For Japanese Speakers

I thought I would share this one with you from my blog---it is from Post #36, but I added enough details, I thought it might be worthy of reposting:

There are numerous Japanese words that cannot be translated directly into English. Undeniably my favorite of these words is yugen [幽玄], or more correctly yuugen, though most people who write about it in English write, yugen.

The book, 'They Have a Word For It,' defines it as, "An awareness of the universe that triggers feelings too deep and mysterious for words." They quote Alan Watts by explaining it as, "To watch the sun sink behind a flower clad hill, to wander on and on in a huge forest without thought of return, to stand upon a shore and gaze after a boat that disappears beyond distant islands, to contemplate the flight of wild geese seen and lost among the clouds."

I don't know if that is actually Alan Watts' original words---he may have been quoting someone else, as those are fairly typical descriptions of the feeling of yugen. In fact, I have read that very description in other places.

The Chinese characters for Yugen are Yuu [幽] (a mountain with the radical for thread on each side of the center line), meaning: 1.) to confine to a room, 2.) faint, dim, indistinct, hazy, weak (this is the same yuu used for yuurei (spirit, ghost, apparition) and yuukai (land of the dead); and gen [玄] (a thread with a lid radical over it--which is actually its own radical), meaning dark, mysterious.

I think it is interesting that 'thread' is used in both characters----hinting towards the threads of reality that weave the physical universe into being. There was, for example, an ancient Indo-European concept that reality was a web of threads--and fate, in particular, was conceived as manifesting through threads. The Old-English word, wyrd, referred both to fate, and one of the names of the three Norns, the three old ladies who weaved our fate. Inherent in the concept of wyrd is the fact that our actions create a web of reality in a cause and effect manner. Wyrd, of course, is the root of the modern English word, weird.

String Theory is the modern science version of this very old concept. But reality woven from threads appears elsewhere in Modern science as well. Einstein's Theory of Relativity tells us that light, from our sub-light-speed perspective, is composed of zero-time zero-space particles, meaning that it does not exist in time or space. The implication is that a photon exists only for an instant, but that instant covers all time and space. It also means that when we perceive (i.e. see) a photon, it must simultaneously exist, outside of time, in both the present, hitting the retina of our eye, and also at its distant point of origin, no matter how many light years away that is. We personally are trapped by time, and can only physically experience the moment of now (which is then irretrievably lost forever as we experience the next moment of now). But since we understand time in our sub-light-speed reality, we see that photon as having traveled over many light years into the present, from our distant past many light years away. But to that zero-time zero-space light particle, its whole existence is all an infinitely small instant in which it is here and there, and all points in between at the same time----it is a wave of energy, or, as suggested by the Chinese characters for yugen, a thread.

One theory that has been published in recent years, reworked Newton's law of Motion in such a way as to suggest that mass is actually an illusion created by light trapped by inertia (which they have also reworked inertia to be the latent light energy that fills the universe, or, the Zero-Point Field). In other words, all that is, is simply light energy! And, as I said, as a zero-time zero-space particle, it is essentially nothing more than a thread stretching from the beginning of time, to the end of time. Now-----how does consciousness fit into that? (...Perhaps it is a reality transcendent of light, and therefore shapes light into the illusion of mass, which creates the physical universe----a very yugen concept to contemplate while staring at a Japanese garden...)

Granted, I have never seen the word yugen discussed in terms of a thread, but there is usually an archetypal symbolism that connects the Chinese characters to the words they refer to. Undoubtedly, I am sure there is something inherent within the concept.

In any event, Yugen is that feeling you get when you perceive that sense of almost being able to touch that profound reality that underlies existence.

It is an extension of the feeling of aware (pronounced Ah-wah-ray)---another Japanese word that is not directly translatable. The same book translates aware as, " the feelings engendered by ephemeral beauty. They provide the example of experiencing the beauty of a cherry blossom slowly falling to the ground---a very Japanese experience because the cherry trees blossom only once a year, and it is a beauty they look forward to, but it only lasts a short time---as the blossoms fall to the ground---a final expression of their beauty, it comes with the knowledge that such beauty is gone for this year. It is therefore understood as a bittersweet beauty referring to the temporal nature of life---the mortality we are all subject too. Life is only fleeting, but in those fleeting moments there is a beauty that exists simply because it is fleeting. (And that is what Heidegger meant when he claimed that we find the significance of being in its finality).

Yugen is, of course, much more profound than aware. As temporal as aware is, yugen implies that beyond this temporal existence there is something more.

