Thursday, January 12, 2012

Basho Revisited, early summer rains

samidare wa   taki furi uzumu   mikasa kana


early summer rains
falling so much they covered up
the waterfall

What a wonderful picture. This haiku by Basho, so pure, so ... Basho. I wonder how he does it. The lightness of this verse touches me deep. I can visualize this one. I can see the waterfall, I can hear the summer rains and even can smell the air so fresh, wow! What a sight! Awesome!
The preface of this haiku tells us more. Let us look at the preface.

"We were told that about 8 km to the east of Sukagawa Station there are falls named 'Ishikawa' so we planned to go to see them, but because the heavy rains of the past few days, the river was so swollen we were unable to cross it and therefore canceled the trip." (Source: Jane Reichhold's Old Pond: Basho's (almost) thousand haiku).



Such a sad idea. Basho was eager to go see the waterfall, but couldn't reach it because of the heavy rains.
Every path has his own obstacles in this case the river was to swollen to cross it. My own path to Enlightenment has obstacles too, but when I conquer these obstacles I grow and a step closer to Enlightenment.

what a sight!
morning glories in full bloom
the swollen river

Isn't it a beautiful image? Can you see it?


Until next time,

Sincerely,

Also published for:



2018 July Re-published on Carpe Diem's Summer Retreat 2018

1 comment:

  1. Hi, I like this and agree that obstacles must be overcome on the path to enlightenment, nice haiku too.

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