TERMS STARTING WITH
Japan and Korea
Japanese Colonial Period 1910-1945
Japanese cosmogony says that “out of the chaotic mass, an egg-like nucleus appears, having within itself the germ and potency of all the universal as well as of all terrestrial life” (SD 1:216).
Japanese Cross-References
Japanese Historical Periods
japanese ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Japan, or its inhabitants. ::: n. sing. & pl. --> A native or inhabitant of Japan; collectively, the people of Japan.
The language of the people of Japan.
japanned ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Japan ::: a. --> Treated, or coated, with varnish in the Japanese manner.
japanner ::: n. --> One who varnishes in the manner of the Japanese, or one skilled in the art.
A bootblack.
japanning ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Japan ::: n. --> The art or act of varnishing in the Japanese manner.
japannish ::: a. --> After the manner of the Japanese; resembling japanned articles.
japan ::: n. --> Work varnished and figured in the Japanese manner; also, the varnish or lacquer used in japanning. ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Japan, or to the lacquered work of that country; as, Japan ware.
TERMS ANYWHERE
25. Japanese Buddhist writings (vols. 56-84)
abhidharma. (P. abhidhamma; T. chos mngon pa; C. apidamo/duifa; J. abidatsuma/taiho; K. abidalma/taebop 阿毘達磨/對法). In Sanskrit, abhidharma is a prepositional compound composed of abhi- + dharma. The compound is typically glossed with abhi being interpreted as equivalent to uttama and meaning "highest" or "advanced" DHARMA (viz., doctrines or teachings), or abhi meaning "pertaining to" the dharma. The SARVASTIVADA Sanskrit tradition typically follows the latter etymology, while the THERAVADA PAli tradition prefers the former, as in BUDDHAGHOSA's gloss of the term meaning either "special dharma" or "supplementary dharma." These definitions suggest that abhidharma was conceived as a precise (P. nippariyAya), definitive (PARAMARTHA) assessment of the dharma that was presented in its discursive (P. sappariyAya), conventional (SAMVṚTI) form in the SuTRAS. Where the sutras offered more subjective presentations of the dharma, drawing on worldly parlance, simile, metaphor, and personal anecdote in order to appeal to their specific audiences, the abhidharma provided an objective, impersonal, and highly technical description of the specific characteristics of reality and the causal processes governing production and cessation. There are two divergent theories for the emergence of the abhidharma as a separate genre of Buddhist literature. In one theory, accepted by most Western scholars, the abhidharma is thought to have evolved out of the "matrices" (S. MATṚKA; P. mAtikA), or numerical lists of dharmas, that were used as mnemonic devices for organizing the teachings of the Buddha systematically. Such treatments of dharma are found even in the sutra literature and are probably an inevitable by-product of the oral quality of early Buddhist textual transmission. A second theory, favored by Japanese scholars, is that abhidharma evolved from catechistic discussions (abhidharmakathA) in which a dialogic format was used to clarify problematic issues in doctrine. The dialogic style also appears prominently in the sutras where, for example, the Buddha might give a brief statement of doctrine (uddesa; P. uddesa) whose meaning had to be drawn out through exegesis (NIRDEsA; P. niddesa); indeed, MAHAKATYAYANA, one of the ten major disciples of the Buddha, was noted for his skill in such explications. This same style was prominent enough in the sutras even to be listed as one of the nine or twelve genres of Buddhist literature (specifically, VYAKARAnA; P. veyyAkarana). According to tradition, the Buddha first taught the abhidharma to his mother MAHAMAYA, who had died shortly after his birth and been reborn as a god in TUsITA heaven. He met her in the heaven of the thirty-three (TRAYASTRIMsA), where he expounded the abhidharma to her and the other divinities there, repeating those teachings to sARIPUTRA when he descended each day to go on his alms-round. sAriputra was renowned as a master of the abhidharma. Abhidharma primarily sets forth the training in higher wisdom (ADHIPRAJNAsIKsA) and involves both analytical and synthetic modes of doctrinal exegesis. The body of scholastic literature that developed from this exegetical style was compiled into the ABHIDHARMAPItAKA, one of the three principal sections of the Buddhist canon, or TRIPItAKA, along with sutra and VINAYA, and is concerned primarily with scholastic discussions on epistemology, cosmology, psychology, KARMAN, rebirth, and the constituents of the process of enlightenment and the path (MARGA) to salvation. (In the MAHAYANA tradition, this abhidharmapitaka is sometimes redefined as a broader "treatise basket," or *sASTRAPItAKA.)
AcalanAtha-VidyArAja. (T. Mi g.yo mgon po rig pa'i rgyal po; C. Budong mingwang; J. Fudo myoo; K. Pudong myongwang 不動明王). In Sanskrit, a wrathful DHARMAPALA of the VAJRAYANA pantheon and the chief of the eight VIDYARAJA. As described in the MAHAVAIROCANABHISAMBODHISuTRA, he is the NIRMAnAKAYA of VAIROCANA, a protector of boundaries and vanquisher of obstacles. A late Indian deity, AcalanAtha-VidyArAja possibly originated from the YAKsA form of VAJRAPAnI, with whom he is associated in his form of AcalavajrapAni. Indian forms of the god from the eleventh century show him kneeling on his left leg, holding a sword (khadga). VajrayAna images show him standing with one or three faces and varied numbers of pairs of hands, identified by his raised sword, snare, and ACALASANA. The cult of AcalanAtha-VidyArAja entered China during the first millennium CE, and was brought to Japan by KuKAI in the ninth century, where the wrathful deity (known in Japanese as Fudo myoo) became important for the Shingon school (SHINGONSHu), even being listed by it as one of the thirteen buddhas. In East Asian iconography, AcalanAtha-VidyArAja holds the sword and a snare or lasso (pAsa), with which he binds evil spirits.
AcArya. (P. Acariya; Thai AchAn; T. slob dpon; C. asheli; J. ajari; K. asari 阿闍梨). In Sanskrit, "teacher" or "master"; the term literally means "one who teaches the AcAra (proper conduct)," but it has come into general use as a title for religious teachers. In early Buddhism, it refers specifically to someone who teaches the supra dharma and is used in contrast to the UPADHYAYA (P. upajjhAya) or "preceptor." (See ACARIYA entry supra.) The title AcArya becomes particularly important in VAJRAYANA Buddhism, where the officiant of a tantric ritual is often viewed as the vajra master (VAJRACARYA). The term has recently been adopted by Tibetan monastic universities in India as a degree (similar to a Master of Arts) conferred upon graduation. In Japan, the term refers to a wise teacher, saint, holy person, or a wonder-worker who is most often a Buddhist monk. The term is used by many Japanese Buddhist traditions, including ZEN, TENDAI, and SHINGON. Within the Japanese Zen context, an ajari is a formal title given to those who have been training for five years or more.
AdhyardhasatikAprajNApAramitAsutra/PrajNApAramitAnayasatapaNcasatikA. (T. Shes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa'i tshul brgya lnga bcu pa; C. Shixiang bore boluomi jing/Bore liqu fen; J. Jisso hannya haramitsukyo/Hannya rishubun; K. Silsang panya paramil kyong/Panya ich'wi pun 實相般若波羅蜜經/般若理趣分). In Sanskrit, "Perfection of Wisdom in One Hundred and Fifty Lines." The basic verses (in Sanskrit) and a commentary describing the ritual accompanying its recitation (originally in Khotanese), are found together as two YOGA class tantras, the srīparmAdhya (T. Dpal mchog dang po) and srīvajramandalAlaMkAra (T. Dpal rdo rje snying po rgyan). In Japan, AMOGHAVAJRA's version of the text (called the Rishukyo) came to form an integral part of the philosophy and practice of the Japanese Shingon sect (SHINGONSHu).
Adi-buddha (Sanskrit) Ādi-buddha [from ādi first, original + the verbal root budh to awaken, perceive, know] First or primeval buddha; the supreme being above all other buddhas and bodhisattvas in the later Mahayana Buddhism of Tibet, Nepal, Java, and Japan. In theosophical writings, the highest aspect or subentity of the supreme Wondrous Being of our universe, existing in the most exalted dharmakaya state.
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. "company" (AMD) A US manufacturer of {integrated circuits}, founded in 1969. AMD was the fifth-largest IC manufacturer in 1995. AMD focuses on the personal and networked computation and communications market. They produce {microprocessors}, {embedded processors} and related peripherals, memories, {programmable logic devices}, circuits for telecommunications and networking applications. In 1995, AMD had 12000 employees in the USA and elsewhere and manufacturing facilities in Austin, Texas; Aizu-Wakamatsu, Japan; Bangkok, Thailand; Penang, Malaysia; and Singapore. AMD made the {AMD 2900} series of {bit-slice} {TTL} components and clones of the {Intel 80386} and {Intel 486} {microprocessors}. {AMD Home (http://amd.com/)}. Address: Sunnyvale, CA, USA. (1995-02-27)
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. ::: (company) (AMD) A US manufacturer of integrated circuits, founded in 1969. AMD was the fifth-largest IC manufacturer in 1995. AMD focuses on the programmable logic devices, circuits for telecommunications and networking applications.In 1995, AMD had 12000 employees in the USA and elsewhere and manufacturing facilities in Austin, Texas; Aizu-Wakamatsu, Japan; Bangkok, Thailand; Penang, Malaysia; and Singapore.AMD made the AMD 2900 series of bit-slice TTL components and clones of the Intel 80386 and Intel 486 microprocessors. .Address: Sunnyvale, CA, USA. (1995-02-27)
Agonshu. (阿含宗). In Japanese, "AGAMA School"; a Japanese "new religion" structured from elements drawn from esoteric Buddhism (MIKKYo) and indigenous Japanese religions; founded in 1970 by Kiriyama Seiyu (born Tsutsumi Masao in 1921). Kiriyama's teachings are presented first in his Henshin no genri ("Principles of Transformation"; 1975). Kiriyama believed he had been saved by the compassion of Kannon (AVALOKITEsVARA) and was told by that BODHISATTVA to teach others using the HOMA (J. goma) fire rituals drawn from Buddhist esoteric (MIKKYo) traditions. Later, while Kiriyama was reading the Agama (J. agon) scriptures, he realized that Buddhism as it was currently constituted in Japan did not correspond to the original teachings of the Buddha. In 1978, Kiriyama changed the name of his religious movement to Agon, the Japanese pronunciation of the transcription of Agama, positing that his teachings derived from the earliest scriptures of Buddhism and thus legitimizing them. His practices are fundamentally concerned with removing practitioners' karmic hindrances (KARMAVARAnA). Since many of these hindrances, he claims, are the result of neglecting one's ancestors or are inherited from them, much attention is also paid in the school to transforming the spirits of the dead into buddhas themselves, which in turn will also free the current generation from their karmic obstructions. Spiritual power in the school derives from the shinsei busshari (true sARĪRA [relics] of the Buddha), a sacred reliquary holding a bone fragment of the Buddha himself, given to Kiriyama in 1986 by the president of Sri Lanka. Individual adherents keep a miniature replica of the sarīra in their own homes, and the relic is said to have the transformational power to turn ancestors into buddhas. A "Star Festival" (Hoshi Matsuri) is held in Kyoto on each National Foundation Day (February 11), at which time two massive homa fires are lit, one liberating the spirits of the ancestors (and thus freeing the current generation from inherited karmic obstructions), the other helping to make the deepest wishes of its adherents come true. Adherents write millions of prayers on wooden sticks, which are cast into the two fires.
agyo. (C. xiayu; K. hao 下語). In Japanese, "appended words" or "granted words." Although the term is now used generally to refer to the instructions of a ZEN master, agyo can also more specifically refer to a set number of stereotyped sayings, often a verse or phrase, that were used in KoAN (C. GONG'AN) training. Unlike the literate monks of the medieval GOZAN monasteries, monks of the RINKA, or forest, monasteries were usually unable to compose their own Chinese verses to express the insight that they had gained while struggling with a koan. The rinka monks therefore began to study the "appended words" or "capping phrases" (JAKUGO) of a koan text such as the BIYAN LU, which summarized or explained each segment of the text. The agyo are found in koan manuals known as MONSAN, or Zen phrase manuals, such as the ZENRIN KUSHu, where they are used to explicate a koan.
aino ::: n. --> One of a peculiar race inhabiting Yesso, the Kooril Islands etc., in the northern part of the empire of Japan, by some supposed to have been the progenitors of the Japanese. The Ainos are stout and short, with hairy bodies.
Aizen Myoo. (愛染明王) (S. RAgavidyArAja). In Japanese, lit. "Bright King of the Taint of Lust"; an esoteric deity considered to be the destroyer of vulgar passions. In stark contrast to the traditional Buddhist approach of suppressing the passions through various antidotes or counteractive techniques (PRATIPAKsA), this VIDYARAJA is believed to be able to transform attachment, desire, craving, and defilement directly into pure BODHICITTA. This deity became a principal deity of the heretical Tachikawa branch (TACHIKAWARYu) of the SHINGONSHu and was considered the deity of conception. As an emanation of the buddha MAHAVAIROCANA or the bodhisattva VAJRASATTVA, Aizen Myoo was favored by many followers of Shingon Buddhism in Japan and by various esoteric branches of the TENDAISHu. Aizen Myoo was also sometimes held to be a secret buddha (HIBUTSU) by these traditions. The NICHIRENSHu was the last to adopt him as an important deity, but he played an important role in the dissemination of its cult. Aizen Myoo is well known for his fierce appearance, which belies the love and affection he is presumed to convey. Aizen Myoo usually has three eyes (to see the three realms of existence) and holds a lotus in his hand, which is symbolic of the calming of the senses, among other things. Other attributes of this deity are the bow and arrows, VAJRAs, and weapons that he holds in his hands.
AjAtasatru. (P. AjAtasattu; T. Ma skyes dgra; C. Asheshi wang; J. Ajase o; K. Asase wang 阿闍世王). In Sanskrit, "Enemy While Still Unborn," the son of King BIMBISARA of Magadha and his successor as king. According to the PAli account, when BimbisAra's queen VAIDEHĪ (P. Videhī) was pregnant, she developed an overwhelming urge to drink blood from the king's right knee, a craving that the king's astrologers interpreted to mean that the son would eventually commit patricide and seize the throne. Despite several attempts to abort the fetus, the child was born and was given the name AjAtasatru. While a prince, AjAtasatru became devoted to the monk DEVADATTA, the Buddha's cousin and rival, because of Devadatta's mastery of yogic powers (ṚDDHI). Devadatta plotted to take revenge on the Buddha through manipulating AjAtasatru, whom he convinced to murder his father BimbisAra, a close lay disciple and patron of the Buddha, and seize the throne. AjAtasatru subsequently assisted Devadatta in several attempts on the Buddha's life. AjAtasatru is said to have later grown remorseful over his evil deeds and, on the advice of the physician JĪVAKA, sought the Buddha's forgiveness. The Buddha preached to him on the benefits of renunciation from the SAMANNAPHALASUTTA, and AjAtasatru became a lay disciple. Because he had committed patricide, one of the five most heinous of evil deeds that are said to bring immediate retribution (ANANTARYAKARMAN), AjAtasatru was precluded from attaining any degree of enlightenment during this lifetime and was destined for rebirth in the lohakumbhiya hell. Nevertheless, Sakka (S. sAKRA), the king of the gods, described AjAtasatru as the chief in piety among the Buddha's unenlightened disciples. When the Buddha passed away, AjAtasatru was overcome with grief and, along with other kings, was given a portion of the Buddha's relics (sARĪRA) for veneration. According to the PAli commentaries, AjAtasatru provided the material support for convening the first Buddhist council (see COUNCIL, FIRST) following the Buddha's death. The same sources state that, despite his piety, he will remain in hell for sixty thousand years but later will attain liberation as a solitary buddha (P. paccekabuddha; S. PRATYEKABUDDHA) named Viditavisesa. ¶ MahAyAna scriptures, such as the MAHAPARINIRVAnASuTRA and the GUAN WULIANGSHOU JING ("Contemplation Sutra on the Buddha of Infinite Life"), give a slightly different account of AjAtasatru's story. BimbisAra was concerned that his queen, Vaidehī, had yet to bear him an heir. He consulted a soothsayer, who told him that an aging forest ascetic would eventually be reborn as BimbisAra's son. The king then decided to speed the process along and had the ascetic killed so he would take rebirth in Vaidehī's womb. After the queen had already conceived, however, the soothsayer prophesized that the child she would bear would become the king's enemy. After his birth, the king dropped him from a tall tower, but the child survived the fall, suffering only a broken finger. (In other versions of the story, Vaidehī is so mortified to learn that her unborn son will murder her husband the king that she tried to abort the fetus, but to no avail.) Devadatta later told AjAtasatru the story of his conception and the son then imprisoned his father, intending to starve him to death. But Vaidehī kept the king alive by smuggling food to him, smearing her body with flour-paste and hiding grape juice inside her jewelry. When AjAtasatru learned of her treachery, he drew his sword to murder her, but his vassals dissuaded him. The prince's subsequent guilt about his intended matricide caused his skin break out in oozing abscesses that emitted such a foul odor that no one except his mother was able to approach him and care for him. Despite her loving care, AjAtasatru did not improve and Vaidehī sought the Buddha's counsel. The Buddha was able to cure the prince by teaching him the "NirvAna Sutra," and the prince ultimately became one of the preeminent Buddhist monarchs of India. This version of the story of AjAtasatru was used by Kosawa Heisaku (1897-1968), one of the founding figures of Japanese psychoanalysis, and his successors to posit an "Ajase (AjAtasatru) Complex" that distinguished Eastern cultures from the "Oedipal Complex" described by Sigmund Freud in Western psychoanalysis. As Kosawa interpreted this story, Vaidehī's ambivalence or active antagonism toward her son and AjAtasatru's rancor toward his mother were examples of the pathological relationship that pertains between mother and son in Eastern cultures, in distinction to the competition between father and son that Freud posited in his Oedipal Complex. This pathological relationship can be healed only through the mother's love and forgiveness, which redeem the child and thus reunite them.
aji gatsurinkan. (阿字月輪觀). In Japanese, "contemplation of the letter 'A' in the moon-wheel." See AJIKAN.
aji honpusho. (阿字本不生). In Japanese, "the letter 'A' that is originally uncreated." See AJIKAN.
ajikan. (阿字観). In Japanese, "contemplation of the letter ‛A'"; a meditative exercise employed primarily within the the Japanese SHINGON school of esoteric Buddhism. The ajikan practice is also known as the "contemplation of the letter 'A' in the moon-wheel" (AJI GATSURINKAN). The letter "A" is the first letter in the Sanskrit SIDDHAM alphabet and is considered to be the "seed" (BĪJA) of MAHAVAIROCANA, the central divinity of the esoteric traditions. The letter "A" is also understood to be the "unborn" buddha-nature (FOXING) of the practitioner; hence, the identification of oneself with this letter serves as a catalyst to enlightenment. In ajikan meditation, the adept draws a picture of the full moon with an eight-petaled lotus flower at its center. The Siddham letter "A" is then superimposed over the lotus flower as a focus of visualization. As the visualization continues, the moon increases in size until it becomes coextensive with the universe itself. Through this visualization, the adept realizes the letter "A" that is originally uncreated (AJI HONPUSHo), which is the essence of all phenomena in the universe and the DHARMAKAYA of MAHAVAIROCANA Buddha.
Aksobhya. (T. Mi bskyod pa; C. Achu fo; J. Ashuku butsu; K. Ach'ok pul 阿閦佛). In Sanskrit, "Immovable" or "Imperturbable"; the name given to the buddha of the East because he is imperturbable in following his vow to proceed to buddhahood, particularly through mastering the practice of morality (sĪLA). Aksobhya is one of the PANCATATHAGATA (five tathAgatas), the buddha of the vajra family (VAJRAKULA). There are references to Aksobhya in the PRAJNAPARAMITA sutras and the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"), suggesting that his cult dates back to the first or second century of the Common Era, and that he was popular in India and Java as well as in the HimAlayan regions. The cult of Aksobhya may have been the first to emerge after the cult of sAKYAMUNI, and before that of AMITABHA. In the Saddharmapundarīkasutra, Aksobhya is listed as the first son of the buddha MahAbhijNA JNAnAbhibhu, and his bodhisattva name is given as JNAnAkara. His cult entered China during the Han dynasty, and an early text on his worship, the AKsOBHYATATHAGATASYAVYuHA, was translated into Chinese during the second half of the second century. Although his cult was subsequently introduced into Japan, he never became as popular in East Asia as the buddhas AMITABHA or VAIROCANA, and images of Aksobhya are largely confined to MAndALAs and other depictions of the paNcatathAgata. Furthermore, because Aksobhya's buddha-field (BUDDHAKsETRA) or PURE LAND of ABHIRATI is located in the East, he is sometimes replaced in mandalas by BHAIsAJYAGURU, who also resides in that same direction. Aksobhya's most common MUDRA is the BHuMISPARsAMUDRA, and he often holds a VAJRA. His consort is either MAmakī or LocanA.
akunin shoki. (惡人正機). In Japanese, lit. "evil people have the right capacity"; the emblematic teaching of the JoDO SHINSHu teacher SHINRAN (1173-1263), which suggests that AMITABHA's compassion is directed primarily to evildoers. When AmitAbha was still the monk named DHARMAKARA, he made a series of forty-eight vows (PRAnIDHANA) that he promised to fulfill before he became a buddha. The most important of these vows to much of the PURE LAND tradition is the eighteenth, in which he vows that all beings who call his name will be reborn in his pure land of SUKHAVATĪ. This prospect of salvation has nothing to do with whether one is a monk or layperson, man or woman, saint or sinner, learned or ignorant. In this doctrine, Shinran goes so far as to claim that if a good man can be reborn in the pure land, so much more so can an evil man. This is because the good man remains attached to the delusion that his virtuous deeds will somehow bring about his salvation, while the evil man has abandoned this conceit and accepts that only through AmitAbha's grace will rebirth in the pure land be won.
A-law "standard" The {ITU-T} {standard} for {nonuniform quantising logarithmic compression}. The equation for A-law is | A | ------- (m/mp) |m/mp| =" 1/A | 1+ln A y = | | sgn(m) | ------ (1 + ln A|m/mp|) 1/A =" |m/mp| =" 1 | 1+ln A Values of u=100 and 255, A=87.6, mp is the Peak message value, m is the current quantised message value. (The formulae get simpler if you substitute x for m/mp and sgn(x) for sgn(m); then -1 "= x "= 1.) Converting from {u-LAW} to A-LAW introduces {quantising errors}. u-law is used in North America and Japan, and A-law is used in Europe and the rest of the world and international routes. [The Audio File Formats FAQ] (1995-02-21)
A-law ::: (standard) The ITU-T standard for nonuniform quantising logarithmic compression.The equation for A-law is | A| -- -- -- - (m/mp) |m/mp| = 1/A simpler if you substitute x for m/mp and sgn(x) for sgn(m); then -1 = x = 1.)Converting from u-LAW to A-LAW introduces quantising errors. u-law is used in North America and Japan, and A-law is used in Europe and the rest of the world and international routes.[The Audio File Formats FAQ] (1995-02-21)
Allies ::: The nations, including the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union, as well as the Free French of Charles De Gaulle, that joined in the war against Germany and the other Axis nations. The Soviet Union was an ally of the Nazis between August 23, 1939, when the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed, and June 22, 1941, when Hitler attacked Russia. Britain became an ally of the Soviet Union only after Stalin and Hitler went to war. The United States became an ally of the Soviet Union only after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Hitler, allied to Japan, declared war on the United States.
All of these factors were seen by the Faxiang school as being simply projections of consciousness (VIJNAPTIMĀTRALĀ). As noted earlier, consciousness (VIJNĀNA) was itself subdivided into an eightfold schema: the six sensory consciousnesses (visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory, tactile, and mental), plus the seventh ego consciousness (manas, or KLIstAMANAS), which invests these sensory experiences with selfhood, and an eighth "storehouse consciousness" (ālayavijNāna), which stores the seeds or potentialities (BĪJA) of these experiences until they sprout as new cognition. One of the most controversial doctrines of the Faxiang school was its rejection of a theory of inherent enlightenment or buddhahood (i.e., TATHĀGATAGARBHA) and its advocacy of five distinct spiritual lineages or destinies (PANCAGOTRA): (1) the TATHĀGATA lineage (GOTRA), for those destined to become buddhas; (2) the PRATYEKABUDDHA lineage, for those destined to become ARHATs via the pratyekabuddha vehicle; (3) the sRĀVAKAYĀNA lineage, for those who will become arhats via the sRĀVAKA vehicle; (4) those of indefinite (ANIYATA) lineage, who may follow any of three vehicles; and (5) those without lineage (agotra), who are ineligible for liberation or who have lost the potential to become enlightened by becoming "incorrigibles" (ICCHANTIKA). The Faxiang school's claim that beings belonged to these various lineages because of the seeds (BĪJA) already present in the mind seemed too fatalistic to its East Asian rivals. In addition, Faxiang's acceptance of the notion that some beings could completely lose all yearning for enlightenment and fall permanently into the state of icchantikas so profoundly conflicted with the pervasive East Asian acceptance of innate enlightenment that it thwarted the school's aspirations to become a dominant tradition in China, Korea, or Japan. Even so, much in the Faxiang analysis of consciousness, as well as its exegetical techniques, were incorporated into mainstream scholasticism in East Asia and continued to influence the subsequent development of Buddhism in the region.
Ame No Mi Naka Nushi No Kami (Japanese) Divine monarch of the central heaven; the first of three arupa (formless) spiritual beings to appear from kon-ton (chaos) in Japanese cosmogony (SD 1:214).
Amida. Japanese pronunciation of the Sinographic transcripton of the name AMITABHA, the buddha who is the primary focus of worship in the PURE LAND traditions of Japan. See JoDOSHu; JoDO SHINSHu.
Amitabha of the West, whose Tibetan name is Wod-pag-med (O-pa me) is the ruling deity of Sukhavati (the western paradise or pure land) and in China and Japan is universally worshiped as Amida-buddha. Esoterically, there are seven dhyani-buddhas (five only have manifested thus far) who represent “both cosmic entities and the rays or reflections of these cosmic originals which manifest in man as monads” (FSO 507; cf SD 1:108).
AmitAbha. (T. 'Od dpag med/Snang ba mtha' yas; C. Amituo fo/Wuliangguang fo; J. Amida butsu/Muryoko butsu; K. Amit'a pul/Muryanggwang pul 阿彌陀佛/無量光佛). In Sanskrit, "Limitless Light," the buddha of the western PURE LAND of SUKHAVATĪ, one of the most widely worshipped buddhas in the MAHAYANA traditions. As recounted in the longer SUKHAVATĪVYuHASuTRA, numerous eons ago, a monk named DHARMAKARA vowed before the buddha LOKEsVARARAJA to follow the BODHISATTVA path to buddhahood, asking him to set forth the qualities of buddha-fields (BUDDHAKsETRA). DharmAkara then spent five KALPAS in meditation, concentrating all of the qualities of all buddha-fields into a single buddha field that he would create upon his enlightenment. He then reappeared before LokesvararAja and made forty-eight specific vows (PRAnIDHANA). Among the most famous were his vow that those who, for as few as ten times over the course of their life, resolved to be reborn in his buddha-field would be reborn there; and his vow that he would appear at the deathbed of anyone who heard his name and remembered it with trust. DharmakAra then completed the bodhisattva path, thus fulfilling all the vows he had made, and became the buddha AmitAbha in the buddha-field called sukhAvatī. Based on the larger and shorter versions of the SukhAvatīvyuhasutra as well as the apocryphal GUAN WULIANGSHOU JING (*AmitAyurdhyAnasutra), rebirth in AmitAbha's buddha-field became the goal of widespread Buddhist practice in India, East Asia, and Tibet, with the phrase "Homage to AmitAbha Buddha" (C. namo Amituo fo; J. NAMU AMIDABUTSU; K. namu Amit'a pul) being a central element of East Asian Buddhist practice. AmitAbha's Indian origins are obscure, and it has been suggested that his antecedents lie in Persian Zoroastrianism, where symbolism of light and darkness abounds. His worship dates back at least as far as the early centuries of the Common Era, as attested by the fact that the initial Chinese translation of the SukhAvatīvyuhasutra is made in the mid-second century CE, and he is listed in the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra") as the ninth son of the buddha MahAbhijNA JNAnAbhibhu. The Chinese pilgrims FAXIAN and XUANZANG make no mention of him by name in their accounts of their travels to India in the fifth and seventh centuries CE, respectively, though they do include descriptions of deities who seem certain to have been AmitAbha. Scriptures relating to AmitAbha reached Japan in the seventh century, but he did not become a popular religious figure until some three hundred years later, when his worship played a major role in finally transforming what had been previously seen as an elite and foreign tradition into a populist religion. In East Asia, the cult of AmitAbha eventually became so widespread that it transcended sectarian distinction, and AmitAbha became the most popular buddha in the region. In Tibet, AmitAbha worship dates to the early propagation of Buddhism in that country in the eighth century, although it never became as prevalent as in East Asia. In the sixteenth century, the fifth DALAI LAMA gave the title PAn CHEN LAMA to his teacher, BLO BZANG CHOS KYI RGYAL MTSHAN, and declared him to be an incarnation of AmitAbha (the Dalai Lama himself having been declared the incarnation of Avalokitesvara, AmitAbha's emanation). ¶ The names "AmitAbha" and "AmitAyus" are often interchangeable, both deriving from the Sanskrit word "amita," meaning "limitless," "boundless," or "infinite"; there are some intimations that Amita may actually have been the original name of this buddha, as evidenced, for example, by the fact that the Chinese transcription Amituo [alt. Emituo] transcribes the root word amita, not the two longer forms of the name. The distinction between the two names is preserved in the Chinese translations "Wuliangguang" ("Infinite Light") for AmitAbha and Wuliangshou ("Infinite Life") for AmitAyus, neither of which is used as often as the transcription Amituo. Both AmitAbha and AmitAyus serve as epithets of the same buddha in the longer SukhAvatīvyuhasutra and the Guan Wuliangshou jing, two of the earliest and most important of the sutras relating to his cult. In Tibet, his two alternate names were simply translated: 'Od dpag med ("Infinite Light") and Tshe dpag med ("Infinite Life"). Despite the fact that the two names originally refer to the same deity, they have developed distinctions in ritual function and iconography, and AmitAyus is now considered a separate form of AmitAbha rather than just a synonym for him. ¶ AmitAbha is almost universally shown in DHYANASANA, his hands at his lap in DHYANAMUDRA, though there are many variations, such as standing or displaying the VITARKAMUDRA or VARADAMUDRA. As one of the PANCATATHAGATA, AmitAbha is the buddha of the padma family and is situated in the west. In tantric depictions he is usually red in color and is shown in union with his consort PAndarA, and in East Asia he is commonly accompanied by his attendants AVALOKITEsVARA (Ch. GUANYIN) and MAHASTHAMAPRAPTA. See also JINGTU SANSHENG; WANGSHENG.
AmitAyus. (T. Tshe dpag med; C. Wuliangshou fo; J. Muryoju butsu; K. Muryangsu pul 無量壽佛). In Sanskrit, the buddha or bodhisattva of "Limitless Life" or "Infinite Lifespan." Although the name originally was synonymous with AMITABHA, in the tantric traditions, AmitAyus has developed distinguishing characteristics and is now sometimes considered to be an independent form of AmitAbha. The Japanese SHINGON school, for example, uses Muryoju in representations of the TAIZoKAI (garbhadhAtumandala) and Amida (AmitAbha) in the KONGoKAI (vajradhAtumandala). AmitAyus is often central in tantric ceremonies for prolonging life and so has numerous forms and appellations in various groupings, such as one of six and one of nine. He is shown in bodhisattva guise, with crown and jewels, sitting in DHYANASANA with both hands in DHYANAMUDRA and holding a water pot (kalasa) full of AMṚTA (here the nectar of long life); like AmitAbha, he is usually red.
AmoghapAsa (Lokesvara). (T. Don yod zhags pa; C. Bukong Juansuo; J. Fuku Kenjaku; K. Pulgong Kyonsak 不空羂索). A popular tantric form of AVALOKITEsVARA, primarily distinguished by his holding of a snare (pAsa); his name is interpreted as "Lokesvara with the unfailing snare." Like Avalokitesvara, he is worshipped as a savior of beings, his snare understood to be the means by which he rescues devotees. His worship seems to have developed in India during the sixth century, as evidenced by the 587 Chinese translation of the AmoghapAsahṛdayasutra (the first chapter of the much longer AmoghapAsakalparAjasutra) by JNAnagupta. Numerous translations of scriptures relating to AmoghapAsa by BODHIRUCI, XUANZANG, and AMOGHAVAJRA and others up into the tenth century attest to the continuing popularity of the deity. The earliest extant image of AmoghapAsa seems to be in Japan, in the monastery of ToDAIJI in Nara, dating from the late seventh century. There are many extant images of the god in northwest India from the ninth and tenth centuries; some earlier images of Avalokitesvara from the eighth century, which depict him holding a snare, have been identified as AmoghapAsa, although the identification remains uncertain. Tibetan translations of the AmoghapAsahṛdayasutra and the AmoghapAsakalparAjasutra are listed in the eighth-century LDAN DKAR MA catalogue, though it is later translations that are included in the BKA' 'GYUR, where they are classified as kriyAtantras. (The Tibetan canon includes some eight tantras concerning AmoghapAsa.) Numerous images of AmoghapAsa from Java dating to the early second millennium attest to his popularity in that region; in the Javanese custom of deifying kings, King Visnuvardhana (d. 1268) was identified as an incarnation of AmoghapAsa. AmoghapAsa can appear in forms with any number of pairs of hands, although by far the most popular are the six-armed seated and eight-armed standing forms. Other than his defining snare, he often carries a three-pointed staff (tridanda) but, like other multiarmed deities, can be seen holding almost any of the tantric accoutrements. AmoghapAsa is depicted in bodhisattva guise and, like Avalokitesvara, has an image of AMITABHA in his crown and is occasionally accompanied by TARA, BHṚKUTĪ, SudhanakumAra, and HAYAGRĪVA.
Ancestor worship: A religious system based on the belief that the spirits of the dead linger about their earthly habitations, have powers of protecting and blessing those responsible for their care, and of avenging their neglect. The doctrine and practice is observed and followed in various parts of the world, notably in China and Japan.
anchin kokkaho. (安鎭國家法). In Japanese, the "technique for pacifying the state." Japanese TENDAI priests often performed this ritual in the palace at the request of the emperor. Offerings were made to the deity fudo myoo (S. ACALANATHA-VIDYARAJA), who in return would quell the demons who were disturbing the peace of the state. A simplified version of this ritual known as kachin or chintaku is now commonly performed for laity at their homes.
ango. (S. vArsika; P. vassa; C. anju; K. an'go 安居). In Japanese, "peaceful dwelling"; also known as gegyo ("summer dwelling"), zage ("sitting in the summer"), zaro ("sitting age"), etc. The term is used in ZEN monasteries to refer either to the summer rainy season retreat, which usually lasts for three months, or to an intensive period of meditative training during the summer rain's retreat. The beginning of this period is known as kessei (C. JIEZHI), but this term is also occasionally used in place of ango to refer to the meditation retreat. In the Soto Zen tradition (SoToSHu), ango is often used as a means of measuring the dharma age, or horo (C. FALA), of a monk. A monk who completes his first summer retreat is known as "one who has entered the community," five retreats or more a "saint," and ten retreats or more a "master." See also VARsA.
anjitsu. (C. anshi; K. amsil 庵室). In Japanese "hut" or "hermitage"; the term is used for a small residence often used by monks to further their training away from the company of others. According to various sources, such as the SHASEKISHu, an anshitsu was preferably built deep in the mountains, far away from the hustle and bustle of cities and towns, which might distract monks from their practice. See also AN.
ankokuji. (安國寺). In Japanese, "temples for the pacification of the country." After the Ashikaga shogunate took over control of the capital of Kyoto from the rapidly declining forces of Emperor Godaigo (1288-1339) between the years 1336 and 1337, they sought to heal the scars of civil war by following the suggestions of the ZEN master MUSo SOSEKI and building pagodas and temples in every province of Japan. By constructing these temples, the shogunate also sought to subsume local military centers under the control of the centralized government, just as the monarch Shomu (r. 724-749) had once done with the KOKUBUNJI system. These pagodas were later called rishoto, and the temples were given the name ankokuji in 1344. Many of these temples belonged to the lineages of the GOZAN system, especially that of Muso and ENNI BEN'EN.
Annen. (安然) (841-889?). Japanese TENDAI (C. TIANTAI) monk considered to be the founder of Japanese Tendai esoterism and thus also known as Himitsu daishi. Annen studied under ENNIN and initiated a reform of the Japanese Tendai tradition by incorporating new teachings from China called MIKKYo, or esoteric Buddhism. He received the bodhisattva precepts at ENRYAKUJI on Mt. Hiei (HIEIZAN) in 859 and by 884 had become the main dharma lecturer at Gangyoji. He subsequently was the founder of a monastery called Godaiin and is therefore often known to the tradition as "master Godaiin" (Godaiin daitoku or Godaiin ajari). Over one hundred works are attributed to Annen on both the exoteric and esoteric teachings of Tendai as well as on Sanskrit SIDDHAM orthography; dozens are extant, including texts that are considered primary textbooks of the Japanese Tendai tradition, such as his Hakke hiroku, Kyojijo, and Shittanzo. Annen is especially important for having examined comprehensively the relationship between precepts associated with the esoteric tradition and the Buddhist monastic precepts, including the bodhisattva precepts (BODHISATTVAsĪLA); his ultimate conclusion is that all precepts ultimately derive from specific sets of esoteric precepts.
Anthropolatry: (Gr.) The worshipping or cult of a human being conceived as a god, and conversely of a god conceived as a human being. The deification of individual human beings was practiced by most early civilizations, and added much colour to the folklore and religion of such countries as Egypt, Greece, India and Japan. The human origin of anthropolatry is illustrated by the failure of Alexander the Great to obtain divine honours from his soldiers. In contrast, the Shinto religion in Japan still considers the emperor as a "visible deity", and maintains shrines devoted to brave warriors or heroes. Monotheistic religions consider anthropolatry as a superstition. -- T.G.
Apart from the remarkable learning that these earlier works display, two things are noteworthy about them. The first is that they are principally based on a single source language or Buddhist tradition. The second is that they are all at least a half-century old. Many things have changed in the field of Buddhist Studies over the past fifty years, some for the worse, some very much for the better. One looks back in awe at figures like Louis de la Vallée Poussin and his student Msgr. Étienne Lamotte, who were able to use sources in Sanskrit, PAli, Chinese, Japanese, and Tibetan with a high level of skill. Today, few scholars have the luxury of time to develop such expertise. Yet this change is not necessarily a sign of the decline of the dharma predicted by the Buddha; from several perspectives, we are now in the golden age of Buddhist Studies. A century ago, scholarship on Buddhism focused on the classical texts of India and, to a much lesser extent, China. Tibetan and Chinese sources were valued largely for the access they provided to Indian texts lost in the original Sanskrit. The Buddhism of Korea was seen as an appendage to the Buddhism of China or as a largely unacknowledged source of the Buddhism of Japan. Beyond the works of "the PAli canon," relatively little was known of the practice of Buddhism in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. All of this has changed for the better over the past half century. There are now many more scholars of Buddhism, there is a much higher level of specialization, and there is a larger body of important scholarship on each of the many Buddhist cultures of Asia. In addition, the number of adherents of Buddhism in the West has grown significantly, with many developing an extensive knowledge of a particular Buddhist tradition, whether or not they hold the academic credentials of a professional Buddhologist. It has been our good fortune to be able to draw upon this expanding body of scholarship in preparing The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism.
ardhaparyanka. (T. skyil krung phyed pa; C. ban jiafuzuo; J. hankafuza; K. pan kabujwa 半跏趺坐). In Sanskrit, the "half cross-legged" posture (ASANA). This particular posture may be formed in a number of ways. As a seated pose, either foot rests on the opposite thigh with the remaining leg bent forward. Alternatively, both shins may be loosely crossed at the ankles while resting or crouching on the seat. As a standing pose, it may form a dancing posture sometimes described as NṚTYASANA. Some standing Japanese images described as being in ardhaparyanka may show a raised foot lifted straight up off the ground, as if about to stomp down. See also VAJRAPARYAnKA; ARDHAPADMASANA.
