of children:
Hand of the dancer quietly descends
More than appears the small child obedient to the Energy
The movement of the dancer’s hand expresses more, much more, than simply getting from up to down;
it expresses the dancer’s obedience to ki. The hand rides the Energy downward, as a surfer stays on the board even as the board drops and rises. Likewise the small child may not follow adult commands, but is obedient to that universal Energy. As the child at play “rides on the energy,” the poet follows and blends with the Energy to ride to the poem.
A Google search of the words “ride the energy” leads to this by the American dancer and musician Gabrielle Roth (1941-2012):
Ride the energy of your own unique spirit.
If you just set people in motion, they’ll heal themselves.
Roth believed and taught that dance heals the body/mind/spirit, and maybe we can find some healing energy in Basho's renku. If we blend Basho with Gabrielle Roth, Dance, Tai’chi, child development, and Oriental medicine come together.
Here is another rather trippy Basho stanza about the Energy of ki.:
Chaos rides on Green at play with the Energy
The Chinese sage Chuang Tzu taught that life developed in a four step process starting with “Chaos,” the primordial void in many Creation mythologies.
From “Chaos” emerged “Energy,”
From Energy emerged “Form” or physical-ness
From “Form” emerged “Life”
And from “Life” emerged “Death.”
Basho’s stanza involves the first two steps in Chuang-Tzu’s creation tale: Chaos and Energy –
but Basho adds a new element which Chuang Tzu did not mention: “Green,” the primal invigorating force
of plant life which “Chaos” rides on while playing with “Energy.” All “Energy” comes from the Sun, so “Green” is chlorophyll, and we have a metaphor for photosynthesis.
Photosynthesis began some billion years ago in a world without oxygen, within microscopic cyano-bacteria, sometimes called “bluegreen algae” (although they were not algae at all). The world without oxygen and without any visible life form could be described as “Chaos without Form or Life.” These bacteria contained a green substance which used sunlight to produce energy and oxygen. Eons of photosynthesis by cyno-bacteria added oxygen to the world allowing higher forms of life to evolve. Bacteria go on reproducing without ever dying, however life dependant on oxygen must eventually burn out, so we come to the final stage in Chuang Tzu’s cosmology. Obviously Basho did not know the science of biology, but that science was still occuring without his knowledge, so we can see that science in his words.
In his Sarashina Journal, Basho tells of a servant boy riding the Energy on a horse over steep mountain terrain.
Nine switchbacks in succession as if we were trudging through the clouds. Even those going on foot become so dizzy our spirits wilt and we cannot steady our feet, yet the servant showing no fear at all, on the horse he sleeps asleep, again and again we think he will fall, from behind watching anxiously without limit.
His sense of balance is so fine no adult can conceive possible, so he must be a teenager. (If this kid were in our era, he would surf or skateboard.) He is not “sleeping, asleep” -- he has closed his eyes so, unlike Etsujin, Basho, and the other old fogies, he will not get dizzy from visual input. Showing no fear, no concern, is cool.
To the Heart of the Buddha so must appear the floating world of humanity and when we reflect in ourselves upon transience swift and relentless, the whirlpool of Naruto is without wind or waves.
The Straits of Naruto between Awa Province (Tokushima) and Awaji Island, are famous for powerful tidal whirlpools. From the adult point of view, the servant is in danger of falling, and this suggests the ephemerality of existence, everything passing away.But in reality the kid does not fall – he and the horse know what they are doing. He should be a symbol for stability, not for transience. When he goes surfing in the whirlpool of Naruto he has no ‘wind or waves’ in his mind so by “riding the Energy” he can maintain his balance in the midst of all that turbulence.
One famous in Kyoto to exorcise my tumor
Base of Fuji wearing conical hat rides a horse
The man with the tumor is riding past Mount Fuji on his way to Kyoto (so he has a long way to go) where the well-known sorcerer will wave his hand – like Obi-Wan extracting suspicion from the storm trooper’s mind – to remove the tumor. This is what sorcerers do: shift to another reality where Energy can change Form and Life. Basho’s stanza is deliberately ambiguous; the subject can be either me or the mountain. As I ride past the base of the conical mountain with a conical hat on my head, either I bounce up and down from the movement of the horse, or the multimillion ton conical mountain moves up and down from the movement of my eyes. This is my horseback sorcery – Energy changing Form
Ki no Tsurayuki produced a similar vision in his semi-fictional Tosa Diary – although according to the story, this was written by an 8 year old boy:
As I watch from the boat rowing by, do the pines know their foot-weary mountains also move?
The eight year old mind wonders if the pine trees realize that the mountains underneath them move –
although that is an illusion caused by the motion of the boat. This is a question we all ask when
we are young, often when looking out the window on a train.
The next two stanzas were written in succession by Basho, so he we see him ride the energy from his own stanza to another image in his mind:
Wings flap in sequence wild geese under moon, Every mouth shall sample this year’s new sake
Geese fly in a V formation so the updraft from one bird lifts the bird behind, enabling the flock as a whole to conserve energy. Watching the ‘V’ of birds fly past the moon, Basho see a wave motion flowing through the two lines of the ‘V,’ an organizing principle or Energy the birds ride on. Rice is polished, steamed, and fermented with mold and yeast for a month to produce raw, rough-tasting ‘new sake.’ This must be aged for a year, a chemical force acting in every molecule to give a smooth taste Japanese drinkers enjoy. All the village men have gathered to sip the new sake from this year’s rice crop. Miyawaki sees in the stanza, “a moment of happiness in which satisfaction mingles with expectation.” This too is “riding the Energy.”
White cloth in the breeze lark sings to the sky
Girls only going to view blossoms rise in a flock
Single layer cotton cloth has been rinsed and is hanging on a line to dry in the breeze; overhead a lark sings brightly rising to heaven. Here are girls only, no males to debase or marginalize the female energy, girls free to be themselves. Japan idolizes the joyful sparkle of teenage girls -- as in J-Pop girl groups and it is interesting to see this consciousness in Basho 330 years ago. The flock of girls in their pretty robes, going to have fun, chatting and laughing with each other, complement the clarity and freshness of the first stanza. Clean white fabric, skylark, cherry blossoms, group of happy girls, all together get high on the Energy.
I plead for your help in finding a person or group to take over my 3000 pages of Basho material, to edit and improve the presentation, to receive all royalties from sales, to spread Basho’s wisdom worldwide and preserve for future generations.
The only substantial
collection in English
of Basho's renku, tanka,
letters and spoken word
along with his haiku, travel
journals, and essays.
The only poet in old-time
literature who paid attention with praise
to ordinary women, children, and teenagers
in hundreds of poems
Hundreds upon hundreds of Basho works
(mostly renku)about women, children,
teenagers, friendship, compassion, love.
These are resources we can use to better
understand ourselves and humanity.
Interesting and heartfelt
(not scholarly and boring)
for anyone concerned with
humanity.
“An astonishing range of
social subject matter and
compassionate intuition”
"The primordial power
of the feminine emanating
from Basho's poetry"
Hopeful, life-affirming
messages from one of
the greatest minds ever.
Through his letters,
we travel through his mind
and discover Basho's
gentleness and humanity.
I plead for your help in
finding a person or group
to take over my 3000 pages of Basho material,
to edit and improve the material, to receive 100%
of royalties, to spread Basho’s wisdom worldwide
and preserve for future generations.
Quotations from Basho Prose
The days and months are
guests passing through eternity.
The years that go by
also are travelers.
The mountains in silence
nurture the spirit;
the water with movement
calms the emotions.
All the more joyful,
all the more caring
Seek not the traces
of the ancients;
seek rather the
places they sought.
