you will be able to see more photos from my travel to Japan on the new blog that i have created for telling the story of my trip:
and off into the empty sky
and off into the empty sky
Showing posts with label Japan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Japan. Show all posts
Tuesday, 14 May 2013
Sunday, 8 July 2012
july the 7th: Tanabata
He is coming, my long-desired lord,
whom I have been
waiting to meet here,
on the banks of the River of
Heaven....
The moment of loosening my girdle is
nigh!
On the River of Heaven
the sound of the water has become loud:
perhaps my
long-awaited lord
will soon be coming in his boat
The love-longing of one whole year
having ended tonight,
every day from tomorrow
I must again pine for him as before!
having ended tonight,
every day from tomorrow
I must again pine for him as before!
When autumn comes,
and the river-mists spread over the Heavenly Stream,
I turn toward the river, and long
and the nights of my longing are many!
and the river-mists spread over the Heavenly Stream,
I turn toward the river, and long
and the nights of my longing are many!
*poems about Tanabata from the Manyoshu , tr. by Lafcadio Hearn
.
Thursday, 17 March 2011
...
Friday, 24 July 2009
that Foolishness, that lightness (also: instead of ars poetica)
Once again, I will go against the routine of the Floating Bridge: today's post will be about photography, among other things. And to make it even worse, it will be, up to a certain degree, self-referential. I would like to let you know how the Beautiful Foolishness of Things, my current project with Michael Tweed, is going.
Simple things (joy is always simple): that I am grateful and would like to thank all those who follow it, who have written to me about the Foolishness and encouraged us to continue.
Also, that I am very happy with the gentle way of its unfolding, its twofold vision entwined into a subtle contemplation of what is at the heart of what, essentially, is not, a gaze whose decisive sign seems to be, above all, the tenderness. The subject who becomes and the things which are meet through tenderness at one point that reveals their same, intimate nature: the vulnerability, ephemerality of being, always on the threshold of fading away. Our prayer for tenderness: the photograph, that one 'takes' of the world, an aggressive grasp of what faces us as 'the other', the word which is bound to reify - can they become a caress, as light as breath?
This is Her way. The Foolishness tells Her myth. A gaze which doesn't imprison or impose its presence upon the world, but quietly awaits for presence to manifest itself as grace. A gentle withdrawal into the in-between, which, to paraphrase Dogen, shouldn't be simply confused with nonbeing or forcefully asserted as being.
I had my fears, at the beginning, that Michael's words and my images would fail to speak together - that 'mitsprechen', wherein the voices become one, without sacrificing their own nature. I have wondered why this hasn't happened, why, on the contrary, their speaking-together flows so effortlessly. This lies, perhaps - I have tried to answer - in the specific nature of what each 'foolishness' represents, and which could be called, if I am allowed to invent such a word, a photo-waka. I can even imagine the kanjis for it: 写真和歌. I don't mean that Michael's poem is a waka illustrating the image, but rather that photograph and poem combine to form a peculiar kind of waka. In what follows, I will try to explain what I mean by this. If the Japanese poetry discussion is based on a series of essays I will indicate in the notes, the thoughts on photography are merely my naive... how to call them? musings which have no intention whatsoever to say something true or meaningful about photography in general: it is only my way of living photography as a path of spiritual experience, as a form of contemplation.
Waka is a classical form of Japanese poetry which relies on brevity (31 syllables) to articulate, in a single unit, a specific form of subjective consciousness which is, in fact, fundamental to all types of Japanese arts (representing, at the same time, a spiritual way, or path: 芸道、geido). The essence of these arts is that they are centred on reaching an alignment, a perfect correspondence among the state of mind of the subject, the material used by a specific art and its expression (words, flowers) and nature. When this particular configuration is established, there emerges something which transcends it: a sudden experience allowing the subject to become aware, in Buddhist terms, of the ultimate Reality, the void pervading all being - the absence in presence, the emptiness in fullness, the discontinuity in the whole.