Arnold, Edwin. (1832-1904). Sir Edwin Arnold was educated at Oxford and served as principal of a government college in Pune, India, from 1856 to 1861, during which time he studied Indian languages and published translations from the Sanskrit. He eventually returned to England, due primarily to the death of a child and his wife's illness. Upon his return, he became a writer for The Daily Telegraph newspaper, where he was appointed chief editor in 1873. He wrote his most famous work, The Light of Asia, during this period. After leaving his editorial position, he traveled widely in Asia, especially in Japan, and published popular accounts of his travels. Although largely forgotten today, The Light of Asia was in its own time a foundational text for anyone in the English-speaking world interested in Buddhism. First published in 1879, The Light of Asia was a poetic rendering of the life of the Buddha. Arnold used as his chief source a French translation of the LALITAVISTARA, one of the more ornate and belletristic Indian biographies of the Buddha. Arnold, however, added his own embellishments and deployed important scenes from the life of the Buddha differently than had previous authors in order to intensify the narrative. Despite the animosity it aroused in many Christian pulpits, the book was a favorite of Queen Victoria, who subsequently knighted Arnold. Although it has long been rendered obsolete, The Light of Asia played a seminal role in introducing the history and belief systems of Buddhism to the West. Arnold also played an important role in rallying support worldwide for the restoration of the important Buddhist pilgrimage site of BODHGAYA, the place where the Buddha achieved enlightenment. He and Reverend SUMAnGALA sent a petition to the Queen of England requesting permission to buy the land and the temple from the Hindus and restore the neglected site. Although unsuccessful, his efforts eventually came to fruition after Indian independence in 1949, when the Indian government returned control of BodhgayA to the Buddhists.
Arya. (P. ariya; T. 'phags pa; C. sheng; J. sho; K. song 聖). In Sanskrit, "noble" or "superior." A term appropriated by the Buddhists from earlier Indian culture to refer to its saints and used technically to denote a person who has directly perceived reality and has become a "noble one." In the fourfold path structure of the mainstream schools, an Arya is a person who has achieved at least the first level of sanctity, that of stream-enterer (SROTAAPANNA), or above. In the fivefold path system, an Arya is one who has achieved at least the path of vision (DARsANAMARGA), or above. The SARVASTIVADA (e.g., ABHIDHARMAKOsABHAsYA) and THERAVADA (e.g., VISUDDHIMAGGA) schools of mainstream Buddhism both recognize seven types of noble ones (Arya, P. ariya). In e.g., the VISUDDHIMAGGA, these are listed in order of their intellectual superiority as (1) follower of faith (P. saddhAnusAri; S. sRADDHANUSARIN); (2) follower of the dharma (P. dhammAnusAri; S. DHARMANUSARIN); (3) one who is freed by faith (P. saddhAvimutta; S. sRADDHAVIMUKTA); (4) one who has formed right view (P. ditthippatta; S. DṚstIPRAPTA), by developing both faith and knowledge; (5) one who has bodily testimony (P. kAyasakkhi; S. KAYASAKsIN), viz., through the temporary suspension of mentality in the equipoise of cessation (NIRODHASAMAPATTI); (6) one who is freed by wisdom (P. paNNAvimutta; S. PRAJNAVIMUKTA), by freeing oneself through analysis; and (7) one who is freed both ways (P. ubhatobhAgavimutta; S. UBHAYATOBHAGAVIMUKTA), by freeing oneself through both meditative absorption (P. jhAna; S. DHYANA) and wisdom (P. paNNA; S. PRAJNA). In the AbhidharmakosabhAsya, the seven types of Arya beings are presented in a slightly different manner, together with the list of eight noble persons (ARYAPUDGALA) based on candidates for (pratipannika) and those who have reached the result of (phalastha) stream-enterer (srotaApanna), once-returner (SAKṚDAGAMIN), nonreturner (ANAGAMIN), and ARHAT; these are again further expanded into a list of twenty members of the Arya VIMsATIPRABHEDASAMGHA and in MahAyAna explanations into forty-eight or more ARYABODHISATTVAs. The Chinese character sheng, used to render this term in East Asia, has a long indigenous history and several local meanings; see, for example, the Japanese vernacular equivalent HIJIRI. It is also the name of one of two Indian esoteric GUHYASAMAJATANTRA traditions, receiving its name from Arya NAgArjuna, the author of the PANCAKRAMA.
As a general rule, we provide multiple language equivalencies only for terms that were traditionally known in the other languages. For this reason, many late tantric terms known only in India and Tibet will not have East Asian equivalents (even though equivalents were in some cases created in the twentieth century); Chinese texts not translated into Tibetan will give only Japanese and Korean equivalencies; Japanese and Korean figures and texts not generally known in China will have only Japanese and Korean transcriptions, and so forth.
"As for the spectator and the coils of the dragon, it is the Chino-Japanese image for the world-force extending itself in the course of the universe and this expresses the attitude of the witness seeing it all and observing in its unfolding the unrolling of the play of the Divine Lila.” Letters on Yoga
“As for the spectator and the coils of the dragon, it is the Chino-Japanese image for the world-force extending itself in the course of the universe and this expresses the attitude of the witness seeing it all and observing in its unfolding the unrolling of the play of the Divine Lila.” Letters on Yoga
astamahopaputra. (T. nye ba'i sras chen brgyad; C. ba da pusa; J. hachidai bosatsu; K. p'al tae posal 八大菩薩). In Sanskrit, the "eight great associated sons"; a group of eight bodhisattvas also known as the AstAMAHABODHISATTVA or "eight great bodhisattvas"; they are KsITIGARBHA, AKAsAGARBHA, AVALOKITEsVARA, VAJRAPAnI, MAITREYA, SARVANĪVARAnAVIsKAMBHIN, SAMANTABHADRA, and MANJUsRĪ. Textual evidence for the grouping is found as early as the third century, the date of ZHI QIAN's Chinese translation of the Astabuddhakasutra (Fo shuo ba jixiangshen zhoujing). In earlier representations, they flank either sAKYAMUNI or AMITABHA. Their roles are laid out in the Astamandalakasutra, where the aims of their worship are essentially mundane-absolution from transgressions, fulfillment of desires, and protection from ills. The grouping is known throughout Asia, from northern India, where they first appeared in ELLORA, Ratnagiri, and NALANDA, and from there as far east as Japan and Indonesia-indeed, virtually anywhere MAHAYANA and tantric Buddhism flourished. They figure as a group in TANTRAs of various classes, where their number of arms corresponds to the main deity of the MAndALA and their colors correspond to the direction in which they are placed. In the mandala of the GUHYASAMAJATANTRA, they flank the central figure AKsOBHYA, who appears in the form of Vajradhṛk and his consort SparsavajrA. When each has a consort, the females are called the astapujAdevī ("eight offering goddesses"). There are four in the GuhyasamAjatantra mandala: RupavajrA, sabdavajrA, GandhavajrA, and RasavajrA. In the vajradhAtu mahAmandala, the group of bodhisattvas is expanded to sixteen.
A striking similarity is present in the mythology of the Algonquin Indians of North America; their chief deity was a mighty hare known as Menabosho or Michabo, to whom they went at death. One account places him in the east, another in the west. The ancient Germanic and Scandinavian peoples used the hare as a symbol, being sacred to the nature goddess Freyja; likewise to the Anglo-Saxon Ostara, goddess of springtime. This is believed to be the basis for the present-day association of the rabbit or hare with Easter. The anthropomorphic idea is found also among other races, very frequently among the Mongolians, Chinese, Japanese, and other Far Eastern peoples. It was considered to be androgynous, thus typifying an attribute of the creative Logos.
Asukadera. (飛鳥寺) In Japanese, "Asuka Temple"; also known as Hokoji ("Monastery of the Flourishing Dharma"), the Asukadera was built during the ASUKA period on a site known as the Amakashi no Oka by the Asuka River near Nara, Japan. Shortly after the death of Emperor Yomei in 587, the powerful vassals Mononobe no Moriya (d. 587), who represented the indigenous ritual specialists, and Soga no Umako (551?-626), a supporter of Buddhism who came from the Korean peninsula, found themselves caught in battle over imperial succession. In celebration of the Soga clan's victory over the Mononobe and the death of Moriya, the Soga commenced the construction of the first complete monastic compound in Japan, which they named Hokoji in 588. Hokoji was completed nine years later in 596 and for more than a century served as the central monastic complex of the Yamato court. The large monastic compound contained a central hall or KONDo and a central pagoda flanked by two other halls. A large lecture hall flanked by a belfry and SuTRA repository was located behind the main monastic complex. According to the NIHON SHOKI ("Historical Records of Japan"), Empress Suiko commissioned two sixteen-feet gilt-bronze icons of the Buddha to be made by Tori Busshi for installment in Hokoji. When the capital was moved from Fujiwarakyo to Heijokyo (modern-day Nara) in 710, the major monasteries including Hokoji were moved as well. Hokoji, otherwise known as Asukadera, was subsequently renamed Gangoji.
Asuka. (飛鳥). Japan's first historical epoch, named after a region in the plains south of modern NARA. Until the eighth century (710) when the capital was moved to Nara, a new palace, and virtually a new capital, was built every time a new ruler succeeded to the throne. One of the earliest capitals was located in the region of Asuka. The Asuka period is characterized by the rise of powerful aristocratic clans such as the Soga and Mononobe and attempts such as the Taika reform (646) to counteract the rise of these clans and to strengthen the authority of the emperor. According to the NIHON SHOKI ("Historical Records of Japan"), the inception of Buddhism occurred in the Japanese isles during this period, when Emperor Kimmei (r. 532-571) received an image of the Buddha from the King Songmyong of the Korean kingdom of Paekche in 552 (var. 538). Buddhism became the central religion of the Asuka court with the support of such famous figures as Prince SHoTOKU, Empress Suiko (r. 593-628), and Empress Jito (r. 686-697). After the establishment of the grand monastery ASUKADERA by the descendants of a Korean clan, other temples modeled after early Chinese monastery campuses, such as HoRYuJI, were also constructed during this period. These temples enshrined the magnificent sculptures executed by Tori Busshi.
A. The first vowel and letter in the Sanskrit alphabet. The phoneme "a" is thought to be the source of all other phonemes and its corresponding letter the origin of all other letters. As the basis of both the Sanskrit phonemic system and the written alphabet, the letter "a" thus comes to be invested with mystical significance as the source of truth, nondifferentiation, and emptiness (suNYATA), or even of the universe as a whole. The PRAJNAPARAMITASARVATATHAGATAMATA-EKAKsARA, the shortest of the perfection of wisdom scriptures, also describes how the entirety of the perfection of wisdom is subsumed by this one letter. The letter in the Sanskrit SIDDHAM alphabet gained special significance within the esoteric Buddhist traditions in Japan (MIKKYo), such as Shingon (see SHINGONSHu), which considered it to be the "seed" (BĪJA) of MAHAVAIROCANA, the central divinity of esoteric Buddhism, and used it in a distinctive type of meditation called AJIKAN ("contemplation of the letter 'a'"). The letter "a," which is said to be originally uncreated (AJI HONPUSHo), is interpreted to be the essence of all phenomena in the universe and the DHARMAKAYA of the buddha MahAvairocana. In the East Asian CHAN traditions, the letter "a" is also sometimes understood to represent the buddha-nature (FOXING, S. BUDDHADHATU) of all sentient beings.
At more than one million words, this is the largest dictionary of Buddhism ever produced in the English language. Yet even at this length, it only begins to represent the full breadth and depth of the Buddhist tradition. Many great dictionaries and glossaries have been produced in Asia over the long history of Buddhism and Buddhist Studies. One thinks immediately of works like the MahAvyutpatti, the ninth-century Tibetan-Sanskrit lexicon said to have been commissioned by the king of Tibet to serve as a guide for translators of the dharma. It contains 9,565 entries in 283 categories. One of the great achievements of twentieth-century Buddhology was the Bukkyo Daijiten ("Encyclopedia of Buddhism"), published in ten massive volumes between 1932 and 1964 by the distinguished Japanese scholar Mochizuki Shinko. Among English-language works, there is William Soothill and Lewis Hodous's A Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms, published in 1937, and, from the same year, G. P. Malalasekera's invaluable Dictionary of PAli Proper Names. In preparing the present dictionary, we have sought to build upon these classic works in substantial ways.
Avalokitesvara. (T. Spyan ras gzigs; C. Guanshiyin/Guanyin; J. Kanzeon/Kannon; K. Kwanseŭm/Kwanŭm 觀世音/觀音). In Sanskrit, "Lord who Looks Down [in Empathy]"; the BODHISATTVA of compassion, the most widely worshipped of the MAHAYANA bodhisattvas and one of the earliest to appear in Buddhist literature. According to legend, Avalokitesvara was produced from a beam of light that radiated from the forehead of AMITABHA while that buddha was deep in meditation. For this reason, Buddhist iconography often depicts AmitAbha as embedded in Avalokitesvara's crown. His name dates back to the beginning of the Common Era, when he replaced the Vedic god BRAHMA as the attendant to sAKYAMUNI Buddha, inheriting in turn BrahmA's attribute of the lotus (PADMA). Images of Avalokitesvara as PADMAPAnI LOKEsVARA ("Lord with a Lotus in his Hand"), an early name, are numerous. Avalokitesvara is the interlocutor or main figure in numerous important MahAyAna sutras, including the PRAJNAPARAMITAHṚDAYASuTRA ("Heart Sutra"). His cult was introduced to China in the first century CE, where his name was translated as Guanshiyin ("Perceiver of the Sounds of the World") or GUANYIN ("Perceiver of Sounds"); his cult entered Korea and Japan with the advent of Buddhism in those countries. Avalokitesvara was once worshipped widely in Southeast Asia as well, beginning at the end of the first millennium CE. Although the MahAyAna tradition eventually faded from the region, images of Avalokitesvara remain. Avalokitesvara is also the patron deity of Tibet, where he is said to have taken the form of a monkey and mated with TARA in the form of a local demoness to produce the Tibetan race. Tibetan political and religious leaders have been identified as incarnations of him, such as the seventh-century king SRONG BTSAN SGAM PO (although that attribution was most likely a later addition to the king's legacy) and, notably, the DALAI LAMAs. The PO TA LA Palace, the residence of the Dalai Lamas, in the Tibetan capital of LHA SA is named for Avalokitesvara's abode on Mount POTALAKA in India. In China, Avalokitesvara as Guanyin underwent a transformation in gender into a popular female bodhisattva, although the male iconographic form also persists throughout East Asia. PUTUOSHAN, located off the east coast of China south of Shanghai, is said to be Potalaka. Avalokitesvara is generally depicted in the full raiments of a bodhisattva, often with an image of AmitAbha in his crown. He appears in numerous forms, among them the two-armed PadmapAni who stands and holds a lotus flower; the four-armed seated Avalokitesvara, known either as Caturbhuja Avalokitesvara [CaturbhujAvalokitesvara] or CintAmani Avalokitesvara [CintAmanyavalokitesvara], who holds the wish-fulfilling jewel (CINTAMAnI) with his central hands in ANJALIMUDRA, and a lotus and crystal rosary in his left and right hands, respectively; the eleven-armed, eleven-faced EKADAsAMUKHA; and the thousand-armed and thousand-headed SAHASRABHUJASAHASRANETRAVALOKITEsVARA (q.v. MAHAKARUnIKA). Tradition holds that his head split into multiple skulls when he beheld the suffering of the world. Numerous other forms also exist in which the god has three or more heads, and any number of arms. In his wrathful form as AstabhayatrAnAvalokitesvara (T. Spyan ras gzigs 'jigs pa brgyad skyob), "Avalokitesvara who Protects against the Eight Fears," the bodhisattva stands in ARDHAPARYAnKA ("half cross-legged posture") and has one face and eight hands, each of which holds a symbol of one of the eight fears. This name is also given to eight separate forms of Avalokitesvara that are each dedicated to protecting from one of the eight fears, namely: AgnibhayatrAnAvalokitesvara ("Avalokitesvara Who Protects from Fear of Fire") and so on, replacing fire with Jala (water), SiMha (lion), Hasti (elephant), Danda (cudgel), NAga (snake), dAkinī (witch) [alt. PisAcī]; and Cora (thief). In addition to his common iconographic characteristic, the lotus flower, Avalokitesvara also frequently holds, among other accoutrements, a jeweled rosary (JAPAMALA) given to him by Aksamati (as related in chapter twenty-five of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA), or a vase. In East Asia, Avalokitesvara often appears in a triad: the buddha AmitAbha in the center, flanked to his left and right by his two bodhisattva attendants, Avalokitesvara and MAHASTHAMAPRAPTA, respectively. In Tibet, Avalokitesvara is part of a popular triad with VAJRAPAnI and MANJUsRĪ. As one of the AstAMAHOPAPUTRA, Avalokitesvara also appears with the other bodhisattvas in group representation. The tantric deity AMOGHAPAsA is also a form of Avalokitesvara. The famous mantra of Avalokitesvara, OM MAnI PADME HuM, is widely recited in the MahAyAna traditions and nearly universally in Tibetan Buddhism. In addition to the twenty-fifth chapter of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra, the KARAndAVYuHA is also devoted to him. See also BAIYI GUANYIN; GUANYIN; MIAOSHAN; MAnI BKA' 'BUM.
Axis ::: Enemies of the Allied forces in WWII. The Axis forces originally included Nazi Germany, Italy, and Japan who signed a pact in Berlin on September 27, 1940. They were later joined by Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, and Slovakia.
Ayuthaya. [alt. Ayutthaya]. There are two important places called Ayuthaya in the Buddhist tradition. ¶ Ayuthaya was a city in north-central India, prominent in early Buddhist texts, that is identified as the ancient city of SAKETA; it was said to be the birthplace of the Indian divine-king RAma. ¶ Ayuthaya is the name of a major Thai kingdom and its capital that flourished between 1350 and 1767 CE. The city of Ayuthaya was built on an island at the confluence of the Chao Phraya, Pasak, and Lopburi rivers and grew in importance as the power of its neighbor, the Thai kingdom of SUKHOTHAI, waned. Strategically located and easy to defend, Ayuthaya was accessible to seagoing vessels and commanded the northward trade of the entire Menam basin, whence it grew rapidly into a major Asian entrepôt. Merchant ships from China, Java, Malaya, Japan, India, Sri Lanka, Persia, Portugal, Holland, France, and England regularly docked at its port. One of the world's wealthiest capitals, Ayuthaya contained hundreds of gilded monasteries, temples, and pagodas within its walls and was traversed by grand canals and waterways that served as avenues. Strong Khmer influence is evident in the architecture of Ayuthaya, which developed a distinctive stepped-pyramidal pagoda form called prang. The city's magnificence was extolled in the travelogues of European and Asian visitors alike. Soon after the city's founding, Ayuthaya's kings became enthusiastic patrons of reformed Sinhalese-style THERAVADA Buddhism, inviting missionaries from their stronghold in Martaban to reform the local sangha. The same form of Buddhism was adopted by neighboring Thai states in the north, the Mon kingdom of Pegu, and later the Burmese, making it the dominant form of Buddhism in Southeast Asia. In 1548, the Burmese king, Tabin Shwehti, invaded the kingdom of Ayuthaya and laid siege to its capital, initiating more than two centuries of internecine warfare between the Burmese and the Thai kingdoms, which culminated in the destruction of Ayuthaya in 1767 and the building of a new Thai capital, Bangkok, in 1782.
Baiyi Guanyin. (S. PAndaravAsinī; T. Gos dkar mo; J. Byakue kannon; K. Paegŭi Kwanŭm 白衣觀音). In Chinese, "White-Robed GUANYIN (Perceiver of Sounds)." An esoteric form of the BODHISATTVA AVALOKITEsVARA (known as Guanyin in Chinese), who became a popular focus of cultic worship in East Asia. The cult of Baiyi Guanyin began around the tenth century in China, whence it spread to Korea and Japan. Several indigenous Chinese scriptures praise the compassion and miraculous powers of White-Robed Guanyin. According to the various Baiyi Guanyin APOCRYPHA, she was also a grantor of children, as was Songzi Guanyin. Many testimonials from literati are appended to these scriptures, which attest to Baiyi Guanyin's ability to ensure the birth of sons, although it is also said that she granted children of both genders. Like many other Guanyin-related texts, the White-Robed Guanyin texts frequently invoke esoteric Buddhist terminology such as DHARAnĪ, MUDRA, and MANTRA. Beginning in the tenth century, Baiyi Guanyin's cult was associated with the founding of temples, as well as the production of countless images commissioned by both religious and laity. Many worshippers, especially monastics and royalty, had visions of White-Robed Guanyin. These dreams range from being promised children in return for a residence (such as the Upper Tianzhu monastery outside of Hangzhou, later also associated with Princess MIAOSHAN), to enlarging existing structures or even restoring them once a vision or dream of White-Robed Guanyin occurred. In such visions and dreams, White-Robed Guanyin appeared as a female, thus differentiating this form of the bodhisattva from SHUIYUE GUANYIN (Moon-in-the-Water Avalokitesvara), who was similarly dressed in a white robe, but appeared as a male. Some miracle tales highlighting the donors' names were also produced in honor of Baiyi Guanyin, lending further credence to the accounts of the bodhisattva's miraculous powers.
Bankei Yotaku. (盤珪永琢) (1622-1693). Japanese ZEN master of the Tokugawa period; also known as Eitaku. Bankei was born in the district of Hamada in present-day Hyogo prefecture. According to his sermons, Bankei was dissatisfied with the standard explanations of the concept of "bright virtue" (mingde) found in the CONFUCIAN classic Daxue ("Great Learning"), and sought explanations elsewhere. His search eventually brought him to the temple of Zuioji, the residence of Zen master Unpo Zensho (1568-1653). After he received ordination and the dharma name Yotaku from Unpo, Bankei left his teacher to perform a long pilgrimage (angya) to various temples and hermitages. After what he describes in sermons as an awakening at the age of twenty-six, Bankei continued his post-awakening training under Unpo's senior disciple, Bokuo Sogyu (d. 1694), and perfected the teaching of FUSHo ZEN ("unborn Zen"). Upon hearing of the arrival of the Chinese monk DAOZHE CHAOYUAN in Nagasaki (1651), Bankei traveled to Sofukuji where Daozhe was residing and furthered his studies under the Chinese master. Bankei spent the rest of his life teaching his "unborn Zen" to both lay and clergy in various locations. He also built and restored a great number of temples and hermitages, such as Ryumonji in his native Hamada. In 1672 he was appointed the abbot of the RINZAI monastery of MYoSHINJI in Kyoto.
bantam work ::: --> Carved and painted work in imitation of Japan ware.
Baojing sanmei. (J. Hokyo sanmai/zanmai; K. Pogyong sammae 寶鏡三昧). In Chinese, "Jeweled-Mirror SAMADHI"; a definitive poem on enlightenment and practice from the standpoint of the Chinese CAODONG ZONG; otherwise known as the Baojing sanmei ge, or "GATHA of the Jeweled-Mirror SamAdhi." This lengthy Chinese song is attributed to the Chan master DONGSHAN LIANGJIE and, along with the CANTONG QI, is revered in the Chinese Caodong and Japanese SoTo schools of CHAN and ZEN as the foundational scripture of their tradition. Although the song is traditionally attributed to Dongshan, a number of sources note that Dongshan secretly received this song from his teacher Yunyan Tansheng (780-841), and Dongshan in turn transmitted it to his head disciple CAOSHAN BENJI. The earliest version of this song appears in the entry on Caoshan in the CHANLIN SENGBAO ZHUAN, written in 1123. The Baojing sanmei emphasizes the "inherent enlightenment" (BENJUE; cf. HONGAKU) of sentient beings and the futility of seeking that enlightenment through conscious reflection. Instead, the song urges its audience to allow one's inherently pure enlightened nature to "silently illuminate" itself through meditation (MOZHAO CHAN), as the Buddha did under the BODHI TREE. Numerous commentaries on this song are extant.
Bassui Tokusho. (拔隊得勝) (1327-1387). Japanese monk of the Hotto branch of the RINZAISHu of ZEN; also known as Bassui Zenji. Ordained at the age of twenty-nine, Bassui subsequently began a pilgrimage around the Kanto area of Japan in search of enlightened teachers. He eventually met Koho Kakumyo (1271-1361) of Unjuji in Izumo, and received from him the name Bassui, which means "well above average," lit., "to rise above the rank-and-file." Their relationship, however, remains unclear. After taking leave from Koho, Bassui continued traveling on pilgrimage until he settled down in Kai, where his local patrons established for him the monastery of Kogakuji ("Facing Lofty Peaks Monastery"). Bassui's teachings stress the importance of KoAN (C. GONG'AN) training and especially the notion of doubt (see YIJING; YITUAN). Bassui was also extremely critical of SoTo teachers of his day, despite the fact that his own teacher Koho was once a Soto monk, and he was strongly critical of their use of koan manuals called MONSAN in their training. Although his teacher Koho employed Soto-style "lineage charts" (see KECHIMYAKU SoJo) as a means of attracting lay support, Bassui rejected their use and instead stressed the importance of practice.
beidou qixing. (J. hokuto shichisho; K. puktu ch'ilsong 北斗七星). In Chinese, "seven stars of the Northern Dipper" (viz., the Big Dipper, or Ursa Major); Daoist divinities that are also prominent in Korean Buddhism, where they are typically known as the ch'ilsong. The cult of the seven stars of the Big Dipper developed within Chinese Buddhist circles through influence from indigenous Daoist schools, who worshipped these seven deities to guard against plague and other misfortunes. The apocryphal Beidou qixing yanming jing ("Book of the Prolongation of Life through Worshipping the Seven Stars of the Northern Dipper"), suggests a correlation between the healing buddha BHAIsAJYAGURU and the Big Dipper cult by addressing the seven-star TATHAGATAs (qixing rulai) with names that are very similar to Bhaisajyaguru's seven emanations. This indigenous Chinese scripture (see APOCRYPHA), which derives from an early Daoist text on Big Dipper worship, is certainly dated no later than the late thirteenth or early fourteenth centuries but may have been composed as early as the middle of the eighth century; it later was translated into Uighur, Mongolian, and Tibetan, as part of the Mongol Yuan dynasty's extension of power throughout the Central Asian region. Thanks to this scripture, the seven-star cult became associated in Buddhism with the prolongation of life. We know that seven-star worship had already been introduced into esoteric Buddhist ritual by at least the eighth century because of two contemporary manuals that discuss HOMA fire offerings to the seven stars: VAJRABODHI's (671-741) Beidou qixing niansong yigui ("Ritual Procedures for Invoking the Seven Stars of the Northern Dipper") and his disciple AMOGHAVAJRA's (705-774) Beidou qixing humo miyao yigui ("Esoteric Ritual Procedure for the Homa Offering to the Seven Stars of the Northern Dipper"). Renderings of DHARAnĪ sutras dedicated to the tathAgata TEJAPRABHA (Qixingguang Rulai), who is said to be master of the planets and the twenty-eight asterisms, are also attributed to Amoghavajra's translation bureau. Worship of the seven stars within esoteric Buddhist circles was therefore certainly well established in China by the eighth century during the Tang dynasty and probably soon afterward in Korean Buddhism. ¶ The worship of the Big Dipper in Korea may date as far back as the Megalithic period, as evidenced by the engraving of the Big Dipper and other asterisms on dolmens or menhirs. In the fourth-century Ji'an tombs of the Koguryo kingdom (37 BCE-668 CE), one of the traditional Three Kingdoms of early Korea, a mural of the Big Dipper is found on the north wall of tomb no. 1, along with an accompanying asterism of the six stars of Sagittarius (sometimes called the Southern Dipper) on the south wall; this juxtaposition is presumed to reflect the influence of the Shangqing school of contemporary Chinese Daoism. Court rituals to the seven stars and the tathAgata Tejaprabha date from the twelfth century during the Koryo dynasty. By at least the thirteen century, the full range of texts and ritual practices associated with the seven-star deities were circulating in Korea. At the popular level in Korea, the divinities of the Big Dipper were thought to control longevity, especially for children, and the ch'ilsong cult gained widespread popularity during the Choson dynasty (1392-1910). This popularization is in turn reflected in the ubiquity in Korean monasteries of "seven-stars shrines" (ch'ilsonggak), which were typically located in less-conspicuous locations along the outer perimeter of the monasteries and were worshipped primarily by the nonelite. Inside these shrines were hung seven-star paintings (T'AENGHWA), which typically depict the tathAgatas of the seven stars, with the tathAgata Tejaprabha presiding at the center. There are also several comprehensive ritual and liturgical manuals compiled during the Choson dynasty and Japanese colonial period in Korea that include rituals and invocations to the seven stars and Tejaprabha, most dedicated to the prolongation of life. Along with the mountain god (sansin), who also often has his own shrine in the monasteries of Korea, the role of the ch'ilsong in Korean Buddhism is often raised in the scholarship as an example of Buddhism's penchant to adapt beliefs and practices from rival religions. Although ch'ilsong worship has declined markedly in contemporary Korea, the ch'ilsokche, a worship ceremony dedicated to the tathAgata Tejaprabha, is occasionally held at some Buddhist monasteries on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, with lay believers praying for good fortune and the prevention of calamity.
Bendoho. (辨道法). In Japanese, "Techniques for Pursuing the Way"; a work devoted to the rules of the SAMGHA hall (see C. SENGTANG), written by DoGEN KIGEN. Primarily during his stays at the monasteries Daibutsuji and EIHEIJI, Dogen wrote a number of related manuals on monastic rules (C. QINGGUI), of which the Bendoho is perhaps most important. These manuals, including the Bendoho, were later collected and published together as a single text known as the EIHEI SHINGI. Dogen modeled his regulations after those found in an earlier code of monastic rules produced in China, the CHANYUAN QINGGUI. The Bendoho was therefore heavily influenced by the Chinese Chan master CHANGLU ZONGZE's manual of meditation, ZUOCHAN YI, which was embedded in the Chanyuan qinggui. The text includes guidelines for all of the activities of the saMgha hall, from sitting, walking, sleeping, and cleaning to the practice of seated meditation (J. zazen; C. ZUOCHAN). The Bendoho also contains a version of Dogen's FUKAN ZAZENGI.
Bendowa. (辨道話). In Japanese, "A Talk on Pursuing the Way"; a short essay written in vernacular Japanese by the SoTo ZEN monk DoGEN KIGEN in 1231. Dogen's earliest extant work, the Bendowa contains a brief description of the orthodox transmission to the East of the "true dharma" (shobo; S. SADDHARMA) of the Buddha and also a succinct explanation of Zen in a series of eighteen questions and answers. The Bendowa was later incorporated into Dogen's magnum opus, the SHoBoGENZo. The teachings on Zen meditation found in the Bendowa are similar to those of Dogen's FUKAN ZAZENGI.
Benkenmitsu nikyoron. (辯顯密二教論). In Japanese, literally "Distinguishing the Two Teachings of the Exoteric and Esoteric"; a relatively short treatise composed by the Japanese SHINGON monk KuKAI in the early ninth century. The text is commonly known more simply as the Nikyoron. As the title suggests, the central theme of the Benkenmitsu nikyoron is the elaboration of the difference between the exoteric and esoteric teachings of Buddhism and the demonstration of the latter's superiority. The text begins with a brief introduction, followed by a series of questions and answers, and a short conclusion. The Benkenmitsu nikyoron describes the relation between the exoteric teachings preached by the NIRMAnAKAYA of the Buddha and the esoteric teachings preached by his DHARMAKAYA as that between provisional words spoken according to the different capacities of sentient beings and ultimate truth. By meticulously citing scriptural references, such as the LAnKAVATARASuTRA, the Benkenmitsu nikyoron shows that the dharmakAya, like the nirmAnakAya and SAMBHOGAKAYA, can indeed preach and that it does so in a special language best articulated in such esoteric scriptures as the MAHAVAIROCANABHISAMBODHISuTRA. Whereas the nirmAnakAya speaks the DHARMA with reference to the six perfections (PARAMITA), the dharmakAya employs the language of the three mysteries: the body, speech, and mind of MAHAVAIROCANA expressed in MUDRA, MANTRA, and MAndALA. Like many of kukai's other writings, the arguments presented in his Benkenmitsu nikyoron helped him legitimize the introduction and installment of the new teachings, now known as MIKKYo or esoteric Buddhism, which he had brought back from China. There are several commentaries on the text, including those composed by Seisen (1025-1115), Raiyu (1226-1304), Yukai (1345-1416), and Kaijo (1750-1805).
benlai mianmu. (J. honrai no menmoku; K. pollae myonmok 本來面目). In Chinese, "original face"; an expression used in the CHAN school to describe the inherent state of enlightenment and often synonymous with buddha-nature (BUDDHADHATU; C. FOXING). The term is best known in the GONG'AN attributed by the tradition to the sixth patriarch (LIUZU) HUINENG (638-713), "Not thinking of good, not thinking of evil, at this very moment, what is your original face before your parents conceived you?" (The last line is often found translated as "what is your original face before your parents were born," but the previous rendering is preferred.) This gong'an is often one of the first given to RINZAI ZEN neophytes in Japan as part of their meditation training; the term, however, does not appear in the earlier DUNHUANG version of the LIUZU TAN JING ("Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch"), but only in later Song-dynasty recensions, suggesting it is actually a Song-period locution.
betsuji nenbutsu. (別時念佛). In Japanese, lit. "special-time recitation of the Buddha's name," also known as nyoho nenbutsu; a term for an intensive nenbutsu (C. NIANFO) practice, usually the chanting of the name of the buddha AMITABHA, as mentioned in the oJo YoSHu and SHASEKISHu. This type of recitation is mainly practiced among the followers of the JoDOSHu for a special period of one, seven, ten, or ninety days as a means of overcoming torpor and sluggishness.
BhadrapAla. (T. Bzang skyong; C. Xianhu/Batuoboluo; J. Kengo/Batsudahara; K. Hyonho/Palt'abara 賢護/跋陀波羅) In Sanskrit, "Auspicious Protector"; a lay (GṚHAPATI) BODHISATTVA who is listed as one of the eight great bodhisattvas (S. AstAMAHOPAPUTRA), who have vowed to protect and propagate the true dharma (S. SADDHARMA) in the age of decline (S. SADDHARMAVIPRALOPA; C. MOFA) after sAKYAMUNI Buddha's death and to guard sentient beings. He is also listed in the DAZHIDU LUN (*MahAprajNApAramitAsAstra) as one of the sixteen great bodhisattvas who have remained a householder. In the RATNAKutASuTRA, BhadrapAla is described as the son of a wealthy merchant (gṛhapati) whose enjoyments surpassed even those of INDRA, the king of the gods, himself. In the Banzhou sanmei jing (PRATYUTPANNABUDDHASAMMUKHAVASTHITASAMADHISuTRA), BhadrapAla appears together with his five hundred attendant bodhisattvas to ask the Buddha how bodhisattvas can obtain wisdom that is as deep and broad as the ocean. In the twentieth chapter of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"), BhadrapAla is identified as someone who slighted the Buddha in a previous lifetime and as a result fell into AVĪCI hell. After suffering there for a thousand eons (KALPA) and requiting his offenses, BhadrapAla was again able to encounter the Buddha and finally accept his teaching. He is also mentioned as one of the eighty thousand bodhisattvas who attended the assembly on Vulture Peak (GṚDHRAKutAPARVATA) where sAkyamuni preached in the opening chapter of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra. BhadrapAla eventually became a buddha who attained enlightenment through the contemplation of water. Drawing on this experience, the Chinese apocryphal *suRAMGAMASuTRA (Shoulengyan jing) says that BhadrapAla became enlightened as he entered the bathhouse; hence, the Chinese CHAN tradition enshrined an image of BhadrapAla in the monastic bathhouse and some Japanese Buddhist schools similarly considered him to be the patron of the temple bathhouse.
Bhaisajyaguru. (T. Sman bla; C. Yaoshi rulai; J. Yakushi nyorai; K. Yaksa yorae 藥師如來). In Sanskrit, "Medicine Teacher"; the "Healing Buddha" or "Medicine Buddha," who was the focus of an important salvific cult in the early MAHAYANA tradition. According to his eponymous scripture, the BHAIsAJYAGURUSuTRA, he has a body more brilliant than the sun, which was the color of lapis lazuli (vaiduryamani) and possessed the power to heal illness and physical deformities; his pure land of VaiduryanirbhAsa is located in the east. The origin of Bhaisajyaguru and his healing cult is unclear, although his worship seems to have arisen contemporaneously with the rise of the MahAyAna. BHAIsAJYARAJA and Bhaisajyasamudgata, two bodhisattvas mentioned in the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"), are likely antecedents, and similarities with other "celestial" buddhas like AMITABHA and AKsOBHYA also suggest possible influence from those rival cults. The Bhaisajyagurusutra was translated into Chinese in the seventh century, during the Tang dynasty, when his worship finally achieved the wide recognition that it continues to enjoy within the Chinese tradition. The Bhaisajyagurusutra is also cited in the eighth-century tantric text, MANJUsRĪMuLAKALPA, indicating that his cult had by then achieved widespread acclaim throughout Asia. Bhaisajyaguru was one of the earliest buddhas to gain popularity in Japan, although initially he was familiar only within the imperial court, which constructed monasteries in his honor beginning in the sixth century. By the eighth century, his cult had spread throughout the country, with Bhaisajyaguru being invoked both to cure illness and to ward off dangers. The worship of Bhaisajyaguru seems to have entered Tibet during the eighth century, two versions of the Bhaisajyagurusutra having been translated into Tibetan by the prolific YE SHES SDE and others. Early in the development of his cult, Bhaisajyaguru was divided into a group of eight medicine buddhas (asta-bhaisajyaguru), made up of seven of his emanations plus the principal buddha. Their names vary according to source, and none save Bhaisajyaguru are worshipped individually. Two of these emanations-Suryaprabha and Candraprabha-are often depicted in a triad with Bhaisajyaguru. Further, Bhaisajyaguru is also said to command twelve warriors (YAKsA) related to various astrological categories and to wage war on illness in the name of their leader. Indic images of Bhaisajyaguru are rare, but his depictions are common across both the East Asian and Tibetan cultural spheres. East Asian images are almost uniform in depicting him seated, with his right hand in the gesture of fearlessness (ABHAYAMUDRA) or the gesture of generosity (VARADAMUDRA), his left in his lap, occasionally holding a medicine bowl. In Tibet, he is also shown holding the fruit of the medicinal myrobalan plant.
bhiksunī. (P. bhikkhunī; T. dge slong ma; C. biqiuni; J. bikuni; K. piguni 比丘尼) In Sanskrit, "beggar (female)," commonly translated as "nun." A bhiksunī holds full ordination in her VINAYA lineage and is distinguished from a novice nun (sRAMAnERIKA) or a probationary postulant (sIKsAMAnA) who both accept only the preliminary training rules. The bhiksunī is enjoined to observe the full set of rules of monastic discipline, or PRATIMOKsA, governing fully ordained nuns, which vary from 311 in the PAli vinaya to 364 in the MuLASARVASTIVADA vinaya followed in Tibet (although the order of bhiksunī was never established there). These rules mirror closely those also incumbent on monks (BHIKsU) (although there are substantially greater numbers of rules in all categories of the bhiksunī prAtimoksa); an important exception, however, is that nuns are also required to adhere to the eight "weighty" or "deferential" "rules" (GURUDHARMA), a set of special rules that nuns alone are enjoined to follow, which explicitly subordinate the bhiksunī to the bhiksu SAMGHA. Upon receiving higher ordination (UPASAMPADA), the new nun is required to remain under the guidance (NIsRAYA; P. nissaya) of her preceptor (UPADHYAYA; P. upajjhAyA) for at least two years until she becomes skilled in dharma and vinaya. After ten years, the nun becomes an elder (sthavirī; P. therī) in the bhiksunī saMgha and, after another two years, may act as a preceptor and ordain new nuns into the order. In South Asia, the formal upasaMpadA ordination of nuns is thought to have died out sometime during the medieval period, and there is little evidence that a formal bhiksunī saMgha was ever established in Southeast Asia. The only surviving bhiksunī ordination lineages are in China, Korea, and Taiwan. Apart from East Asia, most Buddhist women known as "nuns" are actually only ordained with the eight, nine, or ten extended lay precepts (as in Southeast Asia), as srAmanerikA (as in Tibet), or else take the East Asian bodhisattva precepts of the FANWANG JING (as in Japan). In recent years there has been a concerted effort to reintroduce the bhiksunī ordination to countries where it had died out or was never established.
Bhṛkutī. (T. Khro gnyer can; C. Pijuzhi; J. Bikutei; K. Piguji 毘胝). In Sanskrit, lit. "She who Frowns"; a wrathful deity understood to be a form of TARA, who is reputed to have been born from a frown of the BODHISATTVA AVALOKITEsVARA. An alternate account is that she arose from a ray of light emanating out of Avalokitesvara's left eye at the same time TArA was born from the right eye. Bhṛkutī is sometimes said to be an emanation of the buddha AMITABHA as well, particularly in Japan, and often appears with an image of AmitAbha in her crown. Although she can appear in peaceful form, she is generally depicted as a wrathful deity, most commonly with one face with three eyes, and four arms holding a trident, vase, and rosary and displaying the VARADAMUDRA, and either standing in ALĪdHA posture or sitting in LALITASANA. ¶ Bhṛkutī is also the name of the Nepali princess who married SRONG BTSAN SGAM PO. According to the MAnI BKA' 'BUM, she was the daughter of the Nepalese king AMsuvarman and was brought to Tibet by the famed minister Mgar stong btsan after Srong btsan sgam po saw her in a prophetic dream. The Nepalese king initially refused to send her, deriding Tibet as a land of savagery, lacking not only the teachings of the Buddha but basic civil laws as well. Mgar convinced the king that Srong btsan sgam po was sincere in desiring the DHARMA, and was able to return with her, after which he set out to China to bring back the Tang princess WENCHENG. Bhṛkuti is said to have brought with her to Tibet the statue of sAKYAMUNI called JO BO MI BSKYOD RDO RJE, which was eventually housed in RA MO CHE. The historicity of both Bhṛkuti and her father has been called into question by recent scholarship. The Nepalese princess is said to have also brought a sandalwood statue of BhṛkutĪ to Tibet, but (if it ever existed) it had disappeared by the seventeenth century, when the fifth DALAI LAMA, in his guidebook to the temples of LHA SA, reported it missing.
