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.
It would be good for you to see from practice that your following stanza suits the previous one, as an expression of the same heart's connection.
Basho's stanza illustrates this:
Glaring about,
she orders the children to “behave!”
While roasting balls of miso some ash she puffs away
行儀能 /せよと子供を/ぬめ廻し
やき味噌の灰 /吹きはらいつつ
Gyougi you /se yo to kodomo o /nume-mawashi Yaki miso no hai / fuki-harai-tsutsu
The children are scattered about the room, so mother has to “glare about” (nume-mawashi) – stare fiercely in one direction then another – to address them all. not that they listen. The stanza abounds with human activity in its three lively verbs: “glaring about” and “ordering” and her spoken command “behave!” In addition to all the activity of the mother, we see the activity of the children: arguing, fighting, climbing, breaking or swallowing things, crawling or running about, this winter day in 17th century Japan.
Mother has formed soybean paste into balls and put them onto a wooden skewer and roasts over the fire in the sunken hearth in the center of the room to make a side dish. A bit of ash from the fire has gotten on the sticky miso. While she orders her kids to behave, she brings the skewer close to her mouth, purses her lips and exhales a short burst of air at the ash to propel it away from the miso. The astonishing delicacy of this action even the fingers of elves could not perform is the polar opposite of her glaring and shouting at her kids.
Both ordering and puffing are her breath, her life force. According to Yoga, prana – the life force or cosmic energy – enters the body through inhalation and returns to the universe through exhalation; as Mother gave birth to these children, now she gives breath to the food that will nourish them. As we ourselves inhale and exhale, we connect with this mother, transcending space and time to share prana with her.
According to Shinto, our faults are not inherent; rather they are as dust on a mirror, easily wiped off to restore the original purity. Basho’s speck of ash on miso is a similar metaphor. The mother’s anger is not inherent; she can restore her inner peace by puffing away the ash from her spirit. So in Yoga we can breathe away our anger and restore acceptance of human life and activity.
It would be good for you to see from practice
that your following stanza suits the previous one,
as an expression of the same heart's connection.
ある付句に前句を添えて、 同じ付心が表現できるような修練などをしてみるのもよい。
Aru tsukeku ni maeku o soete, oniji tsuke kokoro ga hyougen dekiru you ni shuuren nado o shite miru no mo yoi.
Once we realize that the puffing of ash has the "same heart's connection" as ordering children to behave, we realize the nature of Basho's genius. In the link between these two stanzas, Basho does something no other male poet does: he portrays the activity of an ordinary woman, with no adult male presence, no romance or sex, no suffering or dying, no beauty or sexuality, no morality or evil, no causing problems for men to solve. She simply is ALIVE and expresses her life-force as central, positive, whole, and iconic.
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.
