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.
Kannon, originally a male disciple of Buddha, in Japan became a female Bodhisattva able to leave this world and enter Nirvana, but choosing to stay here to help others. Buddhist officials and scholars maintain that Kannon is male, yet stronger is the desire of the people for a goddess to heal their sorrows. Kannon, in other lands, is called Mary, or in other times the Egyptian goddess Isis.
The Buddhist temple, Hase-dera in Sakurai (between Yoshino and Nara) founded in the year 686, has long been a place of pilgrimage for women. Many noble women and ladies-in-waiting at the imperial court in Kyoto came here to pray to the famous Eleven-Faced Kannon, a 30-foot tall statue in relief of the Goddess of Mercy, carved from a single log of camphor, the largest wooden image in Japan.
The English-language tourist brochure for Hase-dera says of Kannon:
His name consists of two parts. KAN means ‘to observe’ and ON means ‘sounds’ or ‘voice.
We can hear sounds or voices, but cannot look at them. But Kannon can.
It is just like that a mother understands what her baby wants by hearing his cry.
So the name itself suggests a maternal ability to listen so well that listening becomes seeing –
although the priests who wrote this brochure still call Kannon “he.”
Anthropologist Michael Ashkenazi says of Kannon, “for most people she (yes, “she”)
carries the possibility of restoring and continuing life.’’
Women commonly pray to the Goddess of Mercy for love, to bear a child,
for a child to succeed in school or life, or for relief from hardship.
Finally, by the end of April in central Japan, enough warmth has accumulated so even the nights are warm and tranquil. It is a time for the heart to find solace and renew hope.
At the Kannon Temple in Hase:
Night in spring -- one hidden in mystery temple corner
Taking off our shoes at the entrance, we step quietly onto the finely polished hardwood floor. Before us rises Kannon-sama, five times our height, the compassion in her face and figure radiating to every corner of the temple. Over there, in a corner, someone barely seen in the faint lantern light sits in communion with the Goddess. Who is she? Why has she come here alone at night? What is she praying for? Basho scholar Kon Eizo says:
in the one now hidden before my eyes, the images (of all the women who came to Hase-dera in the past) pile up one on top of another to attract my heart.
By making a poem about the hidden woman, Basho eulogizes her; as conduit between spring and Kannon, she herself becomes eternal. This woman and her prayers to Kannon-sama convey a tender mystery known in temples and churches throughout the world - this world where men make decisions but men are
inconstant, and all women can do about it is pray to a goddess for compassion.
NIGHT IN SPRING creates a link between women suffering in the 17th Century and women trapped in the same patriarchal system today.
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.