Biyan lu. (J. Hekiganroku; K. Pyogam nok 碧巖録). In Chinese, "Emerald Grotto Record" or, as it is popularly known in the West, the "Blue Cliff Record"; compiled by CHAN master YUANWU KEQIN; also known by its full title of Foguo Yuanwu chanshi biyan lu ("Emerald Grotto Record of Chan Master Foguo Yuanwu"). The Biyan lu is one of the two most famous and widely used collection of Chan cases (GONG'AN), along with the WUMEN GUAN ("The Gateless Checkpoint"). The anthology is built around XUEDOU CHONGXIAN's Xuedou heshang baice songgu, an earlier independent collection of one hundred old Chan cases (GUCE) with verse commentary; Xuedou's text is embedded within the Biyan lu and Yuanwu's comments are interspersed throughout. Each of the one hundred cases, with a few exceptions, is introduced by a pointer (CHUISHI), a short introductory paragraph composed by Yuanwu. Following the pointer, the term "raised" (ju) is used to formally mark the actual case. Each case is followed by interlinear notes known as annotations or capping phrases (ZHUOYU; J. JAKUGO) and prose commentary (PINGCHANG), both composed by Yuanwu. The phrase "the verse says" (song yue) subsequently introduces Xuedou's verse, which is also accompanied by its own capping phrases and prose commentary, both added by Yuanwu. The cases, comments, and capping phrases found in the Biyan lu were widely used and read among both the clergy and laity in China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam as an contemplative tool in Chan meditation practice and, in some contexts, as a token of social or institutional status. A famous (or perhaps infamous) story tells of the Chan master DAHUI ZONGGAO, the major disciple of Yuanwu, burning his teacher's Biyan lu for fear that his students would become attached to the words of Xuedou and Yuanwu. The Biyan lu shares many cases with the Wumen guan, and the two texts continue to function as the foundation of training in the Japanese RINZAI Zen school.
Japan and Korea
Japanese Colonial Period 1910-1945
Japanese cosmogony says that “out of the chaotic mass, an egg-like nucleus appears, having within itself the germ and potency of all the universal as well as of all terrestrial life” (SD 1:216).
Japanese Cross-References
Japanese Historical Periods
Blyth, Reginald H. (1898-1964). An early English translator of Japanese poetry, with a particular interest in ZEN Buddhism. Blyth was born in Essex; his father was railway clerk. He was imprisoned for three years during the First World War as a conscientious objector. In 1925, he traveled to Korea, then a Japanese colony, where he taught English at Keijo University in Seoul. It was there that he developed his first interest in Zen through the priest Hanayama Taigi. After a brief trip to England, he returned to Seoul and then went to Japan, where he taught English in Kanazawa. With the outbreak of the Pacific War, Blyth was interned as an enemy alien, despite having expressed sympathy for the Japanese cause. Although he remained interned throughout the war, he was allowed to continue his studies, and in 1942 published his most famous work, Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics, which sought to identify Zen elements in a wide range of literature. After the war, Blyth served as a liaison between the Japanese imperial household and the Allies, later becoming a professor of English at Gakushuin University, where one of his students was the future emperor Akihito (b. 1933). After the war, he published a four-volume collection of his translations of Japanese haiku poetry, which was largely responsible for European and American interest in haiku during the 1950s, among the Beat Poets and others, and the writing of haiku in languages other than Japanese. Subsequent scholarship has questioned the strong connection that Blyth saw between Zen and haiku. Blyth died in Japan and is buried in Kamakura next to his friend D. T. SUZUKI.
bodaiji. (菩提寺). In Japanese, literally "BODHI temple"; also known as bodaiin, bodaisho, or DANNADERA. Bodaiji are temples that flourished mainly during the Edo period under the parish system (DANKA SEIDO) established by the Tokugawa shogunate. Parishioners, known as danka or DAN'OTSU, were required to register at these local temples. By establishing the danka and terauke ("temple support") system, the early Tokugawa shogunate hoped to eradicate the threat of Christianity as they had witnessed it in the Christian-led Shimabara Uprising of 1637. During the Edo period, the bodaiji primarily offered funerary and memorial services for the ancestors of its parishioners and in many cases came to function as cemeteries. Festivals for the dead such as bon (see YULANBEN) and higan were also held annually at these temples. Although the danka system was abolished during the Meiji period, the bodaiji continue to function as memorial temples in modern Japan.
BodhgayA. (S. BuddhagayA). Modern Indian place name for the most significant site in the Buddhist world, renowned as the place where sAKYAMUNI Buddha (then, still the BODHISATTVA prince SIDDHARTHA) became a buddha while meditating under the BODHI TREE at the "seat of enlightenment" (BODHIMAndA) or the "diamond seat" (VAJRASANA). The site is especially sacred because, according to tradition, not only did sAkyamuni Buddha attain enlightenment there, but all buddhas of this world system have or will do so, albeit under different species of trees. BodhgayA is situated along the banks of the NAIRANJANA river, near RAJAGṚHA, the ancient capital city of the MAGADHA kingdom. Seven sacred places are said to be located in BodhgayA, each being a site where the Buddha stayed during each of the seven weeks following his enlightenment. These include, in addition to the bodhimanda under the Bodhi tree: the place where the Buddha sat facing the Bodhi tree during the second week, with an unblinking gaze (and hence the site of the animesalocana caitya); the place where the Buddha walked back and forth in meditation (CAnKRAMA) during the third week; the place called the ratnagṛha, where the Buddha meditated during the fourth week, emanating rays of light from his body; the place under the ajapAla tree where the god BRAHMA requested that the Buddha turn the wheel of the dharma (DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANA) during the fifth week; the lake where the NAGA MUCILINDA used his hood to shelter the Buddha from a storm during the sixth week; and the place under the rAjAyatana tree where the merchants TRAPUsA and BHALLIKA met the Buddha after the seventh week, becoming his first lay disciples. ¶ Located in the territory of MAGADHA (in modern Bihar), the ancient Indian kingdom where the Buddha spent much of his teaching career, BodhgayA is one of the four major pilgrimage sites (MAHASTHANA) sanctioned by the Buddha himself, along with LUMBINĪ in modern-day Nepal, where the Buddha was born; the Deer Park (MṚGADAVA) at SARNATH, where he first taught by "turning the wheel of the dharma" (DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANA); and KUsINAGARĪ in Uttar Pradesh, where he passed into PARINIRVAnA. According to the AsOKAVADANA, the emperor AsOKA visited BodhgayA with the monk UPAGUPTA and established a STuPA at the site. There is evidence that Asoka erected a pillar and shrine at the site during the third century BCE. A more elaborate structure, called the vajrAsana GANDHAKUtĪ ("perfumed chamber of the diamond seat"), is depicted in a relief at BodhgayA, dating from c. 100 BCE. It shows a two-storied structure supported by pillars, enclosing the Bodhi tree and the vajrAsana, the "diamond seat," where the Buddha sat on the night of his enlightenment. The forerunner of the present temple is described by the Chinese pilgrim XUANZANG. This has led scholars to speculate that the structure was built sometime between the third and sixth centuries CE, with subsequent renovations. Despite various persecutions by non-Buddhist Indian kings, the site continued to receive patronage, especially during the PAla period, from which many of the surrounding monuments date. A monastery, called the BodhimandavihAra, was established there and flourished for several centuries. FAXIAN mentions three monasteries at BodhgayA; Xuanzang found only one, called the MahAbodhisaMghArAma (see MAHABODHI TEMPLE). The temple and its environs fell into neglect after the Muslim invasions that began in the thirteenth century. British photographs from the nineteenth century show the temple in ruins. Restoration of the site was ordered by the British governor-general of Bengal in 1880, with a small eleventh-century replica of the temple serving as a model. There is a tall central tower some 165 feet (fifty meters) in height, with a high arch over the entrance with smaller towers at the four corners. The central tower houses a small temple with an image of the Buddha. The temple is surrounded by stone railings, some dating from 150 BCE, others from the Gupta period (300-600 CE) that preserve important carvings. In 1886, EDWIN ARNOLD visited BodhgayA. He published an account of his visit, which was read by ANAGARIKA DHARMAPALA and others. Arnold described a temple surrounded by hundreds of broken statues scattered in the jungle. The MahAbodhi Temple itself had stood in ruins prior to renovations undertaken by the British in 1880. Also of great concern was the fact that the site had been under saiva control since the eighteenth century, with reports of animal sacrifice taking place in the environs of the temple. DharmapAla visited BodhgayA himself in 1891, and returned to Sri Lanka, where he worked with a group of leading Sinhalese Buddhists to found the MAHABODHI SOCIETY with the aim of restoring BodhgayA as place of Buddhist worship and pilgrimage. The society undertook a series of unsuccessful lawsuits to that end. In 1949, after Indian independence, the BodhgayA Temple Act was passed, which established a committee of four Buddhists and four Hindus to supervise the temple and its grounds. The Government of India asked AnagArika Munindra, a Bengali monk and active member of the MahAbodhi Society, to oversee the restoration of BodhgayA. Since then, numerous Buddhist countries-including Bhutan, China, Japan, Myanmar, Nepal, Sikkim, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tibet, and Vietnam-have constructed (or restored) their own temples and monasteries in BodhgayA, each reflecting its national architectural style. In 2002, the MahAbodhi Temple was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Bodhidharma. (C. Putidamo; J. Bodaidaruma; K. Poridalma 菩提達磨) (c. late-fourth to early-fifth centuries). Indian monk who is the putative "founder" of the school of CHAN (K. SoN, J. ZEN, V. THIỀN). The story of a little-known Indian (or perhaps Central Asian) emigré monk grew over the centuries into an elaborate legend of Bodhidharma, the first patriarch of the Chan school. The earliest accounts of a person known as Bodhidharma appear in the Luoyang qielan ji and XU GAOSENG ZHUAN, but the more familiar and developed image of this figure can be found in such later sources as the BAOLIN ZHUAN, LENGQIE SHIZI JI, LIDAI FABAO JI, ZUTANG JI, JINGDE CHUANDENG LU, and other "transmission of the lamplight" (CHUANDENG LU) histories. According to these sources, Bodhidharma was born as the third prince of a South Indian kingdom. Little is known about his youth, but he is believed to have arrived in China sometime during the late fourth or early fifth century, taking the southern maritime route according to some sources, the northern overland route according to others. In an episode appearing in the Lidai fabao ji and BIYAN LU, after arriving in southern China, Bodhidharma is said to have engaged in an enigmatic exchange with the devout Buddhist emperor Wu (464-549, r. 502-549) of the Liang dynasty (502-557) on the subject of the Buddha's teachings and merit-making. To the emperor's questions about what dharma Bodhidharma was transmitting and how much merit (PUnYA) he, Wudi, had made by his munificent donations to construct monasteries and ordain monks, Bodhidharma replied that the Buddha's teachings were empty (hence there was nothing to transmit) and that the emperor's generous donations had brought him no merit at all. The emperor seems not to have been impressed with these answers, and Bodhidharma, perhaps disgruntled by the emperor's failure to understand the profundity of his teachings, left for northern China, taking the Yangtze river crossing (riding a reed across the river, in a scene frequently depicted in East Asian painting). Bodhidharma's journey north eventually brought him to a cave at the monastery of SHAOLINSI on SONGSHAN, where he sat in meditation for nine years while facing a wall (MIANBI), in so-called "wall contemplation" (BIGUAN). During his stay on Songshan, the Chinese monk HUIKE is said to have become Bodhidharma's disciple, allegedly after cutting off his left arm to show his dedication. This legend of Bodhidharma's arrival in China is eventually condensed into the famous Chan case (GONG'AN), "Why did Bodhidharma come from the West?" (see XILAI YI). Bodhidharma's place within the lineage of Indian patriarchs vary according to text and tradition (some list him as the twenty-eighth patriarch), but he is considered the first patriarch of Chan in China. Bodhidharma's name therefore soon became synonymous with Chan and subsequently with Son, Zen, and Thièn. Bodhidharma, however, has often been confused with other figures such as BODHIRUCI, the translator of the LAnKAVATARASuTRA, and the Kashmiri monk DHARMATRATA, to whom the DHYANA manual DAMODUOLUO CHAN JING is attributed. The Lidai fabao ji, for instance, simply fused the names of Bodhidharma and DharmatrAta and spoke of a BodhidharmatrAta whose legend traveled with the Lidai fabao ji to Tibet. Bodhidharma was even identified as the apostle Saint Thomas by Jesuit missionaries to China, such as Matteo Ricci. Several texts, a number of which were uncovered in the DUNHUANG manuscript cache in Central Asia, have been attributed to Bodhidharma, but their authorship remains uncertain. The ERRU SIXING LUN seems to be the only of these texts that can be traced with some certainty back to Bodhidharma or his immediate disciples. The legend of Bodhidharma in the Lengqie shizi ji also associates him with the transmission of the LankAvatArasutra in China. In Japan, Bodhidharma is often depicted in the form of a round-shaped, slightly grotesque-looking doll, known as the "Daruma doll." Like much of the rest of the legends surrounding Bodhidharma, there is finally no credible evidence connecting Bodhidharma to the Chinese martial arts traditions (see SHAOLINSI).
Bodhisena. (C. Putixianna; J. Bodaisenna; K. Porisonna 菩提僊那) (704-760). Indian monk who traveled first to Southeast Asia and China starting in 723 and subsequently continued on to Japan in 736 at the invitation of the Japanese emperor Shomu (r. 724-749), where he resided at DAIANJI in Nara. Bodhisena was instrumental in helping to introduce the teachings of the HUAYAN (Kegon) school of Buddhism to Japan. Shomu also asked Bodhisena to perform the "opening the eyes" (KAIYAN; NETRAPRATIstHAPANA) ceremony for the 752 dedication of the great buddha image of VAIROCANA (see NARA DAIBUTSU; Birushana Nyorai) at ToDAIJI. At forty-eight feet high, this image remains the largest extant gilt-bronze image in the world and the Daibutsuden (Great Buddha Hall) where the image is enshrined is the world's largest surviving wooden building.
bokuseki. (墨蹟). In Japanese, "ink traces"; generally referring to any sort of calligraphy executed by an ink brush on paper or silk. The Japanese monk Murata Juko (1422-1502) is said to have hung in his tea room the calligraphy of the Song-dynasty CHAN master YUANWU KEQIN, which he had received from his teacher IKKYu SoJUN, a practice that seems to have had no precedent in Japan. Following his lead, monks largely from the GOZAN lineage began to collect the calligraphy of eminent Song-dynasty Chan masters such as DAHUI ZONGGAO and XUTANG ZHIYU to display in their private quarters and tea rooms. From the time of the Zen and tea master Sen no Rikyu (Soeki Rikyu; 1521-1591), the calligraphy of Japanese Zen monks such as MYoAN EISAI, DoGEN KIGEN, and MUSo SoSEKI began to be seen as valuable commodities. The calligraphy of Zen masters belonging to the DAITOKUJI lineage such as SoHo MYoCHo, Ikkyu Sojun, and TAKUAN SoHo also came to be highly prized. Beginning with Sen no Rikyu, the practice of collecting relatively simple calligraphy, comprised largely of a single, horizontally executed line, came to be favored over those containing longer poems or sermons written in vertical lines.
bonze. (J. bonso/bosso 凡僧). An early English term for a Buddhist monk, especially in East Asia, deriving from the Portuguese pronunciation of the Japanese bonso ("ordinary cleric"). Although occasionally still used in reference to Japanese Buddhist priests, this sixteenth-century term is long outmoded and should be discarded.
Book titles are generally given in the language of original provenance, e.g., Saddharmapundarīkasutra, in Sanskrit, with cross-references to Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean; Dasheng qixin lun, in Chinese, with cross-references to a putative Sanskrit reconstruction of the title, and Japanese and Korean. We also include some main entries to indigenous terms, book titles, personal names, or place names in other Asian languages, e.g.: Burmese, Thai, Lao, Nepalese, Sinhalese, Mongolian, and Vietnamese.
Borland Software Corporation ::: (company) A company that sells a variety of PC software development and database systems. Borland was founded in 1983 and initially became famous for their low-cost software, particularly Turbo Pascal, Turbo C, and Turbo Prolog.Current and past products include the Borland C++ C++ and C developement environment, the Paradox and dBASE databases, Delphi, JBuilder, and InterBase.Borland has approximately 1000 employees worldwide and has operations in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.Borland sold Quattro Pro to Novell in 1994 for $100M. Novell later sold the product to Corel Corporation, who also bought Paradox. dBASE was sold in March(?) 1999 to dBase Inc.In Febuary 1998 Borland bought Visigenic Software, Inc..The company changed its name to Inprise Corporation on 1998-04-29 and then on 2000-11-14 they announced they were changing it back to Borland from the first quarter of 2001.Quarterly sales $69M, profits $61M (Aug 1994). $56M, $6.4M (July 2001) .Headquarters: 100 Borland Way, Scotts Valley, CA, 95066, USA. Telephone: +1 (408) 431 1000.(2002-03-16)
Borland Software Corporation "company" A company that sells a variety of {PC} software development and {database} systems. Borland was founded in 1983 and initially became famous for their low-cost software, particularly {Turbo Pascal}, {Turbo C}, and {Turbo Prolog}. Current and past products include the {Borland C++} C++ and C developement environment, the {Paradox} and {dBASE} {databases}, {Delphi}, {JBuilder}, and {InterBase}. Borland has approximately 1000 employees worldwide and has operations in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Borland sold {Quattro} Pro to {Novell} in 1994 for $100M. Novell later sold the product to {Corel Corporation}, who also bought {Paradox}. dBASE was sold in March(?) 1999 to {dBase Inc.} In Febuary 1998 Borland bought {Visigenic Software, Inc.}. The company changed its name to Inprise Corporation on 1998-04-29 and then on 2000-11-14 they announced they were changing it back to Borland from the first quarter of 2001. Quarterly sales $69M, profits $61M (Aug 1994). $56M, $6.4M (July 2001) {(http://borland.com/)}. Headquarters: 100 Borland Way, Scotts Valley, CA, 95066, USA. Telephone: +1 (408) 431 1000. (2002-03-16)
Bosatsu: In Japanese Buddhist terminology, the equivalent of Bodhisattva (q.v.).
broadcast quality video "communications, multimedia" Roughly, {video} with more than 30 frames per second at a {resolution} of 800 x 640 {pixels}. The quality of moving pictures and sound is determined by the complete chain from camera to receiver. Relevant factors are the colour temperature of the lighting, the balance of the red, green and blue vision pick-up tubes to produce the correct display colour temperature (which will be different) and the {gamma} pre-correction to cancel the non-linear characteristic of {cathode-ray tubes} in television receivers. The {resolution} of the camera tube and video coding system will determine the maximum number of {pixels} in the picture. Different colour coding systems have different defects. The NTSC system (National Television Systems Committee) can produce {hue} errors. The PAL system (Phase Alternation by Line) can produce {saturation} errors. Television modulation systems are specified by ITU CCIR Report 624. Low-resolution systems have {bandwidths} of 4.2 MHz with 525 to 625 lines per frame as used in the Americas and Japan. Medium resolution of 5 to 6.5 MHz with 625 lines is used in Europe, Asia, Africa and Australasia. {High-Definition Television} (HDTV) will require 8 MHz or more of bandwidth. A medium resolution (5.5 MHz in UK) picture can be represented by 572 lines of 402 pixels. Note the ratio of pixels to lines is not the same as the {aspect ratio}. A {VGA} display (480n lines of 640 pixels) could thus display 84% of the height of one picture frame. Most compression techniques reduce quality as they assume a restricted range of detail and motion and discard details to which the human eye is not sensitive. Broadcast quality implies something better than amateur or domestic video and therefore can't be retained on a domestic video recorder. Broadcasts use quadriplex or U-matic recorders. The lowest frame rate used for commercial entertainment is the 24Hz of the 35mm cinema camera. When broadcast on a 50Hz television system, the pictures are screened at 25Hz reducing the running times by 4%. On a 60Hz system every five movie frames are screened as six TV frames, still at the 4% increased rate. The six frames are made by mixing adjacent frames, with some degradation of the picture. A computer system to meet international standard reproduction would at least VGA resolution, an interlaced frame rate of 24Hz and 8 bits to represent the luminance (Y) component. For a component display system using red, green and blue (RGB) electron guns and phosphor dots each will require 7 bits. Transmission and recording is different as various coding schemes need less bits if other representations are used instead of RGB. Broadcasts use YUV and compression can reduce this to about 3.5 bits per pixel without perceptible degradation. High-quality video and sound can be carried on a 34 Mbaud channel after being compressed with {ADPCM} and {variable length coding}, potentially in real time. (1997-07-04)
brunswick black ::: --> See Japan black.
Budai. (J. Hotei; K. P'odae 布袋) (d. 916). A legendary Chinese monk, whose name literally means "Hemp Sack"; also occasionally referred to as Fenghua Budai, Changtingzi, and Budai heshang. He is said to have hailed from Fenghua county in Ningbo prefecture of Zhejiang province. Budai is often depicted as a short figure with an enormous belly and a staff or walking stick on which he has hung a hemp bag or sack (budai), whence derives his name. Budai wandered from one town to the next begging for food, some of which he saved in his sack. This jolly figure is remembered as a thaumaturge who was particularly famous for accurately predicting the weather. On his deathbed, Budai left the following death verse, which implied he was in fact a manifestation of the BODHISATTVA MAITREYA: "Maitreya, true Maitreya, / His thousands, hundreds, and tens of millions of manifestations, / From time to time appear among his fellow men, / But remain unrecognized by his fellow men." Budai is also associated in China with AnGAJA, the thirteenth of the sixteen ARHATs (see sOdAsASTHAVIRA) who serve as protector figures. Angaja had been a snake wrangler before he ordained, so whenever he went into the mountains, he carried a cloth bag with him to catch snakes, which he would release after removing their fangs so they would not injure people. For this reason, he earned the nickname "Cloth-Bag Arhat" (Budai luohan/heshang). In Zhejiang province, many images of Budai were made for worship, and an image of Budai installed in the monastery of MANPUKUJI on Mt. obaku in Japan is still referred to as that of the bodhisattva Maitreya. The local cult hero and thaumaturge Budai was quickly appropriated by the CHAN community as a trickster-like figure, leading to Budai often being as called the "Laughing Buddha." In Japan, Budai is also revered as one of the seven gods of virtue (see SHICHIFUKUJIN). It is Budai who is commonly depicted in all manner of kitschy knickknacks and called the "Fat Buddha." He has never been identified with, and is not to be mistaken for, sAKYAMUNI Buddha.
buddhAnusmṛti. (P. buddhAnussati; T. sangs rgyas rjes su dran pa; C. nianfo; J. nenbutsu; K. yombul 念佛). In Sanskrit, "recollection of the Buddha"; one of the common practices designed to develop concentration, in which the meditator reflects on the meritorious qualities of the Buddha, often through contemplating a series of his epithets. The oldest list of epithets of the Buddha used in such recollection, which is found across all traditions, is worthy one (ARHAT), fully enlightened (SAMYAKSAMBUDDHA), perfect in both knowledge and conduct (vidyAcaranasampanna), well gone (SUGATA), knower of all worlds (lokavid), teacher of divinities (or kings) and human beings (sAstṛ devamanusyAnaM), buddha, and BHAGAVAT. BuddhAnusmṛti is listed among the forty meditative exercises (KAMMAttHANA) discussed in the VISUDDHIMAGGA and is said to be conducive to gaining access concentration (UPACARASAMADHI). In East Asia, this recollection practice evolved into the recitation of the name of the buddha AMITABHA (see NIANFO) in the form of the phrase namo Amituo fo ("homage to AmitAbha Buddha"; J. NAMU AMIDABUTSU). This recitation was often performed in a ritual setting accompanied by the performance of prostrations, the burning of incense, and the recitation of scriptures, all directed toward gaining a vision of AmitAbha's PURE LAND (SUKHAVATĪ), which was considered proof that one would be reborn there. Nianfo practice was widely practiced across schools and social strata in China. In Japan, repetition of the phrase in its Japanese pronunciation of namu Amidabutsu (homage to AmitAbha Buddha) became a central practice of the Japanese Pure Land schools of Buddhism (see JoDOSHu, JoDO SHINSHu).
buddhapAtramudrA. (T. sangs rgyas kyi lhung bzed phyag rgya; C. foboyin; J. buppatsuin; K. pulbarin 佛鉢印). In Sanskrit, "the gesture of the Buddha's begging bowl." In this symbolic posture or gesture (MUDRA), the Buddha holds a begging bowl (PATRA) that sits in his lap. In some variations, the hands hold a jewel, or ornate treasure box, instead. In esoteric rituals, variations of this mudrA may be used for a number of different outcomes. For example, one Chinese indigenous SuTRA (see APOCRYPHA) suggests that forming and holding this gesture will cure stomach ailments. In another Japanese ritual, this mudrA is used to invite autochthonous deities to join the audience in attendance. The buddhapAtramudrA is typically associated with images of the Buddha AMITABHA, whose begging bowl is filled with the nectar of immortality (AMṚTA).
Buddhism: The multifarious forms, philosophic, religious, ethical and sociological, which the teachings of Gautama Buddha have produced, and which form the religion of hundreds of millions in China, Japan, etc. They center around the main doctrine of the arya satyani, the four noble truths (q.v.), the last of which enables one in eight stages to reach nirvana (q.v.): Right views, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.
Bunkyo hifuron. (文鏡秘府論). In Japanese, "A Mirror on Literature and a Treasury of Marvels Treatise"; a work on classical Chinese poetics and prosody, composed by the Japanese SHINGONSHu monk KuKAI, probably in the early ninth century. The work was intended to serve as a vade mecum on classical Chinese writing style and literary allusions for Japanese ranging from novice monks who needed to know how to parse Buddhist MANTRAs and DHARAnĪs to diplomats or scribes who had to compose elegant Chinese prose and verse. The treatise is titled a "mirror on literature" because it describes correct Chinese style and a "treasury of marvels" because it serves as a literary compendium and thesaurus. The text is significant not only because of its impact on the development of Japanese classical-Chinese writing, but also because its extensive extracts of original Chinese sources (most now lost) stand as a valuable resource for the study of Tang literature.
butsudan. (佛壇). In Japanese, literally "buddha platform"; a platform on which an image of a buddha and/or BODHISATTVA is placed and worshipped; also known as SHuMIDAN ("SUMERU platform"). A butsudan can be made of stone, clay, or wood and can take the shape of a lotus platform, niche, or portable shrine. According to the BAIZHANG QINGGUI, a butsudan houses the image of the SAMBHOGAKAYA of the Buddha. The Nihon shoki also notes that the practice of making butsudan had spread widely among Japanese commoners as early as the Nara and Heian periods. Nowadays, butsudan are owned by most households and take the form of a portable shrine that houses icons, sacred objects of a particular school or sect, and mortuary tablets, known as ihai, for deceased family members. They are thus used primarily for private worship and mortuary practice.
Byodoin. (平等院). A famous Japanese temple located in Uji, south of Kyoto, now associated with the TENDAISHu and JoDOSHu sects. Byodoin is especially famous for its Phoenix Hall (Hoodo), which houses a magnificent image of AMITABHA made by the artist Jocho (d. 1057). The hall, the statue, and fifty-two other small sculptures of BODHISATTVAs making offerings of music to the central AmitAbha statue have been designated as national treasures. The Byodoin AmitAbha image is highly regarded as a representative piece of the refined art of the Fujiwara period (894-1185). Byodoin was originally a villa that belonged to the powerful regent Fujiwara no Michinaga (966-1027). The private villa was later transformed by Michinaga's son Yorimichi (992-1074) into a temple in 1052, and the Phoenix Hall was constructed the following year. Many halls dedicated to the buddha AmitAbha were built in this period by powerful aristocrats who were influenced by the growing belief in the notion of mappo (see MOFA), or "the demise of the dharma," wherein the only means of salvation was the practice of nenbutsu, the recitation of AmitAbha's name (see also NIANFO; BUDDHANUSMṚTI). The monk Myoson (d. 1063), originally the abbot of another temple called ONJoJI, was installed as the first abbot of Byodoin.
cankrama. (P. cankama; T. 'chag pa; C. jingxing; J. kyogyo/kinhin; K. kyonghaeng 經行). In Sanskrit, lit. "walking"; referring to both the physical act of walking itself and, by extension, composed, meditative walking, as well as the mendicant life of wandering as a vocation. Cankrama is the most active of the four postures (ĪRYAPATHA), and is one of the specific objects of mindfulness of the body (see SMṚTYUPASTHANA). Cankrama also refers to walking in a calm, collected manner, while maintaining one's object of meditation. Finally, cankrama refers to the wandering, "homeless" life (see PRAVRAJITA) of the Indian recluse, which was the model for the Buddhist SAMGHA. In East Asia, in addition to walking meditation per se, the term is also used to describe short periods of walking that break up extended periods of seated meditation (ZUOCHAN). In Korean meditation halls, for example, a three-hour block of meditation practice will be divided into three fifty-minute blocks of seated meditation, punctuated by ten-minutes of walking meditation. The Japanese ZEN tradition reads these Sinographs as kinhin.
Cantong qi. (J. Sandokai; K. Ch'amdong kye 参同契). A famous verse attributed to the Chinese CHAN master SHITOU XIQIAN. Along with the BAOJING SANMEI, the Cantong qi is revered in the Chinese CAODONG ZONG and Japanese SoToSHu traditions as the foundational scripture of the tradition. The Cantong qi is relatively short (forty-four five-character stanzas, for a total of 220 Sinographs), but Shitou's verse is praised for its succinct and unequivocal expression of the teaching of nonduality. The Sinograph "can" in the title means to "consider," "compare," or "differentiate"; it thus carries the connotation of "difference" and is said to refer to the myriad phenomena. The Sinograph "tong" means "sameness" and is said to refer to the oneness of all phenomena. The Sinograph "qi" means "tally" and is said to refer to the tallying of oneself and all phenomena. The title might be alluding to an earlier verse bearing the same title, which is attributed to the renowned Daoist master Wei Boyang. The Cantong qi also seems to be the root source from which were derived core concepts in the "five ranks" (WUWEI) doctrine, an emblematic teaching of the mature Caodong school.
Caodong zong. (J. Sotoshu; K. Chodong chong 曹洞宗). One of the so-called "five houses and seven schools" (WU JIA QI ZONG) of the mature Chinese CHAN tradition. The school traces its own pedigree back to the sixth patriarch (LIUZU) HUINENG via a lineage that derives from QINGYUAN XINGSI and SHITOU XIQIAN, but its history begins with the two Tang-dynasty Chan masters who lend their names to the school: DONGSHAN LIANGJIE and his disciple CAOSHAN BENJI. The name of this tradition, Caodong, is derived from the first characters of the two patriarchs' names, viz., Caoshan's "Cao" and Dongshan's "Dong." (The disciple's name is said to appear first in the school's name purely for euphonic reasons.) One of the emblematic teachings of the Caodong tradition is that of the "five ranks" (WUWEI), taught by Dongshan and further developed by Caoshan, which was a form of dialectical analysis that sought to present the full panoply of MAHAYANA Buddhist insights in a compressed rubric. During the Song dynasty, the Caodong school also came to be associated with the contemplative practice of "silent illumination" (MOZHAO CHAN), a form of meditation that built upon the normative East Asian notion of the inherency of buddhahood (see TATHAGATAGARBHA) to suggest that, since enlightenment was the mind's natural state, nothing needed to be done in order to attain enlightenment other than letting go of all striving for that state. Authentic Chan practice therefore entailed only maintaining this original purity of the mind by simply sitting silently in meditation. The practice of silent illumination is traditionally attributed to HONGZHI ZHENGJUE (see MOZHAO MING) and ZHENGXIE QINGLIAO, who helped revive the moribund Caodong lineage during the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries and turned it into one of the two major forces in mature Song-dynasty Chan. The silent-illumination technique that they championed was harshly criticized by teachers in the rival LINJI ZONG, most notably Hongzhi's contemporary DAHUI ZONGGAO. In Japan, the ZEN master DoGEN KIGEN is credited with transmitting the Caodong lineage to the Japanese isles in the thirteenth century, where it is known as the SoToSHu (the Japanese pronunciation of Caodong zong); it became one of the three major branches of the Japanese Zen school, along with RINZAISHu and oBAKUSHu. In Korea, just one of the early Nine Mountains schools of SoN (see KUSAN SoNMUN), the Sumisan school, is presumed to trace back to a teacher, Yunju Daoying (d. 902), who was also a disciple of Dongshan Liangjie; the Caodong school had no impact in the subsequent development of Korean Son, where Imje (C. Linji zong) lineages and practices dominated from the thirteenth century onwards.
Chan. (J. Zen; K. Son; V. Thièn 禪). In Chinese, the "Meditation," or Chan school (CHAN ZONG); one of the major indigenous schools of East Asian Buddhism. The Sinograph "chan" is the first syllable in the transcription channa, the Chinese transcription of the Sanskrit term DHYANA (P. JHANA); thus chan, like the cognate term chanding (chan is a transcription and ding a translation, of dhyAna), is often translated in English simply as "meditation." For centuries, the title CHANSHI (meditation master) was used in such sources as the "Biography of Eminent Monks" (GAOSENG ZHUAN) to refer to a small group of elite monks who specialized in the art of meditation. Some of these specialists adopted the term chan as the formal name of their community (Chan zong), perhaps sometime during the sixth or seventh centuries. These early "Chan" communities gathered around a number of charismatic teachers who were later considered to be "patriarchs" (ZUSHI) of their tradition. The legendary Indian monk BODHIDHARMA was honored as the first patriarch; it was retrospectively claimed that he first brought the Chan teachings to China. Later Chan lineage histories (see CHUANDENG LU) reconstructed elaborate genealogies of such patriarchs that extended back to MAHAKAsYAPA, the first Indian patriarch, and ultimately to the Buddha himself; often, these genealogies would even go back to all of the seven buddhas of antiquity (SAPTABUDDHA). Six indigenous patriarchs (Bodhidharma, HUIKE, SENGCAN, DAOXIN, HONGREN, and HUINENG) are credited by the established tradition with the development and growth of Chan in China, but early records of the Chan school, such as the LENGQIE SHIZI JI and LIDAI FABAO JI, reveal the polemical battles fought between the disparate communities to establish their own teachers as the orthodox patriarchs of the tradition. A particularly controversial dispute over the sixth patriarchy broke out between the Chan master SHENXIU, the leading disciple of the fifth patriarch Hongren, and HEZE SHENHUI, the purported disciple of the legendary Chinese monk Huineng. This dispute is often referred to as the "sudden and gradual debate," and the differing factions came to be retrospectively designated as the gradualist Northern school (BEI ZONG; the followers of Shenxiu) and the subitist Southern school (NAN ZONG; the followers of Huineng). The famous LIUZU TANJING ("Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch"), composed by the followers of this putative Southern school, is an important source for the history of this debate. Following the sixth patriarch, the Chan lineage split into a number of collateral lines, which eventually evolved into the so-called "five houses and seven schools" (WU JIA QI ZONG) of the mature Chan tradition: the five "houses" of GUIYANG (alt. Weiyang), LINJI, CAODONG, YUNMEN, and FAYAN, and the subsequent bifurcation of Linji into the two lineages of HUANGLONG and YANGQI, giving a total of seven schools. ¶ The teachings of the Chan school were introduced to Korea perhaps as early as the end of the seventh century CE and the tradition, there known as SoN, flourished with the rise of the Nine Mountains school of Son (KUSAN SoNMUN) in the ninth century. By the twelfth century, the teachings and practices of Korean Buddhism were dominated by Son; and today, the largest Buddhist denomination in Korea, the CHOGYE CHONG, remains firmly rooted in the Son tradition. The Chan teachings were introduced to Japan in the late twelfth century by MYoAN EISAI (1141-1215); the Japanese tradition, known as ZEN, eventually developed three major sects, RINZAISHu, SoToSHu, and oBAKUSHu. The Chan teachings are traditionally assumed to have been transmitted to Vietnam by VINĪTARUCI (d. 594), a South Indian brAhmana who is claimed (rather dubiously) to have studied in China with the third Chan patriarch SENGCAN before heading south to Guangzhou and Vietnam. In 580, he is said to have arrived in Vietnam and settled at Pháp Van monastery, where he subsequently transmitted his teachings to Pháp Hièn (d. 626), who carried on the Chan tradition, which in Vietnamese is known as THIỀN. In addition to the Vinītaruci lineage, there are two other putative lineages of Vietnamese Thièn, both named after their supposed founders: VÔ NGÔN THÔNG (reputedly a student of BAIZHANG HUAIHAI), and THẢO ĐƯỜNG (reputedly connected to the YUNMEN ZONG lineage in China). Chan had a presence in Tibet during the early dissemination (SNGA DAR) of Buddhism, and the Chan monk MOHEYAN was an influential figure at the Tibetan court in the late eighth century, leading to the famous BSAM YAS DEBATE.
Chanlin sengbao zhuan. (J. Zenrin soboden; K. Sollim sŭngbo chon 禪林僧寶傳). In Chinese, "Chronicles of the SAMGHA Jewel in the Forests of CHAN"; compiled in the twelfth century by the "lettered Chan" (WENZI CHAN) monk JUEFAN HUIHONG (1071-1128). Huihong intended for this chronicle to serve as a supplement to his own "Biographies of Eminent Monks" (GAOSENG ZHUAN), which is no longer extant. Huihong collected the biographies of over a hundred eminent Chan masters who were active in the lettered Chan movement between the late Tang and early Song dynasties, appending his own comments to each biography. Huihong's collection is said to have been pared down to eighty-one biographies by the Chan master DAHUI ZONGGAO. Later, Dahui's disciple Jinglao (d.u.) of Tanfeng added a biography of WUZU FAYAN, the teacher of Dahui's own master YUANWU KEQIN, and two other masters to the conclusion of Huihong's text, giving a total of eighty-four biographies in the extant collection. A postscript by XUTANG ZHIYU appears at the end of the compilation. Unlike Chan "lamplight histories" (CHUANDENG LU), which are typically arranged according to principal and collateral lineages, the monks treated in this compilation are listed according to their significance in the origin and development of the "lettered Chan" movement; Huihong's treatment undermines the neat charts of master-disciple connections deriving from the lamplight histories, which have become so well known in the literature. In Japan, a copy of the Chanlin sengbao zhuan was published as early as 1295 and again in 1644.
Ch’an school of Buddhism: The Chinese equivalent of the Japanese Zen Buddhism (q.v.).
chanshi. (J. zenji; K. sonsa 禪師). In Chinese, lit. "DHYANA master," "meditation master," and, later, "CHAN master." Various "biographies of eminent monks" (GAOSENG ZHUAN) collections mention specialists of meditation known as chanshi, many of whom appear in a section typically entitled "practitioners of meditation" (xichan). Teachers of the TIANTAI, PURE LAND, and SANJIE JIAO are often referred to as chanshi. After the rise of the CHAN school in China, the term typically referred more specifically to the eminent teachers of this specific tradition. Often the formal title of chanshi (Chan master) was bestowed upon exceptional teachers by the monarchs of China, Korea, and Japan.