One experience I found to be Yugen---was sitting and watching a gold-fish---in a gold-fish bowl---the gentle ways that it moves its fins, even when the fish does not move. It is a gentle, silent wave of movement as the fins bend back and forth between the movement the fish makes and the pressure of the surrounding water.

I hope that many of my own haiku, express a sense of yugen. At least, for me, many of them do. But today, rather than sharing one of my own haiku, I will share one of the Japanese classics. Here is a haiku by the popular haiku poet, Issa, that is so full of yugen, it spills over:



Yuzen to shite
yama o miru
kawazu kana



Composedly he sits
contemplating the mountains--
the worthy frog!



That translation is by Lewis Mackenzie—who takes some liberty with it—but justifiably so.

 

We had a good downpour today. Even had a few strikes of lightning. In fact, the past few days have been quite warm, even getting into the 80's recently. Spring is here---but Denver can still get a snowstorm this time of year. Each day it is less likely, but it has happened.

If you read my earlier posts, you might recall that I wrote about a small temple in the mountains north of Kyoto. I had to hike up a narrow trail in the thick forest and bamboo groves to get there, and there was no one around. I was very fascinated with how, as a breeze blew into the temple, a little bell hanging off the bottom of a long scroll or pennant would hit the wall and ring. In a moment somewhat akin to pondering over a tree falling in the forest with no one to hear---I was very fascinated with that bell-----and just sat quietly listening to it, very contented, peaceful---insects were buzzing, and birds were chirping, and yet I was the only human there to listen to that bell. And once I was to leave, I knew it would go on ringing, but no one would be there. As I pointed out in my previous post, no matter what the weather---all year long, whenever there is a breeze or a wind, it will ring.

Thinking about that I composed several tanka today as I was out driving around in the rain:



春の嵐也
何回も
阿弥陀寺の鈴は
鳴くが
聞こえる人なし



Haru no arashi ya
nankai mo
amidaji no suzu wa
naku ga
kikoeru hito nashi



Ah. The spring storm!
over and over
the little bell in Amida Temple
rings, but
no one is there to hear



This next one is kind of an experiment, because haiku and tanka have a rythm when read in Japanese. A bad rythm, which is probably more difficult for foreigners to pick up, can make for bad haiku. But in this one I purposely strain the rythm. But the bell itself on that day, had a somewhat slow restrained rythm, as the wind picked up the scroll to let it fall back against the wall, allowing for a few seconds between each ring of the bell:



春の嵐也
りん。。。りん。。。と
阿弥陀寺の鈴
りん。。。りん。。。と
誰も聞こえぬ



haru no arashi ya
rin... rin... to
amidaji no suzu
rin... rin... to
dare mo kikoenu



the spring storm!
ring... ring...
the little bell in Amida Temple
ring... ring...
no one can hear



阿弥陀寺の鈴

人踏まぬ
山の古寺
春の風が
吹くといつも
呼び出したり也



Amida-ji no suzu

hito fumanu
yama no furudera
haru no kaze ga
fuku to itsumo
yobidashitari ya



The little bell of Amida Temple

No one steps foot in
the old mountain temple
but when the spring wind blows
it always
calls out!



The Japanese verb, yobidasu, has several meanings, including to call out, call up, to invite, to summon, and even to conjure up. When we add, ~tari, to the end of a verb, it implies doing multiple things. So we could translate the last line to be, 'it calls out and stuff!' Or perhaps we could write something like, 'calls out, summons, and conjures up...!'

After all, we might wonder, if no one is there to hear the bell, then who is it really for---perhaps the statue of Amida Buddha sitting next to it? Or perhaps it is calling out to people to come pay respects, or to come break the loneliness of this little temple at the end of a narrow mountain trail.

Here is another Spring haiku:



心配たくさん
雀の子
見る親



shinpai takusan
suzume no ko
miru oya



There are many worries
--the parents who watch
their baby sparrows



Spring is a time when families finally get to go out and enjoy the nice weather after the cold winter months. Sometimes for really small children, it is the first time that they can really experience the outdoors, at least without having to bundle all up in clothes that allow little freedom of movement. Sparrows, like humans, watch their babies very carefully. It is in the Spring that they are hatched, and eventually get to leave the nest, try to learn to fly, and first begin to explore. It is also a time when they can become a delicious and hardy meal for a hawk or an eagle, or even a neighborhood cat.