The ultimate source of creativity for the waka poet is what the Japanese call 'kokoro' - which could be understood as 'pre-phenomenal mind' or 'awareness', a state of subjectivity which can be neither grasped by cognitive activity nor articulated in any linguistic-psychological way. Toyo Izutsu writes: "As the mental concentration of the poet reaches the uttermost, out of the absolute serenity of his creative subjectivity showing no sign of vacillating this way and that - there, naturally and efortlessly, emerge, in spite of himself, poems'.
the infinity within,
it too would gently
reveal itself.
As far as I understand it, this is also the case with Michael's process of creation, co-extensive with his Buddhist practice of contemplation, which allows - however not by intentionally seeking or forcing it to appear - the spontaneous manifestation of thoughts/words (omoi, kotoba) and feelings (yojo) from that all-pervading yet never phenomenologically articulated Self-Awareness. But, and I see here the first fundamental similarity between the two types of creation, isn't photography born in exactly the same way (at least that kind of photography which fascinates me, the opposite of the conceptual approach): an intense yet effortless concentration of body and mind, which have overcome their duality, and thereby become the empty ground - empty exactly through or within the utmost fullness of being - allowing for that instant of revelation to take place, for something to emerge which transcends the photographer's self and becomes the expression of reality itself? What happens in that moment is a kind of spontaneous 'casting off body and mind', to use Dogen's famous phrase 'shinjin datsuraku' (身心脱落), experience which lies at the heart of the Japanese Buddhist contemplation. And the amazing thing in the case of photography is that the distinctions between hand-eye/tool (camera) are similarly abolished for that shortest instant of time. Everything melts into one gaze, one act of absolute concentration of creative energy.
Exactly as in the case of the waka poet, "vacillating this way and that", or the mind taking the lead and obscuring the non-dualistic awareness which becomes manifest, leads to failure. One has to be totally present there, absorbed into that moment and act, one has to become the presence itself. That single moment when one pushes the button, that release of the shutter which reveals the fundamental discontinuity of the world inside the flow lies beyond conceptualization and, as such, cannot be explained but only approached as a 'living experience' - the same way Zen stresses the fact that one has to undergo the same spiritual experience expressed in a koan, for example, and not merely try to 'understand' it on a discoursive level.
The idea of discontinuity leads to another important similarity between waka and a photograph, in this interpretation which perceives them as living spiritual realities and not merely as dead objects, products of the intellect. Let's take the waka first. Toyo Izutsu sees its specificity in its 'field'-structure: its extreme linguistic condensation allows the poem to constitute an a-temporal unity in which every part is perceived simultanuously and a multitude of meanings reverberates at the same time, at every point of the 'field', 'bringing into being a global view of the Whole'. Thus waka can be seen to represent a spatial expanse in which time, as implied in every succession of words articulated in a syntactic flow, is annihilated and the semantic content is given as a whole, at once. In this way, it may seem, waka tries to transcend the very nature of the material it is made of, since language manifests itself as a linear succession of words which can unfold their meaning only in a temporal sequence.
Yet what the waka-poet aims at, struggling with this intrinsic limitation of language, is given freely and naturally in photography. If time is annihilated in waka, time is held still in a photograph, suspended, and the different parts of the image are perceived instantly, as a whole. In a way, the photograph could also be understood as a non-sequential 'field' whose unity is grasped instantly, beyond the linguistic activity of the subject. Usually, the photograph is analyzed in terms of the past, a dead and frozen time which captures, in a way mummifies reality: from Barthes's 'that-has-been', a footprint or a death mask, to Sontag's 'way of imprisoning reality, of making it stand still' or Hutcheon's 'all photographs are by definition representations of the past'. But if time is made to stand still, then subjectivity can thus break from the normal flow and find itself in an eternal 'now', experience the essence of time as time-being, or being-time (有時, uji), as Dogen describes it - simultanously flow and eternal moment (an analogy would be, perhaps, the Einsteinian wave/particle nature of light). The past hours are absorbed in the I, they may 'seem to be elsewhere but are actually in the absolute, eternal now'. Each particular moment of time embodies simultanously all the time-being of the world.
When I said that I considered each separate foolishness to be a waka, I was referring exactly to this correlation between self and world, between spiritual realities and natural ones, which is the characteristic of Japanese Zen poetry. Because self and nature share the same essence, the Buddhahood, the nature references in the poem are meant to actualize "a state of subjective consciousness". As I see it, my photographs showing things and events of nature play the same role which the images drawn from nature play in classical waka: Michael's poems almost never contain nature-descriptive instances, but blend with the image to articulate a poetic-linguistic-visual field which sustains the contemplation of Reality.