Chanyuan qinggui. (J. Zen'on shingi; K. Sonwon ch'onggyu 禪苑清規). In Chinese, "Pure Rules of the Chan Garden"; compiled by the CHAN master CHANGLU ZONGZE, in ten rolls. According to its preface, which is dated 1103, the Chanyuan qinggui was modeled on BAIZHANG HUAIHAI's legendary "rules of purity" (QINGGUI) and sought to provide a standardized set of monastic rules and an outline of institutional administration that could be used across all Chan monasteries. As the oldest extant example of the qinggui genre, the Chanyuan qinggui is an invaluable source for the study of early Chan monasticism. It was the first truly Chinese set of monastic regulations that came to rival in importance and influence the imported VINAYA materials of Indian Buddhism and it eventually came to be used not only in Chan monasteries but also in "public monasteries" (SHIFANG CHA) across the Chinese mainland. The Chanyuan qinggui provides meticulous descriptions of monastic precepts, life in the SAMGHA hall (SENGTANG), rites and rituals, manners of giving and receiving instruction, and the various institutional offices at a Chan monastery. A great deal of information is also provided on the abbot and his duties, such as the tea ceremony. Semi-independent texts such the ZUOCHAN YI, a primer of meditation, the Guijing wen, a summary of the duties of the monastic elite, and the Baizhang guisheng song, Zongze's commentary on Baizhang's purported monastic code, are also appended at the end of the Chanyuan qinggui. The Japanese pilgrims MYoAN EISAI, DoGEN KIGEN, and ENNI BEN'EN came across the Chanyuan qinggui during their visits to various monastic centers in China and, upon their return to Japan, they used the text as the basis for the establishment of the Zen monastic institution. Copies of a Chinese edition by a certain Yu Xiang, dated 1202, are now housed at the Toyo and Kanazawa Bunko libraries. The Chanyuan qinggui was also imported into Korea, which printed its own edition of the text in 1254; the text was used to reorganize Korean monastic institutions as well.
Chengshi lun. (S. *Tattvasiddhi; J. Jojitsuron; K. Songsil non 成實論). In Chinese, "Treatise on Establishing Reality"; a summary written c. 253 CE by the third century CE author HARIVARMAN of the lost ABHIDHARMA of the BAHUsRUTĪYA school, a branch of the MAHASAMGHIKA. (The Sanskrit reconstruction *Tattvasiddhi is now generally preferred over the outmoded *SatyasiddhisAstra). The Tattvasiddhi is extant only in KUMARAJĪVA's Chinese translation, made in 411-412, in sixteen rolls (juan) and 202 chapters (pin). The treatise is especially valuable for its detailed refutations of the positions held by other early MAINSTREAM BUDDHIST SCHOOLS; the introduction, for example, surveys ten different grounds of controversy separating the different early schools. The treatise is structured in the form of an exposition of the traditional theory of the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS, but does not include listings for different factors (DHARMA) that typify many works in the abhidharma genre. The positions advocated in the text are closest to those of the STHAVIRANIKAYA and SAUTRANTIKA schools, although, unlike the SthaviranikAya, the treatise accepts the reality of "unmanifest materiality" (AVIJNAPTIRuPA) and, unlike SautrAntika, rejects the notion of an "intermediate state" (ANTARABHAVA) between existences. Harivarman opposes the SARVASTIVADA position that dharmas exist in past, present, and future, the MahAsAMghika view that thought is inherently pure, and the VATSĪPUTRĪYA premise that the "person" (PUDGALA) exists. The Chengshi lun thus hones to a "middle way" between the extremes of "everything exists" and "everything does not exist," both of which it views as expediencies that do not represent ultimate reality. The text advocates, instead, the "voidness of everything" (sarvasunya) and is therefore sometimes viewed within the East Asian traditions as representing a transitional stage between the mainstream Buddhist schools and MahAyAna philosophical doctrine. The text was so widely studied in East Asia, especially during the fifth and sixth centuries, that reference is made to a *Tattvasiddhi school of exegesis (C. Chengshi zong; J. Jojitsushu; K. Songsilchong); indeed, the Jojitsu school is considered one of the six major schools of Japanese Buddhist scholasticism during the Nara period.
Cheng weishi lun shu ji. (J. Joyuishikiron jukki; K. Song yusik non sulgi 成唯識論述). In Chinese, "Explanatory Notes on the CHENG WEISHI LUN" (*VijNaptimAtratAsiddhi); by the Chinese YOGACARA monk KUIJI and probably compiled sometime between 659 and 682. In his preface, Kuiji praises VASUBANDHU and his TRIMsIKA, DHARMAPALA's *VijNaptimAtratAsiddhi (C. Cheng weishi lun) and XUANZANG for translating DHARMAPALA's text. Then, as do most commentaries of that period, Kuiji expounds upon the title of DharmapAla's text. In his subsequent introduction, Kuiji largely divides his commentary into five sections. In the first section, he ascertains the period in the Buddha's life to which the teachings belong (see JIAOXIANG PANSHI; PANJIAO) and discusses its audience, the BODHISATTVAs. In the second section, Kuiji discusses the tenets of the Cheng weishi lun, which he subsumes under the notion of "mind-only" (CITTAMATRA). In third section, Kuiji demonstrates that the Cheng weishi lun belongs to the "one vehicle" (EKAYANA) and the BODHISATTVAPItAKA. In the fourth section, short biographies and dates of the ten masters of the YOGACARA are provided. Kuiji then provides a detailed analysis of the Cheng weishi lun itself in the last section. Several commentaries on Kuiji's text have been written throughout the ages in East Asia. The Cheng weishi lun shu ji also exerted a considerable amount of influence on Silla-period Korean Buddhism and among the Nara schools of early Japanese Buddhism (see NARA BUDDHISM, SIX SCHOOLS OF).
Chikchisa. (直指寺). In Korean, "Direct Pointing Monastery"; the eighth district monastery (PONSA) of the contemporary CHOGYE CHONG of Korean Buddhism, located on Mount Hwangak in North Kyongsang province. The monastery purports to have been founded in 418 CE by the Koguryo monk Ado (fl. c. 418). There are three different stories about how the monastery got its name. The first version states that the name originated when Ado pointed directly at Mount Hwangak and said, "At that place, a large monastery will be established." The second story says that a monk called Nŭngyo (fl. c. 936) laid out the monastery campus using only his hands and without using any other measuring devices; hence, the monastery was given the name "Direct Measuring" (chikchi). A third story connects the name to the famous line concerning the soteriological approach of the SoN or CHAN school: "direct pointing to the human mind" (K. chikchi insim; C. ZHIZHI RENXIN). With the support of the Koryo king Taejo (r. 918-943), Nŭngyo restored the monastery in 936; major renovations followed in the tenth century and again during the Choson dynasty. In 1595, during the Japanese Hideyoshi invasions, all its buildings except the Ch'onbul Chon (Thousand Buddhas Hall), Ch'onwang Mun (Heavenly Kings Gate), and Chaha Mun (Purple-Glow Gate) were burned to the ground. The monastery was rebuilt in a massive construction project that began in 1602 and lasted for seventy years. The monastery enshrines many treasures, including a seated figure of the healing buddha BHAIsAJYAGURU and a hanging picture of a Buddha triad (Samjonbul T'AENGHWA). Two three-story stone pagodas are located in front of the main shrine hall (TAEUNG CHoN) and other three-story pagodas are located in front of the Piro chon (VAIROCANA Hall).
chinyong. (C. zhenying; J. shin'ei 眞影). In Korean, lit. "true image"; viz., a "monk's portrait." Although the term is known throughout the East Asian Buddhist traditions, it is especially associated with Korea; the related term DINGXIANG (J. chinzo, lit. "head's appearance") is more typically used within the Chinese and Japanese traditions. The employment of the term chinyong in Korea is a late Choson dynasty development; different terms were used in Korea before that era to refer to monk's portraits, including chinhyong ("true form"), sinyong ("divine image"), chinyong ("true appearance") and yongja ("small portrait image"). "Chin" ("true") in the compound refers to the inherent qualities of the subject, while "yong" ("image") alludes to his physical appearance; thus, a chinyong is a portrait that seeks to convey the true inner spirituality of the subject. Images of eminent masters who had been renowned patriarchs of schools, courageous monk soldiers, or successful fund-raisers were enshrined in a monastery's portrait hall. These portraits were painted posthumously-and, unlike Chinese dingxiang portraits, typically without the consent of the subjects-as one means of legitimizing the dharma-transmission lineage of their religious descendants; this usage of portraits is seen in both meditation (SoN) and doctrinal (KYO) monasteries. Korean monk portraits were not given out to individual disciples or lay adherents, as occurred in Chinese and Japanese Buddhism, where dozens and even hundreds of portraits were produced by and for a variety of persons. In the context of the Korean Son school, the pictures additionally enhanced the Son Buddhist emphasis on the direct spiritual transmission (see YINKE) between master and disciple. The development of monk portraiture was closely tied to annual commemorative practices in Buddhist monasteries, which sought to maintain the religious bonds between the dharma ancestors and their descendants.
Chion'in. (知恩院). In Japanese, "Knowing Beneficence Cloister"; the headquarters of the JoDOSHu, or PURE LAND school of Japanese Buddhism, which was founded by HoNENs (1133-1212); located in the Higashiyama district of Kyoto. Chion'in was the site where Honen taught and where he died after a long period of fasting. His disciple Genchi (1183-1238) built the complex in his honor in 1234 and, still today, a statue of Honen is enshrined in the founder's hall. Most of the monastery was destroyed by fire in 1633, but the third Tokugawa shogun rebuilt the monastery in the middle of the seventeenth century with the structures present today. These include the main gate, or sanmon, built in 1619 and the largest gate of this type in Japan at seventy-nine feet tall. The oldest building on the monastery campus is the hondo, or main Buddha hall, built in 1633, which can hold three thousand people. Guesthouses from 1641 are roofed in the Irimoya style, and the roof beams on many of the buildings are capped with the Tokugawa three-hollyhock leaf crest. Various hallways in the monastery have also been built with "nightingale floors" (J. uguisubari)-floorboards with metal ends that rub on metal joints when someone walks across them, making them extremely squeaky. This flooring was specifically designed to sound an alarm in case any assassin might try to sneak into the sleeping quarters when the Tokugawa family stayed over at the monastery. The monastery's bell was cast in 1633 and weighs seventy-four tons; it is so massive that it takes seventeen monks to ring it when it is rung annually on New Year's Day.
Chodang chip. (C. Zutang ji; J. Sodoshu 祖堂集). In Korean, "Patriarchs' Hall Collection"; one of the earliest "lamplight histories" (CHUANDENG LU), viz., lineage records, of the CHAN tradition, compiled in 952 by the monks Jing (K. Chong) (d.u.) and Yun/Jun (K. Un/Kyun) (d.u.) of the monastery of Chaojingsi in Quanzhou (in present-day Fujian provine). The Chodang chip builds on an earlier Chan history, the BAOLIN ZHUAN, on which it seems largely to have been based. According to one current theory, the original text by Jing and Yun was a short work in a single roll, which was expanded into ten rolls early in the Song dynasty and subsequently reissued in twenty rolls in the definitive 1245 Korean edition. The anthology includes a preface by the compilers' teacher and collaborator Zhaoqing Shendeng/Wendeng (884-972), also known as the Chan master Jingxiu, who also appends verse panegyrics after several of the biographies in the collection. The Chodang chip provides biographies of 253 figures, including the seven buddhas of the past (SAPTATATHAGATA), the first Indian patriarch (ZUSHI) MAHAKAsYAPA up to and including the sixth patriarch (LIUZU) of Chan in China, HUINENG, and monks belonging to the lineages of Huineng's putative disciples QINGYUAN XINGSI and NANYUE HUAIRANG. In contrast to the later JINGDE CHUANDENG LU, the Chodang chip mentions the lineage of Qingyuan before that of Nanyue. In addition to the biographical narrative, the entries also include short excerpts from the celebrated sayings and dialogues of the persons it covers. These are notable for including many features that derive from the local vernacular (what has sometimes been labeled "Medieval Vernacular Sinitic"); for this reason, the text has been the frequent object of study by Chinese historical linguists. The Chodang chip is also significant for containing the biographies of several Silla-dynasty monks who were founders of, or associated with, the Korean "Nine Mountains School of Son" (KUSAN SoNMUN), eight of whom had lineage ties to the Chinese HONGZHOU ZONG of Chan that derived from MAZU DAOYI; the anthology in fact offers the most extensive body of early material on the developing Korean Son tradition. This emphasis suggests that the two compilers may themselves have been expatriate Koreans training in China and/or that the extant anthology was substantially reedited in Korea. The Chodang chip was lost in China after the Northern Song dynasty and remained completely unknown subsequently to the Chinese Chan and Japanese Zen traditions. However, the 1245 Korean edition was included as a supplement to the Koryo Buddhist canon (KORYo TAEJANGGYoNG), which was completed in 1251 during the reign of the Koryo king Kojong (r. 1214-1259), and fortunately survived; this is the edition that was rediscovered in the 1930s at the Korean monastery of HAEINSA. Because the collection is extant only in a Koryo edition and because of the many Korean monks included in the collection, the Chodang chip is often cited in the scholarly literature by its Korean pronunciation.
Chogye chong. (曹溪宗). In Korean, the "Chogye order"; short for Taehan Pulgyo Chogye chong (Chogye Order of Korean Buddhism); the largest Buddhist order in Korea, with and some fifteen thousand monks and nuns and over two thousand monasteries and temples organized around twenty-five district monasteries (PONSA). "Chogye" is the Korean pronunciation of the Chinese Caoxi, the name of the mountain (CAOXISHAN) where the sixth patriarch (LIUZU) of CHAN, HUINENG, resided; the name is therefore meant to evoke the order's pedigree as a predominantly Chan (K. SoN) tradition, though it seeks also to incorporate all other major strands of Korean Buddhist thought and practice. The term Chogye chong was first used by the Koryo monk ŬICHoN to refer to the "Nine Mountains school of Son" (KUSAN SoNMUN), and the name was used at various points during the Koryo and Choson dynasties to designate the indigenous Korean Son tradition. The Chogye order as it is known today is, however, a modern institution. It was formed in 1938 during the Japanese colonial administration of Korea, a year after the monastery of T'aegosa was established in central Seoul and made the new headquarters of Choson Buddhism (Choson Pulgyo ch'ongbonsan). This monastery, later renamed CHOGYESA, still serves today as the headquarters of the order. The constitution of the order traces its origins to Toŭi (d. 825), founder of the Kajisan school in the Nine Mountains school of Son; this tradition is said to have been revived during the Koryo dynasty by POJO CHINUL, who provided its soteriological grounding; finally, the order's lineage derives from T'AEGO POU, who returned to Korea at the very end of the Koryo dynasty with dharma transmission in the contemporary Chinese LINJI ZONG. In 1955, following the end of the Korean War, Korean Buddhism entered into a decade-long "purification movement" (chonghwa undong), through which the celibate monks (pigu sŭng) sought to remove all vestiges of Japanese influence in Korean Buddhism, and especially the institution of married monks (taech'o sŭng). This confrontation ultimately led to the creation of two separate orders: the Chogye chong of the celibate monks, officially reconstituted in 1962, and the much smaller T'AEGO CHONG of married monks.
Chogyesa. (曹溪寺). In Korean, "Chogye Monastery"; the administrative headquarters of the CHOGYE CHONG, the largest Buddhist order in contemporary Korea, and its first district monastery (PONSA). In an attempt to unify Korean Buddhist institutions during the Japanese colonial period, Korean Buddhist leaders prepared a joint constitution of the SoN and KYO orders and established the Central Bureau of Religious Affairs (Chungang Kyomuwon) in 1929. Eight years later, in 1937, the Japanese government-general decided to help bring the Buddhist tradition under centralized control by establishing a new headquarters for Choson Buddhism (Choson Pulgyo Ch'ongbonsan) in the capital of Seoul. With financial and logistical assistance from the Japanese colonial administration, the former headquarters building of a proscribed Korean new religion, the Poch'on'gyo, was purchased, disassembled, and relocated from the southwest of Korea to the site of Kakhwangsa in the Chongno district of central Seoul. That new monastery was given the name T'aegosa, after its namesake T'AEGO POU, the late-Koryo Son teacher who received dharma transmission in the Chinese LINJI ZONG. After the split in 1962 between the celibate monks of the Chogye chong and the married monks (taech'o sŭng), who organized themselves into the T'AEGO CHONG, T'aegosa was renamed Chogyesa, from the name of the mountain where the sixth patriarch (LIUZU) of Chan, HUINENG, resided (see CAOXISHAN). This monastery continues to serve today as the headquarters of the Chogye chong. In addition to the role it plays as the largest traditional monastery in the city center of Seoul, Chogyesa also houses all of the administrative offices of the order.
Ch'ongho Hyujong. (清虚休静) (1520-1604). Korean SoN master of the Choson dynasty; best known to Koreans by his sobriquet Sosan taesa (lit. the Great Master "West Mountain," referring to Mt. Myohyang near present-day P'yongyang in North Korea). Hyujong was a native of Anju in present-day South P'yongan province. After losing his parents at an early age, Hyujong was adopted by the local magistrate of Anju, Yi Sajŭng (d.u.), and educated at the Songgyun'gwan Confucian academy. In 1534, Hyujong failed to attain the chinsa degree and decided instead to become a monk. He was ordained by a certain Sungin (d.u.) on CHIRISAN in 1540, and he later received the full monastic precepts from Hyuong Ilson (1488-1568). Hyujong later became the disciple of the Son master Puyong Yonggwan (1485-1571). In 1552, Hyujong passed the clerical exams (SŬNGKWA) revived by HoŮNG POU, who later appointed Hyujong the prelate (p'ansa) of both the SoN and KYO traditions. Hyujong also succeeded Pou as the abbot of the monastery Pongŭnsa in the capital, but he left his post as prelate and spent the next few years teaching and traveling throughout the country. When the Japanese troops of Hideyoshi Toyotomi (1536/7-1598) invaded Korea in 1592, Hyujong's disciple Kiho Yonggyu (d. 1592) succeeded in retaking the city of Ch'ongju, but died shortly afterward in battle. Hyujong himself was then asked by King Sonjo (r. 1567-1608) to lead an army against the invading forces. His monk militias (ŭisŭnggun) eventually played an important role in fending off the Japanese troops. When the king subsequently gave Hyujong permission to retire, the master left his command in the hands of his disciple SAMYoNG YUJoNG; he died shortly thereafter. Hyujong is said to have had more than one thousand students, among whom Yujong, P'yonyang Ŭn'gi (1581-1644), Soyo T'aenŭng (1562-1649), and Chonggwan Ilson (1533-1608) are best known. Hyujong left a number of writings, including the SoN'GA KWIGAM, which is one of the most widely read works of the Korean Buddhist tradition. Other important works include the Samga kwigam, Son'gyo sok, Son'gyo kyol, and Solson ŭi. In these works, Hyujong attempted to reconcile the teachings of the Son and Kyo traditions of Buddhism, as well as the doctrines of Buddhism and Confucianism.
chongjong. (宗正). In Korean, "supreme patriarch" (lit. "primate of the order"); the spiritual head of the CHOGYE CHONG (Chogye order) of Korean Buddhism. The term chongjong first began to be used in Korean Buddhism during Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945) and has continued to be employed since 1954 when the celibate monks (pigu sŭng) established an independent Chogye order, which eventually excluded the married monks (taech'o sŭng) who had dominated monastic positions during the colonial period. A Korean Supreme Court ruling in 1962 ultimately gave the celibate monks title to virtually all the major monasteries across the nation and led to the Chogye order's official re-establishment as the principal ecclesiastical institution of Korean Buddhism, with the chongjong serving as its primate. The married monks subsequently split off from the Chogye order to form the independent T'AEGO CHONG. ¶ To be selected as chongjong, a candidate must be a minimum of sixty-five years of age and have been a monk for at least forty-five years; his rank in the Chogye order must be that of Taejongsa (great master of the order), the highest of the Chogye order's six ecclesiastical ranks. To select the chongjong, a committee of seventeen to twenty-five monks is appointed, which includes the Chogye order's top executive (ch'ongmuwonjang), council representative (chonghoe ŭijang), and head vinaya master (hogye wiwonjang); the selection is finalized through a majority vote of the committee members. The chongjong is initially appointed for a five-year term and is eligible for reappointment for one additional term. The contemporary Chogye order counts Wonmyong Hyobong (1888-1966), appointed in 1962, as its first chongjong.
Ch'ont'ae sagyo ŭi. (C. Tiantai sijiao yi; J. Tendai shikyogi 天台四教儀). In Korean, the "Principle of the Fourfold Teachings of the Tiantai [School]," composed by the Korean monk Ch'egwan (d. 970); an influential primer of TIANTAI ZONG (K. Chont'ae chong) doctrine. The loss of the texts of the Tiantai tradition in China after the chaos that accompanied the fall of the Tang dynasty prompted the king of the Wuyue kingdom to seek copies of them elsewhere in East Asia. King Kwangjong (r. 950-975) of the Koryo dynasty responded to the Wuyue king's search by sending the monk Ch'egwan to China in 961. In order to summarize the major teachings of the Tiantai school, Ch'egwan wrote this one-roll abstract of TIANTAI ZHIYI's Sijiao yi, which also draws on other of Zhiyi's writings, including his FAHUA XUANYI. Ch'egwan's text is especially known for its summary of Zhiyi's doctrinal classification schema (see JIAOXIANG PANSHI) on the different (chronological) stages of the Buddha's teaching career and the varying methods he used in preaching to his audiences; these are called the "five periods and eight teachings" (WUSHI BAJIAO). The five periods correspond to what the Tiantai school considered to be the five major chronological stages in the Buddha's teaching career, each of which is exemplified by a specific scripture or type of scripture: (1) HUAYAN (AVATAMSAKASuTRA), (2) AGAMA, (3) VAIPULYA, (4) PRAJNAPARAMITA, and (5) SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA and MAHAPARINIRVAnASuTRA. The different target audiences of the Buddha's message lead to four differing varieties of content in these teachings (huafa): (1) the PItAKA teachings, which were targeted at the two-vehicle adherents (ER SHENG) of disciples (sRAVAKA) and solitary buddhas (PRATYEKABUDDHA); (2) the common teachings, which were intended for both two-vehicle adherents and neophyte bodhisattvas of the MAHAYANA; (3) the distinct teachings, which targeted only bodhisattvas; (4) the perfect or consummate teachings (YUANJIAO), which offered advanced bodhisattvas an unvarnished assessment of Buddhist truths. In speaking to these audiences, which differed dramatically in their capacity to understand his message, the Buddha is said also to have employed four principal techniques of conversion (huayi), or means of conveying his message: sudden, gradual, secret, and indeterminate. Ch'egwan's text played a crucial role in the revitalization of the Tiantai tradition in China and has remained widely studied since. The Ch'ont'ae sagyo ŭi was also influential in Japan, where it was repeatedly republished. Numerous commentaries on this text have also been written in China, Korea, and Japan.
Chonŭnsa. (泉隱寺). In Korean, "Monastery of the Hidden Fount"; one of the three major monasteries located on the Buddhist sacred mountain of CHIRISAN. The monastery is said to have been founded in 828 by an Indian monk named Togun (d.u.) and was originally named Kamnosa (either "Sweet Dew Monastery" or "Responsive Dew Monastery"), after a spring there that would clear the minds of people who drank its ambrosial waters. During the Koryo dynasty, Chonŭnsa was elevated to the status of first Son monastery of the South, during the rule of Ch'ŭngnyol wang (r. 1275-1308). Most of the monastery was destroyed during the Japanese Hideyoshi invasion (1592-1598). In 1679, a Son monk named Tanyu (d.u.) rebuilt the monastery, but changed the name to Chonŭn (Hidden Fount), because the spring had disappeared after a monk killed a snake that kept showing up around it. Subsequently, fires of unknown origin repeatedly occurred in the monastery, which stopped only after hanging up a board with the name of the monastery written in the "water" calligraphic style by Won'gyo Yi Kwangsa (1705-1777), one of the four preeminent calligraphers of the Choson dynasty.
chopstick ::: n. --> One of two small sticks of wood, ivory, etc., used by the Chinese and Japanese to convey food to the mouth.
chosan. (朝参). In Japanese, lit. "morning meditation"; the morning-period ZAZEN that begins the day at a Japanese ZEN monastery.
Choson Pulgyo t'ongsa. (朝鮮佛教通史). In Korean, "A Comprehensive History of Choson Buddhism"; compiled by the Buddhist historian Yi Nŭnghwa (1868-1943). Yi's Choson Pulgyo t'ongsa is the first modern attempt to write a comprehensive history of Korean (or Choson as it was then known) Buddhism. The text was first published by Sinmun'gwan in 1918. The first volume narrates the history of Korean Buddhism from its inception during the Three Kingdoms period up until the time of the Japanese occupation. Information on the temples and monasteries established by Koreans and a report on the current number of monks and nuns are also appended to end of this volume. The second volume narrates the history of Buddhism in India after the Buddha's death. The compilation of the canon (TRIPItAKA; DAZANGJING) and the formation of the various schools and traditions are provided in this volume. The third and final volume provides a commentary on some of the more important events described in volume one. Yi relied heavily on biographies of eminent monks and stele inscriptions. Yi's text is still considered an important source for studying the history of Korean Buddhism.
Choson Pulgyo yusin non. (朝鮮佛教唯新論). In Korean, "Treatise on the Reformation of Korean Buddhism"; composed by the Korean monk-reformer HAN YONGUN in 1910. While sojourning in Japan, Han personally witnessed what to him seemed quite innovative ways in which Japanese Buddhists were seeking to adapt their religious practices to modern society and hoped to implement similar ideas in Korea. This clarion call for Buddhist reform was one of the first attempts by a Korean author to apply Western liberalism in the context of Korean society. Han attributed many of the contemporary problems Korean Buddhism was facing to its isolation from society at large, a result of the centuries-long persecution Buddhism had suffered in Korea at the hands of Confucian ideologues during the previous Choson dynasty (1392-1910). To help restore Buddhism to a central place in Korean society and culture, Han called for what were at the time quite radical reforms, including social and national egalitarianism, the secularization of the SAMGHA, a married clergy, expanded educational opportunities for monks, the transfer of monasteries from the mountains to the cities, and economic self-reliance within the monastic community. Both the Japanese government-general and the leaders of the Korean Buddhist community rebuffed most of Han's proposals (although several of his suggestions, including a married clergy, were subsequently co-opted by the Japanese colonial administration), but the issues that he raised about how to make Buddhism relevant in an increasingly secularized and capitalist society remain pertinent even to this day.
chukai. (抽解). In Japanese, "to take off"; referring to the rest period between meditation periods for monks practicing in the sodo, or SAMGHA hall. In between meditation sessions, monks are allowed to leave the SAMGHA hall and take off their robes to lie down and rest.
CJK ::: (character) In internationalisation, a collective term for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.The characters of these languages are all partly based on Han characters (i.e., hanzi or kanji), which require 16-bit character encodings. CJK character encodings should consist minimally of Han characters plus language-specific phonetic scripts such as pinyin, bopomofo, hiragana, hangul, etc.CJKV is CJK plus Vietnamese. .(2001-01-01)
CJK "character" In {internationalisation}, a collective term for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. The characters of these languages are all partly based on {Han characters} (i.e., "hanzi" or "{kanji}"), which require 16-bit {character encodings}. CJK character encodings should consist minimally of {Han characters} plus language-specific phonetic scripts such as pinyin, bopomofo, hiragana, hangul, etc. {CJKV} is CJK plus {Vietnamese}. {(ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/examples/nutshell/ujip/doc/cjk.inf)}. (2001-01-01)
CJKV ::: (character) CJK plus Vietnamese. Vietnamese, like the other three CJK languages, requires 16-bit character encodings but it does not use Han characters.[CJKV Information Processing: Chinese, Japanese, Korean & Vietnamese Computing, Ken Lunde, pub. O'Reilly 1998, ].(2001-03-18)
CJKV "character" {CJK} plus {Vietnamese}. Vietnamese, like the other three CJK languages, requires 16-bit {character encodings} but it does not use {Han characters}. ["CJKV Information Processing: Chinese, Japanese, Korean & Vietnamese Computing", Ken Lunde, pub. O'Reilly 1998, {(http://oreilly.com/catalog/cjkvinfo/)}]. (2001-03-18)
Clipper ::: 1. (hardware, cryptography) An integrated circuit which implements the SkipJack algorithm. The Clipper is manufactured by the US government to encrypt Phil Zimmerman (inventor of PGP) remarked, This doesn't even pass the sniff test (i.e. it stinks). .alt.privacy.clipper2. A compiled dBASE dialect from Nantucket Corp, LA. Versions: Winter 85, Spring 86, Autumn 86, Summer 87, 4.5 (Japanese Kanji), 5.0. It uses the Xbase programming language.(2004-09-01)
Clipper 1. "hardware, cryptography" An {integrated circuit} which implements the {SkipJack} {algorithm}. The Clipper is manufactured by the US government to encrypt telephone data. It has the added feature that it can be decrypted by the US government, which has tried to make the chip compulsory in the United States. Phil Zimmerman (inventor of {PGP}) remarked, "This doesn't even pass the sniff test" (i.e. it stinks). {(http://wired.com/clipper/)}. {news:alt.privacy.clipper} 2. A compiled {dBASE} dialect from Nantucket Corp, LA. Versions: Winter 85, Spring 86, Autumn 86, Summer 87, 4.5 (Japanese Kanji), 5.0. It uses the {Xbase} programming language. (2004-09-01)
CompuServe Information Service "company" (CIS, CompuServe Interactive Services). An ISP and on-line service {portal} based in Columbus, Ohio, USA; part of {AOL} since February 1998. CIS was founded in 1969 as a computer {time-sharing service}. Along with {AOL} and {Prodigy}, CIS was one of the first pre-Internet, on-line services for consumers, providing {bulletin boards}, on-line conferencing, business news, sports and weather, financial transactions, {electronic mail}, {Usenet} news, travel and entertainment data and on-line editions of computer publications. CIS was originally run by {CompuServe Corporation}. In 1979, CompuServe was the first service to offer {electronic mail} and technical support to personal computer users. In 1980 they were the first to offer {real-time} {chat} with its CB Simulator. By 1982, the company had formed its Network Services Division to provide wide-area networking to corporate clients. Initially mostly serving the USA, in 1986 they developed a Japanese version called NIFTYSERVE. In 1989, they expanded into Europe and became a leading {Internet service provider}. In 2001 they released version 7.0 of their client program. {CompuServe home (http://compuserve.com/)}. (2009-04-02)
coolie ::: n. --> Same as Cooly.
An East Indian porter or carrier; a laborer transported from the East Indies, China, or Japan, for service in some other country.
corchorus ::: n. --> The common name of the Kerria Japonica or Japan globeflower, a yellow-flowered, perennial, rosaceous plant, seen in old-fashioned gardens.
CSK Corporation "company" The japanese company that owns {CSK Software} and {Sega}. CSK Corp. is the largest independent japanese software company. (2003-05-13)
CSK Corporation ::: (company) The japanese company that owns CSK Software and Sega. CSK Corp. is the largest independent japanese software company.(2003-05-13)
CSK Software ::: (company) An international software company formed by the merger of Quay Financial Software and Micrognosis, and fully owned by CSK Corporation, Japan.CSK Software is based in Frankfurt/Main (Germany) with offices in London (UK), Zurich (Switzerland), Madrid (Spain), and Singapore. Products segments are RDD: Enterprise Application Integration, main product is XGen, an universal message converter with GUI and connections also to SWIFT (SWIFT gold label). .E-mail: .Address: CSK Software AG, Opernplatz 2, D-60313 Frankfurt, Germany.Tel: +49 (69) 509 520. Fax: +49 (69) 5095 2333.(2003-05-13)
CSK Software "company" An international software company formed by the merger of {Quay Financial Software} and {Micrognosis}, and fully owned by {CSK Corporation}, Japan. CSK Software is based in Frankfurt/Main (Germany) with offices in London (UK), Zurich (Switzerland), Madrid (Spain), and Singapore. Products segments are RDD: Real-time data delivery, main product is {Slingshot} for delivering real-time data over the Internet (real push technology). ETS: Electronic Trading Systems, price calculation and automatic trading (with connections to {XONTRO} and {XETRA}). EAI: {Enterprise Application Integration}, main product is {XGen}, a universal message converter with {GUI} and connections also to {SWIFT}. {(http://csksoftware.com/)}. E-mail: "info@csksoftware.com". Address: CSK Software AG, Opernplatz 2, D-60313 Frankfurt, Germany. Tel: +49 (69) 509 520. Fax: +49 (69) 5095 2333. (2003-05-13)
Cundī. (T. Skul byed ma; C. Zhunti; J. Juntei; K. Chunje 准提). In Sanskrit, the name Cundī (with many orthographic variations) probably connotes a prostitute or other woman of low caste but specifically denotes a prominent local ogress (YAKsInĪ), whose divinized form becomes the subject of an important Buddhist cult starting in the eighth century. Her worship began in the Bengal and Orissa regions of the Indian subcontinent, where she became the patron goddess of the PAla dynasty, and soon spread throughout India, and into Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia, and Tibet, eventually making its way to East Asia. Cundī was originally an independent focus of cultic worship, who only later (as in the Japanese SHINGONSHu) was incorporated into such broader cultic practices as those focused on the "womb MAndALA" (see TAIZoKAI). Several scriptures related to her cult were translated into Chinese starting in the early eighth century, and she lends her name to both a MUDRA as well as an influential DHARAnĪ: namaḥ saptAnAM samyaksaMbuddhakotīnAM tadyathA: oM cale cule cunde svAhA. The dhAranī attributed to Cundī is said to convey infinite power because it is in continuous recitation by myriads of buddhas; hence, an adept who participates in this ongoing recitation will accrue manifold benefits and purify himself from unwholesome actions. The efficacy of the dhAranī is said to be particularly pronounced when it is recited before an image of Cundī while the accompanying Cundī mudrA is also being performed. This dhAranī also gives Cundī her common epithet of "Goddess of the Seventy Million [Buddhas]," which is sometimes mistakenly interpreted (based on a misreading of the Chinese) as the "Mother of the Seventy Million Buddhas." The texts also provide elaborate directions on how to portray her and paint her image. In Cundī's most common depiction, she has eighteen arms (each holding specific implements) and is sitting atop a lotus flower (PADMA) while being worshipped by two ophidian deities.
Dahui Pujue chanshi shu. (J. Daie Fukaku zenji sho; K. Taehye Pogak sonsa so 大慧普覺禪師書). In Chinese, "CHAN Master Dahui Pujue's Letters"; also known as the Dahui shumen, DAHUI SHUZHUANG, SHUZHUANG, and Dahui shu. Its colophon is dated to 1166. In reply to the letters he received from his many students, both ordained and lay, the Chan master DAHUI ZONGGAO wrote back with detailed instructions on meditation practice, especially his signature training in "observing the meditative topic," or more freely "questioning meditation" (KANHUA CHAN); after his death, his letters were compiled and edited in two rolls by his disciples Huiran and Huang Wenchang. Numerous editions of this collection were subsequently printed in China, Korea, and Japan. Many practitioners of Chan, SoN, and ZEN favored the Dahui Pujue chanshi shu for its clarity, intelligibility, and uniquely personal tone. The text was especially influential in the writings of the Korean Son master POJO CHINUL (1158-1210), who first learned about the Chan meditative technique of kanhua Chan from its pages and who attributed one of his three awakenings to his readings of Dahui. Dahui's letters were formally incorporated into the Korean Son monastic curriculum by at least the seventeenth century, as one of books in the "Fourfold Collection" (SAJIP), where it is typically known by its abbreviated title of "Dahui's Letters" (K. TAEHYE SoJANG) or just "Letters" (K. SoJANG; C. Shuzhuang). The Japanese monk and historian MUJAKU DoCHu (1653-1744) also wrote an important commentary to the text, known as the Daiesho koroju.
Daianji. (大安寺). In Japanese, "Great Peace Monastery"; one of the seven great monasteries of the ancient Japanese capital of Nara (NANTO SHICHIDAIJI). Daianji was founded in the Asuka area and, according to internal monastery records, was originally the Kudara no odera (Great Paekche Monastery) that was founded by Emperor Jomei in 639. When this monastery burned down in 642, Empress Kogyoku had it rebuilt and renamed it Daianji. If this identification with Kudara no odera is correct, Daianji has the distinction of being the first monastery in Japan founded by the court. The monastery moved to Nara in 716, following the relocation of the capital there in 710. The Koguryo monk Tohyon (J. Togen, fl. c. seventh century) lived at Daianji during the seventh century, where he wrote the Nihon segi, an early historical chronicle, which is no longer extant. Daianji was also the residence of the Indian monk BODHISENA (704-760), who lived and taught there until the end of his life. Bodhisena performed the "opening the eyes" (C. KAIYAN; J. KAIGEN; NETRAPRATIstHAPANA) ceremony for the 752 dedication of the great buddha image of Vairocana (NARA DAIBUTSU; Birushana Nyorai) at ToDAIJI, another of the great Nara monasteries. Daianji was also home to the Korean monk SIMSANG (J. Shinjo, d. 742) from the Silla kingdom, who was instrumental in introducing the teachings of the Kegon (C. HUAYAN; K. Hwaom) school of Buddhism to Japan. Since the time of another famous resident, KuKAI (774-835), Daianji has been associated with the SHINGONSHu of Japanese Buddhism. Daianji was at times quite grand, with two seven-story pagodas and many other buildings on its campus. After a fire destroyed much of the monastery in the 1200s, rebuilding was slow and the renovated structures were damaged once again by an earthquake in 1449. Daianji's fireproof treasury holds nine wooden images from the eighth century, including three different representations of the BODHISATTVA AVALOKITEsVARA, including both his representations as AMOGHAPAsA (J. Fuku Kenjaku) and his thousand-armed manifestation (SAHASRABHUJASAHASRANETRAVALOKITEsVARA), as well as two of the four heavenly kings (S. CATURMAHARAJAKAYIKA; J. shitenno). The monastery also retains two famous images that are brought out for display for one month each year: in March, HAYAGRĪVA, and in October, the eleven-headed Avalokitesvara (Juichimen Kannon).
daibutsu. (大佛). In Japanese, "great buddha"; referring to colossal wooden or cast-bronze buddha images, such as the forty-eight-foot-high image of VAIROCANA enshrined at ToDAIJI and the image of AMITABHA in KAmakura. As a specific example, see NARA DAIBUTSU.
dai-gohonzon. (大御本尊). In Japanese, lit. "great object of devotion"; the most important object of worship in the NICHIREN SHoSHu school of Japanese Buddhism. The dai-gohonzon is a plank of camphor wood that has at its center an inscription of homage to the title of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra")-NAMU MYoHo RENGEKYo, as well as the name of NICHIREN (1222-1282), surrounded by a cosmological chart (MAndALA) of the Buddhist universe, written in Nichiren's own hand in 1279. By placing namu Myohorengekyo and his name on the same line, the school understands that Nichiren meant that the teachings of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra and the person who proclaimed those teachings (Nichiren) are one and the same (ninpo ikka). The dai-gohonzon has been enshrined at TAISEKIJI, the administrative head temple of Nichiren Shoshu, since the temple's foundation in 1290; for this reason, the temple remains the major pilgrimage center for the school's adherents. The dai-gohonzon itself, the sanctuary (kaidan) where it is enshrined at Kaisekiji, and the teaching of namu Myohorengekyo, are together called the "three great esoteric laws" (SANDAI HIHo), because they were hidden between the lines of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra until Nichiren discovered them and revealed them to the world. Transcriptions of the mandala, called simply GOHONZON, are inscribed on wooden tablets in temples or on paper scrolls when they are enshrined in home altars. See also DAIMOKU.
Daigu Sochiku. (大愚宗築) (1584-1669). Japanese ZEN master of the RINZAISHu lineage. Daigu was born in Mino, present-day Gifu prefecture. In his twenties, Daigu went on a pilgrimage around the country with several other young monks, including GUDo ToSHOKU and Ungo Kiyo (1582-1659), in search of a teacher. In his thirties, Daigu built the monastery of Nansenji in the capital Edo, which he named after his home temple in Mino. He also founded the monasteries of Enkyoji in Kinko (present-day Shiga prefecture) and Enichiji in Tanba (present-day Hyogo prefecture). Daigu was active in restoring dilapidated temples. In 1656, he was invited as the founding abbot of the temple Daianji in Echizen (present-day Fukui prefecture). During the Tokugawa period, temples were mandated by the bakufu to affiliate themselves with a main monastery (honzan), thus becoming a branch temple (matsuji). The temples that Daigu built or restored became branch temples of MYoSHINJI. Daigu's efforts thus allowed the influence of Myoshinji, where he once served as abbot, to grow. Along with Gudo, Daigu also led a faction within Myoshinji that rejected the invitation of the Chinese Chan master YINYUAN LONGQI to serve as abbot of the main temple.
daimio ::: n. --> The title of the feudal nobles of Japan.
daimoku. (題目). In Japanese, lit. "title" of a scripture; the term comes to be used most commonly in the NICHIRENSHu and associated schools of Japanese Buddhism to refer specifically to the title of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"). The title is presumed to summarize the gist of the entire scripture, and the recitation of its title in its Japanese pronunciation (see NAMU MYoHoRENGEKYo) is a principal religious practice of the Nichiren and SoKKA GAKKAI schools. Recitation of the title of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra is called specifically the "diamoku of the essential teaching" (honmon no daimoku) in the Nichiren school. The Japanese reformer NICHIREN (1222-1282) advocated recitation of this daimoku as one of the "three great esoteric laws" (SANDAI HIHo), and he claimed it exemplified mastery of wisdom (PRAJNA) in the three trainings (TRIsIKsA).
