Thursday, April 16, 2009

Yugen

From The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, by Alan Watts:

There is no English word for a type of feeling which the Japanese call yugen, and we can only understand by opening our minds to situations in which Japanese people use the word.


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 the shore and gaze after a boat that disappears behind distant islands, to contemplate the flight of wild geese seen and lost among the clouds. (Seami) All these are yugen, but what have they in common?

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