Seek not the paths of the ancients;
Seek that which the ancients sought.
He who creates three to five haiku poems during a lifetime is a haiku poet. He who attains to completes ten is a master.
The haiku that reveals seventy to eighty percent of its subject is good. Those that reveal fifty to sixty percent, we never tire of.
Sabi is the color of the poem. It does not necessarily refer to the poem that describes a lonely scene. If a man goes to war wearing stout armor or to a party dressed up in gay clothes, and if this man happens to be an old man, there is something lonely about him. Sabi is something like that.
Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.
The summer grasses—
For many brave warriors
The aftermath of dreams.
The old pond:
A frog jumps in,—
The sound of the water.
There is nothing you can see that is not a flower;
There is nothing you can think that is not the moon.