Found the following quote from Bashô from the beginning of The Knapsack Notebook (part of a collection of Bashô travel journals under the title, Narrow Road to the Interior, translated by Sam Hamill.

Within this temporal body composed of a hundred bones and nine holes there resides a spirit which, for lack of a adequate name, I think of as windblown. Like delicate drapery, it may be torn away and blown off by the least breeze. It brought me to writing poetry many years ago, initially for its own gratification, but eventually as a way of life. True, frustration and rejection were almost enough to bring this spirit to silence, and sometimes pride brought it to the brink of vanity. From the writing of the very first line, it has found no contentment as it was torn by one doubt after another. This windblown spirit considered the security of court life at one point; at another, it considered risking a display of its ignorance by becoming a scholar. But its passion for poetry would not permit either. Since it knows no other way that the way of poetry, it has clung to it tenaciously.