Dainichi(bo) Nonin. (大日[房]能忍) (d.u.). Japanese monk of the late Heian and early Kamakura eras; his surname was Taira. Nonin is the reputed founder of the short-lived ZEN sect known as the DARUMASHu, one of the earliest Zen traditions to develop in Japan. Nonin was something of an autodidact and is thought to have achieved awakening through his own study of scriptures and commentaries, rather than through any training with an established teacher. He taught at the temple of Sanboji in Suita (present-day osaka prefecture) and established himself as a Zen master. Well aware that he did not have formal authorization (YINKE) from a Chan master in a recognized lineage, Nonin sent two of his disciples to China in 1189. They returned with a portrait of BODHIDHARMA inscribed by the Chan master FOZHAO DEGUANG (1121-1203) and the robe of Fozhao's influential teacher DAHUI ZONGGAO. Fozhao also presented Nonin with a portrait of himself (see DINGXIANG), on which he wrote a verse at the request of Nonin's two disciples. Such bestowals suggested that Nonin was a recognized successor in the LINJI lineage. In 1194, the monks of HIEIZAN, threatened by Nonin's burgeoning popularity, urged the court to suppress Nonin and his teachings as an antinomian heresy. His school did not survive his death, and many of his leading disciples subsequently became students of other prominent teachers, such as DoGEN KIGEN; this influx of Nonin's adherents introduced a significant Darumashu component into the early SoToSHu tradition. Nonin was later given the posthumous title Zen Master Shinpo [alt. Jinho] (Profound Dharma).
Daitokuji. (大德寺). A famous Japanese ZEN monastery in Kyoto; also known as Murasakino Daitokuji. After his secluded training at the hermitage of Ungoan in eastern Kyoto in 1319, the Japanese RINZAI Zen master SoHo MYoCHo, or Daito Kokushi, was invited by his uncle Akamatsu Norimura to Murasakino located in the northeastern part of Kyoto. There a dharma hall was built and inaugurated by Daito in 1326. Daito was formally honored as the founding abbot (kaizan; C. KAISHAN) and he continued to serve as abbot of Daitokuji until his death in 1337. In an attempt to control the influential monasteries in Kyoto, Emperor Godaigo (1288-1339), who was a powerful patron of Daito and Daitokuji, decreed in 1313 that only those belonging to Daito's lineage could become abbot of Daitokuji and added Daitokuji to the official GOZAN system. Two years later, Daitokuji was raised to top rank of the gozan system, which it shared with the monastery NANZENJI. These policies were later supported by retired Emperor Hanazono (1297-1348), another powerful patron of Daito and his monastery. Daitokuji was devastated by a great fire in 1453 and suffered further destruction during the onin War (1467-1477). The monastery was restored to its former glory in 1474, largely through the efforts of its prominent abbot IKKYu SoJUN. A famous sanmon gate was built by the influential tea master Sen no Rikyu. During its heyday, Daitokuji had some twenty-four inner cloisters (tatchu), such as Ikkyu's Shinjuan and Rikyu's Jukoin and over 173 subtemples (matsuji).
dAkinī. (T. mkha' 'gro ma; C. tuzhini; J. dakini; K. tojini 荼枳尼). In Sanskrit, a cannibalistic female demon, a witch; in sANTIDEVA's BODHICARYAVATARA, a female hell guardian (narakapAlA); in tantric Buddhism, dAkinīs, particularly the vajradAkinī, are guardians from whom tAntrikas obtain secret doctrines. For example, the VAJRABHAIRAVA adept LAlitavajra is said to have received the YAMANTAKA tantras from vajradAkinīs, who allowed him to bring back to the human world only as many of the texts as he could memorize in one night. The dAkinī first appears in Indian sources during the fourth century CE, and it has been suggested that they evolved from local female shamans. The term is of uncertain derivation, perhaps having something to do with "drumming" (a common feature of shamanic ritual). The Chinese, Japanese, and Korean give simply a phonetic transcription of the Sanskrit. In Tibetan, dAkinī is translated as "sky goer" (mkha' 'gro ma), probably related to the Sanskrit khecara, a term associated with the CAKRASAMVARATANTRA. Here, the dAkinī is a goddess, often depicted naked, in semi-wrathful pose (see VAJRAYOGINĪ); they retain their fearsome element but are synonymous with the highest female beauty and attractiveness and are enlightened beings. They form the third of what are known as the "inner" three jewels (RATNATRAYA): the guru, the YI DAM, and the dAkinīs and protectors (DHARMAPALA; T. chos skyong). The archetypical Tibetan wisdom or knowledge dAkinī (ye shes mkha' 'gro) is YE SHES MTSHO RGYAL, the consort of PADMASAMBHAVA. dAkinīs are classified in a variety of ways, the most common being mkha' 'gro sde lnga, the female buddhas equivalent to the PANCATATHAGATA or five buddha families (PANCAKULA): BuddhadAkinī [alt. AkAsadhAtvīsvarī; SparsavajrA] in the center of the mandala, with LocanA, MAmakī, PAndaravAsinī, and TARA in the cardinal directions. Another division is into three: outer, inner, and secret dAkinīs. The first is a YOGINĪ or a YOGIN's wife or a regional goddess, the second is a female buddha that practitioners visualize themselves to be in the course of tantric meditation, and the last is nondual wisdom (ADVAYAJNANA). This division is also connected with the three bodies (TRIKAYA) of MahAyAna Buddhism: the NIRMAnAKAYA (here referring to the outer dAkinīs), SAMBHOGAKAYA (meditative deity), and the DHARMAKAYA (the knowledge dAkinī). The word dAkinī is found in the title of the explanation (vAkhyA) tantras of the yoginī class or mother tantras included in the CakrasaMvaratantra group.
danka seido. (檀家制度). In Japanese, "parish-household system"; danka (parish household) is synonymous with DANNA, and the more common form after the mid-Tokugawa period. See DANNA.
dannadera. (J) (檀那寺). In Japanese, "parish temple"; a Japanese Buddhist institutional system that reached its apex in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. See DANNA.
danna. (檀那). This Japanese term is originally a transcription of the Sanskrit term DANA, or "giving." When referring to a patron of a monk, nun, or monastery, the term danna is used with reference to a "donor" (J. dan'otsu, dan'ochi, dannotsu; S. DANAPATI) or "parish temple" (DANKA). During the Tokugawa period (1603-1868), the Japanese shogunate required every family to register at and support a local temple, called the DANNADERA, which in turned entitled that family to receive funerary services from the local priest. The dannadera, also called the BODAIJI and dankadera, thus served as a means of monitoring the populace and preventing the spread in Japan of subversive religions, such as Christianity and the banned Nichiren-Fuju-Fuse sect of the NICHIREN school. By requiring each Japanese family to be registered at a specific local temple and obligating them to provide for that temple's economic support and to participate in its religious rituals, all Japanese thus became Buddhist in affiliation for the first time in Japanese history.
Daozhe Chaoyuan. (J. Dosha Chogen; K. Toja Ch'owon 道者超元) (1630-1698). Chinese CHAN and ZEN master in the LINJI lineage. Daozhe was a native of Xinghua prefecture in present-day Fujian province. He became a student of Gengxin Xingmi (1603-1659), a direct disciple of the Chan master FEIYIN TONGRONG and, after inheriting Gengxin's lineage, became a dharma cousin of the renowned Chan master YINYUAN LONGQI. In 1651, Daozhe traveled to Nagasaki, Japan, where he served as abbot of the monastery Sofukuji for the next five years. During his stay in Japan, a number of important Buddhist figures visited him for instruction, including the monks Dokuan Genko (1630-1698), Kengan Zen'etsu (1618-1690), EGOKU DoMYo, Choon Dokai (1628-1695), and BANKEI YoTAKU. Unlike his compatriot Yinyuan, who continued to reside in Japan, Daozhe returned to China in 1658 and died shortly thereafter. Daozhe played an important role in preparing the ground for Yinyuan's later establishment of the oBAKUSHu in Japan.
Dari jing shu. (J. Dainichikyosho; K. Taeil kyong so 大日經疏). In Chinese, "Commentary on the MAHAVAIROCANASuTRA"; dictated by sUBHAKARASIMHA and committed to writing with additional notes by his disciple YIXING. After Yixing's death, the Dari jing shu was further edited and expanded by the monks Zhiyan (d.u.) and Wengu (d.u.), and this new edition is known as the DARI JING YISHI. Both editions were transmitted to Japan (the Dari jing shu by KuKAI, Dari jing yishi by ENNIN) and they seem to have circulated without a determinate number of volumes or fixed title. SAICHo, for example, cites a fourteen-roll edition of the Dari jing shu, and Kukai cites a twenty-roll edition; Ennin cites a fourteen-roll edition of the Dari jing yishi, and ENCHIN cites a ten-roll edition. Those belonging to the Tomitsu line of Kukai's SHINGON tradition thus began to exclusively paraphrase the twenty-roll edition of the Dari jing shu, while those of the Taimitsu line of the TENDAI tradition relied solely on the version Ennin had brought back from China. The exact relation between the two editions remains a matter for further study. The first two rolls of the Dari jing shu, known more popularly in Japan as the "Kuchi no sho," provide notes and comments on the first chapter of the MAHAVAIROCANABHISAMBODHISuTRA and serve as an important source for the study of the MahAvairocanasutra's central doctrines. Numerous studies and commentaries on the Kuchi no sho exist. The rest of Yixing's commentary, known as the "Oku no sho," is largely concerned with matters of ritual and art (see MAndALA). Further explanations of the Oku no sho were primarily transmitted from master to disciple as an oral tradition in Japan; twelve such oral traditions are known to exist. The Dari jing shu played an important role in the rise of esoteric Buddhism (see TANTRA) in East Asia, and particularly in Japan.
Dari jing yishi. (J. Dainichikyo gishaku; K. Taeil kyong ŭisok 大日經義釋). In Chinese, "Interpretation of the Meaning of the MAHAVAIROCANABHISAMBODHISuTRA." The monks Zhiyan (d.u.) and Wengu (d.u.) further edited and expanded upon the famous commentary on the MahAvairocanAbhisaMbodhisutra, the DARI JING SHU. The Dari jing shu was dictated by sUBHAKARASIMHA and written down by his disciple YIXING, with further notes. Both texts were transmitted to Japan (the Dari jing shu by KuKAI and Dari jing yishi by ENNIN); monks connected with the Taimitsu strand of the TENDAI tradition exclusively relied on the Dari jing yishi that Ennin had brought back from China. The eminent Japanese monk ENCHIN paid much attention to the Dari jing yishi and composed a catalogue for the text known as Dainichigyo gishaku mokuroku, wherein he details the provenance of the text and the circumstances of its arrival in Japan. Enchin also discusses three different points on which the Dari jing yishi was superior to the Dari jing shu. These points were further elaborated in his other commentaries on the Dari jing yishi. Few others besides Enchin have written commentaries on this text. In China, the Liao dynasty monk Jueyuan (d.u.) composed a commentary entitled the Dari jing yishi yanmi chao.
Darumashu. (達摩宗). In Japanese, the "BODHIDHARMA sect"; one of the earliest Japanese Buddhist ZEN sects, established in the tenth century by DAINICHI NoNIN; the sect takes its name from the putative founder of the CHAN tradition, Bodhidharma. Little was known about the teachings of the Darumashu until the late-twentieth century apart from criticisms found in the writings of its contemporary rivals, who considered the school to be heretical. Criticisms focused on issues of the authenticity of Nonin's lineage and antinomian tendencies in Nonin's teachings. A recently discovered Darumashu treatise, the Joto shogakuron ("Treatise on the Attainment of Complete, Perfect Enlightenment"), discusses the prototypical Chan statement "mind is the buddha," demonstrating that a whole range of benefits, both worldly and religious, would accrue to an adept who simply awakens to that truth. As a critique of the Darumashu by Nonin's rival MYoAN EISAI states, however, since the school posits that the mind is already enlightened and the afflictions (KLEsA) do not exist in reality, its adherents claimed that there were therefore no precepts that had to be kept or practices to be followed, for religious cultivation would only serve to hinder the experience of awakening. The Darumashu also emphasized the importance of the transmission of the patriarchs' relics (J. shari; S. sARĪRA) as a mark of legitimacy. Although the Darumashu was influential enough while Nonin was alive to prompt other sects to call for its suppression, it did not survive its founder's death, and most of Nonin's leading disciples affiliated themselves with other prominent teachers, such as DoGEN KIGEN. These Darumashu adherents had a significant influence on early SoToSHu doctrine and self-identity and seem to have constituted the majority of the Sotoshu tradition into its third generation of successors. ¶ Darumashu, as the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese term Damo zong (Bodhidharma lineage), can also refer more generally to the CHAN/SoN/ZEN school, which traces its heritage back to the founder and first Chinese patriarch, Bodhidharma.
Dasheng fayuan yilin zhang. (J. Daijo hoon girinjo; K. Taesŭng pobwon ŭirim chang 大乗法苑義林章). In Chinese, "(Edited) Chapters on the Forest of Meaning of the Dharma-Garden of MAHĀYĀNA"; composed by the eminent Chinese monk KUIJI. This treatise consists of twenty-nine chapters in seven rolls, but a thirty-three chapter edition is known to have been transmitted to Japan in the second half of the twelfth century. Each chapter is concerned with an important doctrinal matter related to the YOGĀCĀRABHuMIsĀSTRA. Some chapters, for instance, discuss the various canons (PItAKA), two truths (SATYADVAYA), five faculties (INDRIYA), the sixty-two views (DṚstI), eight liberations (AstAVIMOKsA), and buddha-lands (BUDDHAKsETRA), to name but a few. Because of its comprehensive doctrinal coverage, the Dasheng fayuan yilin zhang has served as an invaluable source of information on early YOGĀCĀRA thought in China.
data driven ::: A data driven architecture/language performs computations in an order dictated by data dependencies. Two kinds of data driven computation are dataflow and demand driven.From about 1970 research in parallel data driven computation increased. Centres of excellence emerged at MIT, CERT-ONERA in France, NTT and ETL in Japan and Manchester University.
data driven A data driven architecture/language performs computations in an order dictated by data dependencies. Two kinds of data driven computation are {dataflow} and {demand driven}. From about 1970 research in parallel {data driven} computation increased. Centres of excellence emerged at {MIT}, {CERT-ONERA} in France, {NTT} and {ETL} in Japan and {Manchester University}.
date ::: (convention, data) A string unique to a time duration of 24 hours between 2 successive midnights defined by the local time zone. The specific e.g., Gregorian, Islamic, Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew etc. as well as local ordering conventions such as UK: day/month/year, US: month/day/year.Inputting and outputting dates on computers is greatly complicated by these localisation issues which is why they tend to operate on dates internally in some unified form such as seconds past midnight at the start of the first of January 1970.Many software and hardware representations of dates allow only two digits for the year, leading to the year 2000 problem.Unix manual page: date(1), ctime(3). (1997-07-11)
date "convention, data" A string unique to a time duration of 24 hours between 2 successive midnights defined by the local time zone. The specific representation of a date will depend on which calendar convention is in force; e.g., Gregorian, Islamic, Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew etc. as well as local ordering conventions such as UK: day/month/year, US: month/day/year. Inputting and outputting dates on computers is greatly complicated by these {localisation} issues which is why they tend to operate on dates internally in some unified form such as seconds past midnight at the start of the first of January 1970. Many software and hardware representations of dates allow only two digits for the year, leading to the {year 2000} problem. {Unix manual page}: date(1), ctime(3). (1997-07-11)
David-Néel, Alexandra. (1868-1969). A famous traveler to Tibet. Born Alexandra David to a bourgeois family in Paris, she was educated in a Calvinist convent before studying Indian and Chinese philosophy at the Sorbonne and the Collège de France. In 1888, she traveled to London, where she became interested in Theosophy. In 1891, she journeyed to Ceylon and India (where she studied Vedānta) and traveled as far as Sikkim over eighteen months. Upon returning to France, she began a career as a singer and eventually was offered the position of female lead in the Hanoi Opera. Some years later, in Tunis, she met and married a railroad engineer, Philippe Néel, who insisted that she retire from the stage. She agreed to do so if he would finance a one-year trip to India for her. He ended up not seeing his wife again for another fourteen years. David-Néel became friends with THOMAS and CAROLINE RHYS DAVIDS in London, leading scholars of THERAVĀDA Buddhism, and corresponded with the ZEN scholar DAISETZ TEITARO SUZUKI, before publishing her first book on Buddhism in 1911, entitled, Le modernisme bouddhiste et le bouddhisme du Bouddha. She continued to Sikkim, where she met the thirteenth DALAI LAMA in Darjeeling in 1912, while he was briefly in residence there after fleeing a Chinese invasion of Tibet. David-Néel spent two years in retreat receiving instructions from a RNYING MA hermit-lama. In 1916, the British expelled her from Sikkim, so she traveled to Japan, where she was the guest of D. T. Suzuki. From there she went to China, traveling west in the company of a young Sikkimese monk named Yongden. Disguised as a pilgrim, she arrived in LHA SA in 1924, presumably the first European woman to reach the Tibetan capital. She returned to France as a celebrity the following year. She published the best-selling book My Journey to Lhasa, followed by a succession of books based on her travels in Tibet and her study and practice of Tibetan Buddhism. She built a home in Digne, which she named Samten Dzong, "Fortress of Concentration." David-Néel made one final trip to Asia as World War II began, but spent the rest of her life writing in Digne, where she died at the age of one hundred.
Daxiu Zhengnian. (J. Daikyu Shonen; K. Taehyu Chongnyom 大休正念) (1215-1289). Chinese CHAN master in the LINJI ZONG. A native of Wenzhou in present-day Zhejiang province, Daxiu began his training under the CAODONG master Donggu Miaoguang (d. 1253) of Linyinsi, and later became the disciple of Shiqi Xinyue (d. 1254). In 1269, Daxiu left for Japan, where he received the patronage of the powerful regent Hojo Tokimune (1251-1284). In Kamakura, Daxiu established the monastery Jochiji, which came to be ranked fourth in the Kamakura GOZAN system. Daxiu also served as abbot of the monasteries ZENKoJI, Juhukuji, and KENCHoJI. In 1288, Daxiu became the abbot of ENGAKUJI, but passed away the next year in 1289. He was given the posthumous title Zen Master Butsugen ("Source of the Buddhas"). His teachings can be found in the Daikyu osho goroku.
Denkoroku. (傳光録). In Japanese, "Record of the Transmission of the Light"; a text also known by its full title, Keizan osho denkoroku ("A Record of the Transmission of the Light by Master Keizan"). The anthology is attributed by Soto tradition to KEIZAN JoKIN, but was most probably composed posthumously by his disciples. The Denkoroku is a collection of pithy stories and anecdotes concerning fifty-two teachers recognized by the Japanese SoToSHu as the patriarchs of the school, accompanied by the author's own explanatory commentaries and concluding verses. Each chapter includes a short opening case (honsoku), which describes the enlightenment experience of the teacher; a longer section (called a kien) offering a short biography and history of the teacher, including some of his representative teachings and exchanges with students and other teachers; a prose commentary (teisho; C. TICHANG) by the author; and a concluding appreciatory verse (juko). The teachers discussed in the text include twenty-seven Indian patriarchs from MAHĀKĀsYAPA to PrajNātāra; six Chinese patriarchs from BODHIDHARMA through HUINENG; seventeen Chinese successors of Huineng in the CAODONG ZONG, from QINGYUAN XINGSI to TIANTONG RUJING; and finally the two Japanese patriarchs DoGEN KIGEN and Koun Ejo (1198-1280). The Denkoroku belongs to a larger genre of texts known as the CHUANDENG LU ("transmission of the lamplight records"), although it is a rigidly sectarian lineage history, discussing only the single successor to each patriarch with no treatment of any collateral lines.
Devadatta. (T. Lhas sbyin; C. Tipodaduo; J. Daibadatta; K. Chebadalta 提婆達多). Sanskrit and Pāli proper name for a cousin and rival of the Buddha; he comes to be viewed within the tradition as the embodiment of evil for trying to kill the Buddha and split the SAMGHA (SAMGHABHEDA). Devadatta is said to have been the brother of ĀNANDA, who would later become the Buddha's attendant. According to Pāli sources, when Gotama (GAUTAMA) Buddha returned to Kapalivatthu (KAPILAVASTU) after his enlightenment to preach to his native clan, the Sākiyans (sĀKYA), Devadatta along with ĀNANDA, Bhagu, Kimbila, BHADDIYA-KĀlIGODHĀPUTTA, Anuruddha (ANIRUDDHA), and UPĀLI were converted and took ordination as monks. Devadatta quickly attained mundane supranormal powers (iddhi; S. ṚDDHI) through his practice of meditation, although he never attained any degree of enlightenment. For a period of time, Devadatta was revered in the order. Sāriputta (sĀRIPUTRA) is depicted as praising him, and the Buddha lists him among eleven chief elders. Devadatta, however, always seems to have been of evil disposition and jealous of Gotama; in the final years of the Buddha's ministry, he sought to increase his influence and even usurp leadership of the saMgha. He used his supranormal powers to win over the patronage of Prince Ajātasattu (AJĀTAsATRU), who built for him a monastery at Gayāsīsa (Gayāsīrsa). Emboldened by this success, he approached the Buddha with the suggestion that the Buddha retire and pass the leadership of the saMgha to him, whereupon the Buddha severely rebuked him. It was then that Devadatta conceived a plan to kill the Buddha even while he incited Ajātasattu to murder his father BIMBISĀRA, king of MAGADHA, who was the Buddha's chief patron. At Devadatta's behest, Ajātasattu dispatched sixteen archers to shoot the Buddha along a road, but the Buddha, using his supranormal powers, instead converted the archers. Later, Devadatta hurled a boulder down the slope of Mt. Gijjhakuta (GṚDHRAKutAPARVATA) at the Buddha, which grazed his toe and caused it to bleed. Finally, Devadatta caused the bull elephant NĀLĀGIRI, crazed with toddy, to charge at the Buddha, but the Buddha tamed the elephant with the power of his loving-kindness (P. mettā; S. MAITRĪ). Unsuccessful in his attempts to kill the Buddha, Devadatta then decided to establish a separate order. He approached the Buddha and recommended that five austere practices (DHUTAnGA) be made mandatory for all members of the saMgha: forest dwelling, subsistence only on alms food collected by begging, use of rag robes only, dwelling at the foot of a tree, and vegetarianism. When the Buddha rejected his recommendation, Devadatta gathered around him five hundred newly ordained monks from Vesāli (VAIsĀLĪ) and, performing the fortnightly uposatha (UPOsADHA) ceremony separately at Gayāsīsa, formally seceded from the Buddha's saMgha. When the five hundred Vesāli monks were won back to the fold by Sāriputta (sĀRIPUTRA) and Moggallāna (MAHĀMAUDGALYĀYANA), Devadatta grew sick with rage, coughing up blood, and never recovered. It is said that toward the end of his life, Devadatta felt remorse and decided to journey to see the Buddha to ask him for his forgiveness. However, spilling the blood of a Buddha and causing schism in the saMgha are two of the five "acts that brings immediate retribution" (P. ānantariyakamma; S. ĀNANTARYAKARMAN), viz., rebirth in hell. In addition, Devadatta is said to have beaten to death the nun UTPALAVARnĀ when she rebuked him for attempting to assassinate the Buddha. She was an arhat, and killing an arhat is another of the "acts that bring immediate retribution." When Devadatta was on his way to visit the Buddha (according to some accounts, to repent; according to other accounts, to attempt to kill him one last time by scratching him with poisoned fingernails), the earth opened up and Devadatta fell into AVĪCI hell, where he will remain for one hundred thousand eons. His last utterance was that he had no other refuge than the Buddha, an act that, at the end of his torment in hell, will cause him to be reborn as the paccekabuddha (PRATYEKABUDDHA) Atthissara. In many JĀTAKA stories, the villain or chief antagonist of the BODHISATTVA is often identified as a previous rebirth of Devadatta. In the "Devadatta Chapter" of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"), the Buddha remarks that in a previous life, he had studied with the sage Asita, who was in fact Devadatta, and that Devadatta would eventually become a buddha himself. This statement was used in the Japanese NICHIREN school as proof that even the most evil of persons (see ICCHANTIKA; SAMUCCHINAKUsALAMuLA) still have the capacity to achieve enlightenment. In their accounts of India, both FAXIAN and XUANZANG note the presence of followers of Devadatta who adhered to the austere practices he had recommended to the Buddha.
Developed countries - The higher-income countries of the world, including the United States, Canada, most of Western Europe, Japan, Australia, and South Africa.
Dewa sanzan. (出羽三山). In Japanese, the "three mountains of Dewa"; referring to Mount Haguro, Mount Gassan, and Mount Yudono in what was once known as Dewa province (in modern-day Yamagata prefecture). The region is particularly important in SHUGENDo and has long been a place of pilgrimage; it was visited by BASHo.
DFC ::: A dataflow language.[Data Flow Language DFC: Design and Implementation, S. Toshio et al, Systems and Computers in Japan, 20(6):1- 10 (Jun 1989)].
DFC A {dataflow} language. ["Data Flow Language DFC: Design and Implementation", S. Toshio et al, Systems and Computers in Japan, 20(6):1- 10 (Jun 1989)].
Dharmodgata. (T. Chos 'phags; C. Faqi pusa; J. Hoki bosatsu; K. Popki posal 法起菩薩). In Sanskrit, "Elevated Dharma," or "Dharma Arising," the name of a BODHISATTVA whom the AVATAMSAKASuTRA describes as residing in the Diamond (S. VAJRA) Mountains. According to the Chinese translations of the AvataMsakasutra, Dharmodgata lives in the middle of the sea in the Diamond Mountains (C. Jingangshan; J. KONGoSAN; K. KŬMGANGSAN), where he preaches the dharma to his large congregation of fellow bodhisattvas. The AstASĀHASRIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ also says that Dharmodgata (his name there is transcribed as C. Tanwujian, J. Donmukatsu, and K. Tammugal) preaches the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ three times daily at the City of Fragrances (S. Gandhavatī; C. Zhongxiangcheng; J. Shukojo; K. Chunghyangsong), now used as the name of one of the individual peaks at the Korean KŬMGANGSAN. Since the Chinese Tang dynasty and the Korean Silla dynasty, East Asian Buddhists have presumed that Dharmodgata resided at the Diamond Mountains, just as the bodhisattva MANJUsRĪ lived at WUTAISHAN. In his HUAYAN JING SHU, CHENGGUAN's massive commentary to the AvataMsakasutra, Chengguan explicitly connects the sutra's mention of the Diamond Mountains to the Kŭmgangsan of Korea. At Kŭmgangsan, there are many place names associated with Dharmodgata and several legends and stories concerning him have been transmitted. Records explain that P'YOHUNSA, an important monastery at Kŭmgangsan, at one time had an image of Dharmodgata enshrined in its main basilica (although the image is now lost). According to the Japanese ascetic tradition of SHUGENDo, the semilegendary founder of the school, EN NO OZUNU (b. 634), is considered to be a manifestation of Dharmodgata, and his principal residence, Katsuragi Mountain in Nara prefecture, is therefore also sometimes known as the Diamond Mountains (KONGoSAN).
Dhṛtarāstra. (P. Dhatarattha; T. Yul 'khor srung; C. Chiguo Tian; J. Jikokuten; K. Chiguk Ch'on 持國天). In Sanskrit, "He whose Empire is Unyielding," or "He who Preserves the Empire"; one of the four "great kings" of heaven (CATURMAHĀRĀJA), who are also known as "world guardians" (LOKAPĀLA); he is said to be a guardian of the DHARMA and of sentient beings who are devoted to the dharma. Dhṛtarāstra guards the gate that leads to the east at the midslope of the world's central axis of Mount SUMERU; this gate leads to purvavideha (see VIDEHA), one of the four continents (dvīpa), which is located in the east. Dhṛtarāstra and his fellow great kings reside in the first and lowest of the six heavens of the sensuous realm of existence (KĀMADHĀTU), the heaven of the four great kings (CATURMAHĀRĀJAKĀYIKA). Dhṛtarāstra is a vassal of sAKRO DEVĀNĀM INDRAḤ (see INDRA; sAKRA), the king of the gods, who is lord of the heaven of the thirty-three divinities (TRĀYASTRIMsA), the second of the six sensuous-realm heavens, which is located at the peak of Mount SUMERU. Among the eight classes of demigods, Dhṛtarāstra rules over the "heavenly musicians" (GANDHARVA) and the "stinking hungry demons" (putana). Dhṛtarāstra and the four heavenly kings were originally indigenous Indian or Central Asian deities, who were eventually "conquered" by the Buddha and incorporated into Buddhism; they seem to have been originally associated with royal (KsATRIYA) lineages, and their connections with royal warfare are evidenced in the suits of armor they come to wear as their cult is transmitted from Central Asia to China, Korea, and Japan. According to the Dhāranīsamuccaya, Dhṛtarāstra is to be depicted iconographically with his sword in his left hand and his right fist akimbo on his waist.
dianyan. (J. tengen; K. choman 點眼). In Chinese, lit. "dotting the eyes," also known as "opening the eyes" (KAIYAN; T. spyan phye); a consecration ceremony for a buddha image (BUDDHĀBHIsEKA) that serves to make the icon come alive. The term refers to a ceremony, or series of ceremonies, that accompanies the installation of a buddha image or painting, which specifically involves dotting the pupils onto the inert eyes of the icon in order to animate it. Until this ceremony is performed, the icon remains nothing more than an inert block of wood or lump of clay; once its eyes are dotted, however, the image is thought to become invested with the power and charisma of a living buddha. The related term kaiyan has the same denotation, but may in some contexts it refer more broadly to "opening up the eyes" of an image by ritually dropping eye drops into its eyes. Both dianyan or kaiyan occurred in conjunction with esoteric Buddhist rituals. The Yiqie rulai anxiang sanmei yigui jing provides an elaborate set of instructions on how to consecrate buddha images, in which "dotting the eyes" accompanies the performance of other esoteric practices, such as MANTRA and MUDRĀ. When a bodhisattva wonders why buddha images are installed if the DHARMAKĀYA of a buddha has no physical form, the Buddha replies that images are used as an expedient for guiding neophytes who have first aroused the thought of enlightenment (BODHICITTOTPĀDA). In Korea, where this term choman is typically used for this ceremony rather than kaean (C. kaiyan), there were different "dotting the eyes" consecrations for different types of Buddhist images and requisites, including images of a buddha, ARHAT, the ten kings of hell (shiwang), and the kings of heaven, as well as in conjunction with ceremonies for erecting a STuPA or offering robes (KAsĀYA). Through these choman ceremonies, Buddhist artifacts are transformed from mere physical objects into spiritually sanctioned religious items imbued with spiritual efficacy. The Korean Chinon chip ("Mantra Anthology"), extant in several editions of which the oldest is dated 1476, includes a "mantra for dotting the eyes" (choman mun) along with its Sanskrit and Chinese transliterations. In Japan, this ceremony is usually called kaigen (C. kaiyan) rather than tengen. In Chinese CHAN texts, "dotting the eyes" of a buddha image is also sometimes used as a metaphor for a Chan adept's final achievement of awakening. See also NETRAPRATIstHĀPANA.
dianzuo. (J. tenzo; K. chonjwa 典座). In Chinese, lit. "in charge of seating"; the term that comes to be used for a cook at a Buddhist monastery, who supervises the preparation and distribution of meals. In Indian VINAYA texts, the term was used to designate a "manager," the service monk (S. VAIYĀPṚTYA[KARA]; P. veyyāvaccakara) who assigned seating at assemblies and ceremonies and arranged for the distribution of material objects or donations in addition to food. In the pilgrimage records of YIJING in India and ENNIN in China, the term always referred to a "manager," not someone who worked in the monastic kitchen. But sometime after the tenth century, during the Northern Song dynasty, the term came to be used in Chinese monasteries to refer to the cook. In East Asian CHAN monasteries, the cook and five other officers, collectively known as the ZHISHI (J. chiji), oversaw the administration of the monastic community. Typically, the dianzuo position was considered a prestigious position and offered only to monks of senior rank. The Japanese Zen monk DoGEN KIGEN wrote a famous essay on the responsibilities of the cook entitled Tenzo kyokun ("Instructions to the Cook"). Cf. DRAVYA MALLAPUTRA.
Digital Versatile Disc "storage" (DVD, formerly "Digital Video Disc") An optical storage medium with improved capacity and bandwidth compared with the {Compact Disc}. DVD, like CD, was initally marketed for entertainment and later for computer users. [When was it first available?] A DVD can hold a full-length film with up to 133 minutes of high quality video, in {MPEG-2} format, and audio. The first DVD drives for computers were read-only drives ("DVD-ROM"). These can store 4.7 GBytes - over seven times the storage capacity of CD-ROM. DVD-ROM drives read existing {CD-ROMs} and music CDs and are compatible with installed sound and video boards. Additionally, the DVD-ROM drive can read DVD films and modern computers can decode them in software in {real-time}. The DVD video standard was announced in November 1995. Matshusita did much of the early development but Philips made the first DVD player, which appeared in Japan in November 1996. In May 2004, Sony released the first dual-layer drive, which increased the disc capacity to 8.5 GB. Double-sided, dual-layer discs will eventually increase the capacity to 17 GB. Write-once DVD-R ("recordable") drives record a 3.9GB DVD-R disc that can be read on a DVD-ROM drive. Pioneer released the first DVD-R drive on 1997-09-29. By March 1997, {Hitachi} had released a rewritable DVD-RAM drive (by false analogy with {random-access memory}). DVD-RAM drives read and write to a 2.6 GB DVD-RAM disc, read and write-once to a 3.9GB DVD-R disc, and read a 4.7 GB or 8.5 GB DVD-ROM. Later, DVD-RAM discs could be read on DVD-R and DVD-ROM drives. {Background (http://tacmar.com/dvd_background.htm)}. {RCA home (http://imagematrix.com/DVD/home.html)}. (2006-01-07)
dingxiang. (J. chinzo; K. chongsang 頂相). In Chinese, lit. "mark on the forehead" or "head's appearance." The term dingxiang was originally coined as the Chinese translation of the Sanskrit term UsnĪsA, but the term also came to be used to refer to a portrait or image of a monk or nun. Written sources from as early as the sixth century, such as the GAOSENG ZHUAN ("Biographies of Eminent Monks"), recount the natural mummification of eminent Buddhist monks, and subsequently, the making of lifelike sculptures of monks made from ashes (often from cremation) mixed with clay. The earliest extant monk portraits date from the ninth century and depict the five patriarchs of the esoteric school (C. Zhenyan; J. SHINGONSHu); these portraits are now enshrined in the collection of ToJI in Kyoto, Japan. Another early example is the sculpture of the abbot Hongbian in cave 17 at DUNHUANG. Dingxiang portraits were largely, but not exclusively, used within the CHAN, SoN, and ZEN traditions, to be installed in special halls prepared for memorial and mortuary worship. After the rise of the SHIFANGCHA (monasteries of the ten directions) system in the Song dynasty, which guaranteed the abbacy to monks belonging to a Chan lineage, portraits of abbots were hung in these image halls to establish their presence in a shared spiritual genealogy. The portraits of the legendary Indian monk BODHIDHARMA and the Chan master BAIZHANG HUAIHAI were often placed at the center of these arrangements, symbolizing the spiritual and institutional foundations of Chan. The practice of inscribing one's own dingxiang portrait before death also flourished in China; inscribed portraits were presented to disciples and wealthy supporters as gifts and these portraits thus functioned as highly valued commodities within the Buddhist religious community. The practice of preparing dingxiang portraits was transmitted to Japan. Specifically noteworthy are the Japanese monk portrait sculptures dating from the Kamakura period, known for their lifelike appearance. The making of dingxiang portraits continues to flourish even to this day. In Korea, the related term CHINYoNG ("true image") is more commonly used to refer to monks' portraits.
Directed Oc "language" (Doc) A language related to {Oc}. ["Programming Language Doc and Its Self-Description, or 'X=X Is Considered Harmful'", M. Hirata, Proc 3rd Conf Japan Soc Soft Sci Tech, pp. 69-72, 1986]. (1999-10-08)
Directed Oc ::: (language) (Doc) A language related to Oc.[Programming Language Doc and Its Self-Description, or 'X=X Is Considered Harmful', M. Hirata, Proc 3rd Conf Japan Soc Soft Sci Tech, pp. 69-72, 1986]. (1999-10-08)
Dogen Kigen. (道元希玄) (1200-1253). Japanese ZEN monk who is regarded as the founder of the SoToSHu. After losing both his parents at an early age, Dogen became the student of a relative, the monk Ryokan (d.u.), who lived at the base of HIEIZAN, the headquarters of the TENDAI school (C. TIANTAI) in 1212; Ryokan subsequently recommended that Dogen study at the famed training center of Senkobo. The next year, Dogen was ordained by Koen (d.u.), the abbot of the powerful Tendai monastery of ENRYAKUJI. Dogen was later visited by the monk Koin (1145-1216) of Onjoji, who suggested the eminent Japanese monk MYoAN EISAI as a more suitable teacher. Dogen visited Eisai at his monastery of KENNINJI and became a student of Eisai's disciple Myozen (1184-1225). In 1223, Dogen accompanied Myozen to China as his attendant and made a pilgrimage to various important monastic centers on Mts. Tiantong, Jing, and Yuwang. Before returning to Japan in 1227, Dogen made another trip in 1225 to Mt. Tiantong to study with the CAODONG ZONG Chan master TIANTONG RUJING (1162-1227), from whom he is said to have received dharma transmission. During his time there, Dogen overheard Rujing scolding a monk who was sleeping, saying, "The practice of zazen (C. ZUOCHAN) is the sloughing off of body and mind. What does sleeping accomplish?" Dogen reports that he experienced awakening upon hearing Rujing's words "sloughing off body and mind" (SHINJIN DATSURAKU), a phrase that would figure prominently in his later writings. The phrase, however, is not common in the Chan tradition, and scholars have questioned whether Dogen's spoken Chinese was up to the task of understanding Rujing's oral instructions. Dogen also attributes to Rujing's influence the practice of SHIKAN TAZA, or "just sitting," and the notion of the identity of practice and attainment: that to sit correctly in meditative posture is to enact one's own buddhahood. After Rujing's death, Dogen returned to Japan, famously reporting that he had learned only that noses are vertical and eyes are horizontal. He returned to Kenninji, but relocated two years later in 1229 to the monastery of Anyoin in Fukakusa. In 1233, Dogen moved to Koshoji, on the outskirts of Kyoto, where he established one of the first monasteries in Japan modeled on Song-dynasty Chan monastic practice. Dogen resided there for the next ten years and attracted a large following, including several adherents of the DARUMASHu, who became influential in his burgeoning community. When the powerful monastery of Tofukuji was established by his RINZAISHu rival ENNI BEN'EN, Dogen moved again to remote area of Echizen (present-day Fukui prefecture), where he was invited to reside at the newly established monastery of Daibutsuji; Dogen renamed the monastery EIHEIJI in 1246. There, he composed several chapters of his magnum opus, SHoBoGENZo ("Treasury of the True Dharma Eye"). In 1253, as his health declined, Dogen entrusted Eiheiji to his successor Koun Ejo (1198-1280), a former disciple of the Darumashu founder DAINICHIBo NoNIN, and left for Kyoto to seek medical treatment. He died that same year. Dogen was a prolific writer whose work includes the FUKAN ZAZENGI, EIHEI SHINGI, Eihei koroku, BENDoWA, HoKYoKI, GAKUDo YoJINSHU, Tenzo kyokun, and others. Dogen's voluminous oeuvre has been extremely influential in the modern construction of the Japanese Zen tradition and its portrayal in Western literature. See also GENJo KoAN; SHIKAN TAZA.
Dokuan Genko. (独庵玄光) (1630-1698). Japanese ZEN monk in the SoToSHu. Dokuan was ordained by the monk Tenkoku (d.u.) at the temple of Kodenji in his hometown of Saga. After traveling around the country on pilgrimage, Dokuan visited the émigré Chinese CHAN monk DAOZHE CHAOYUAN in Nagasaki and studied under him for eight years. When Daozhe returned to China in 1658, Dokuan continued his training under the Zen master Gesshu Sorin (1614-1687) at Kotaiji in Nagasaki and remained at Kotaiji after Gesshu's death. Dokuan was a prolific writer whose work includes the Gohoshu, Shui sanbo kanno den, and the Zenaku genken hoo hen.
dokusan. (C. ducan; K. tokch'am 獨參). In Japanese, lit. a "private consultation" between a ZEN student and master, which is conducted in the privacy of the master's room. This consultation is an important element of training in the Japanese RINZAISHu, and allows the master to check the progress of the student in his meditation, and the student to ask questions regarding his practice. Dokusan is also the formal occasion where the student is expected to express his understanding of a specific Zen koan (GONG'AN) so that the master can gauge his development (see J. JAKUGO; C. ZHUOYU).
