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.
The sea produces some mighty strange creatures, and Basho takes us to visit them in their natural habitat alive or soon after death. (Sea animals as food appear in the article F-10 BESIDES RICE.) Experiencing the life-force in an animal underwater may assist us in discovering the life-force in ourselves and humanity.
Octopus trap -- over fleeting dreams summer moon
The traps are laid out in the evening; an octopus crawls in, thinking it a fine place to rest –then when the brief summer night becomes morning, the octopus cannot get out, and someone comes to make sushi out of the little fellow. Octopuses are highly intelligent, possibly more so than any other order of invertebrates. Maze and problem-solving experiments have shown evidence of a memory system that can store both short- and long-term memory. Does an octopus dream? Can an octopus who is alive and comfortable realize his or her life is soon to end? Can we?
In Japanese mythology, dawn and sunrise are the Sun-Goddess emerging from a Rock Cave where she hid herself.
Source of morning sun, in the East red sea snail
What you think? clam asleep in shell sees a dream
Rapana venosa, the veined rapa whelk or Asian rapa whelk, is a species of large predatory sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk or whelk, in the family Muricidae, the rock shells. The shell of has a large whorl with round aperture of a deep orange color which suggests a red light starting to emerge from within the shell. So the whelk is the Sun, and the shell is the Rock Cave. Nearby in the Eastern Sea, a clam sleeps peacefully in his or her shell – but even in sleep an awareness of the momentous event enters the dreams of a clam.
Clams alive still are worthwhile -- end of the year
Clam soup is a traditional favorite at New Years, so, to a mercantile consciousness, clams are only worthwhile dead. Basho say “Wrong!”
As a clam’s body from shell parting, autumn passes
Basho compares the passage of autumn to the body of a clam torn from its shell – a most intimate and sensual image.
Bamboo fence crumbled and washed away by the tsunami
A Buddha was eaten by fish we cut open
A bamboo fence has been completely washed away. Basho escalates. Not only was the bamboo fence swallowed by the sea, but the waves engulfed a temple and washed away a wooden or bronze image of the Buddha. We know this because we are fisher folk who have captured a huge fish (or whale?) and while we gut it we discover the Buddha there in the stomach. Would a fish really eat a wooden or bronze statue of zero food value and likely to get caught in the throat? I don’t think so.
Another interpretation is possible – but you may not like this one either: Buddhism speaks of death as “entering Nirvana” and a dead person as a “Buddha” – so what the fisher folk found in the fish’s stomach was the hair and nails and other indigestible parts of a human being, someone washed away along with the bamboo fence. We follow the movement in Basho’s mind through the link he creates.
Tiny crab crawling up my leg clear water
Taking a break from summer hiking to sit with lower legs in the cool stream, refreshed by a cool breeze, surprised to feel the eight legs and two pincers of a tiny hiker on wet flesh, looking to see the orange crab shape crawling on leg through the coolness of water flowing by -- all is Sensation.
Basho in Gifu watched the famous cormorant fishing on the Nagara River.. The birds dive in to catch fish, but an iron ring around the gullet stops the fish from going down and men steal it from the hungry bird’s mouth. (Talk about exploitation!)
Interesting, but by and by sad cormorant fishing
Here is a journey through Basho’s mind: first, “interested” by the unusual custom, then after thinking about it some more, saddened.
Whitebait are slender herring-like fish, finger-length and semi-transparent; early in spring they swim up river from the bay and are caught in nets. They are eaten fried or in soup but also alive and still “dancing.”
White bait – black eyes open to Dharma‘s net
The Dharma is the Law of Buddhism that all things must die and pass away. The startlingly black eyes of the silvery fish open to the Truth as the net takes them. Basho however is vegan, so no whitebait die for his protein.
In the dawn whitebait, one inch of translucence
As the sky begin to lighten, Basho sees the affinity between slender inch-long bodies of the fish lying in a net and the growing light spread across the vast sky.
Warmly hugged within a robe of down the duck’s legs
The legs have no feathers; instead the duck floating on the lake has pulled the legs up nestling into the belly flesh which is covered by feathers. Basho looks very deeply and intimately into animal as well as human bodies.
Disappeared into January sea – little grebe
The round little ball of water bird was sitting peacefully on the surface of the lake; suddenly the grebe dives and disappears; Basho imagines the bird hidden in that vastness of water.
Fishing fire shows beneath the waves bullhead choking
Bullhead are small fish, ten inchs long, who live in rivers in mountain valleys, hiding under pebbles. The fire built on the boat attracts the fish who is then seen in the light reflected through the water before the fisherman grabs it with a net. The fish is already choking while still underwater; choking with fear of what is to come. Can a fish understand the nature of future time?
The sea slug (or sea cucumber), a soft sac of rubbery flesh with inner tube from mouth to anus, flourishes in winter among the rocks in shallow water. They are eaten raw in vinegar (by some folks). Yum yum, sea slug!
Still living frozen into one sea slugs
A fisherman or woman has gathered sea slugs and left them in a bucket on the rocks. The head of a sea slug can hardly be distinguished from the other end, and here in the frozen slimy mess, one creature cannot be distinguished from another. The verse is bitter cold and gruesome -- yet some may agree with me that it is one of Basho’s funniest haiku – a kind of sick funny.
Whalers would spot whales from stations along the shore and launch boats to catch them with harpoons and lances.
Fisherman’s child to announce a whale blows on a shell
The young boy with his eagle eyes spots a whale in the bay and blows on his shell to alert the village men who run to their boats and set out. The whale hears and rushes to escape. Wikipedia says,
The fusing of the neck vertebrae, while increasing stability when swimming at high speeds, decreases flexibility; whales are unable to turn their heads. When swimming, whales rely on their tail fin propel them through the water. Flipper movement is continuous. Whales swim by moving their tail fin and lower body up and down, propelling themselves through vertical movement, while their flippers are mainly used for steering.
Wearing imperial robes he indeed is august
Full of sutras, is his boat escorted by a crocodile?
I bet you can hardly wait to find out what is going on here: A VIP on an Imperial mission wears purple robes forbidden to ordinary humans. He is august, inspiring awe and reverence. Basho makes him a monk sent by the Emperor of Japan to China to collect Buddhist scriptures and bring to Japan. And now for the final twist: in Japanese mythology, when “Her Augustness Luxuriant Jewel Princess” was pregnant and leaving the Kingdom of the Sea, her father, the Sea God, sent a crocodile to escort her boat. Now does the link make sense?
The saltwater crocodile is the largest of all living reptiles, The males can reach sizes up to 20 feet and weigh up to 3,000 pounds. They use ocean currents to travel long distances. In a study, 20 crocodiles were tagged with satellite transmitters; 8 of these crocodiles ventured out into open ocean, in which one of them travelled 590 km (370 mi) in 25 days. Not having to move around much, sometimes simply by floating, the current-riding behavior allows for the conservation of energy. They will even interrupt their travels, residing in sheltered bays for a few days when the current is against the desired direction of travel, until the current changes direction. Pretty smart. A good choice for an escort to a boat carrying sacred texts.
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.
