Nasreddin Hodja & Matsuo Basho

Two writers that I think are famous in their native countries, but deserve more credit, and are more alike than are often thought. Nasreddin Hodja (13th century) & Matsuo Basho (17th century) imo both have a way of describing the world through Hegelian Synthesis. 

They both like to take a normal idea as the thesis (sitting on a donkey) and add an antithesis (ride the donkey backwards) and then have the synthesis (I am not riding the donkey backwards, the donkey is going backwards and i'm riding the right way) 

With Basho you see it in his Haiku (he is the father of Haiku after all) has the ultimate thesis (nature, he likes to describe nature a lot) and then there is some disruption: artificial, or human - and it opposes or breaks this nature (antithesis) - and then there is a sort of resolution that comes from this - which ends in wabi-sabi or Yugen (synthesis)

creating and destroying; built flying cars & autonomous vehicles, now building /faust, more here: /july, web: july.rocks

They also both serve as avatars for the trickster archetype, but I always found them funnier and less malignant than some of the western iterations, perhaps it’s to do with translation but they have a much clearer overlap with the Trickster as guide, or pathfinder (towards knowledge/insight/satori) than say Thoth or Loki, I mean Nazrudin is a basically walking Zen Koan. He is also my favourite Donkey Smuggler of all time.