For me, the Foolishness represents the exact opposite of the Bridge: the lightness. The living experience that only lightness and grace can offer a way out of suffering. And if I personally fail, there are others who don't. There is hope. As Makoto Ueda puts it:
"Life is constant suffering for those who have not attained enlightenment; it is something to flee from for those who long for the life of a recluse. But those who have returned to the earthly world after attaining a high stage of enlightenment can look at life with a smile, for they are part of that life. Knowing what life ultimately is, they can take suffering with a detached light-hearted attitude — with lightness."
Simple things (joy is always simple): that I am grateful and would like to thank all those who follow it, who have written to me about the Foolishness and encouraged us to continue.
Also, that I am very happy with the gentle way of its unfolding, its twofold vision entwined into a subtle contemplation of what is at the heart of what, essentially, is not, a gaze whose decisive sign seems to be, above all, the tenderness. The subject who becomes and the things which are meet through tenderness at one point that reveals their same, intimate nature: the vulnerability, ephemerality of being, always on the threshold of fading away. Our prayer for tenderness: the photograph, that one 'takes' of the world, an aggressive grasp of what faces us as 'the other', the word which is bound to reify - can they become a caress, as light as breath?
This is Her way. The Foolishness tells Her myth. A gaze which doesn't imprison or impose its presence upon the world, but quietly awaits for presence to manifest itself as grace. A gentle withdrawal into the in-between, which, to paraphrase Dogen, shouldn't be simply confused with nonbeing or forcefully asserted as being.
and if she needed to withdraw,
which wasn’t often,
it was never away from
but only between.
which wasn’t often,
it was never away from
but only between.
I had my fears, at the beginning, that Michael's words and my images would fail to speak together - that 'mitsprechen', wherein the voices become one, without sacrificing their own nature. I have wondered why this hasn't happened, why, on the contrary, their speaking-together flows so effortlessly. This lies, perhaps - I have tried to answer - in the specific nature of what each 'foolishness' represents, and which could be called, if I am allowed to invent such a word, a photo-waka. I can even imagine the kanjis for it: 写真和歌. I don't mean that Michael's poem is a waka illustrating the image, but rather that photograph and poem combine to form a peculiar kind of waka. In what follows, I will try to explain what I mean by this. If the Japanese poetry discussion is based on a series of essays I will indicate in the notes, the thoughts on photography are merely my naive... how to call them? musings which have no intention whatsoever to say something true or meaningful about photography in general: it is only my way of living photography as a path of spiritual experience, as a form of contemplation.
Waka is a classical form of Japanese poetry which relies on brevity (31 syllables) to articulate, in a single unit, a specific form of subjective consciousness which is, in fact, fundamental to all types of Japanese arts (representing, at the same time, a spiritual way, or path: 芸道、geido). The essence of these arts is that they are centred on reaching an alignment, a perfect correspondence among the state of mind of the subject, the material used by a specific art and its expression (words, flowers) and nature. When this particular configuration is established, there emerges something which transcends it: a sudden experience allowing the subject to become aware, in Buddhist terms, of the ultimate Reality, the void pervading all being - the absence in presence, the emptiness in fullness, the discontinuity in the whole.
The ultimate source of creativity for the waka poet is what the Japanese call 'kokoro' - which could be understood as 'pre-phenomenal mind' or 'awareness', a state of subjectivity which can be neither grasped by cognitive activity nor articulated in any linguistic-psychological way. Toyo Izutsu writes: "As the mental concentration of the poet reaches the uttermost, out of the absolute serenity of his creative subjectivity showing no sign of vacillating this way and that - there, naturally and efortlessly, emerge, in spite of himself, poems'.
the infinity within,
it too would gently
reveal itself.