A sparrow had made a nest on top of the circuit breaker or fuse box on the back of my house. It was fun to watch them hatch, and grow, and the mother work hard to feed them. She was upset every time we walked out our back door, which was next to the fuse box. One day I could hear that the mother was quite upset. It was shortly after my wife had let my beagle out to do her business. I guess the mother was training her babies to fly, I don't really know how it happened---but when I stepped out, it was obvious that my playful and always hungry beagle had happily chomped all the babies down.

 

Spring is a time of new beginnings, and happiness. But death is an inescapable part of life. The existentialist, Martin Heidegger, said that it is the finality of life that gives it meaning, and in this respect he certainly mirrored a Japanese sentiment of impermanence that is centuries old.

I shared a number of Jisei, or death poems before. As I said then, I will not share my own, mainly because I am not dying, and therefore do not have my own jisei (There was a time in the late 1600's when I thought I was dying, and I contemplated whether or not I should compose a death poem, but time passed and I never really needed to...)

These poems come from the book, Japanese Death Poems, compiled by Yoel Hoffman, and I have kept his translation, unless I felt it could be improved upon.

I will start with the poet, Bako, who died on May 1st, 1751. His jisei is about the hototogisu, a species of cuckoo that is appreciated for its beautiful voice. But it is also considered a messenger of death. It is actually a summer word, but as I mentioned before, jisei do not always follow the season they were written in:



furikaeru

tani no to mo nashi

hototogisu



Looking back at the valley

no more dwellings, only

the cuckoo cries



The hototogisu does not make its own nest, but instead takes over the nest of the Nightingale, and pushes the nightingale's eggs out of the nest, to lay its own.

Another one about this bird was composed by, Chosui, who died on April 4th, 1769 (my translations):



koki usuki

kumo o machiete

hototogisu



dark clouds, white clouds passing

I wait

hototogisu



Or this could also be translated in view of the Buddhist tradition that clouds appear in the West when one dies. The post-particle 'o' in this haiku indicates that Chosui is waiting for the clouds, rather than simply waiting as clouds pass:



Thick ones, thin ones,

I await the clouds

the hototogisu cries



Hoyu died at the end of the 17th Century:



namu ya sora

tada ariake no

hototogisu



Praise to the skies

alone in moonlit early dawn

a cuckoo cries



Namu actually stands for Namu Amida Butsu, a prayer to Amida Buddha. I could therefore translate this as,



Namu!

Alone in the sky's early dawn light

A hototogisu



There is an anonymous poem that was supposedly composed by a prisoner right before his execution. I don't remember Hoffman including this in his book. But I always liked it:



sono ato wa

meido de kikan

hototogisu



hototogisu

I will hear the rest of the song

in the land of the dead



Chine was the sister of Kyorai, a famous poet. She died May 15th, 1688:



moeyasuku

mata kieyasuki

hotaru kana



It lights up

as easily as it fades

the firefly!



(Hoffman did not include the exclamation point, but that is what 'kana' implies) After her death, Kyorai composed the following (my translation):



te no ue ni

kanashiku kiyuru

hotaru kana



In my hand,

sadly, it fades

the firefly!



Chora died May 5th, 1776 (my translation):



gokuraku to

iute neburu ya

kaya no uchi



"Paradise"

I murmur in my sleep!

in the mosquito netting



After his death, his wife responded with:



ka no koe mo

kanashiki kaya no

atari kana



the drone of the mosquitoes

round the netting, too,

is sad



The famous artist, Hokusai, who made the beautiful woodblock prints of Mt. Fuji, died on April 12th 1849 (my translation):



hitodama

yuku kisan ja

natsu no hara



As a ghost

I will wander

the summer fields



As spring unfolded, he clearly longed for the green beauty of summer, when the fields have grown and the undergrowth is thick.

Here is one last one----Kinu died on March 2nd, 1817:



yururi saku

kotoshi no hana no

kakugo kana



How leisurely the cherry

blossoms bloom this year, unhurried,

by their doom!



As I have mentioned before, the cherry blossoms are always a strong symbol of the temporal nature of life. This is Heidegger's existentialism--the beauty of the cherry blossom, which the Japanese wait a whole year for, yet it lasts for only a short time, before raining down, petal by petal, in one last final show of beauty before the blossoms decay back into nature. Heidegger would add that, to be truly human, one must break free from the conformity of the collective consciousness, and to stand out and shine as does the cherry blossom. But in this haiku by the poet, now facing the certainty of death, the sakura shine on, as if oblivious to their own finality. As they begin to blossom they have their whole life as a blossom ahead of them...

(I added the last comma and the appropriate exclamation point, because the emphasis of the Japanese 'kana' is on the final line).

 

ahh, I have to finally learn japanese some day...