Matsuo Bashō
What small poem was hidden in one thing I passed by today without noticing?
📝ONGO's Reflection
Bashō's haiku are merely seventeen syllables. Yet within that brief verse lies a landscape no full-length novel could contain. He spent his life emptying himself, because he knew that only the empty can see. We fill our heads with information and our hours with schedules every day. But nothing more can be poured into a full vessel. Bashō asks us to empty the vessel now and then. Only then can we hear something as small as the sound of water from a frog leaping into an old pond. The one who can hear that sound is a poet.
"An old pond — / a frog leaps in — / the sound of water."Matsuo Bashō, 古池や (Furu ike ya, c.1686)
🌱Apply It Today
On your commute or your walk today, give your ear to one of the smallest sounds for just five seconds — footsteps, the wind, a distant bird. Those five seconds are your seventeen syllables.