As far as I understand it, this is also the case with Michael's process of creation, co-extensive with his Buddhist practice of contemplation, which allows - however not by intentionally seeking or forcing it to appear - the spontaneous manifestation of thoughts/words (omoi, kotoba) and feelings (yojo) from that all-pervading yet never phenomenologically articulated Self-Awareness. But, and I see here the first fundamental similarity between the two types of creation, isn't photography born in exactly the same way (at least that kind of photography which fascinates me, the opposite of the conceptual approach): an intense yet effortless concentration of body and mind, which have overcome their duality, and thereby become the empty ground - empty exactly through or within the utmost fullness of being - allowing for that instant of revelation to take place, for something to emerge which transcends the photographer's self and becomes the expression of reality itself? What happens in that moment is a kind of spontaneous 'casting off body and mind', to use Dogen's famous phrase 'shinjin datsuraku' (身心脱落), experience which lies at the heart of the Japanese Buddhist contemplation. And the amazing thing in the case of photography is that the distinctions between hand-eye/tool (camera) are similarly abolished for that shortest instant of time. Everything melts into one gaze, one act of absolute concentration of creative energy.
Exactly as in the case of the waka poet, "vacillating this way and that", or the mind taking the lead and obscuring the non-dualistic awareness which becomes manifest, leads to failure. One has to be totally present there, absorbed into that moment and act, one has to become the presence itself. That single moment when one pushes the button, that release of the shutter which reveals the fundamental discontinuity of the world inside the flow lies beyond conceptualization and, as such, cannot be explained but only approached as a 'living experience' - the same way Zen stresses the fact that one has to undergo the same spiritual experience expressed in a koan, for example, and not merely try to 'understand' it on a discoursive level.
The idea of discontinuity leads to another important similarity between waka and a photograph, in this interpretation which perceives them as living spiritual realities and not merely as dead objects, products of the intellect. Let's take the waka first. Toyo Izutsu sees its specificity in its 'field'-structure: its extreme linguistic condensation allows the poem to constitute an a-temporal unity in which every part is perceived simultanuously and a multitude of meanings reverberates at the same time, at every point of the 'field', 'bringing into being a global view of the Whole'. Thus waka can be seen to represent a spatial expanse in which time, as implied in every succession of words articulated in a syntactic flow, is annihilated and the semantic content is given as a whole, at once. In this way, it may seem, waka tries to transcend the very nature of the material it is made of, since language manifests itself as a linear succession of words which can unfold their meaning only in a temporal sequence.
Yet what the waka-poet aims at, struggling with this intrinsic limitation of language, is given freely and naturally in photography. If time is annihilated in waka, time is held still in a photograph, suspended, and the different parts of the image are perceived instantly, as a whole. In a way, the photograph could also be understood as a non-sequential 'field' whose unity is grasped instantly, beyond the linguistic activity of the subject. Usually, the photograph is analyzed in terms of the past, a dead and frozen time which captures, in a way mummifies reality: from Barthes's 'that-has-been', a footprint or a death mask, to Sontag's 'way of imprisoning reality, of making it stand still' or Hutcheon's 'all photographs are by definition representations of the past'. But if time is made to stand still, then subjectivity can thus break from the normal flow and find itself in an eternal 'now', experience the essence of time as time-being, or being-time (有時, uji), as Dogen describes it - simultanously flow and eternal moment (an analogy would be, perhaps, the Einsteinian wave/particle nature of light). The past hours are absorbed in the I, they may 'seem to be elsewhere but are actually in the absolute, eternal now'. Each particular moment of time embodies simultanously all the time-being of the world.
time was simply
the expansion of her being
in which all things
were revelation.
But speaking in terms of processuality, what actually interests me here: in that 'now' which seems to suspend time, the absolute of the moment when the button is pushed, there takes place an encounter between the creative consciousness and the world, which produces - or better - lets emerge a new reality, by its own accord. In that act, as I experience it, a hidden reality reveals itself, which is neither a merely mechanical copy of the world as it is, nor the expression of the human subjectivity, but something which incorporates and transcends both and embodies the time-being of both self and world.the expansion of her being
in which all things
were revelation.