Dosho. (道昭) (629-700). Japanese monk and reputed founder of the Japanese Hosso (YOGĀCĀRA) school in the seventh century. A native of Kawachi province, Dosho became renowned for his strict adherence to the precepts while he was residing at the monastery of Gangoji. In 653, Dosho made a pilgrimage to China, where he studied under the Chinese monk-translator and Yogācāra scholar XUANZANG. In 660, Dosho returned to Gangoji and devoted the rest of his life to the dissemination of the Yogācāra teachings that he had brought back with him from China.
DS level ::: (communications) (Digital Signal or Data Service level) Originally an AT&T classification of transmitting one or more voice conversations in one digital data stream. The best known DS levels are DS0 (a single conversation), DS1 (24 conversations multiplexed), DS1C, DS2, and DS3.By extension, the DS level can refer to the raw data rate necessary for transmission: DS0 64 Kb/sDS1 1.544 Mb/s technologies or standards (e.g. X.25, SMDS, ISDN, ATM, PDH).Japan uses the US standards for DS0 through DS2 but Japanese DS5 has roughly the circuit capacity of US DS4, while the European standards are rather different bits per second but rates above DS1 are not necessarily integral multiples of 1,544 kb/s. (1998-05-18)
DS level "communications" (Digital Signal or Data Service level) Originally an {AT&T} classification of transmitting one or more voice conversations in one digital data stream. The best known DS levels are {DS0} (a single conversation), {DS1} (24 conversations multiplexed), {DS1C}, {DS2}, and {DS3}. By extension, the DS level can refer to the raw data rate necessary for transmission: DS0 64 Kb/s DS1 1.544 Mb/s DS1C 3.15 Mb/s DS2 6.31 Mb/s DS3 44.736 Mb/s DS4 274.1 Mb/s (where K and M signify multiplication by 1000 and 1000000, rather than powers of two). In this sense it can be used to measure of data service rates classifying the user access rates for various point-to-point {WAN} technologies or standards (e.g. {X.25}, {SMDS}, {ISDN}, {ATM}, {PDH}). Japan uses the US standards for DS0 through DS2 but Japanese DS5 has roughly the circuit capacity of US DS4, while the European standards are rather different (see {E1}). In the US all of the transmission rates are integral multiples of 8000 bits per second but rates above DS1 are not necessarily integral multiples of 1,544 kb/s. (1998-05-18)
Dunhuang. (J. Tonko; K. Tonhwang 敦煌). A northwest Chinese garrison town on the edge of the Taklamakan desert in Central Asia, first established in the Han dynasty and an important stop along the ancient SILK ROAD; still seen written also as Tun-huang, followed the older Wade-Giles transcription. Today an oasis town in China's Gansu province, Dunhuang is often used to refer to the nearby complex of approximately five hunded Buddhist caves, including the MOGAO KU (Peerless Caves) to the southeast of town and the QIANFO DONG (Caves of the Thousand Buddhas) about twenty miles to the west. Excavations to build the caves at the Mogao site began in the late-fourth century CE and continued into the mid-fourteenth century CE. Of the more than one thousand caves that were hewn from the cliff face, roughly half were decorated. Along with the cave sites of LONGMEN and YUNGANG further east and BEZEKLIK and KIZIL to the west, the Mogao grottoes contain some of the most spectacular examples of ancient Buddhist sculpture and wall painting to be found anywhere in the world. Legend has it that in 366 CE a wandering monk named Yuezun had a vision of a thousand golden buddhas at a site along some cliffs bordering a creek and excavated the first cave in the cliffs for his meditation practice. Soon afterward, additional caves were excavated and the first monasteries established to serve the needs of the monks and merchants traveling to and from China along the Silk Road. The caves were largely abandoned in the fourteenth century. In the early twentieth century, Wang Yuanlu (1849-1931), self-appointed guardian of the Dunhuang caves, discovered a large cache of ancient manuscripts and paintings in Cave 17, a side chamber of the larger Cave 16. As rumors of these manuscripts reached Europe, explorer-scholars such as SIR MARC AUREL STEIN and PAUL PELLIOT set out across Central Asia to obtain samples of ancient texts and artwork buried in the ruins of the Taklamakan desert. Inside were hundreds of paintings on silk and tens of thousands of manuscripts dating from the fifth to roughly the eleventh centuries CE, forming what has been described as the world's earliest and largest paper archive. The texts were written in more than a dozen languages, including Chinese, Tibetan, Sanskrit, Sogdian, Uighur, Khotanese, Tangut, and TOCHARIAN and consisted of paper scrolls, wooden tablets, and one of the world's earliest printed books (868 CE), a copy of the VAJRACCHEDIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀSuTRA ("Diamond Sutra"). In the seventh-century, a Tibetan garrison was based at Dunhuang, and materials discovered in the library cave also include some of the earliest documents in the Tibetan language. This hidden library cave was apparently sealed in the eleventh century. As a result of the competition between European, American, and Japanese institutions to acquire documents from Dunhuang, the material was dispersed among collections world-wide, making access to all the manuscripts difficult. Many items have still not been properly catalogued or conserved and there are scholarly disputes over what quantity of the materials are modern forgeries. In 1944 the Dunhuang Academy was established to document and study the site and in 1980 the site was opened to the public. In 1987 the Dunhuang caves were listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site and today are being preserved through the efforts of both Chinese and international groups.
Dz'yan and Zen are the Chinese, Senzar and Japanese forms of this word.
E-carrier system ::: (communications) A series of digital transmission formats promulgated by the ITU and used outside of North America and Japan.The basic unit of the E-carrier system is the DS0, which has a transmission rate of 64 Kbps, and is commonly used for one voice circuit. The E1 format consists circuits carry multiple E1 channels multiplexed, resulting in transmission rates of up to 565.148 Mbps.The E-carrier system is similar to, and compatible with, the T-carrier system used in North America, but has higher capacity since it uses out-of-band signaling in contrast to the in-band signaling or bit-robbing used in the T-system.(2000-03-10)
E-carrier system "communications" A series of {digital} transmission formats promulgated by the {ITU} and used outside of North America and Japan. The basic unit of the E-carrier system is the {DS0}, which has a transmission rate of 64 Kbps, and is commonly used for one {voice circuit}. The {E1} format consists of 32 DS0 channels, for a total capacity of 2.048 Mbps. {E2}, {E3}, {E4}, and {E5} circuits carry multiple E1 channels multiplexed, resulting in transmission rates of up to 565.148 Mbps. The E-carrier system is similar to, and compatible with, the {T-carrier system} used in North America, but has higher capacity since it uses {out-of-band signaling} in contrast to the {in-band signaling} or {bit-robbing} used in the T-system. (2000-03-10)
Edward Yourdon "person" A {software engineering} consultant, widely known as the developer of the "{Yourdon method}" of structured systems analysis and design, as well as the co-developer of the Coad/Yourdon method of {object-oriented analysis} and design. He is also the editor of three software journals - American Programmer, Guerrilla Programmer, and Application Development Strategies - that analyse software technology trends and products in the United States and several other countries around the world. Ed Yourdon received a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from {MIT}, and has done graduate work at MIT and at the Polytechnic Institute of New York. He has been appointed an Honorary Professor of {Information Technology} at Universidad CAECE in Buenos Aires, Argentina and has received numerous honors and awards from other universities and professional societies around the world. He has worked in the computer industry for 30 years, including positions with {DEC} and {General Electric}. Earlier in his career, he worked on over 25 different {mainframe} computers, and was involved in a number of pioneering computer projects involving {time-sharing} and {virtual memory}. In 1974, he founded the consulting firm, {Yourdon, Inc.}. He is currently immersed in research in new developments in software engineering, such as object-oriented software development and {system dynamics} modelling. Ed Yourdon is the author of over 200 technical articles; he has also written 19 computer books, including a novel on {computer crime} and a book for the general public entitled Nations At Risk. His most recent books are Object-Oriented Systems Development (1994), Decline and Fall of the American Programmer (1992), Object-Oriented Design (1991), and Object-Oriented Analysis (1990). Several of his books have been translated into Japanese, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, Portugese, Dutch, French, German, and other languages, and his articles have appeared in virtually all of the major computer journals. He is a regular keynote speaker at major computer conferences around the world, and serves as the conference Chairman for Digital Consulting's SOFTWARE WORLD conference. He was an advisor to Technology Transfer's research project on software industry opportunities in the former Soviet Union, and a member of the expert advisory panel on CASE acquisition for the U.S. Department of Defense. Mr. Yourdon was born on a small planet at the edge of one of the distant red-shifted galaxies. He now lives in the Center of the Universe (New York City) with his wife, three children, and nine Macintosh computers, all of which are linked together through an Appletalk network. (1995-04-16)
Eiheiji. (永平寺). In Japanese, "Eternal Peace Monastery." Eiheiji is currently the headquarters (honzan) of the SoToSHu. Eiheiji was founded by the Zen master DoGEN KIGEN. A lay follower named Hatano Yoshishige offered his property in Echizen as a site for the new monastery and invited Dogen to lead the community. In 1243, Dogen moved to Echizen and resided in a dilapidated temple named Kippoji. In the meantime, Hatano and others began constructing a new DHARMA hall and SAMGHA hall (see C. SENGTANG), which they quickly finished by 1244. The new monastery was named Daibutsuji and renamed Eiheiji by Dogen in 1246. The name Eihei is said to derive from the Han-dynasty reign period, Yongping (58-75 CE; J. Eihei), when Buddhism first arrived in China. In 1248, the mountain on which Eiheiji is located was renamed Mt. Kichijo. In 1372, Eiheiji was declared a shusse dojo, an official monastery whose abbot is appointed by the state. In 1473, Eiheiji was devastated by war and fire, and reconstruction efforts began in 1487. Since its foundation, Eiheiji has continued to serve as one of the most important Zen institutions in Japan.
Eihei shingi. (永平清規). In Japanese, "Pure Rules for EIHEI(JI)"; a collection of essays on the ZEN monastic codes or "pure rules" (QINGGUI), composed by DoGEN KIGEN. The work is composed in two rolls, in six major sections. The Tenzo Kyokun section, composed while Dogen was still residing at Koshoji in 1237, discusses the duties of the cook. The BENDoHo details the daily duties at the monastery of Daibutsuji and the practices, such as meditation, carried out in the SAMGHA hall (see C. SENGTANG). The Fu shukuhanpo explains the proper method of preparing and consuming rice gruel. The Shuryo shingi of 1249 describes the proper deportment of monks in training at Eiheiji's shuryo. The Tai taiko goge jariho, composed in 1244, deals with the proper ritual decorum or means of respecting a master (ĀCĀRYA). The final section, the Chiji shingi, from 1246, details the duties of the officers of the monastery. In 1667, these essays were edited together and published by Kosho Chido (d. 1670), the thirtieth abbot of Eiheiji. The fiftieth abbot, Gento Sokuchu (1729-1807), republished Kosho's edited volume with minor corrections in 1794.
Eison. [alt. Eizon] (叡尊) (1201-1290). In Japanese, "Lord of Sagacity"; founder of Shingon Risshu, a Kamakura-period school that combined the esoteric teachings of the SHINGONSHu with VINAYA disciplinary observance. After beginning his career as a monk at the age of eleven, he initially studied Shingon teachings at DAIGOJI in Kyoto and in 1224 moved to KoYASAN, the mountain center of esoteric teachings and practices. In 1235, while studying vinaya at SAIDAIJI, Eison came to realize the centrality of the PRĀTIMOKsA precepts to a monastic vocation; however, since the custom of full monastic ordination (J. gusokukai) had died out in Japan long before, he was unable to be properly ordained. Eison decided that his only recourse was to take the precepts in a self-administrated ceremony (J. jisei jukai) before an image of the Buddha. Eison and three other monks conducted such a self-ordination at ToDAIJI in 1236, after which he traveled around the country, ordaining monks and lecturing on the Buddhist precepts, before eventually returning to Saidaiji to stay. That monastery is now regarded as the center of the Shingon Risshu school. Eison is also known for his extensive charitable activities and his attempts to disseminate the recitation of the MANTRA of light (J. komyo shingon) among the laity. When the Mongols invaded Japan in 1274 and 1281, Eison performed esoteric rituals on behalf of the court to ward off the invasions. Among Eison's works are the Bonmokyo koshakuki bugyo monju, a sub-commentary to the Pommanggyong kojokki, the Korean YOGĀCĀRA monk T'AEHYoN's (d.u.) commentary on the FANWANG JING; and the Kanjingaku shoki, his autobiography, compiled at the age of eighty-six. Eison was given the posthumous name Kosho Bosatsu (Promoting Orthodoxy BODHISATTVA).
Emma-O: In Japanese Buddhism, the god who is the ruler of the underworld and judges the dead.
Enchin. (圓珍) (814-891). Japanese monk affiliated with the TENDAISHu (C. TIANTAI ZONG) and reputed founder of the Jimon branch of the school. Enchin was a native of Sanuki in present-day Kagawa and a cousin of the SHINGON master KuKAI. At age fourteen, Enchin became the student of GISHIN, the abbot of ENRYAKUJI, and four years later received the full monastic precepts from him. For the next twelve years, Enchin remained in retreat on HIEIZAN. In 853, Enchin traveled to Fuzhou, China, and stayed at the nearby monastery of Kaiyuansi. There he studied the Sanskrit SIDDHAM script under the Indian TREPItAKA Boredaluo (PrajNātāra?). Enchin later visited Yuezhou and Taizhou (present-day Zhejiang province), where he studied Tiantai doctrine and practice. In 855, Enchin entered the Chinese capital of Chang'an with his fellow Japanese monk Ensai (d. 877), where they are believed to have received the "dharma-transmission ABHIsEKA" (denbo kanjo) from Faquan (d.u.) at the monastery of Qinglongsi, as well as the secret of teachings of the "two realms" (RYoBU) from PrajNācakra (d.u.). Enchin then returned to Mt. Tiantai in Taizhou with the new translations of esoteric scriptures that he acquired in Chang'an. Enchin returned to Japan in 858 and resided at the monastery of Onjoji (see MIIDERA). In 866, Enchin became the fifth head (zasu) of Enryakuji and was given imperial permission to transform Onjoji into the official grounds of "dharma-transmission abhiseka." A schism between the lineages of Enchin and ENNIN over the issue of succession in 993 led to the split between Ennin's Sanmon branch of Hieizan and Enchin's Jimon branch of Onjoji. Enchin was later given the posthumous title Great Master Chisho (Realization of Wisdom).
Engakuji. (圓覺寺). A large monastery in Kamakura, Japan, that is currently the headquarters (honzan) of the Engakuji branch of the RINZAISHu of the ZEN tradition. Engakuji was once listed as a second-rank monastery in the influential GOZAN system. The monastery was established by the powerful regent Hojo Tokimune (1251-1284) in 1282. When LANXI DAOLONG, the prominent Chinese abbot of the influential monastery of KENCHoJI, died in 1274, Hojo Tokimune immediately sought a replacement, and his envoys returned from China escorting the CHAN master WUXUE ZUYUAN. Wuxue, who was serving as abbot of Kenchoji, was installed as the founding abbot (J. kaisan; C. KAISHAN) of the new monastery of Engakuji. In 1400, Engakuji was devastated by a great fire, but restoration efforts in 1625 refurbished the monastery to its current size and form. Since its foundation, Engakuji has remained a center of Zen culture and training in Japan.
Enni Ben'en. (C. Yuan'er Bianyuan 圓爾辨圓) (1202-1280). Japanese ZEN master in the Chinese LINJI ZONG and Japanese RINZAISHu. Enni was tonsured at the TENDAI monastery of Onjoji (see MIIDERA) at the age of seventeen, and received the full monastic precepts at the precepts platform (kaidan) in the monastery of ToDAIJI. In 1235, Enni left for China and visited the CHAN masters Chijue Daochong (1169-1250), Xiaoweng Miaokan (1177-1248), and Shitian Faxun (1171-1245). Enni eventually visited the Chan master WUZHUN SHIFAN at the monastery of WANSHOUSI on Mt. Jing and inherited his Linji lineage. In 1241, Enni returned to Japan and began to teach at the capital Kyoto at the invitation of the powerful Fujiwara minister Kujo Michiie (1191-1252). In 1243, Enni was given the title Shoichi (Sacred Unity). Enni also won the support of the powerful regent Hojo Tokiyori (1227-1263). Michiie later installed Enni as the founding abbot (J. kaisan; C. KAISHAN) of his powerful monastery of Tofukuji. Enni also served as abbot of the Zen monastery of KENNINJI in Kyoto. In 1311, Enni was named State Preceptor Shoichi. His teachings are recorded in the Shoichi Kokushi goroku and Shoichi kokushi kana hogo.
Ennin. (C. Yuanren 圓仁) (794-864). Japanese monk of the TENDAISHu (C. TIANTAI ZONG), who wrote a classic account of his ninth-century pilgrimage to China. A native of Tochigi prefecture, Ennin lost his father when young, and became a student of the eminent Japanese monk SAICHo at the monastery of ENRYAKUJI on HIEIZAN. Ennin was ordained on Mt. Hiei in 814 and received the full monastic precepts three years later at the precepts platform (kaidan) on the grounds of the monastery of ToDAIJI. In 838, Ennin traveled to China with his companions Engyo (799-852) and Jokyo (d. 866), arriving in Yangzhou (present-day Jiangsu province) at the mouth of the Yangzi River. The next year, he visited the monastery of Kaiyuansi, where he received the teachings and rituals of the various KONGoKAI (vajradhātu) deities from the monk Quanya (d.u.). Ennin also studied the Sanskrit SIDDHAM script while in China. When adverse winds kept him from returning to Japan, he remained behind at the monastery of Fahuayuan on Mt. Chi in Dengzhou (present-day Shandong province). From there, Ennin made a pilgrimage to WUTAISHAN and studied Tiantai doctrine and practice. In 840, Ennin arrived in the capital of Chang'an, where he studied the kongokai MAndALA under Yuanzheng (d.u.) of the monastery of Daxingshansi. The next year, Ennin also studied the teachings of the TAIZoKAI (garbhadhātu) and *SUSIDDHIKARASuTRA under Yizhen (d.u.) of the monastery of Qinglongsi. In 842, Ennin furthered his studies of the taizokai under Faquan (d.u.) at the monastery of Xuanfasi, siddham under Yuanjian (d.u.) of Da'anguosi, and siddham pronunciation under the Indian ĀCĀRYA Baoyue (d.u.). In 845, Ennin fled from the Huichang persecution of Buddhism (see HUICHANG FANAN) that then raged in Chang'an, and arrived back in Japan in 847. Ennin kept a detailed record of his sojourn in China in his famed diary, the NITTo GUHo JUNREI GYoKI (translated into English as A Pilgrimage to China in Search of the Law). In 854, Ennin was appointed the head (zasu) of Enryakuji and three years later was allowed to perform the RYoBU ABHIsEKA for Emperor Buntoku (r. 850-858) in the palace. Ennin promoted the Tendai/Tiantai teachings of the four kinds of SAMĀDHI (sizhong sanmei), which he had brought back to Japan from China. He also made an effort to continue his teacher Saicho's attempt to implement the use of the bodhisattva precepts (see FANWANG JING) in Japan.
En no Ozunu. (役小角) (b. 634). Also known as En no Gyoja (lit. "En the Ascetic"), a semi-legendary figure associated with SHUGENDo (lit. the "Way of Cultivating Supernatural Power") who is known for his shamanic abilities and mountain austerities. Practitioners of Shugendo, Japan's tradition of mountain asceticism, regard him as their founder and view him as the archetypal ascetic. The earliest accounts of En no Ozunu appear in the Shoku Nihongi (797) and the Nihon Ryoiki (810-824). He subsequently became the subject of numerous medieval texts, although many of the details of his life are sketchy. Allegedly born in Chihara in present-day Nara prefecture, he spent three decades of practice in KATSURAGISAN, where legend holds that he worked to convert malicious spirits. In 699, he was exiled to Izu (in present-day Shizuoka prefecture) by Emperor Monmu because of accusations made by his disciple, Karakuni no Muraji Hirotari that he was practicing sorcery. Shugendo considers En no Ozunu to be a manifestation of Hoki Bosatsu (DHARMODGATA), whose sphere of practice in the Katsuragi mountains includes KONGoSAN (see also KŬMGANGSAN), the traditional residence of this BODHISATTVA. In 1799, in conjunction with the alleged eleven hundredth anniversary of En no Ozunu's death, Emperor Kokaku bestowed on him the title Jinben Daibosatsu (Great Bodhisattva Mysterious Change).
Enpo dentoroku. (延寶傳燈). In Japanese, "The Enpo Reign-Era Transmission of the Lamplight Record"; a late Japanese genealogical history of the ZEN school, written by the RINZAISHu monk Mangen Shiban (1626-1710) and completed in 1678 and published in 1706, in a total of 41 rolls. Like the earlier Chinese lamplight record JINGDE CHUANDENG LU, which was named after the Chinese reign-era during which the text was compiled, Mangen used the Japanese reign-era Enpo to designate his collection. The text includes the biographies of over one thousand Zen clerics and lay practitioners in the major Zen lineages of the Japanese Rinzaishu and SoToSHu, with excerpts from their sermons and verses. Because of its vast scope, the collection offers a comprehensive overview of the history of the Japanese Zen tradition up to Mangen's time. In his preface, Shiban states that his source materials were these masters' discourse records (J. goroku; C. YULU), biographies, and stele and pagoda inscriptions, which he had collected for over thirty years since his youth. Mangen subsequently collected the biographies of 1,662 Buddhist monks from a range of Japanese sects and compiled them into the HONCHo KoSoDEN, completed in 1702 in a total of 75 rolls.
Enryakuji. (延暦寺). An important monastery located on HIEIZAN (Mt. Hiei), near Kyoto, Japan, which has served as the headquarters (honzan) of the TENDAISHu (C. TIANTAI ZONG) since its foundation. Enryakuji, or Hieizanji, started from humble beginnings in 785, when the Japanese monk SAICHo built a straw hut on Mt. Hiei. Three years later he built Ichijo shikan'in, the famous main hall that later was named Konpon chudo and is currently designated a national treasure (kokuho). In 806, with Emperor Kanmu's (r. 781-806) support, Saicho's residence was firmly established as a powerful monastery, whose function was to protect the new capital Heijokyo (present-day Kyoto) from the demons that threatened the capital from the northeast. In 822, the year of Saicho's death, the emperor granted permission to construct a MAHĀYĀNA precepts platform (daijo kaidan) at the site, and a year later the monastery was renamed Enryakuji. In 824, the monk GISHIN was appointed the first head (zasu) of Enryakuji and the Tendai school. In 828, the Mahāyāna precepts platform was constructed on Mt. Hiei, which gave the Tendai monks freedom from the monopoly over ordination that the powerful monasteries in Nara had wielded up to that time. In 834, the Shakado was constructed in the Saito (West Hall) subcomplex. In 848, ENNIN established the Shuryogon'in complex at YOKAWA and in 858 the monk ENCHIN established the subtemple Onjoji (see MIIDERA) as his separate residence. A schism between the lineages of Enchin and Ennin over the issue of succession in 993 led to the split between Ennin's Sanmon branch of Mt. Hiei and Enchin's Jimon branch of Onjoji. This schism grew into a violent battle that involved the recruiting of so-called warrior monks (SoHEI). In 1571, Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582) burned a large number of monasteries on Mt. Hiei to the ground, including Enryakuji. Enryakuji now largely consists of three independent subcomplexes known as the Todo (East Pagoda), Saito (West Pagoda), and Yokawa.
er mi. (J. nimitsu; K. i mil 二密). In Chinese, "two aspects of esoteric Buddhism." "Esoteric as to principle" (li mi) refers to the doctrines and conceptual understanding of esoteric Buddhism. "Esoteric as to practices" (shi mi) refers to the physical enactment of the "esoteric principle," either in tantric rituals and practices or in the Buddha's unfathomable activities. The Japanese TAIMITSU sect of esoteric Buddhism (as advocated by Japanese TENDAISHu) regards the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA and MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA as representative of esoteric as to principle, whereas the sutras promoted by SHINGONSHu are esoteric with regard to both principle and practices.
Erru sixing lun. (J. Ninyu shigyoron; K. Iip sahaeng non 二入四行論). In Chinese, "Treatise on the Two Accesses and Four Practices," attributed to the legendary Indian monk BODHIDHARMA, putative founder of the CHAN ZONG; regardless of the authenticity of this ascription, the text is legitimately regarded as the earliest text of the Chan school. The treatise provides an outline of "two accesses" (ER RU): the access of principle (liru) a more static approach to practice, which sought an intuitive insight into the DHARMA and a recognition of the fact that each and every person was innately endowed with the capacity for enlightenment. This was complemented by the access of practice (xingru), which was subdivided into four progressive practices: retribution of enmity, acquiescing to conditions, seeking nothing, and practicing in accord with the dharma. The treatise underscores the inherent purity of the practitioner, which it glosses as the dharma or principle, and betrays little evidence of features that come to characterize the later Chan tradition, such as the debate over sudden or gradual enlightenment, the rejection of traditional meditative techniques, etc. Numerous copies of this treatise were found in DUNHUANG, and citations of this text are found in the XU GAOSENG ZHUAN, LENGQIE SHIZI JI, and JINGDE CHUANDENG LU. The text was published in Korea as part of the SoNMUN CH'WARYO and in Japan as the SHoSHITSU ROKUMONSHu. A preface to this relatively short treatise was prepared by the monk Tanlin (fl. 506-574) and some editions of the treatise also contain two letters attributed to Bodhidharma's disciple HUIKE.
Even though the Taisho is often considered to be the definitive East Asian canon, it does not offer truly critical editions of its texts. The second Koryo canon's reputation for accuracy was so strong that the Japanese editors adopted it wholesale as the textus receptus for the modern Taisho edition of the canon, i.e., where there was a Koryo edition available for a text, the Taisho editors simply copied it verbatim, listing in footnotes alternate readings found in other canons, but not attempting to evaluate the accuracy of those readings or to establish a critical edition. Hence, to a large extent, the Taisho edition of the dazangjing is a modern typeset edition of the xylographical Koryo canon, with an updated arrangement of its contents based on modern historiographical criteria.
Fafang. (法舫) (1904-1951). In Chinese, "Skiff of Dharma"; distinguished Chinese Buddhist scholar and activist who initiated some of the earliest ecumenical dialogues between Chinese MAHĀYĀNA and Sri Lankan THERAVĀDA Buddhists. Ordained at the age of eighteen, Fafang was one of the first students to study in the Chinese Buddhist Academy that TAIXU founded in Wuchang (Wuchang Foxue Yuan). He eventually taught at the academy, as well as at other leading Chinese Buddhist institutions of his time, contributing significantly to Taixu's attempts to found international Buddhist research centers and libraries. He also was longtime chief editor of the influential and long-running Buddhist periodical Haichao yin ("Sound of the Tide"). In 1946, Fafang traveled to Sri Lanka after becoming proficient in Sanskrit, Pāli, Japanese, and English and studied Theravāda Buddhism with Kirwatatuduwe Prasekene. Among his later accomplishments, Fafang taught at the University of Sri Lanka, served as one of the chief editors for the compilation of Taixu's collected works, founded one of the first Pāli learning centers in China, and created a student exchange program for Chinese and Sri Lankan monks.
Fahua zhuan[ji]. (J. Hokke den[ki]; K. Pophwa chon['gi] 法華傳[]). In Chinese, "Compendium of the 'Lotus Sutra,'" also known as the Hongzan fahua zhuan[ji], was composed by Huixiang during the Tang dynasty. This work included much information regarding the translation, circulation, commentaries, epigraphy, illustrations, magical lore, and other aspects of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA. Several other comparable compendia devoted exclusively to the Saddharmapundarīkasutra are still extant (by authors from China, Korea, and Japan), testifying to the scripture's popularity throughout East Asia.
fanan. (J. honan; K. pomnan 法難). In Chinese, "calamities that befall the dharma," referring to political persecutions of Buddhism, or other forms of systematic harassment of the religion and its adherents. Examples of such persecutions abound throughout Buddhist history. In India, e.g., there were Indian rulers who were hostile to Buddhism, such as King Pusyamitra (c. end of the second century BCE) and those of the Sena dynasty (c. eleventh to twelfth centuries), as well as Muslim generals and rulers who sacked Buddhist centers and forced the conversion of the local populace. In East Asia, China saw the systematic persecution by four emperors with Daoist affinities, as well as the infamous Huichang persecution (HUICHANG FANAN). More recent periods saw Japan's suppression of Buddhism during the Meiji period (beginning in 1868; cf. SHINBUTSU BUNRI) and the Korean Choson dynasty's five centuries of persecution of Buddhism, which extended into the late nineteenth century. Related Chinese terms are feifo ("abolition of Buddhism"), miefo ("annihilation of Buddhism"), pofo ("destruction of Buddhism"), huifa ("damage to Buddhism"), and mie-Shi ("annihilation of [the teachings of] sĀKYAMUNI").
fanbai. (J. bonbai; K. pomp'ae 梵唄). In Chinese, lit., "the speech of BRAHMĀ," Buddhist ritual chanting performed in a distinctively clear, melodious, and resonate voice; "fan," lit. Brahmā, is generically used in China to refer to all things Indian, and "bai" is a transcription of the Sanskrit word bhāsā, or "speech," so fanbai means something like "Indian-style chanting." Although the historical origins of fanbai are uncertain, according to legend, it derives from the singing of the heavenly musicians (GANDHARVA) or from the chants of Gadgadasvara (Miaoyin), a bodhisattva appearing in the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA who eulogized the virtues of sĀKYAMUNI Buddha. An account in the NANHAI JIGUI NEIFA CHUAN, a pilgrimage record written by the Chinese monk YIJING (635-713), who sojourned in India for twenty-five years, confirms that fanbai chanting was still popular on the Indian subcontinent during the seventh century. Fanbai was transmitted to China almost simultaneously with the introduction of Buddhism. The Chinese developed their own style of fanbai by at least the third century CE: Cao Zhi (192-232) of the Wei dynasty is said to have created it inspired by a fish's movement, leading to the use of the term yushan (lit. "fish mountain") as an alternate name for fanbai. According to the Korean SAMGUK YUSA, the transmission of fanbai (K. pomp'ae) from China to Korea occurred perhaps as early as the first half of the seventh century; subsequently, the monk CHIN'GAM HYESO (774-850) is said to have introduced the Tang-Chinese style of fanbai to the Silla kingdom around 830. The NITTo KYuHo JUNREIGYoKI by ENNIN (794-864), a Japanese pilgrim monk who visited both Silla Korea and Tang China, reports that both Silla and Tang styles of pomp'ae were used in Korean Buddhist ceremonies. The Choson monk Taehwi (fl. c. 1748), in his Pomŭmjong po ("The Lineage of the Brahmā's Voice School"), traces his Korean lineage of pomp'ae monks back to the person of Chin'gam Hyeso. Fanbai was preserved orally in China and Korea, but was recorded in Japan using the Hakase neume style of notation. The fanbai chanting style involves special vocalization techniques with complex ornamentation that are thought to have been introduced from India, but uses lyrics that derive from Chinese verse; these lyrics are usually in non-rhyming patterns of five- or seven-character lines, making up four-line verses that praise the virtues of the Buddha. Vocables are sometimes employed in fanbai, unlike in sutra chanting. The different fanbai chants are traditionally performed solo or by a chorus, often in a call and response format. Only in Korea has fanbai branched into two distinct types: hossori pomp'ae and chissori pomp'ae. Some pomp'ae texts can be performed only in one style, but others, such as porye and toryanggye, leave the choice to the performer. Hossori pomp'ae is performed in a melismatic style that is elegantly simple, in a vocal style somewhat similar to Western music. By contrast, chissori pomp'ae is solemn, highly sophisticated, and utilizes a tensed throat and falsetto for high notes. Although chissori pomp'ae is considered to be a more important vocal musical form, there are only twelve extant compositions in this style. Owing to how texts and melodic phrases are organized, even though it uses a shorter text, chissori pomp'ae takes two or three times longer to complete than hossori. Of the two, only hossori can be accompanied by musicians or sung to accompany dance. Korean pomp'ae is also performed during Buddhist ceremonies such as YoNGSANJAE.
fangsheng. (T. srog blu/tshe thar; J. hojo; K. pangsaeng 放生). In Chinese, "releasing living creatures," referring to the practice of buying captured animals, such as fish, turtles, or birds, and then setting them free; the focus of a ritual popular in East Asian Buddhism, the "ceremony of releasing living creatures" (FANGSHENG HUI). The Buddhist tradition asserts that merit (PUnYA) is produced by both actively pursuing wholesome actions (KUsALA-KARMAPATHA) as well as refraining from unwholesome actions (AKUsALA-KARMAPATHA); fangsheng is regarded as an enhancement of both types of action, by furthering the first lay precept (sĪLA) that forbids the unsalutary action of killing, as well as the MAHĀYĀNA precept that encourages the salutary act of vegetarianism. ¶ The two representative scriptures on fangsheng are the FANWANG JING ("Book of Brahmā's Net") and the SUVARnAPRABHĀSOTTAMASuTRA (C. Jinguangming jing; "Sutra of Golden Light"), the former providing the doctrinal basis for the practice of fangsheng, the latter a protypical example of a fangsheng hui. The Fanwang jing says that because all sentient beings in the six destinies (sAdGATI; see also GATI) have at some time or other during the vastness of SAMSĀRA been one's parents, a person should always strive to rescue creatures from people who would kill them in order to save them from their torment. The Suvarnaprabhāsottamasutra tells a story about Jalavāhana (sĀKYAMUNI Buddha in an earlier life), who saved ten thousand fish who were dying in a dried up pond by bringing water to refill it. He then recited for them the ten epithets of the buddha Ratnasikhin/Ratnabhava, since he had been told that any creatures who heard that Buddha's name at the time of their deaths would be reborn in the heavens. The fish were reborn as divinities in the TRĀYASTRIMsA heaven, who then rained jewels down on the earth.¶ In China, the Buddhist custom of vegetarianism had started to pervade the culture by the Qi (479-501) and Liang (502-556) dynasties, a custom that encouraged the freeing of animals. In 619, an imperial decree prohibited fishing, hunting, and the slaughter of animals during the first, fifth, and ninth months of the year. A decree of 759 established eighty-one ponds for the release and protection of fish. Fangsheng appears to have been practiced not only by individual laypeople and monks. There is a record of the Liang dynasty monk Huiji (456-515) who practiced mendicancy so he could buy and release captured animals. TIANTAI ZHIYI (538-597), the founder of the TIANTAI ZONG, is known to have performed a formal ceremony for releasing animals in 575. Zhiyi lamented the fact that local folk made their living by catching fish, so he built a "pond where creatures could be released" (fangsheng chi) and preached to the freed fish the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA and the Suvarnaprabhāsottamasutra. Zhiyi thus established the Suvarnaprabhāsottamasutra as the scriptural authority for fangsheng. Following Zhiyi, the fangsheng ceremony subsequently became one of the important rituals used within the Tiantai school. Ciyun Zunshi (964-1032) and SIMING ZHILI (960-1028), both Tiantai monks during the Song dynasty, were ardent advocates of fangsheng, who established ponds for releasing creatures and performed the ceremony of releasing creatures, especially in conjunction with celebrations of the Buddha's birthday. In the CHAN school, YONGMING YANSHOU (904-975) and YUNQI ZHUHONG (1535-1615) were among the most enthusiastic proponents of fangsheng. Zhuhong wrote works regarding the practice of vegetarianism, including the Shirou ("On Meat-Eating") and the Shasheng feirensuowei ("Killing Is Not What Humans Are Supposed To Do"), and also composed tracts on the ritual practice of fangsheng, such as the Fangsheng yi ("Rite for Releasing Living Creatures") and the Jiesha fangsheng wen ("Text on Prohibiting Killing and Releasing Living Creatures"). His Fangsheng yi is still considered today one of the standard sources for the Fangsheng ritual. Eventually, almost every large monastery in China had a pool for releasing fish and pens for the care of livestock that had been rescued from the butcher. Because these animals had been given Buddhist precepts, they were encouraged to observe them, with males and females segregated and carnivorous fish kept separately. Birds, turtles, and fish were more popular for release than domesticated animals because they required no further assistance. The pious who delivered cows and pigs to the monastery, however, were required to contribute toward their sustenance. ¶ The practice was popular in other Buddhist countries. In medieval Japan the imperial government would order the capture of three times the number of fish needed to be released at a ceremony in order that the requisite number-often from one to three thousand-would still be alive by the time the ceremony took place. In such cases, the practice of releasing animals resulted in the unfortunate death of many before they could be liberated. Among Tibetan Buddhists, the killing of animals is normatively deplored, and protecting the life of even the tiniest insect (srog skyob) is a common practice; in the LHA SA region, a small Muslim community traditionally performed the task of killing and butchering animals; farmers and nomads butcher some of their animals each year. Vegetarianism (sha med) is admired, but not widespread in Tibet, except during the first two weeks of the fourth Tibetan month SA GA ZLA BA when, it is believed, the results of wholesome actions increase one hundred thousand times. Buying an animal destined for slaughter to protect one's own life, or more commonly to protect the life of an important religious figure, is also common; that practice is known as tshe thar, lit., "liberating life" in Tibetan.
Fanwang jing. (J. Bonmokyo; K. Pommang kyong 梵網經). In Chinese, "Brahmā's Net Sutra," the scripture is often cited by its reconstructed, but unattested, Sanskrit title, the *Brahmajālasutra. This scripture is reputed to have been translated by KUMĀRAJĪVA in 406, but it is most likely an indigenous Chinese scripture (see APOCRYPHA) composed during the middle of the fifth century. The Fanwang jing, in its current recension in two rolls, purports to be the tenth chapter of a much longer, 120-roll scripture titled the Bodhisattvasīlasutra, which is otherwise unknown. The first roll provides a description of the buddha VAIROCANA and the ten different stages of the BODHISATTVA path. Because subsequent Chinese indigenous scriptures that were closely related to the Fanwang jing, such as the PUSA YINLUO PENYE JING, provided more systematic presentations of these soteriological models, this first roll was not widely studied and was typically omitted in commentaries on the scripture. Far more important to the tradition is the second roll, which is primarily concerned with the "bodhisattva precepts" (BODHISATTVAsĪLA); this roll has often circulated independently as PUSAJIE JING (*Bodhisattvasīlasutra; "The Book of the Bodhisattva Precepts"). This roll provides a list of ten major and forty-eight minor MAHĀYĀNA precepts that come to be known as the "Fanwang Precepts," which became a popular alternative to the 250 monastic precepts of the DHARMAGUPTAKA VINAYA (also known as the SIFEN LÜ). Unlike the majority of rules found in other non-Mahāyāna vinaya codes, the bodhisattva precepts are directed not only at ordained monks and nuns, but also may be taken by laymen and laywomen. The Fanwang jing correlates the precepts with Confucian virtues such as filial piety and obedience, as well as with one's buddha-nature (FOXING). Numerous commentaries on this text were composed, and those written by FAZANG, Mingkuang (fl. 800 CE), and the Korean monk T'AEHYoN (d.u.) were most influential. As the primary scriptural source in East Asia for the bodhisattva precepts, the Fanwang jing was tremendously influential in subsequent developments in Buddhist morality and institutions throughout the region. In Japan, for example, the TENDAISHu monk SAICHo (767-822) disparaged the PRĀTIMOKsA precepts of the traditional vinaya as being the precepts of HĪNAYĀNA adherents, and rejected them in favor of having all monastics take instead the MAHĀYĀNA precepts of the Fanwang jing. In Korea, all monastics and laypeople accept the bodhisattva precepts deriving from the Fanwang jing, but for monks and nuns these are still seen as complementary to their main monastic vows.
