When composing a verse let there not be a hair's breath separating your mind from what you write; composition of a poem must be done in an instant, like a woodcutter felling a huge tree or a swordsman leaping at a dangerous enemy.

Learn about a pine tree from a pine tree, and about a bamboo plant from a bamboo plant.

What is important is to keep our mind high in the world of true understanding, and returning to the world of our daily experience to seek therein the truth of beauty. No matter what we may be doing at a given moment, we must not forget that is has a bearing upon our everlasting self which is poetry.

Even in Kyoto/Hearing the cuckoo's cry/I long for Kyoto

April's air stirs in Willow-leaves...a butterfly Floats and balances

I felt quite at home, / As if it were mine sleeping lazily / In this house of fresh air.

A flute with no holes is not a flute.