The importance and unimportance of the self cannot be exaggerated.

Or, to express this in another way, suggested to me by Professor Suzuki, in connection with seeing into our own nature, poetry is the something that we see, but the seeing and the something are one; without the seeing there is no something, no something, no seeing. There is neither discovery nor creation: only the perfect, indivisible experience.

Regarding R. H. Blyth: Blyth's four volume Haiku became especially popular at this time [1950's] because his translations were based on the assumption that the haiku was the poetic expression of Zen. Not surprisingly, his books attracted the attention of the Beat school, most notably writers such as Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and Jack Kerouac, all of whom had a prior interest in Zen.

Regarding R. H. Blyth: For translations, the best books are still those by R. H. Blyth. . . .

Regarding R. H. Blyth: Two men who may be called pillars of the Western haiku movement, Harold G. Henderson and R. H. Blyth. . . .

Things have done their part; it is for us to do ours.

A thief running away like mad from a ferocious watch-dog may be a splendid example of Zen.