Faxiang zong. (J. Hossoshu; K. Popsang chong 法相宗). In Chinese, "Dharma Characteristics School," the third and most important of three strands of YOGĀCĀRA-oriented MAHĀYĀNA Buddhism to emerge in China, along with the DI LUN ZONG and SHE LUN ZONG. The name Faxiang (originally coined by its opponents and having pejorative connotations) comes from its detailed analysis of factors (DHARMA) on the basis of the Yogācāra doctrine that all phenomena are transformations of consciousness, or "mere-representation" (VIJNAPTIMĀTRATĀ). The school's own preferred name for itself was the WEISHI ZONG (Consciousness/Representation-Only School). Interest in the theories of the SHIDIJING LUN (viz., Di lun) and the MAHĀLĀNASAMGRAHA (viz., She lun) largely waned as new YOGĀLĀRA texts from India were introduced to China by the pilgrim and translator XUANZANG (600/602-664) and the work of HUAYAN scholars such as FAZANG (643-712) on the AVATAMSAKASuTRA (within which the Dasabhumikasutra is incorporated) began to gain prominence. One of the reasons motivating Xuanzang's pilgrimage to India, in fact, was to procure definitive Indian materials that would help to resolve the discrepancies in interpretation of Yogācāra found in these different traditions. Because of the imperial patronage he received upon his return, Xuanzang became one of the most prominent monks in Chinese Buddhist history and attracted students from all over East Asia. The Faxiang school was established mainly on the basis of the CHENG WEISHI LUN (*VijNaptimātratāsiddhi; "The Treatise on the Establishment of Consciousness-Only"), a text edited and translated into Chinese by Xuanzang, based on material that he brought back with him from India. Xuanzang studied under sĪLABHADRA (529-645), a principal disciple of DHARMAPĀLA (530-561), during his stay in India, and brought Dharmapāla's scholastic lineage back with him to China. Xuanzang translated portions of Dharmapāla's *VijNaptimātratāsiddhi, an extended commentary on VASUBANDHU's TRIMsILĀ ("Thirty Verses on Consciousness-Only"). Dharmapāla's original exegesis cited the different interpretations of Vasubandhu's treatise offered by himself and nine other major scholiasts within the Yogācāra tradition; Xuanzang, however, created a précis of the text and translated only the "orthodox" interpretation of Dharmapāla. Xuanzang's disciple KUIJI (632-682) further systematized Xuanzang's materials by compiling the CHENG WEISHI LUN SHUJI ("Commentarial Notes on the *VijNaptimātratāsiddhi") and the Cheng weishi lun shuyao ("Essentials of the *VijNaptimātratāsiddhi"); for his efforts to build the school, Kuiji is traditionally regarded as the first Faxiang patriarch. The Faxiang school further developed under Huizhao (650-714), its second patriarch, and Zhizhou (668-723), its third patriarch, but thereafter declined in China. ¶ The teachings of the Faxiang school were transmitted to Korea (where it is called the Popsang chong) and were classified as one of the five major doctrinal traditions (see KYO) of the Unified Silla (668-935) and Koryo (935-1392) dynasties. The Korean expatriate monk WoNCH'ŬK (613-696) was one of the two major disciples of Xuanzang, along with Kuiji, and there are reports of intense controversies between Kuiji's Ci'en scholastic line (CI'EN XUEPAI) and Wonch'uk's Ximing scholastic line (XIMING XUEPAI) due to their differing interpretations of Yogācāra doctrine. Wonch'ŭk's commentary to the SAMDHINIRMOCANASuTRA, the Jieshenmi jing shu (K. Haesimmil kyong so), was transmitted to the DUNHUANG region and translated into Tibetan by CHOS GRUB (C. Facheng, c. 755-849) at the behest of the Tibetan king RAL PA CAN (806-838), probably sometime between 815 and 824. Wonch'ŭk's exegesis of the scripture proved to be extremely influential in the writings of TSONG KHA PA (1357-1419), and especially on his LEGS BSHAD SNYING PO, where Wonch'ŭk's work is called the "Great Chinese Commentary." ¶ The Japanese Hossoshu developed during the Nara period (710-784) after being transmitted from China and Korea, but declined during the Heian (794-1185) due to persistent attacks from the larger TENDAI (C. TIANTAI) and SHINGON (C. Zhenyan) schools. Although the Hossoshu survived, it did not have the wide influence over the Japanese tradition as did its major rivals. ¶ Faxiang is known for its comprehensive list of one hundred DHARMAs, or "factors" (BAIFA), in which all dharmas-whether "compounded" or "uncompounded," mundane or supramundane-are subsumed; this list accounts in large measure for its designation as the "dharma characteristics" school. These factors are classified into five major categories:
Fazang. (J. Hozo; K. Popchang 法藏) (643-712). Tang-dynasty Chinese monk and putative third patriarch of the HUAYAN ZONG, also known as Xianshou, Dharma Master Guoyi (Nation's Best), Great Master Xiangxiang (Fragrant Elephant), and state preceptor (GUOSHI) Kang Zang. Fazang was the third-generation descendent of immigrants to China from the kingdom of SOGDIANA in Central Asia (the Greek Transoxiana) and thus used as his secular surname the ethnicon KANG. At a young age, Fazang became a student of the Chinese monk ZHIYAN, and studied the AVATAMSAKASuTRA. Fazang was also fluent in several Central Asian languages, and assisted the monks sIKsĀNANDA and YIJING in translating new recensions of the AvataMsakasutra (699) and the LAnKĀVATĀRASuTRA (704). Empress WU ZETIAN often requested Fazang to lecture on the AvataMsakasutra and its teachings on PRATĪTYASAMUTPĀDA. Fazang devoted the rest of his career to the study of the AvataMsakasutra and composing commentaries on the Lankāvatārasutra, FANWANG JING, DASHENG QIXIN LUN, and other texts. Many of Fazang's compositions sought to systematize his teacher Zhiyan's vision of the AvataMsakasutra in terms drawn from indigenous Chinese Buddhist materials, such as the Dasheng qixin lun. In so doing, Fazang developed much of the specific doctrinal terminology and worldview that comes to be emblematic of the Huayan zong, making him the de facto founder of this indigenous school of Chinese Buddhist philosophy. Among Fazang's many works, his HUAYAN JING TANXUAN JI, HUAYAN WUJIAO ZHANG, and his commentary to the Dasheng qixin lun shu ("Awakening of Faith According to the Mahāyāna") are most famous. Fazang passed away while residing at the monastery of Da Qianfusi. Fazang remained close throughout his life to his Korean colleague ŬISANG, the founder of the Korean Hwaom school, with whom he studied together under Zhiyan, and some of his correspondence with Ŭisang survives. SIMSANG (J. Shinjo) (d. c. 744), another Korean who is claimed to have been a direct disciple of Fazang, was the first transmitter of the Huayan teachings in Japan, and Simsang's own disciple RYoBEN [alt. Roben] (689-773) is considered the founder of the Japanese Kegon school. For discussion of Fazang's philosophical views, see also HUAYAN ZONG; INDRA'S NET; SI FAJIE.
Fazhao. (J. Hosho; K. Popcho 法照) (d.u.). Tang-dynasty Chinese monk, now revered by followers of the Japanese JoDOSHu and JoDO SHINSHu as the fifth patriarch of the PURE LAND (JINGTU ZONG) tradition in China. Fazhao resided at LUSHAN early in his career, where he devoted himself to recitation of the name of the buddha AMITĀBHA (see NIANFO); there, Fazhao had a vision of AMITĀBHA, who personally taught him about the pure land. Fazhao subsequently traveled to the Chinese capital of Chang'an, where he developed the method of WUHUI NIANFO, or "five-tempo intonation of [the name of] the Buddha." When he demonstrated this practice in 767 at the monastery of Yunfengsi, the practice is said to have resulted in a series of miracles, such as the appearance of Amitābha amid the clouds, which in turn purportedly led Emperor Daizong (762-779) to invite Fazhao to the imperial palace. In addition to demonstrating the value of buddha-recitation practice, Fazhao also sought to explain pure land teachings in terms drawn from TIANTAI doctrine, bringing pure land beliefs into the mainstream of contemporary Buddhist intellectual discourse. Because of his success in propagating pure land teachings, his peers called Fazhao the "latter-day SHANDAO." Fazhao later moved to the monastery of Zhulinsi on WUTAISHAN and acquired the cognomen Wuhui fashi (Dharma Master Five-Tempo).
fazhu. (J. hoshu/hosshu; K. popchu 法主). In Chinese, "Lord of the DHARMA," a reverential epithet for the Buddha, e.g., "The World Honored One is the source of the dharma; the World Honored One is the lord of the dharma." In addition, the term fazhu is used to refer to the chief officiant of a religious ritual or ceremony, and with reference to a teacher who give dharma lectures. In China during the Southern and Northern Dynasties (Nanbei chao) period (c. 420-589), fazhu was the title of a minor SAMGHA official who oversaw a monastery's internal affairs. In modern Japan, the term is also used as a title for leaders of different Buddhist sects (when it is then pronounced as hosshu or hossu).
Fazun. (法尊) (T. Blo bzang chos 'phags) (1902-1980). Twentieth-century Chinese translator of Buddhist scriptures and scholar of Tibetan religious and political history. In 1920, Fazun was ordained as a novice on WUTAISHAN. He became acquainted with Dayong (1893-1929), a student of TAIXU's who introduced him to the techniques of Buddhist TANTRA, at the time a popular strand of Buddhism in China in its Japanese (MIKKYo) and Tibetan forms. Fully ordained in Beijing in 1922, Fazun trained under Taixu's patronage in the tenets of the PURE LAND and TIANTAI schools at the Wuchang Institute for Buddhist Studies. During the same years, Taixu urged Dayong to train in Japanese mikkyo on KoYASAN. Taixu's aim was to verify and rectify the opinions about Buddhist tantra that circulated in China, where this form of Indian Buddhism had flourished at the Tang court. Upon his return, Dayong conferred on Fazun several ABHIsEKAs of the lower tantric cycles that he had brought from Japan. He also instructed Fazun in the Mizong gangyao ("Essentials of Tantra"), a primer for students of Buddhist tantra by the Japanese SHINGONSHu scholar Gonda Raifu (1846-1934) that Wang Hongyuan (1876-1937), a Chinese student of Gonda's, had translated in 1918. After an introduction to the Tibetan tantric traditions by Bai Puren (1870-1927), a Mongolian lama stationed at Beijing's Yonghe Gong, Dayong became gradually dissatisfied with Japanese mikkyo. With Taixu's endorsement, he resolved to study Buddhist tantra in its Tibetan form. In 1924, Fazun joined Dayong's Group for Learning the Dharma in Tibet (Liu Zang Xuefa Tuan), a team of some thirty Chinese monks who were studying the basics of the Tibetan language in Beijing. From 1925 to 1929, Fazun carried on his language learning in eastern Tibet and began his training in the classics of the DGE LUGS monastic curriculum, which in the ensuing years would become his main focus of translation. After Dayong's passing in 1929, Fazun followed his Tibetan teacher, DGE BSHES A mdo, to central Tibet. He stayed at 'BRAS SPUNGS monastery from 1930 to 1933. In 1934, Taixu asked Fazun to take on the position of director at the newly established Sino-Tibetan Institute (Hanzang Jiaoli Yuan) near Chongqing. The thirteenth DALAI LAMA also encouraged Fazun to spread TSONG KHA PA's synthesis of the Buddhist teachings in China. Hence from 1935, under the Japanese occupation and during the Chinese civil war, Fazun served as an educator of young monks in Tibetan Buddhism and as a translator of Tibetan scriptures at the Sino-Tibetan Institute. These years of prolific translation work established Fazun as the foremost translator of Buddhism from Tibetan sources in the history of Chinese Buddhism. Among his translations are Tsong kha pa's LAM RIM CHEN MO (Putidao cidi guanglun), LEGS BSHAD SNYING PO (Bian liaoyi buliaoyi lun), SNGAGS RIM CHEN MO (Mizong daocidi lun); MAITREYA's ABHISAMAYĀLAMKĀRA (Xianguan zhuangyan lun); CANDRAKĪRTI's MADHYAMAKĀVATĀRA (Ru zhonglun); and ĀRYADEVA's CATUḤsATAKA (Sibailun song). Fazun also translated into Tibetan the ABHIDHARMAMAHĀVIBLĀsA, extant in the two hundred rolls of XUANZANG's Chinese rendering (Da piposha lun), by the title Bye brag bshad mdzod chen mo. In 1950, after the Communist authorities discontinued the activities of the Institute, Fazun moved to Beijing. The Committee for Minority Affairs appointed him as a translator of communist propaganda materials, including Chairman Mao's Xin minzhu zhuyi("New Democracy") and Lun renmin minzhu zhuanzheng ("On the People's Democratic Dictatorship"), for the education of the new generation of cadres in occupied Tibet. In 1966, as the Cultural Revolution set in, he was charged with expressing anti-Communist sentiments during the 1930s. He was confined in a labor camp until his release in 1972. During the 1970s Fazun resumed his translation activity from Tibetan with DHARMAKĪRTI's PRALĀnAVĀRTTIKA (Shiliang lun), DIGNĀGA's PRALĀnASAMUCCAYA (Jiliang lun), and ATIsA DĪPAMKARAsRĪJNĀNA's BODHIPATHAPRADĪPA (Putidao deng lun). Fazun suffered a fatal heart attack in 1980. Because of his unsurpassed knowledge of Tibetan language, religion, and history, and his writing style inspired by KUMĀRAJĪVA's and Xuanzang's Buddhist Chinese, Fazun is often referred to as "the Xuanzang of modern times."
Fenollosa, Ernest Francisco (Kano Yeitan). (1853-1908). An American proponent of Japanese Buddhism and Japanese art. Born in Salem, Massachusetts, to a mother from Salem and a Spanish father, he was part of Boston's East Asian renaissance during the 1890s and one of the first students of the incipient discipline of art history. He studied philosophy at Harvard and attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. At the age of twenty-five, Fenollosa went to teach at the Imperial University in Japan, where his students introduced him to Buddhism. His interest in the religion grew through his visits to temples near Nara and Kyoto. Fenollosa also became interested in traditional Japanese art and met the aristocratic families who had been court painters during the Tokugawa shogunate. By 1882, Fenollosa was considered enough of an expert to lecture at the Ryuchikai Club and, in 1884, he was named an imperial commissioner of fine arts. Sakurai Keitaku Ajari, the head of the Hoyugin Temple at MIIDERA, became Fenollosa's teacher of Buddhism. Fenollosa received the precepts of TENDAI Buddhism in 1885, making him one of the first Americans to practice MAHĀLĀNA Buddhism. During his time in Japan, he was adopted into the Kano family and received the name Kano Yeitan. He was also presented with the "Order of the Sacred Mirror" by the Meiji emperor. After returning to the United States in 1890, Fenollosa lectured and wrote about Buddhism, became the curator of Far Eastern Art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and in 1893 published a poem called East and West. In 1895, he married his second wife, Mary McNeil Scott, and they returned together to Japan, where Fenollosa taught English at Tokyo Higher Normal School. He and Mary remained in Japan until 1900. Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art, his magnum opus, was published posthumously, with help from Ezra Pound.
fifth generation language ::: (language, artificial intelligence) A myth the Japanese spent a lot of money on. In about 1982, MITI decided it would spend ten years and a lot of crisis. The project spent its money and its ten years and in 1992 closed down with a wimper. (1996-11-06)
fifth generation language "language, artificial intelligence" A myth the Japanese spent a lot of money on. In about 1982, {MITI} decided it would spend ten years and a lot of money applying {artificial intelligence} to programming, thus solving the {software crisis}. The project spent its money and its ten years and in 1992 closed down with a wimper. (1996-11-06)
Fourteen A septenate in which each member is dual. In the Hindu Laws of Manu, fourteen manus are enumerated; and in theosophy a root-manu and a seed-manu are given for each round. In a Hindu allegory, there arise from the churning of the ocean fourteen “precious things,” which in a corresponding Japanese system are enumerated as seven. See also KURMA-AVATARA
Fudochi shinmyoroku. (不動智神妙録). In Japanese, "Record of the Mental Sublimity of Immovable Wisdom," a treatise on ZEN and sword fighting composed by the Japanese RINZAISHu monk TAKUAN SoHo (1573-1645). In the first half of the seventeenth century, Takuan found himself in the middle of a political battle known as the "purple robe incident" (shi'e jiken), which, in 1629, ultimately led to his exile to Kaminoyama in Uzen (present-day Yamagata Prefecture). There, he composed this treatise on the proper use of the mind in Zen and sword fighting for the samurai sword master Yagyu Muneori (1571-1646), the personal instructor to the shogun. Takuan first describes the afflictions that rise from ignorance (AVIDLĀ) as hindrances to proper sword fighting. Then he explains the "immovable wisdom" as the unclinging, unstopping mind. Takuan likens this unmoving state to the concept of "no-mind" (J. mushin; C. WUXIN) in the "Platform Sutra" (LIUZU TANJING), wherein one's movements are not calculated, but instinctual; thus, there should be no gap between mind and sword. The rest of the treatise expounds upon the proper means of attaining this state of no-mind.
Fujitsu ::: (company) A Japanese elecronics corporation. Fujitsu owns ICL, Amdahl Corporation, and DMR.Home .(2000-04-03)
Fujitsu "company" A Japanese elecronics corporation. Fujitsu owns {ICL}, {Amdahl Corporation}, and {DMR}. Home {USA (http://fujitsu.com/)}, {Japan (http://fujitsu.co.jp/index-e.html)}. (2000-04-03)
Fukan zazengi. (普勸坐禪儀). In Japanese, "General Advice on the Principles of Seated Meditation," an important meditation manual composed by the eminent Japanese ZEN master DoGEN KIGEN. Although this treatise is traditionally dated to 1227, recent discoveries of a hitherto unknown copy of the Fukan zazengi suggest the date of 1233. The Fukan zazengi is a relatively short treatise on seated meditation (ZAZEN), which is also embedded in Dogen's magnum opus, the SHoBoGENZo. The treatise underscores the need to practice seated meditation as a corrective against excessive indulgence in "words and letters," viz., scholastic interpretations of Buddhist doctrine (cf. BULI WENZI). The explanation of how to perform seated meditation starts with preparing a quiet spot for practice and following a proper diet. The correct posture for meditation is then described. The actual practice of seated meditation begins with the regulation of breathing, which is followed by an injunction to stay aware of all thoughts that arise in the mind. The treatise then briefly explains the psychosomatic effects of meditation and the proper way to rise from seated meditation. The importance of seated meditation is reiterated at the end. Dogen's manual is in large part a revision of the Chinese Chan master CHANGLU ZONGZE's influential primer of meditation, the ZUOCHAN YI.
Fukeshu. (普化宗). In Japanese, "Puhua Sect"; a secondary sect of the Japanese ZEN school, founded by SHINCHI KAKUSHIN (1207-1298). While Kakushin was in China studying under WUMEN HUIKAI (1183-1260), he is said to have met a layman, the otherwise-unknown Zhang Can (J. Cho San; d.u.), who claimed to be a sixteenth-generation successor of the little-known Tang-dynasty monk Puhua (J. Fuke; d.u.), supposedly an eccentric friend of LINJI YIXUAN and a successor of MAZU DAOYI. Four lay disciples of Zhang's accompanied Kakushin when he returned to Japan, helping Kakushin to establish the sect. There is no evidence of the existence of a Puhua school in China apart from Kakushin's account, however, and the school seems to be a purely Japanese creation. During the Tokugawa era (1603-1867), in particular, the school attracted itinerant lay Zen practitioners, known as "clerics of emptiness" (kamuso), who played the bamboo flute (shakuhachi) as a form of meditation and wore a distinctive bamboo hat that covered their entire face as they traveled on pilgrimage around the country. Because masterless samurai (ronin) and bandits began adopting Fuke garb as a convenient disguise during the commission of their crimes, the Meiji government proscribed the school in 1871 and it vanished from the scene.
Fumu enzhong jing. (J. Bumo onjugyo; K. Pumo ŭnjung kyong 父母恩重經). In Chinese, "The Scripture on the Profundity of Parental Kindness," an indigenous Buddhist scripture, composed in the seventh century that extols the virtues of filial piety (C. xiao). There are several different recensions of this sutra, including one discovered in the caves of DUNHUANG. The scripture denounces unfilial sons who, after their marriages, neglect and abuse their parents, and instead urges that they requite the kindness of their parents by making offerings at the ghost festival (C. YULANBEN; S. *ULLAMBANA) and by copying this scripture and reciting it out loud. This text seems to be related to other earlier Chinese APOCRYPHA, such as the Fumu enzhong nanbao jing ("The Scripture on the Difficulty of Requiting Parental Kindness") and the YULANPEN JING ("Ullambana Scripture"), and displays the possible influence of the indigenous Confucian tradition. The Fumu enzhong jing continues to be one of the most popular scriptures in East Asian Buddhism and is frequently cited in the Buddhist literature of China, Korea, and Japan.
furigana "human language, Japanese" (Or "rubi") Small {hiragana}, written above {kanji} (and these days sometimes above Latin characters) as a phonetic comment and reading aid. The singular and plural are both "furigana". (2000-12-30)
furigana ::: (human language, Japanese) (Or rubi) Small hiragana, written above kanji (and these days sometimes above Latin characters) as a phonetic comment and reading aid. The singular and plural are both furigana.(2000-12-30)
fusho Zen. (不生禪). In Japanese, "unborn Zen"; a form of ZEN meditation popularized by the RINZAISHu master BANKEI YoTAKU. The teaching of the "unborn" (fusho) functioned as the central theme of Bankei's vernacular sermons (kana hogo). According to Bankei, the unborn is none other than buddha-nature (FOXING), or buddha mind, itself. As such, he emphatically notes that there is little need actually to seek buddhahood, since everyone is already born with the innate, unborn buddha mind. Bankei's teaching of unborn Zen was harshly criticized by the fellow Rinzai Zen master HAKUIN EKAKU.
Ganjin. (C. Jianzhen 鑑眞) (688-763). Chinese VINAYA master and reputed founder of the RISSHu and the monastery of ToSHoDAIJI in Japan; also known as Todai Wajo. Ganjin was a native of Guangling, Yangzhou, in present-day Jiangsu province. He studied TIANTAI thought and practice and the vinaya under the vinaya master Dao'an (654-717). Having returned to Yangzhou from his studies in Chang'an and Luoyang, he led an illustrious career at the monastery of Damingsi as a famous lecturer on the vinaya of the NANSHAN LÜ ZONG, and is credited with the establishment of many monasteries. In 733, two monks from Nara, Eiei (d. 748) and Fusho (d.u.), arrived in China. While studying in Chang'an, they learned of Ganjin and headed for Damingsi in 742 to meet him. The next year, Ganjin made his first attempt to go to Japan. After four more failed attempts, Ganjin was finally able to arrive in Japan in 754. During his earlier attempts, Ganjin had lost his eyesight and Eiei had lost his life. Upon his arrival, he was warmly welcomed by retired Emperor Shomu (r. 724-749) and the Buddhist community in Japan. In the summer of 754, an ordination platform was prepared at the great Nara monastery of ToDAIJI, where Ganjin conferred the precepts on Emperor Shomu and others. A precepts hall was constructed the next year in 755. In 756, Ganjin and RYoBEN (689-773), the abbot of Todaiji, were appointed to senior ecclesiastical positions at court. A year after Empress Koken (r. 749-758) abdicated the throne in 758, a new monastery, named Toritsu Shodaiji (alt. Toshodaiji), was built and granted to Ganjin. In 763, as death neared, Ganjin had a statue of himself made and installed in his quarters at Toshodaiji, which remains to this day.
garanbo. (伽藍法). In Japanese, lit. "temple dharma," viz., "temple lineage." Garanbo refers to the practice of inheriting the lineage of a temple (i.e., the lineage of the temple's founder) regardless of the monastic lineage one might have inherited earlier from one's teacher. By the Edo period, most temples and monasteries belonging to the ZENSHu in Japan required monks to follow the garanbo system. Through the garanbo system, monasteries built by the founder of a lineage were able to secure financial and spiritual support from a network of temples belonging to that lineage.
GCOS "operating system" /jee'kohs/ An {operating system} developed by {General Electric} from 1962; originally called GECOS (the General Electric Comprehensive Operating System). The GECOS-II operating system was developed by {General Electric} for the 36-bit {GE-635} in 1962-1964. Contrary to rumour, GECOS was not cloned from {System/360} [{DOS/360}?] - the GE-635 architecture was very different from the {IBM 360} and GECOS was more ambitious than DOS/360. GE Information Service Divsion developed a large special multi-computer system that was not publicised because they did not wish {time sharing} customers to challenge their bills. Although GE ISD was marketing {DTSS} - the first commercial time sharing system - GE Computer Division had no license from Dartmouth and GE-ISD to market it to external customers, so they designed a time-sharing system to sell as a standard part of GECOS-III, which replaced GECOS-II in 1967. GECOS TSS was more general purpose than DTSS, it was more a programmer's tool (program editing, e-mail on a single system) than a BASIC TSS. The {GE-645}, a modified 635 built by the same people, was selected by {MIT} and {Bell} for the {Multics} project. Multics' infancy was as painful as any infancy. Bell pulled out in 1969 and later produced {Unix}. After the buy-out of GE's computer division by {Honeywell}, GECOS-III was renamed GCOS-3 (General Comprehensive Operating System). Other OS groups at Honeywell began referring to it as "God's Chosen Operating System", allegedly in reaction to the GCOS crowd's uninformed and snotty attitude about the superiority of their product. [Can anyone confirm this?] GCOS won and this led in the orphaning and eventual death of Honeywell {Multics}. Honeywell also decided to launch a new product line called Level64, and later DPS-7. It was decided to mainatin, at least temporarily, the 36-bit machine as top of the line, because GCOS-3 was so successfull in the 1970s. The plan in 1972-1973 was that GCOS-3 and Multics should converge. This plan was killed by Honeywell management in 1973 for lack of resources and the inability of Multics, lacking {databases} and {transaction processing}, to act as a business operating system without a substantial reinvestment. The name "GCOS" was extended to all Honeywell-marketed product lines and GCOS-64, a completely different 32-bit operating system, significanctly inspired by Multics, was designed in France and Boston. GCOS-62, another different 32-bit low-end DOS level was designed in Italy. GCOS-61 represented a new version of a small system made in France and the new {DPS-6} 16-bit {minicomputer} line got GCOS-6. When the intended merge between GCOS-3 and Multics failed, the Phoenix designers had in mind a big upgrade of the architecture to introduce {segmentation} and {capabilities}. GCOS-3 was renamed GCOS-8, well before it started to use the new features which were introduced in next generation hardware. The GCOS licenses were sold to the Japanese companies {NEC} and {Toshiba} who developed the Honeywell products, including GCOS, much further, surpassing the {IBM 3090} and {IBM 390}. When Honeywell decided in 1984 to get its top of the range machines from NEC, they considered running Multics on them but the Multics market was considered too small. Due to the difficulty of porting the ancient Multics code they considered modifying the NEC hardware to support the Multics compilers. GCOS3 featured a good {Codasyl} {database} called IDS (Integrated Data Store) that was the model for the more successful {IDMS}. Several versions of transaction processing were designed for GCOS-3 and GCOS-8. An early attempt at TP for GCOS-3, not taken up in Europe, assumed that, as in {Unix}, a new process should be started to handle each transaction. IBM customers required a more efficient model where multiplexed {threads} wait for messages and can share resources. Those features were implemented as subsystems. GCOS-3 soon acquired a proper {TP monitor} called Transaction Driven System (TDS). TDS was essentially a Honeywell development. It later evolved into TP8 on GCOS-8. TDS and its developments were commercially successful and predated IBM {CICS}, which had a very similar architecture. GCOS-6 and GCOS-4 (ex-GCOS-62) were superseded by {Motorola 68000}-based {minicomputers} running {Unix} and the product lines were discontinued. In the late 1980s Bull took over Honeywell and Bull's management chose Unix, probably with the intent to move out of hardware into {middleware}. Bull killed the Boston proposal to port Multics to a platform derived from DPS-6. Very few customers rushed to convert from GCOS to Unix and new machines (of CMOS technology) were still to be introduced in 1997 with GCOS-8. GCOS played a major role in keeping Honeywell a dismal also-ran in the {mainframe} market. Some early Unix systems at {Bell Labs} used GCOS machines for print spooling and various other services. The field added to "/etc/passwd" to carry GCOS ID information was called the "{GECOS field}" and survives today as the "pw_gecos" member used for the user's full name and other human-ID information. [{Jargon File}] (1998-04-23)
GCOS ::: (operating system) /jee'kohs/ An operating system developed by General Electric from 1962; originally called GECOS (the General Electric Comprehensive Operating System).The GECOS-II operating system was developed by General Electric for the 36-bit GE-635 in 1962-1964. Contrary to rumour, GECOS was not cloned from System/360 [DOS/360?] - the GE-635 architecture was very different from the IBM 360 and GECOS was more ambitious than DOS/360.GE Information Service Divsion developed a large special multi-computer system that was not publicised because they did not wish time sharing customers to GECOS TSS was more general purpose than DTSS, it was more a programmer's tool (program editing, e-mail on a single system) than a BASIC TSS.The GE-645, a modified 635 built by the same people, was selected by MIT and Bell for the Multics project. Multics' infancy was as painful as any infancy. Bell pulled out in 1969 and later produced Unix.After the buy-out of GE's computer division by Honeywell, GECOS-III was renamed GCOS-3 (General Comprehensive Operating System). Other OS groups at Honeywell their product. [Can anyone confirm this?] GCOS won and this led in the orphaning and eventual death of Honeywell Multics.Honeywell also decided to launch a new product line called Level64, and later DPS-7. It was decided to mainatin, at least temporarily, the 36-bit machine as lacking databases and transaction processing, to act as a business operating system without a substantial reinvestment.The name GCOS was extended to all Honeywell-marketed product lines and GCOS-64, a completely different 32-bit operating system, significanctly inspired small system made in France and the new DPS-6 16-bit minicomputer line got GCOS-6.When the intended merge between GCOS-3 and Multics failed, the Phoenix designers had in mind a big upgrade of the architecture to introduce segmentation and capabilities. GCOS-3 was renamed GCOS-8, well before it started to use the new features which were introduced in next generation hardware.The GCOS licenses were sold to the Japanese companies NEC and Toshiba who developed the Honeywell products, including GCOS, much further, surpassing the IBM 3090 and IBM 390.When Honeywell decided in 1984 to get its top of the range machines from NEC, they considered running Multics on them but the Multics market was considered too small. Due to the difficulty of porting the ancient Multics code they considered modifying the NEC hardware to support the Multics compilers.GCOS3 featured a good Codasyl database called IDS (Integrated Data Store) that was the model for the more successful IDMS.Several versions of transaction processing were designed for GCOS-3 and GCOS-8. An early attempt at TP for GCOS-3, not taken up in Europe, assumed that, as in required a more efficient model where multiplexed threads wait for messages and can share resources. Those features were implemented as subsystems.GCOS-3 soon acquired a proper TP monitor called Transaction Driven System (TDS). TDS was essentially a Honeywell development. It later evolved into TP8 on GCOS-8. TDS and its developments were commercially successful and predated IBM CICS, which had a very similar architecture.GCOS-6 and GCOS-4 (ex-GCOS-62) were superseded by Motorola 68000-based minicomputers running Unix and the product lines were discontinued.In the late 1980s Bull took over Honeywell and Bull's management choose Unix, probably with the intent to move out of hardware into middleware. Bull killed technology) are still to be introduced in 1997 with GCOS-8. GCOS played a major role in keeping Honeywell a dismal also-ran in the mainframe market.Some early Unix systems at Bell Labs used GCOS machines for print spooling and various other services. The field added to /etc/passwd to carry GCOS ID information was called the GECOS field and survives today as the pw_gecos member used for the user's full name and other human-ID information.[Jargon File] (1998-04-23)
genjo koan. (C. xiancheng gong'an; K. hyonsong kongan 現[見]成公案). In Japanese, lit. "presently manifest case," or "actualized case," deriving from a term in Chinese law for an "open and shut case," or someone "caught dead to rights." The term is sometimes used in the CHAN school to refer to the universality of buddhahood in all aspects of the mundane world and, for this reason, is occasionally interpreted (rather too freely) as the "koan of everyday life." Genjo koan is one of the seminal terms in the writings of DoGEN KIGEN (1200-1253), the putative founder of the SoToSHu of Japanese ZEN, and is the title of a treatise written in 1233 that was later anthologized as the first roll of the sixty- and the seventy-five-roll recensions of his magnum opus, the SHoBoGENZo ("Treasury of the True Dharma Eye"). The term seems to have first been used by the Tang Chan master Muzhou Daoming (780-877), and more often later by such Song Chan masters as HONGZHI ZHENGJUE (1091-1157) and YUANWU KEQIN (1063-1135). Dogen deploys the term to criticize the RINZAI (LINJI) usage of koan (C. GONG'AN) as a means of catalyzing a breakthrough into awakening, thus making genjo koan a polemical device for distinguishing his presentation of Zen thought and practice from rival schools. Although Dogen never directly defines it, in his usage, genjo koan indicates the way in which all things are constantly manifesting their inherent buddhahood in the here and now; thus, Buddhist cultivation entails simply performing a single practice, such as seated meditation (J. ZAZEN), so completely that the enlightenment inherent in that practice becomes "an open and shut case."
Genken Programming Language ::: (language) (GPL) A variant of PL360 by K. Asai of the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute.[Experience With GPL, K. Asai, in Machine Oriented Higher Level Languages, W. van der Poel, N-H 1974, pp. 371-376]. (1995-04-13)
Genken Programming Language "language" (GPL) A variant of {PL360} by K. Asai of the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute. ["Experience With GPL", K. Asai, in Machine Oriented Higher Level Languages, W. van der Poel, N-H 1974, pp. 371-376]. (1995-04-13)
Genshin. (源信) (942-1017). Japanese TENDAISHu monk, scholar, and artist, popularly known as ESHIN SoZU (Head Monk of Eshin) because he spent much of his life at the monastery of Eshin at YOKAWA on HIEIZAN. Genshin was born in Yamato province (present-day Nara prefecture), but after losing his father at a young age, he was put in the care of the Tendai center on Mt. Hiei. It is believed that during his teens he formally joined the institution and became a student of the Tendai reformer RYoGEN (912-985). Genshin first gained a name for himself in 974 due to his sterling performance in an important debate at Mt. Hiei. Eventually, Genshin retired to the secluded monastery of Shuryogon'in in Yokawa, where he devoted the rest of his life primarily to scholarship. Genshin wrote on a wide array of Buddhist topics related to both Tendai and PURE LAND practices and is also regarded as the founder of the Eshin school of Tendai, which espoused the notion that everyone is inherently awakened (J. HONGAKU). While it is uncertain if any of his art is extant, Genshin was both a sculptor and painter, and his paintings of the buddha Amida (S. AMITĀBHA) welcoming believers into the PURE LAND, referred to as raigozu, helped to popularize this subject in Japan. The most influential of Genshin's works was the oJo YoSHu ("Collection of Essentials on Going to Rebirth" [in the pure land]), written in 985, one of the first Japanese treatises on the practice of nenbutsu (C. NIANFO) and the soteriological goal of rebirth in the pure land, playing an important role in laying the groundwork for an independent pure land tradition in Japan a century later. The ojo yoshu offers a systematic overview of pure land thought and practice, using extensive passages culled from various scriptures and treatises, especially the writings of the Chinese pure land monks DAOCHUO and SHANDAO. Genshin contends that the practice of nenbutsu is relatively easy for everyone and is appropriate for people during the dharma-ending age (mappo; see MOFA), especially as a deathbed practice. The ojo yoshu was also one of the few texts written in Japan that made its way to China, where it influenced the development of pure land Buddhism on the mainland. Japanese Buddhists have long debated whether Genshin should be primarily viewed as affiliated with either the Tendai or pure land schools. In fact, however, this distinction was not relevant during Genshin's own lifetime, since an independent pure land tradition did not yet exist at that point. Given the Tendai notion that all beings can attain buddhahood through a variety of means, an argument he supports in his Ichijo yoketsu ("Essentials of the One Vehicle"), Genshin asserts that nenbutsu (C. nianfo) practice is the best method for reaching this goal. Pure land practice for Genshin therefore fits under the larger umbrella of Tendai thought. Nonetheless, Genshin's presentation of pure land beliefs and practice offered a foundation for the development of pure land Buddhism in Japan, notably in its influence on HoNEN (1133-1212) and SHINRAN (1173-1263); for this reason, the JoDO SHINSHu school considers Genshin to be the sixth patriarch in its lineage.
ginkgo ::: n. --> A large ornamental tree (Ginkgo biloba) from China and Japan, belonging to the Yew suborder of Coniferae. Its leaves are so like those of some maidenhair ferns, that it is also called the maidenhair tree.
Gishin. (義眞) (781-833). Japanese monk who was the first head (zasu) of the TENDAISHu. At a young age, Gishin became the student of the Japanese monk SAICHo, who dwelled on HIEIZAN. He later went to the monastery of DAIANJI and studied the VINAYA under the Chinese vinaya master GANJIN. Gishin also studied Chinese under Jiken (d.u.) of ToDAIJI. In 804, the novice Gishin followed his teacher Saicho to China where he primarily served as an interpreter for his teacher. That same year, Saicho and Gishin arrived at the monastery of Guoqingsi on Mt. Tiantai (in present-day Zhejiang province). There, Gishin was ordained, receiving the full monastic precepts. The next year, both Saicho and Gishin received the "perfect teaching" (C. YUANJIAO) BODHISATTVA precepts (engyo bosatsukai) of the FANWANG JING from the reputed seventh patriarch of the TIANTAI tradition Daosui (d.u.) at the monastery of Longxingsi. Before their return to Japan that year, both Saicho and Gishin purportedly received initiation into the "two realms" (RYoBU) of the KONGoKAI (vajradhātu) and TAIZoKAI (garbadhātu) MAndALAs from a certain Shunxiao (d.u.) during their sojourn in Yuezhou (present-day Zhejiang province). After Saicho's death in 823, Gishin was given permission to construct a MAHĀYĀNA precepts platform (daijo kaidan) at his monastery of ENRYAKUJI. In 832, he was appointed the first head (zasu) of the Tendai school on Mt. Hiei.
glass-rope ::: n. --> A remarkable vitreous sponge, of the genus Hyalonema, first brought from Japan. It has a long stem, consisting of a bundle of long and large, glassy, siliceous fibers, twisted together.
GNU archive site ::: (body) The main GNU FTP archive is on gnu.org but copies (mirrors) of some or all of the files there are also held on many other computers around the which is logically closest if it's not obvious from the transfer rate). Trans-ocean TCP/IP links are very expensive and usually very slow.The following hosts mirror GNU files. Look for a directory like /pub/gnu, /mirrors/gnu, /systems/gnu or /archives/gnu. Electronic mail addresses of administrators and Internet addresses are given for some hosts. .Australia: archie.au, archie.oz, archie.oz.auBrazil: ccsun.unicamp.br (143.106.1.5, )Denmark: ftp.denet.dkEurope: archive.eu.net (192.16.202.1)Finland: ftp.funet.fi (128.214.6.100, gnu-adm)France: irisa.irisa.fr, ftp.univ-lyon1.fr ( ) , , ftp://ftp.germany.eu.net/).Israel: ftp.technion.ac.il ( )Japan: utsun.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp, ftp.cs.titech.ac.jpKorea: cair.kaist.ac.kr (143.248.11.170)Netherlands: hp4nl.nluug.nl, ftp.win.tue.nl (131.155.70.100)Norway: ugle.unit.no (129.241.1.97)South Africa: ftp.sun.ac.zaSweden: isy.liu.se, ftp.stacken.kth.se, ftp.luth.se, ftp.sunet.se, , sdi.slu.se.Switzerland: ftp.eunet.ch, nic.switch.chThailand: ftp.nectec.or.th (192.150.251.32, )UK: src.doc.ic.ac.uk (146.169.3.7, , also sun cartridge or exabyte tapes); ).USA: louie.udel.edu, ftp.kpc.com (Silicon Valley, CA) ftp.hawaii.edu, f.ms.uky.edu, ftp.digex.net (Internet address 164.109.10.23, run by labrea.stanford.edu, ftp.cs.widener.edu, archive.cis.ohio-state.edu, and ftp.uu.net.Western Canada: ftp.cs.ubc.ca ( ) (1999-12-09)
Goddard, Dwight. (1861-1939). American popularizer of Buddhism and author of the widely read A Buddhist Bible. He was born in Massachusetts and educated in both theology and mechanical engineering. Following the death of his first wife, he enrolled at Hartford Theological Seminary and was ordained as a minister in the Congregational Church. He went to China as a missionary and it was there that he visited his first Buddhist monastery. After holding pastoral positions in Massachusetts and Chicago, he left the ministry to become a mechanical engineer. An invention that he sold to the government made him independently wealthy and allowed him to retire in 1913. He traveled to China several times in the 1920s, where he met a Lutheran minister who was seeking to promote understanding between Buddhists and Christians. Goddard first learned of Zen Buddhism from a Japanese friend in New York in 1928 and later traveled to Japan where he met DAISETZ TEITARO SUZUKI and practiced ZAZEN for eight months in Kyoto. Upon his return to America, Goddard attempted in 1934 to form an American Buddhist community, called the Followers of the Buddha. With property in Vermont and California, the organization was to include a celibate monkhood, called the Homeless Brothers, supported by lay members. Goddard also published a Buddhist magazine, Zen, A Magazine of Self-Realization, before bringing out, with his own funds, what would become his most famous work, A Buddhist Bible, in 1932. The purpose of the anthology was to "show the unreality of all conceptions of the personal ego" and inspire readers to follow the path to buddhahood. It was Goddard's conviction that Buddhism was the religion most capable of meeting the problems of European civilization. Commercially published in 1938, the contents of A Buddhist Bible were organized by the language of a text's origins and contained works that had not been translated into English before. The works came mostly from Chinese, translated by the Chinese monk Wai-tao, in collaboration with Goddard. Tibetan selections were drawn from W. Y. EVANS-WENTZ. A Buddhist Bible is not without its eccentricities. For example, Goddard rearranged the VAJRACCHEDIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀSuTRA ("Diamond Sutra") into a more "sensible" order, and he included in his anthology a classic of Chinese philosophy, the Daode jing (Tao te ching). Goddard also composed his own treatise to provide practical guidance in meditation, which he felt was difficult for Europeans and Americans. As one of the first anthologies of Buddhist texts widely available in the West, and especially because it was one of the few that included MAHĀYĀNA works, A Buddhist Bible remained widely read for decades after its publication.
