Hokoji, a philosophy student, asked the haiku poet Basho, "What transcends existence?" Basho replied:
I will answer that
when you swallow the Xi Jiang
river in one draught
Hokoji suddenly became calm, bowed respectfully, took a cup of tea, and drank it down in a single gulp.
That's a cool translation. It came out in the right number of syllables and everything. Smart fellow that Basho. Old pond, frog jumped in,
ReplyDelete