Basho
Banana Tree
aka: Matsuo Munefusa (original name),
Matsuo Basho
Matsuo Basho
| born: 1644 died: 1694 50 years place: Japan |
Basho was the famous Japanese haiku
poet and Zen adept. He is different from the
Korean/Chinese Zen master with the same
name(Bajiao in Chinese). Also different
than Baso, which is the Japanese
pronunciation of the Chinese "Mazu", one of
the most well-known Chinese Chan masters
of the Tang Dynasty, who lived about 1,000
years before this poet.
poet and Zen adept. He is different from the
Korean/Chinese Zen master with the same
name(Bajiao in Chinese). Also different
than Baso, which is the Japanese
pronunciation of the Chinese "Mazu", one of
the most well-known Chinese Chan masters
of the Tang Dynasty, who lived about 1,000
years before this poet.
| Zen master: Butcho, ... Zen disciples: none known formally |
| Some English translations of Basho's haikus:
you can call me... first rain of winter. ****** Basho's last haiku before dying:
my dreams keep meandering... dry fields of fall. ****** |
| poems, haikus: Osho many books on Zen by Osho use haikus by Basho injected in the live discourses, with brief commentary. |
Chinese simplified
(no change):
(no change):
| oshobob The Living Workshop |
| Zen Masters |
| Zen poets have written beautiful haikus, so condensed that a vast poetic world becomes like a seed in the haiku. Sometimes they are very simple, you cannot even catch the significance immediately. But if you ponder over them, meditate upon them, then, by and by, the small haiku becomes a door. A few days before I was reading Basho's famous haiku. It is very small, but if you meditate upon it, suddenly a door opens. The haiku is:
frog jump-in water-sound. Just visualize it – an old pond, very ancient, a frog jumps in, the water-sound. Finished. Nothing more to say. A whole situation condensed. If you meditate on it, suddenly you will feel a silence surrounding you. Something will change within you. It is objective art... --Osho The Grass Grows By Itself |
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"The Ancient Pond" haiku--painting and calligraphy by Basho