Pebble Stars: A Meditation

A Tribute to the Japanese Poet Matsuo Bashō

"Nothing one sees is not a flower, nothing one imagines is not the moon. If what is seen is not a flower, one is like a barbarian; if what is imagined is not a flower, one is like a beast. Depart from the barbarian, break away from the beast, follow the Creative, return to the Creative."
~Knapsack Notebook


Bashō, wanderer, lover of beauty, home everywhere and nowhere, so close and so far, from across civilizations and ages I salute your inscrutable Eastern mind! 

I too have journeyed. By foot, by car, by plane, by boat, by train have I roved the world. But alas, I did not find such satisfaction in my travels as you did! Perhaps I, who often forgets the beginning and is forever looking to the end, could not find happiness in the middle. Perhaps I was dissatisfied because I thought of my odysseys as merely the way to the end. For you, it seems, they were end and beginning together. 

Lamentable is the distance between your thoughts and mine. As far almost as the East is from the West! I struggle to focus on impermanence as you did, and my focus is as impermanent as its object. In addressing you now, I defy impermanence like a stubborn child. Would you reel against the seeming timelessness of your own words? 

But how to comprehend this the primary object of your contemplation? Maybe it is as simple as watching the leaves fall from the trees, or the farmhouses and skyscrapers flash past the train window? Perhaps the clouds racing across the face of a waning moon? The pond frozen in winter? Have I grasped impermanence when I open my eyes after a night’s sleep to find a new day, the old gone forever? Can anything be impermanent? Yes, things change, but once in time are they not forever in time?

Why did I travel? To see places unforgotten as you did. But the things I saw were always more beautiful in the land of my mind, and I left disappointed. Cruel imagination! 

The lands, the buildings, the people, everything I have seen, all dying, all crumbling into dust! Impermanence. Eternal change. Do I contradict myself? Were you and your fathers right?

But I have been unfair. I have seen many beautiful things. And many beautiful things have I not seen. Forever they live. While all things turn to ash, they live forever in my mind. And if not my mind, in the mind of someone. Permanence.

You, Bashō, in the boundless simplicity and ambiguity of your words, have led me into a world of whirling possibility. One thing changes into another, lost then found, alive then dead, then alive. A cascade of images tumbles down, and then rises up, revolving, reckless, and ever-changing. 

Is there a beginning to the spinning cataract? Is there an end? Yes, you seem to say. All is beginning, all is end. And you lived as you wrote. 

Do I comprehend your vision? Can I, a child of the West, pierce the Eastern veil with my gaze? From birth, I have been molded as clay by a potter. And into this earthen vessel has been etched the straight line of life. How can I grasp the circle?

One thing do I uncontestedly share with you. We both are lovers of beauty. From pear blossoms to mountain ranges to slight human gestures, the aesthetic world calls to my heart as it does to yours. 

I walk down to a trickling stream. In the water the golden leaves float, carried to an unknown place. The sunlight reflects itself in white swords and sparkling orbs. I bend down to see a little ant, moving slowly in a circle, round and round. I wonder how long it has been here, I wonder where it came from. Tomorrow maybe, it will be dead. But today it is alive, and it is beautiful. 

At first light, I look to the fields covered with morning mist. In the eye of my mind, the mist forms the shapes of a thousand horses. White horses, like ghosts they move into the West, chased by the sun. In a few minutes, the sun will take them and make them clouds. Tomorrow maybe, they will be back to gallop across the fields again in ethereal beauty.

The notes of the music I hear rise and fall in perfect harmony. With them my thoughts and feelings are carried to places of melancholy and happiness. In their loveliness I dream of worlds enchanting and mysterious. In their beauty my mind rests.

What power within such things moves me? Is it the same power that moves you? 

I wonder where your mind wanders when you daydream. Do you marvel over beauty grand and magnificent or small and unassuming? Perhaps here is again shown that meddlesome division of hemispheres and molded clay. For I cannot imagine that you always dream of the mountaintops and the celestial heights as I do. 


Oh, glorious splendor! I look to the stars and the haloed moon, and I travel to the edges of infinity to gaze at the source of light! From there I turn my eyes to the earth and see you with a pebble in your hand. You hold it up to the brightest star, and smile.