When I said that I considered each separate foolishness to be a waka, I was referring exactly to this correlation between self and world, between spiritual realities and natural ones, which is the characteristic of Japanese Zen poetry. Because self and nature share the same essence, the Buddhahood, the nature references in the poem are meant to actualize "a state of subjective consciousness". As I see it, my photographs showing things and events of nature play the same role which the images drawn from nature play in classical waka: Michael's poems almost never contain nature-descriptive instances, but blend with the image to articulate a poetic-linguistic-visual field which sustains the contemplation of Reality.
For me, the Foolishness represents the exact opposite of the Bridge: the lightness. The living experience that only lightness and grace can offer a way out of suffering. And if I personally fail, there are others who don't. There is hope. As Makoto Ueda puts it:
"Life is constant suffering for those who have not attained enlightenment; it is something to flee from for those who long for the life of a recluse. But those who have returned to the earthly world after attaining a high stage of enlightenment can look at life with a smile, for they are part of that life. Knowing what life ultimately is, they can take suffering with a detached light-hearted attitude — with lightness."
with the tiniest,
most subtle of gestures,
or even with none,
all was accomplished.
most subtle of gestures,
or even with none,
all was accomplished.
Essays on Japanese aesthetics and philosophy on which I based my text:
1. The Theory of Beauty in the Classical Aesthetics of Japan, by Toshihiko and Toyo Izutsu.
2. A Study of Dogen by Masao Abe and Steven Heine.
3. Japanese Poetry: The Sketch of Metaphysical Perception, in Singing the Way by Patrick Laude.
Wednesday, 3 June 2009
japanese waiting in black and white
the stones still wet
from the night's rain
if his straw sandals fail
to carry him across?
the rope of her heart
wrapping the gift:
a rock from her garden
of silence and longing.
the wind in her linen
how silly of her
to let such white
hinder his way.
a haze her eyes
the air bright
the door half-open
the kettle on
the flower of fear
the flower of hope
breathing together
a tangle of dreams
won't he come
won't he come
This post has been inspired by Lady Otomo No Sakanoe's poem (8th century):
You say, "I will come."
And you do not come.
Now you say, "I will not come."
So I shall expect you.
Have I learned to understand you?
Friday, 3 April 2009
yet even if it be so
My Lord has departed
And the time has grown long.
Shall I search the mountains,
Going forth to meet you,
Or wait for you here?
No! I would not live,
Longing for you.
On the mountain crag, rather,
Rock-root as my pillow,
Dead would I lie.
Yet even if it be so
I shall wait for my Lord
Till on my black hair -
Trailing fine in the breeze -
The dawn's frost shall fall.
In the autumn field,
Over the rice ears,
The morning mist trails,
Vanishing somewhere...
Can my love fade too?
Longing for the Emperor
by Empress Iwa no Hime ( - 347 AD)
Friday, 27 March 2009
Sunday, 8 March 2009
one small fish swimming alone, then next to one big fish, then they become three, later four and in the end many colourful stories
—
‿ ‿
— — —
‿ ‿ ‿ ‿
— — —
‿ ‿ ‿ ‿
— — —
‿ ‿ ‿ ‿
— — —
‿ ‿ ‿ ‿
— — —
‿ ‿
—
Christian Morgenstern (Fisches Nachtgesang)
—
‿ ‿
— — —
‿ ‿ ‿ ‿
— — —
‿ ‿ ‿ ‿
[sorry, I seem to be floundering for words. -The translator]
‿ ‿ ‿ ‿
— — —
‿ ‿ ‿ ‿
— — —
‿ ‿
‿ ‿
— — —
‿ ‿ ‿ ‿
— — —
‿ ‿ ‿ ‿
[sorry, I seem to be floundering for words. -The translator]
‿ ‿ ‿ ‿
— — —
‿ ‿ ‿ ‿
— — —
‿ ‿
—
Fish's Night Song
(English translation from Fish Language,
by Emily Ezust)
(English translation from Fish Language,
by Emily Ezust)
Das Vollkommene zu kommentieren ist eine unfruchtbare Übung. Jeder unbefangene Leser wird diesem Satz zustimmen. Aber gibt es das: einen unbefangenen Leser? Goethes wohlgemeinter Ratschlag, das Unerforschliche ruhig zu verehren, ist bei Philologen und Kritikern stets auf taube Ohren gestoßen. Also meinetwegen! [...]
