Basho Poetics 3: Detaching from Your Self

The Master said, "Learn of the pine from the pine, learn of the bamboo from the bamboo." In other words, one must become detached from the self.

If one understands this idea of "learning" in one's own way, the result will be no learning at all. "To learn" means to enter into the object and to feel the subtlety that is revealed there; then the poem grows. For example, no matter how clearly one represents an object, if the poem lacks the feeling that arises naturally out of the object, the self and the object would form a duality and the feeling would not have attained makoto. The poetic meaning would have come from the self.

trans Barnhill