An old pond
A frog jumps in
The sound of water
古池や 蛙飛び込む 水の音
Furu ike ya, kawazu tobikomu, mizu no oto

Let us speak of forms and shapes, of the fluidity of life, of being and being gone. Of warm summer days, of turtles and frogs, of walks with the dogs down by the creek…

Matsuo Basho’s famous frog haiku has been translated ten thousand times (万 wàn, also meaning “many” or, so many, one looses count). The words have been parsed, the meaning interpreted a thousand ways (千 sen, also meaning many in countless ways). Its parts dissected like that poor old frog in a high school biology class.

I like to go for walks with my two small dogs to Pawnee Prairie Park in Wichita, Kansas. There is a spot where we round the corner and approach the creek high up on the bank. Most days, I hear the plop of the turtle as it slips off a log into the water. I try to be silent, but somehow the turtle knows I am coming.

Am I hearing the sound of the creek or the turtle? Am I witnessing a magical change of form, the fluidity of turtle and the water?

In one sense Basho gives voice to the old pond that is otherwise silent. Is the pond offended by the interfering frog? Or does it welcome the abrupt change to an otherwise dull existence? One wonders.

Other philosophical questions to ponder:

One wonders, if a banana,
is still a banana,
when it is eaten?

If not,
when does it cease to be a banana
and become me?
— Bashō no yōna

Along the same lines:

Are the bricks in a building
One and the same
If the building falls down?
— Bashō no yōna

These amusing musings all deal with Plato’s Theory of Forms. The physical world we soon learn is not the ultimate reality, as Basho discovered at the Old Pond.