Lakonischer als "Fisches Nachtgesang" kann ein Gedicht nicht sein; das Wort einsilbig wäre bereits eine Übertreibung. [...]
Das Gedicht, soviel steht fest, hat keine Silbe zuviel und keine Silbe zuwenig.
Es ist das außerdem einzige Gedicht, das ich auswendig rezitieren kann.
Hans-Magnus Enzensberger
To analyse perfection is a sterile exercise. Every unprejudiced reader cannot but agree. But is there such a thing as an unprejudiced reader? Goethe's well-meant advice, that one should adore the inscrutable silently, has always fallen on deaf ears when it comes to philologists and literary scholars. Well then... [...]
A poem can hardly be more laconic than 'Fish's Night Song'; the word 'monosyllabic' would already be an exageration. [...]
The poem, so much is clear, has no syllable too many or too few. Furthermore, it is the only poem that I can recite by heart.
Hans-Magnus Enzensberger, when asked to write about this poem
Lakonischer als "Fisches Nachtgesang" kann ein Gedicht nicht sein; das Wort einsilbig wäre bereits eine Übertreibung. [...]
Das Gedicht, soviel steht fest, hat keine Silbe zuviel und keine Silbe zuwenig.
Es ist das außerdem einzige Gedicht, das ich auswendig rezitieren kann.
Hans-Magnus Enzensberger
To analyse perfection is a sterile exercise. Every unprejudiced reader cannot but agree. But is there such a thing as an unprejudiced reader? Goethe's well-meant advice, that one should adore the inscrutable silently, has always fallen on deaf ears when it comes to philologists and literary scholars. Well then... [...]
A poem can hardly be more laconic than 'Fish's Night Song'; the word 'monosyllabic' would already be an exageration. [...]
The poem, so much is clear, has no syllable too many or too few. Furthermore, it is the only poem that I can recite by heart.
Hans-Magnus Enzensberger, when asked to write about this poem
Friday, 16 January 2009
happy
Today's post doesn't belong to the routine of this blog, but I am so happy that I have to tell you this: I have just found out that I got the big prize at the national D:Focus photography contest, together with the first prize at the category 'photojournalism'. This means that I got 2200 euro to buy electronic products, which in its turn means that I can finally buy the digital camera I have been longing for, the Nikon D300. Which I could have never ever bought otherwise, not in this life maybe :-)
I am so happy! And more than this material value, the prize has a special symbolic meaning for me, coming now, after I have returned to my images (and to my blog :-) when in late autumn I had given up photography for good (or so I had thought at the time).
You can see the winning album here (Japan by 'murasaki'). You already know some of the pictures from my blog.
I am so happy! And more than this material value, the prize has a special symbolic meaning for me, coming now, after I have returned to my images (and to my blog :-) when in late autumn I had given up photography for good (or so I had thought at the time).
You can see the winning album here (Japan by 'murasaki'). You already know some of the pictures from my blog.
Friday, 31 October 2008
Saturday, 20 September 2008
speaking a strange language
What a terrible mistake, thought Drogo, perhaps everything is like that -- we think there are beings like ourselves around us and instead there is nothing but ice and stones speaking a strange language; we are on the point of greeting a friend but our arm falls inert, the smile dies away because we are completely alone.
Dino Buzzati, The Tartar Steppe
Dino Buzzati, The Tartar Steppe
Monday, 15 September 2008
Thursday, 11 September 2008
Mount Zao covered with snow
The Chinese poet, Su Shih (Su Tung-po, 1036-1101) wrote:
Tu Fu's poems are figureless paintings, Han Kan's paintings are wordless poems.
Friday, 15 August 2008
I cleansed the mirror
of my heart...
now it reflects
the moon.
Renseki
I won't even stop
at the valley's brook
for fear that
my shadow
may flow into the world.
Dogen
Through one word, or seven words, or three times five, even if you investigate thoroughly myriad forms, nothing can be depended upon. Night advances, the moon glows and falls into the ocean. The black dragon jewel you have been searching for, is everywhere.
Dogen
Dogen
note: these pictures were taken at a tea ceremony in Sendai, Japan, 2006.
