Reflections: Existence Is a Trip

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You may be aware that my profile avatar is a portrait of the great Japanese haiku master, Bashō. In the "Translator’s Introduction" to his translation of Bashō’s classic spiritual travelogue, Narrow Road to the Interior, Sam Hamill gives us these thought-provoking words :

Bashō knew well the Samantabhadra-bodhisattva-sutra and its primary teaching: “Of one thing it is said, ‘This is good,’ and of another it is said, ‘This is bad,’ but there is nothing inherent in either to make them ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ The ‘self’ is empty of independent existence.”

Later in the same introduction, Hamill gives us this advice of Bashō on the nature of creativity:

“Learn the rules well, and then forget them.”

And,

“When a great act presents itself, it does so without rules.”

Ah-so.
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