Thursday, January 30, 2014

What word expresses...


Welcome to my world.


In his paper Japanese Aesthetics, Graham Parkes speaks about this concept:

"And here is [twelfth-century Buddhist monk Yoshida] Kenkō on the link between impermanence and beauty: 'If man were never to fade away like the dews of Adashino, never to vanish like the smoke over Toribeyama, how things would lose their power to move us! The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty' (Keene, 7). The acceptance and celebration of impermanence goes beyond all morbidity, and enables full enjoyment of life.

Insofar as we don't rejoice in life we fail to appreciate the pathos of the things with which we share our lives. For most of us, some of these things, impermanent as they are, will outlast us—and especially if they have been loved they will become sad things: 'It is sad to think that a man's familiar possessions, indifferent to his death, should remain long after he is gone' (Keene, 30)."


(Yugen, previously here.)

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