Saturday, 9 August 2008
on not forgetting
When longing for him
Tortures me beyond endurance,
I reverse my robe --
Garb of night, black as leopard-flower berries --
And wear it inside out.
Tortures me beyond endurance,
I reverse my robe --
Garb of night, black as leopard-flower berries --
And wear it inside out.
Ono no Komachi
Wednesday, 25 June 2008
green leaf falling upon a little red fish
I have just found out that the Sanskrit term varna (cast) has two literal meanings: firstly colour and secondly veil. In the Vedas, it was also used to depict the light of gods and the glowing colours of dawn. Are colours then nothing but a veil simultaneously hiding and revealing the world to us? And what about the veiling and the unveiling of the soul? Could colours be the essence of such an act, of a deed creating the world? There is also Goethe with his mysterious words: colours are Taten des Lichts, Taten und Leiden - acts of light, acts and sufferings of light. Why must there be pain between the veiling and the unveiling? And could this veil be used to bind the lover, to bind the self to the object, the soul to its longing, to its act?
It is written in the Bhagavad Gita: These works never bind me, for I have no desire for their fruit. He who knows me as Truth is never bound by actions.
Note to the picture:
the red fish are carp, koi (鯉), the colourful, ornamental kind which one can find swimming in all the ponds of Japanese temples. Because of its homophony with koi (恋）, love, the carp has been used as a symbol for passionate love throughout the ages. I once read a short story bearing this title, koi, in which the main character receives a carp as a gift and takes care of it in his garden pond. Nothing actually happens. It is considered to be one of the most erotic stories in Japanese literature.
It is written in the Bhagavad Gita: These works never bind me, for I have no desire for their fruit. He who knows me as Truth is never bound by actions.
Note to the picture:
the red fish are carp, koi (鯉), the colourful, ornamental kind which one can find swimming in all the ponds of Japanese temples. Because of its homophony with koi (恋）, love, the carp has been used as a symbol for passionate love throughout the ages. I once read a short story bearing this title, koi, in which the main character receives a carp as a gift and takes care of it in his garden pond. Nothing actually happens. It is considered to be one of the most erotic stories in Japanese literature.
Monday, 23 June 2008
to long for the moon...
Are we to look at cherry blossoms only in full bloom, the moon only when it is cloudless? To long for the moon while looking on the rain, to lower the blinds and be unaware of the passing of the spring -- these are even more deeply moving. Branches about to blossom or gardens strewn with faded flowers are worthier of our admiration. In all things, it is the beginnings and the ends that are interesting. Does the love between men and women refer only to the moments when they are in each other's arms? The man who grieves over a love affair broken off before it was fulfilled, who bewails empty vows, who spends long autumn nights alone, who lets his thoughts wander to distant skies, who yearns for the past in a delapidated house -- such a man truly knows what love means.
The moon that appears close to dawn after we have long waited for it moves us more profoundly than the full moon shining cloudless over a thousand leagues. And how incomparably lovely is the moon, almost greenish in its light, when seen through the tops of the cedars deep in the mountains, or when it hides for a moment behind clustering clouds during a sudden shower! The sparkle on hickory or white-oak leaves seemingly wet with moonlight strikes one to the heart. One suddenly misses the capital, longing for a friend who could share the moment.
Kenko, Essays in Idleness
Saturday, 24 May 2008
my mind is dazzled
The Ise Shrine Priestess writes:
My mind is dazzled --
Did you come to visit me?
Did I go to you?
Was our night a dream? Reality?
Was I sleeping? Or was I awake?
through the blackest shadow
Narihira answers:
Through the blackest shadow
Of the darkness of the heart I wander
In bewilderment --
You who know the world of love, decide:
Is my love reality or dream?
from Kokinshu
Tuesday, 20 May 2008
the festival of the cherry blossoms (last)
Towards the end of the Second Month, the festival of the cherry blossoms took place in the Grand Hall. The empress and the crown prince were seated to the left and right of the throne. ... It was a beautiful day. The sky was clear, birds were singing. Adepts at Chinese poetry, princes and high courtiers and others, drew lots to fix the rhyme schemes for their poems.
"I have drawn 'spring,'" said Genji, his voice finely resonant in even so brief a statement.
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