Godensho. (御伝鈔). In Japanese, "Biographical Notes," an important early biography of SHINRAN (1163-1273), in two rolls; written in 1295 by his great-grandson KAKUNYO (1270-1351), the third abbot of HONGANJI. Godensho is the abbreviated title of this work favored in JoDO SHINSHu communities; its full title is Honganji Shonin Shinran den e ("Biography with Illustrations of the Honganji Sage Shinran"). This text is often paired with illustrations in a version that is presumed to have been composed by Kakunyo's son Zonkaku (1290-1373) and painted by Joga Hogen. As few documents survive from Shinran's time, this biography is especially important in detailing the events in Shinran's life, and all later biographies draw upon it. One of the most important features of the Godensho is its identification of Shinran as being an earthly manifestation of AMITĀBHA.
Godzillagram ::: (networking) /god-zil'*-gram/ (From Japan's national hero and datagram) 1. A network packet that in theory is a broadcast to every machine in the [255.255.255.255]. Fortunately, few gateways are foolish enough to attempt to implement this case!2. A network packet of maximum size. An IP Godzillagram has 65,536 octets. Compare super source quench.(2003-10-07)
Godzillagram "networking" /god-zil'*-gram/ (From Japan's national hero and {datagram}) 1. A {network packet} that in theory is a {broadcast} to every machine in the universe. The typical case is an {IP} {datagram} whose destination IP address is [255.255.255.255]. Fortunately, few {gateways} are foolish enough to attempt to implement this case! 2. A network packet of maximum size. An {IP} Godzillagram has 65,536 {octets}. Compare {super source quench}. (2003-10-07)
Go "games, application" A thinking game with an oriental origin estimated to be around 4000 years old. Nowadays, the game is played by millions of people in (most notably) China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. In the Western world the game is practised by a yearly increasing number of players. On the {Internet} Go players meet, play and talk 24 hours/day on the {Internet Go Server} (IGS). {(http://cwi.nl/~jansteen/go/go.html)}. {Usenet} newsgroup: {news:rec.games.go}. (1995-03-17)
gohonzon. (御本尊). In Japanese, "object of devotion." See DAI-GOHONZON.
goltschut ::: n. --> A small ingot of gold.
A silver ingot, used in Japan as money.
gong'an. (J. koan; K. kongan 公案). In Chinese, "public case," or "precedent"; better known in the West by its Japanese pronunciation koan, a word that has now entered common English parlance as "koan." Gong'an was originally a legal term, referring to the magistrate's (gong) table (an), which by metonymy comes to refer to a legal precedent or an authoritative judgment; the term also comes to mean simply a "story" (gong'an in vernacular Chinese refers to the genre of detective stories). The term is widely used in the CHAN school in a way that conveys both denotations of a legal precedent and a story. The study of gong'an seems to have had its beginnings in the practice, probably dating from the late-Tang dynasty, of commenting on the exchanges or "ancient precedents" (guce) culled from Chan genealogical histories (e.g., JINGDE CHUANDENG LU) and the recorded sayings or discourse records (YULU) of the Chan masters of the past. Commenting on old cases (niangu), often using verses (SONGGU), seems to have become a well-established practice by the early Song dynasty, as more recorded sayings began to include separate sections known as nianggu and songgu. Perhaps one of the most famous collections of verse commentaries on old cases is the Chan master XUEDOU CHONGXIAN's Xuedou heshang baice songgu, which now exists only as part of a larger influential collection of gong'ans known as the BIYAN LU. Other famous gong'an collections, such as the CONGRONG LU and WUMEN GUAN, were compiled during the Song dynasty and thereafter. These collections often shared a similar format. Each case (bence), with some exceptions, begins with a pointer (CHUISHI), a short introductory paragraph. The actual case, often a short anecdote, is interspersed with interlinear notes known as "annotations" or "capping phrases" (C. zhuoyu/zhuyu; see J. JAKUGO). After the case, a prose commentary (pingchang), verse commentary (songgu), and subcommentary on the verse commentary follow. Traditionally, 1,700 specific gong'an are said to have been in circulation in the Chan school. Although this number does have antecedents within the tradition, there are no fixed numbers of cases included in Chan gong'an anthologies; for example, a late Qing-dynasty collection, the 1712 Zongjian falin, includes 2,720 gong'an, which were claimed to be all the gong'an then in active use within the tradition. Whatever the number, there seems not to have been any kind of systematic curriculum within the Chinese Chan or Korean Son traditions using this full panoply of gong'an. The creation of a pedagogical system of training involving mastery of a series of many different koans is commonly attributed to HAKUIN EKAKU (1685-1768) in the Japanese RINZAISHu of ZEN. The widespread reference to 1,700 gong'an in Western-language materials may derive from accounts of Japanese government attempts in 1627 to routinize the Rinzai monastic curriculum, by promulgating a regulation requiring all Zen abbots to master 1,700 cases as part of their training. ¶ The literary endeavor of studying old cases also gave rise to new forms of meditation. The Chan master DAHUI ZONGGAO in the YANGQI PAI of the LINJI ZONG systematized a practice in which one focuses on what he termed the "meditative topic" (HUATOU), which in some contexts refers to the "keyword," or "critical phrase" of a gong'an story. For instance, the famous huatou "WU" (no) that Dahui used as a meditative topic was derived from a popular gong'an attributed to ZHAOZHOU CONGSHEN: A student asked Zhaozhou, "Does a dog have buddha nature, or not?," to which Zhaozhou replied "wu" (no; lit., "it does not have it") (see WU GONG'AN; GOUZI WU FOXING). This new practice was called the "Chan of observing the meditative topic" or, more freely, "questioning meditation" (KANHUA CHAN). During the Song dynasty, students also began to seek private instruction on gong'an from Chan masters. These instructions often occurred in the abbot's quarters (FANGZHANG). ¶ The active study of gong'an in Korean SoN begins with POJO CHINUL and his disciple CHIN'GAK HYESIM, who learned of Dahui's kanhua Chan largely through the writings of their Chinese counterpart. Hyesim was also the first Korean Son monk to compile his own massive collection of cases, titled the SoNMUN YoMSONG CHIP. The use of cases was later transmitted to Japan by pilgrims and émigré monks, where koan study became emblematic of the Rinzaishu. Because rote memorization of capping phrases came to take precedence over skilled literary composition in classical Chinese, the Japanese compiled large collections of capping phrases, such as the ZENRIN KUSHu, to use in their training.
gouzi wu foxing. (J. kushi mubussho; K. kuja mu pulsong 狗子無佛性). In Chinese, "a dog has no buddha-nature"; a CHAN expression that becomes a famous meditative topic (HUATOU) and is used as the subject of a Chan "questioning meditation" (see KANHUA CHAN). This phrase refers to a GONG'AN exchange attributed to the Tang-dynasty monk ZHAOZHOU CONGSHEN (778-897): Once when Zhaochou was asked, "Does a dog have buddha-nature (FOXING), or not?" Zhaochou answered, "No" (lit. "It does not have it."). This gong'an exchange is the famous "no" (WU) huatou, the first case of the WUMEN GUAN ("Gateless Checkpoint"), which is often the initial meditation topic given to neophyte Chan monks in the LINJI ZONG and Linji-oriented traditions in China, Korea, and Japan.
gozan. (五山). In Japanese, "five mountains"; a medieval Japanese ranking system for officially sponsored ZEN monasteries, which may derive from Chinese institutional precedents. Large and powerful public monasteries in China known as "monasteries of the ten directions" (SHIFANGCHA) came under the control of the Chinese state during the Song dynasty and were designated either as VINAYA or CHAN monasteries. Government administration of these monasteries eventually ceased, but it is widely believed that five major Chan monasteries in Zhejiang province (ranked in the order of WANSHOUSI, Lingyinsi, Jingdesi, Jingci Bao'en Guangxiaosi, and Guanglisi) were selected to be protected and governed by the state, largely through the efforts of the Chan master DAHUI ZONGGAO and his disciples. Whether this is indeed the beginning of a "five-mountain ranking system" is unclear, but by the Yuan dynasty the term was clearly in use in China. The implementation of this system in Japan began under the rule of the Kamakura shogun Hojo Sadatoki (1271-1311). Five illustrious RINZAISHu monasteries in Kamakura, including KENCHoJI and ENGAKUJI, were granted gozan status and given a specific rank. A reordering of the gozan ranks occurred when Emperor Godaigo (1288-1339) came to power in 1333. The powerful Zen monasteries in Kyoto, NANZENJI and DAITOKUJI, replaced Kenchoji and Engakuji as the top-ranking monasteries, and the monastery of ToFUKUJI was added to the gozan system. The gozan ranks were changed again several times by the Ashikaga shogunate. By the Muromachi period, some three hundred official monasteries (kanji) were ranked either gozan, jissatsu (ten temples), or shozan (many mountains). The term gozan also came to denote the prosperous lineages of MUSo SOSEKI and ENNI BEN'EN, who populated the gozan monasteries; monks in these lineages were particularly renowned for their artistic and literary talents in classical Chinese and brushstroke art. There seems also to have been a five-mountain convent system (amadera gozan or niji gozan) for Japanese nuns, which paralleled the five-mountain monastery system of the monks, but little is known about it.
Gṛdhrakutaparvata. (P. Gijjhakutapabbata; T. Bya rgod phung po'i ri; C. Lingjiushan; J. Ryojusen; K. Yongch'uksan [alt. Yongch'wisan/Yongch'usan] 靈鷲山). In Sanskrit, "Vulture Peak," one of the five hills surrounding the city of RĀJAGṚHA, a favored site of GAUTAMA Buddha and several of his most important disciples in mainstream Buddhist materials and the site where the Buddha is said to have delivered many renowned sutras in the NIKĀYAs and ĀGAMAs; in the MAHĀYĀNA, Gṛdhrakuta is also the location where sĀKYAMUNI Buddha is purported to have preached such important Mahāyāna scriptures as the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra") and the perfection of wisdom sutras (PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ). The hill was so named either because it was shaped like a vulture's beak or a flock of vultures, or because vultures roosted there. In another legend, the peak is said to have received its name when, in an attempt to distract ĀNANDA from his meditation, the demon MĀRA turned himself into a frightening vulture; Ānanda, however, was unswayed by the provocation and eventually became enlightened. In one of the most famous episodes in the life of the Buddha, his evil cousin DEVADATTA, in attempting to kill the Buddha, instead wounded him when he hurled a boulder down on him from the hill, cutting his toe; for this and other "acts that bring immediate retribution" (ĀNANTARYAKARMAN), Devadatta fell into AVĪCI hell. Because many important Mahāyāna sermons are said to have been spoken on the peak, some schools-specifically the Japanese NICHIRENSHu-believe that the mountain itself is a PURE LAND. Other sources state that because of the sutras set forth there, the peak has become a STuPA, and like the Buddha's seat (VAJRĀSANA) in BODHGAYĀ, it will not be destroyed by fire at the end of the KALPA. Although beings in the intermediate state (ANTARĀBHAVA) are said to be able to pass through mountains, they are not able to pass through Vulture Peak. The first Buddhist council (see COUNCIL, FIRST), in which a group of five hundred ARHATS met to recite the Buddha's teaching after his death, is said to have been held in a cave on Vulture Peak.
Guan Wuliangshou jing. (S. *Amitāyurdhyānasutra; J. Kan Muryojukyo; K. Kwan Muryangsu kyong 觀無量壽經). In Chinese, "Sutra on the Visualization of [the Buddha of] Immeasurable Life"; often called simply the Guan jing, or "Visualization Scripture." Along with the AMITĀBHASuTRA and SUKHĀVATĪVYuHASuTRA, the Guan Wuliangshou jing has been considered one of the three central scriptures of the PURE LAND tradition(s) (JINGTU SANBU JING). The Guan jing was extremely influential in East Asian Buddhism for advocating specific types of visualizations or contemplations (guan) on the person of the buddha AMITĀBHA (C. Wuliangshou; S. Amitāyu), and for encouraging oral recitation of Amitābha's name (chengming; see NIANFO). Early commentaries on the scripture were written by SHANDAO (613-681), an important Chinese exponent of pure land practice, as well as by TIANTAI ZHIYI (538-597), and JINGYING HUIYUAN (523-592), all attesting to the text's centrality to the East Asian Buddhist tradition. Although the Guan Wuliangshou jing purports to be a translation by the monk KĀLAYAsAS (fl. c. 383-442), no Sanskrit or Tibetan recension is known to have ever existed; Uighur versions of the Guan Wuliangshou jing are extant, but they are translations of the Chinese version. The scripture also contains specific Chinese influences, such as references to earlier Chinese translations of pure land materials and other contemplation sutras (guan jing), which has suggested to some scholars that the text might be a Chinese indigenous composition (see APOCRYPHA). It is now generally accepted that the scripture outlines a visualization exercise that was practiced in Central Asia, perhaps specifically in the TURFAN region, but includes substantial Chinese admixtures. ¶ The Guan Wuliangshou jing tells the story of prince AJĀTAsATRU who, at the urging of DEVADATTA, imprisons his father, king BIMBISĀRA, and usurps the throne. After Ajātasatru learns that his mother, queen VAIDEHĪ, has been surreptitiously keeping her husband alive by sneaking food in to him, he puts her under house arrest as well. The distraught queen prays to the Buddha for release from her suffering and he immediately appears in her chambers. Vaidehī asks him to show her a land free from sorrow and he displays to her the numerous buddha fields (BUDDHAKsETRA) throughout the ten directions (DAsADIs) of the universe. Queen Vaidehī, however, chooses to be reborn in the buddha AMITĀBHA's pure land of SUKHĀVATĪ, so the Buddha instructs her in sixteen visualizations that ensure the meditator will take rebirth there, including visualizations on the setting sun, the lotus throne of Amitābha, Amitābha himself, as well as the bodhisattvas AVALOKITEsVARA and MAHĀSTHĀMAPRĀPTA. The visualizations largely focus on the details of sukhāvatī's beauty, such as its beryl ground, jeweled trees, and pure water. In the last three visualizations, the Buddha expounds the nine grades of rebirth (JIUPIN) in that land, which became a favorite topic among exegetes in China, Korea, and Japan. The Guan Wuliangshou jing has also exerted much influence in the realm of art. A number of exquisite mural representations of sukhāvatī and the sixteen contemplations adorn the walls of the DUNHUANG cave complex, for example.
Guanyin. (J. Kannon; K. Kwanŭm 觀音). In Chinese, "Perceiver of Sounds," an abbreviation of the longer name Guanshiyin (J. Kanzeon; K. Kwanseŭm; Perceiver of the World's Sounds); the most famous and influential BODHISATTVA in all of East Asia, who is commonly known in Western popular literature as "The Goddess of Mercy." Guanyin (alt. Guanshiyin) is the Chinese translation of AVALOKITEsVARA, the bodhisattva of compassion; this rendering, popularized by the renowned Kuchean translator KUMĀRAJĪVA in his 405-406 CE translation of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"), derives from an earlier form of this bodhisattva's name, Avalokitasvara, which is attested in some Sanskrit manuscripts of this scripture; Kumārajīva interprets this name as "gazing" (avalokita; C. guan) on the "sounds" (svara; C. yin) [of this wailing "world" (C. shi) of suffering]. Avalokitasvara was supplanted during the seventh century CE by the standard Sanskrit form Avalokitesvara, the "gazing" (avalokita) "lord" (īsvara); this later form is followed in XUANZANG's Chinese rendering Guanzizai (J. Kanjizai; K. Kwanjajae), as found in his 649 CE translation of the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀHṚDAYASuTRA ("Heart Sutra"). The primary textual source for Guanyin worship is the twenty-fifth chapter of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra; that chapter is devoted to the bodhisattva and circulated widely as an independent text in East Asia. The chapter guarantees that if anyone in danger calls out Guanshiyin's name with completely sincerity, the bodhisattva will "perceive the sound" of his call and rescue him from harm. Unlike in India and Tibet, Avalokitesvara took on female form in East Asia around the tenth century. In traditional China, indigenous forms of Guanyin, such as BAIYI GUANYIN (White-Robed Guanyin), Yulan Guanyin (Guanyin with Fish Basket), SHUIYUE GUANYIN (Moon in Water Guanyin), Songzi Guanyin (Child-Granting Guanyin), MALANG FU, as well as Princess MIAOSHAN, became popular subjects of worship. Guanyin was worshipped in China by both monastics and laity, but her functions differed according to her manifestation. Guanyin thus served as a protectress against personal misfortune, a symbol of Buddhist ideals and restraint, or a granter of children. Various religious groups and lay communities also took one of her various forms as their patroness, and in this role, Guanyin was seen as a symbol of personal salvation. Beginning in the tenth century, these different manifestations of Guanyin proliferated throughout China through indigenous sutras (see APOCRYPHA), secular narratives, miracle tales, monastic foundation legends, and images. In later dynasties, and up through the twentieth century, Guanyin worship inspired both male and female religious groups. For example, White Lotus groups (see BAILIAN SHE; BAILIAN JIAO) during the Song dynasty included members from both genders, who were active in erecting STuPAs and founding cloisters that promoted Guanyin worship. In the twentieth century, certain women's groups were formed that took Princess Miaoshan's refusal to marry as inspiration to reject the institution of marriage themselves and, under the auspices of a Buddhist patron, pursue other secular activities as single women. ¶ In Japan, Kannon was originally introduced during the eighth century and took on additional significance as a female deity. For example, Kannon was often invoked by both pilgrims and merchants embarking on long sea voyages or overland travel. Invoking Kannon's name was thought to protect travelers from seven different calamities, such as fire, flood, storms, demons, attackers, lust and material desires, and weapons. Moreover, Kannon worship in Japan transcended sectarian loyalties, and there were numerous miracle tales concerning Kannon that circulated throughout the Japanese isles. ¶ In Korea, Kwanŭm is by far the most popular bodhisattva and is also known there as a deity who offers succor and assistance in difficult situations. The cult of Kwanŭm flourished initially under the patronage of the aristocracy in both the Paekche and Silla kingdoms, and historical records tell of supplications made to Kwanŭm for the birth of children or to protect relatives who were prisoners of war or who had been lost at sea. Hence, while the cult of AMITĀBHA was principally focused on spiritual liberation in the next life, Kwanŭm instead was worshipped for protection in this life. Still today, Kwanŭm is an object of popular worship and a focus of ritual chanting in Korean Buddhist monasteries by both monks and, especially, laywomen (and usually chanted in the form Kwanseŭm).
Gudo Toshoku. (愚堂東寔) (1579-1661). Japanese ZEN master in the RINZAISHu. Gudo Toshoku was born in Mino, present-day Gifu prefecture. In his twenties, he went on a pilgrimage around the country with several other young monks, such as DAIGU SoCHIKU and Ungo Kiyo (1582-1659), in search of a teacher. Gudo later travelled to Shotakuin, a memorial chapel (tatchu) at the Rinzai monastery of MYoSHINJI, where he found a teacher by the name of Yozan Keiyo (1559-1626). Gudo later became Yozan's DHARMA heir (see FASI). In 1614, Gudo became the abbot of a dilapidated monastery named Zuiganji in his native Mino. He was also invited as the abbot of the nearby monastery of Shodenji. In 1621, he was once again invited to restore Daisenji, another dilapidated monastery in Mino. With the support of powerful local patrons, Gudo was able to restore all these monasteries. In 1628, he became the abbot of Myoshinji and served as abbot a total of three times. During his stay at Myoshinji, Gudo led a faction within the monastery that opposed tendering an invitation to the Chinese Chan master YINYUAN LONGQI to serve as abbot of the monastery. Yinyuan instead was invited to Uji in 1661 to establish a new monastery, MANPUKUJI, which led to the foundation of the oBAKUSHu of Japanese Zen. Gudo later returned to his efforts to restore monasteries throughout the country. During the Tokugawa period, monasteries were mandated by the military government (bakufu) to affiliate themselves with a main monastery (honzan), thus becoming branch temples (matsuji). The monasteries that Gudo restored became branch temples of Myoshinji. Through Gudo's efforts, the influence of Myoshinji thus grew extensively. The influential Zen master HAKUIN EKAKU traced his lineage back to Gudo through the latter's disciple Shido Bunan (1603-1676) and Shido's disciple Dokyo Etan (1642-1721). Gudo later received the honorary title Daien Hokan kokushi (State Preceptor Great and Perfect Jeweled Mirror). His teachings can be found in the Hokanroku.
guoshi. (J. kokushi; K. kuksa 國師). In Chinese, "state preceptor," a high ecclesiastical office in East Asian Buddhist religious institutions. The first record of a "state preceptor" in China occurs during the reign of Emperor Wenxian (r. 550-559) of the Northern Qi dynasty, who is said to have appointed the monk Fachang (d.u.) as a guoshi after listening to his disquisition at court on the MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA. During the Tang dynasty, many renowned monks were appointed as guoshi, including FAZANG (643-712) as the Kangzang guoshi, CHENGGUAN (738-839) as the Qingliang guoshi, and NANYANG HUIZHONG (d. 775) as the Nanyang guoshi. In Japan, the term kokushi was used during the Nara period to refer to the highest ecclesiastical office accredited to each province (koku) by the central government. In Korea, kuksa were appointed from the Silla through early Choson dynasties and the term referred to a senior monk who served as a symbolic religious teacher and adviser to the state. The kuksa system appears to have become firmly established in Korea during the Koryo dynasty, which treated Buddhism as a virtual state religion. The first king of the Koryo dynasty, Wang Kon (T'aejo, r. 918-943), established a system of "royal preceptors" (wangsa) for his own religious edification, in distinction to the "state preceptors" who ministered to the government more broadly. The institution of ecclesiastical examinations (SŬNGKWA) during the reign of the king Kwangjong (r. 949-975) further systematized the appointments of both kuksa and wangsa. The kuksa and wangsa were compared to the parents of sentient beings and were thus placed at a status higher than even the king himself in state ceremonies. A monk could be posthumously appointed as a kuksa, and it was common during the Koryo dynasty for the king to reverentially appoint his wangsa as a kuksa following his spiritual adviser's death. Because Confucian ideologues during the late Koryo criticized the political roles played by kuksa and wangsa as examples of the corruption of Buddhism, the offices were eventually abolished during the reign of the third king of the Confucian-oriented Choson dynasty, T'aejong (r. 1400-1418).
Gyogi. (行基) (668-749). Japanese monk of the Hosso (FAXIANG ZONG) tradition; his name is sometimes also seen transcribed as Gyoki, although Gyogi is to be preferred. Gyogi was a native of otori in Izumi no kuni (present Sakai-shi, osaka prefecture). He was ordained in 682, perhaps at the monastery of YAKUSHIJI, by the eminent monk DoSHo. Almost two decades later, Gyogi is said to have taken the rather unconventional route of directly preaching to the public in the capital and the countryside. He also became famous for building monasteries, bridges, roads, and irrigation systems. As a large number of the taxable population sought ordination from Gyogi, in 717 the court issued an edict banning private ordination, leaving temple grounds, and performing rites for the sick without official sanction. The court then increased its control of the Buddhist SAMGHA by requiring government certification (kokucho) of all ordinations. The court's hostile attitude toward Gyogi later changed and in 743 he was asked to assist in the construction of the great VAIROCANA statue at ToDAIJI. Shortly thereafter, Gyogi was appointed by Emperor Shomu (r. 724-749) as the supreme priest (daisojo) of the office of priestly affairs (sogo) in 745.
Gyonen. (凝然) (1240-1321). Japanese monk associated with the Kegonshu doctrinal school (HUAYAN ZONG). Gyonen was a scion of the Fujiwara clan, one of the most influential aristocratic families in Japan, who ordained at sixteen and subsequently moved to ToDAIJI, where he eventually became abbot. At Todaiji, he lectured frequently on the AVATAMSAKASuTRA, the central text of the Kegonshu, and was also invited to lecture on FAZANG's WUJIAO CHANG at the imperial court, which awarded him the honorary title of state preceptor (J. kokushi; C. GUOSHI). Gyonen wrote over 125 works, all in literary Chinese, which ran the gamut from SuTRA exegesis, to biography, to ritual music. Gyonen's interest in Buddhist doctrine was not limited to the Kegon school. His most famous work is his HASSHu KoYo ("Essentials of the Eight Traditions"), which provides a systematic overview of the history and doctrines of the eight major schools that were dominant in Japanese Buddhism during the Nara and Heian periods. Gyonen's portrayal of Japanese Buddhism as a collection of independent schools identified by discrete doctrines and independent lines of transmission had a profound impact on Japanese Buddhist studies into the modern period.
Hachiman. (八幡). In Japanese, "God of Eight Banners," a popular SHINTo deity (KAMI), who is also considered a "great BODHISATTVA"; also known as Hachiman jin. Although his origins are unclear, Hachiman can at least be traced back to his role as the tutelary deity of the Usa clan in Kyushu during the eighth century. Hachiman responded to an oracle in 749, vouchsafing the successful construction of the Great Buddha (DAIBUTSU) image at ToDAIJI and quickly rose in popularity in both Kyushu and the Nara capital. In 859, the Buddhist monk Gyokyo established the Iwashimizu Hachiman Shrine near the capital of Kyoto that was dedicated to the deity. Hachiman's oracles continued to play decisive roles in Nara politics, leading to a worship cult devoted to him. The Hachiman cult expanded throughout the Heian period (794-1185), and in 809, he was designated a "great bodhisattva" (daibosatsu) by drawing on the concept of HONJI SUIJAKU (buddhas or bodhisattvas appearing in the world as gods). Hachiman also came to be considered a manifestation of the semi-legendary ancient sovereign ojin and was likewise seen as guardian of the monarch. From the eleventh century, the Minamoto warrior clan also linked itself with Hachiman. Through this patronage, Hachiman became increasingly associated with warfare. During the Meiji persecution of Buddhism in 1868, which separated the gods from the buddhas and bodhisattvas (SHINBUTSU BUNRI), Hachiman was divorced from his Buddhist identity and recast as a purely Shinto deity. Currently, there are approximately 25,000 Hachiman shrines across Japan.
haibutsu kishaku. (排佛釋). In Japanese, "abolishing Buddhism and destroying [the teachings of] sĀKYAMUNI"; a slogan coined to describe the extensive persecution of Buddhism that occurred during the Meiji period (1868-1912). The rise of Western-derived notions of nationalism, kokugaku (national learning), and SHINTo as a new national ideology raised serious questions about the role of Buddhism in modern Japan. Buddhism was characterized as a foreign influence and the institution suffered the disestablishment of thousands of temples, the desecration of its ritual objects, and the defrocking of monks and nuns. When an edict was issued separating Shinto from Buddhism in 1868 (see SHINBUTSU BUNRI), Buddhist monasteries and temples where local deities (KAMI) were worshipped as manifestations of a buddha or BODHISATTVA (see HONJI SUIJAKU) sustained the most damage. The forced separation of Shinto and Buddhism eventually led to the harsh criticism of Buddhism as a corrupt and superstitious institution. Buddhists sought to counter the effects of these attacks through a rapid transformation of the SAMGHA in order to make their religion more relevant to the needs of modern, secular society.
haiku: A Japanese poem where the form consists of a single three-line stanza of seventeen syllables. The first line contains five syllables, the second contains seven, whilst the last has, again, five syllables. The short poem encapsulates the spirit of the poet's mood. Haikus often lose their meaning in translation.
Hakuin Ekaku. (白隱慧鶴) (1685-1768). Japanese ZEN master renowned for revitalizing the RINZAISHu. Hakuin was a native of Hara in Shizuoka Prefecture. In 1699, Hakuin was ordained and received the name Ekaku (Wise Crane) from the monk Tanrei Soden (d. 1701) at the nearby temple of Shoinji. Shortly thereafter, Hakuin was sent by Tanrei to the temple of Daishoji in Numazu to serve the abbot Sokudo Fueki (d. 1712). Hakuin is then said to have lost faith in his Buddhist training and devoted much of his time instead to art. In 1704, Hakuin visited the monk Bao Sochiku (1629-1711) at the temple Zuiunji in Mino province. While studying under Bao, Hakuin is said to have read the CHANGUAN CEJIN by YUNQI ZHUHONG, which inspired him to further meditative training. In 1708, Hakuin is said to have had his first awakening experience upon hearing the ringing of a distant bell. That same year, Hakuin met Doju Sokaku (1679-1730), who urged him to visit the Zen master Dokyo Etan (1642-1721), or Shoju Ronin, at the hermitage of Shojuan in Iiyama. During one of his begging rounds, Hakuin is said to have had another important awakening after an old woman struck him with a broom. Shortly after his departure from Shojuan, Hakuin suffered from an illness, which he cured with the help of a legendary hermit named Hakuyu. Hakuin's famous story of his encounter with Hakuyu was recounted in his YASENKANNA, Orategama, and Itsumadegusa. In 1716, Hakuin returned to Shoinji and devoted much of his time to restoring the monastery, teaching students, and lecturing. Hakuin delivered famous lectures on such texts as the VIMALAKĪRTINIRDEsA, SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA, VAJRACCHEDIKĀPRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀSuTRA, BIYAN LU, BAOJING SANMEI, DAHUI PUJUE CHANSHI SHU, and YUANREN LUN, and the recorded sayings (YULU) of LINJI YIXUAN, WUZU FAYAN, and XUTANG ZHIYU. He also composed a number of important texts during this period, such as the Kanzan shi sendai kimon, Kaian kokugo, and SOKKoROKU KAIEN FUSETSU. Prior to his death, Hakuin established the monastery of Ryutakuji in Mishima (present-day Shizuoka prefecture). Hakuin was a strong advocate of "questioning meditation" (J. kanna Zen; C. KANHUA CHAN), which focused on the role of doubt in contemplating the koan (GONG'AN). Hakuin proposed that the sense of doubt was the catalyst for an initial SATORI (awakening; C. WU), which had then to be enhanced through further koan study in order to mature the experience. The contemporary Rinzai training system involving systematic study of many different koans is attributed to Hakuin, as is the famous koan, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" (see SEKISHU KoAN). Hakuin was a prolific writer who left many other works as well, including the Dokugo shingyo, Oniazami, Yabukoji, Hebiichigo, Keiso dokuzui, Yaemugura, and Zazen wasan. Hakuin also produced many prominent disciples, including ToREI ENJI, Suio Genro (1716-1789), and GASAN JITo. The contemporary Japanese Rinzai school of Zen traces its lineage and teachings back to Hakuin and his disciples.
Hanam Chungwon. (漢岩重遠) (1876-1951). First supreme patriarch (CHONGJoNG) of the Korean Buddhist CHOGYE CHONG (between 1941 and 1945), before the split between the Chogye order and T'AEGO CHONG; he is also known as Pang Hanam, using his secular surname. In 1899, Hanam went to the hermitage Sudoam in Ch'ongamsa to study with KYoNGHo SoNGU, the preeminent SoN master of his generation. In 1905, after three years of lecturing throughout the country, Hanam became the Son master of Naewon Meditation Center at the monastery of T'ONGDOSA. In 1926, he moved to Sangwonsa on Odae Mountain, which remained his primary residence for the rest of his life. Hanam's best-known work is the biography he wrote of his teacher Kyongho; some twenty-three correspondences between him and his teacher are also still extant. More recently, in 1995, a collection of Hanam's own dharma talks was published as the Hanam ilbal nok ("Hanam's One-Bowl Record"). Hanam's "five regulations for the SAMGHA," which he promulgated when he first arrived at Sangwonsa, outlined what he considered to be the main constituents of Korean Buddhist practice: (1) Son meditation, (2) "recollection" of the Buddha's name (K. yombul; C. NIANFO), (3) doctrinal study, (4) ritual and worship, and (5) maintaining the monastery. Hanam was a strong advocate for the revitalization of "questioning meditation" (K. kanhwa Son; C. KANHUA CHAN) in Korean Buddhism, although he was more flexible than many Korean masters-who typically used ZHAOZHOU CONGSHEN's "No" (K. mu; C. wu) gong'an (see WU GONG'AN; GOUZI WU FOXING) exclusively-in recommending also a variety of other Chan cases. Hanam also led a move to reconceive "recitation of the Buddha's name," a popular practice in contemporary Korean Buddhism, as "recollection of the Buddha's name," in order better to bring out the contemplative dimensions of yombul practice and its synergies with gong'an meditation. During the four years he was supreme patriarch of the Chogye order, Hanam was especially adept at avoiding entanglement with the Japanese colonial authorities, refusing, for example, to visit the governor-general in the capital of Seoul but accepting visits from Japanese authorities who came to Sangwonsa to "pay respects" to him. Hanam's emphasis on the monastic context of Son practice was an important influence in post-liberation Korean Buddhism after the end of World War II.
Han character "character" (From the Han dynasty, 206 B.C.E to 25 C.E.) One of the set of {glyphs} common to Chinese (where they are called "hanzi"), Japanese (where they are called {kanji}), and Korean (where they are called {hanja}). Han characters are generally described as "ideographic", i.e., picture-writing; but see the reference below. Modern Korean, Chinese and Japanese {fonts} may represent a given Han character as somewhat different glyphs. However, in the formulation of {Unicode}, these differences were {folded}, in order to conserve the number of {code positions} necessary for all of {CJK}. This unification is referred to as "Han Unification", with the resulting character repertoire sometimes referred to as "Unihan". {Unihan reference at the Unicode Consortium (http://charts.unicode.org/unihan.html)}. [John DeFrancis, "The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy", University of Hawaii Press, 1984]. (1998-10-18)
Han character ::: (character) (From the Han dynasty, 206 B.C.E to 25 C.E.) One of the set of glyphs common to Chinese (where they are called hanzi), Japanese (where they are called kanji), and Korean (where they are called hanja).Han characters are generally described as ideographic, i.e., picture-writing; but see the reference below.Modern Korean, Chinese and Japanese fonts may represent a given Han character as somewhat different glyphs. However, in the formulation of Unicode, these necessary for all of CJK. This unification is referred to as Han Unification, with the resulting character repertoire sometimes referred to as Unihan. .[John DeFrancis, The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy, University of Hawaii Press, 1984]. (1998-10-18)
Hannya shingyo hiken. (般若心經秘鍵). In Japanese, "Secret Key to the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀHṚDAYASuTRA"; attributed to the Japanese SHINGONSHu monk KuKAI. According to its colophon, Kukai composed the Hannya shingyo hiken upon imperial request during a great epidemic in 818, but an alternative theory rejects the colophon's claim and dates the text to 834. The Hannya shingyo hiken claims that the PrajNāpāramitāhṛdaya, the famous "Heart Sutra," is actually an esoteric scripture (see TANTRA) that explicates the "great mind-MANTRA SAMĀDHI" of the BODHISATTVA PrajNā. The treatise first provides a synopsis of the scripture and an explanation of its title, followed by a detailed interpretation of its teachings, in a total of five sections (each corresponding to a certain part of the scripture). In its first section, entitled "the complete interpenetration between persons and DHARMAs," the treatise describes the practice of the bodhisattva AVALOKITEsVARA in terms of five factors (cause, practice, attainment, entrance, and time). The next section, entitled "division of the various vehicles," divides the different vehicles (YĀNA) of Buddhism into the vehicles of construction, destruction, form, two, and one, and also mentions the vehicles of SAMANTABHADRA (see HUAYAN ZONG), MANJUsRĪ (see SANLUN ZONG), MAITREYA (see YOGĀCĀRA), sRĀVAKAs, PRATYEKABUDDHAs, and Avalokitesvara (see TIANTAI ZONG). In the third section, entitled "benefits attained by the practitioner," the treatise discusses seven types of practitioners (Huayan, Sanlun, Yogācāra, srāvaka, pratyekabuddha, Tiantai, and Shingon) and four varieties of dharmas (cause, practice, attainment, and entrance). The fourth section, entitled "clarification of the DHĀRAnĪ," explains the MANTRA "GATE GATE PĀRAGATE PĀRASAMGATE BODHI SVĀHĀ" in terms of its name, essence, and function, and also divides it into four types, which are associated with the srāvaka, pratyekabuddha, MAHĀYĀNA, and esoteric (himitsu) vehicles. The fifth section, entitled "secret mantra," further divides the spell into five different types and explains the attainment of BODHI within the various vehicles. Commentaries on this treatise were written by DoHAN (1178-1252), Saisen (1025-1115), KAKUBAN (1095-1143), Innyu (1435-1519), Donjaku (1674-1742), and others.
Hanyong Chongho. (漢永鼎鎬) (1870-1948). Korean monk renowned for his efforts to revitalize Buddhist education during the Japanese colonial period. Hanyong Chongho studied the Confucian classics when young and entered the SAMGHA at seventeen. He became a disciple of Soryu Ch'omyong (1858-1903), from whom he received the dharma name Hanyong. In 1909, he traveled to Seoul and helped lead the Buddhist revitalization movement, along with fellow Buddhist monks HAN YONGUN and Kŭmp'a Kyongho (1868-1915). In 1910, shortly after Japan's formal annexation of Korea, Hoegwang Sason (1862-1933) and others signed a seven-item treaty with the Japanese SoToSHu, which sought to assimilate Korean Buddhism into the Soto order. In response to this threat to Korean Buddhist autonomy, Hanyong Chongho helped Han Yongun and other Korean Buddhist leaders establish the IMJE CHONG order in Korea. In 1913, he published the journal Haedong Pulgyo ("Korean Buddhism") in order to inform the Buddhist community of the need for revitalization and self-awareness. Beginning with his teaching career at Kodŭng Pulgyo Kangsuk in 1914, he devoted himself to the cause of education and went on to teach at various other Buddhist seminaries (kangwon) throughout the country. His many writings include the Songnim sup'il ("Jottings from Stone Forest"), Chongson Ch'imunjiphwa ("Selections from Stories of Admonitions"), and Chongson Yomsong sorhwa ("Selections from the YoMSONG SoRHWA"), a digest of the most-famous Korean kongan (C. GONG'AN) collection.
Han Yongun. (韓龍雲) (1879-1944). Korean monk, poet, and writer, also known by his sobriquet Manhae or his ordination name Pongwan. In 1896, when Han was sixteen, both his parents and his brother were executed by the state for their connections to the Tonghak ("Eastern Learning") Rebellion. He subsequently joined the remaining forces of the Tonghak Rebellion and fought against the Choson-dynasty government but was forced to flee to Oseam hermitage on Mt. Sorak. He was ordained at the monastery of Paektamsa in 1905. Three years later, as one of the fifty-two monastic representatives, he participated in the establishment of the Won chong (Consummate Order) and the foundation of its headquarters at Wonhŭngsa. After returning from a sojourn in Japan, where he witnessed Japanese Buddhism's attempts to modernize in the face of the Meiji-era persecutions, Han Yongun wrote an influential tract in 1909 calling for radical changes in the Korean Buddhist tradition; this tract, entitled CHOSoN PULGYO YUSIN NON ("Treatise on the Reformation of Korean Buddhism"), set much of the agenda for Korean Buddhist modernization into the contemporary period. After Korea was formally annexed by Japan in 1910, Han devoted the rest of his life to the fight for independence. In opposition to the Korean monk Hoegwang Sason's (1862-1933) attempt to merge the Korean Won chong with the Japanese SoToSHu, Han Yongun helped to establish the IMJE CHONG (Linji order) with its headquarters at PoMoSA in Pusan. In 1919, he actively participated in the March First independence movement and signed the Korean Declaration of Independence as a representative of the Buddhist community. As a consequence, he was sentenced to three years in prison by Japanese colonial authorities. In prison, he composed the Choson Tongnip ŭi so ("Declaration of Korea's Independence"). In 1925, three years after he was released from prison, he published a book of poetry entitled Nim ŭi ch'immuk ("Silence of the Beloved"), a veiled call for the freedom of Korea (the "beloved" of the poem) and became a leader in resistance literature; this poem is widely regarded as a classic of Korean vernacular writing. In 1930, Han became publisher of the monthly journal Pulgyo ("Buddhism"), through which he attempted to popularize Buddhism and to raise the issue of Korean political sovereignty. Han Yongun continued to lobby for independence until his death in 1944 at the age of sixty-six, unable to witness the long-awaited independence of Korea that occurred a year later on August 15th, 1945, with Japan's surrender in World War II.
hara-kiri ::: n. --> Suicide, by slashing the abdomen, formerly practiced in Japan, and commanded by the government in the cases of disgraced officials; disembowelment; -- also written, but incorrectly, hari-kari.
Hara ::: The Japanese term for the Svasthithana Chakra in the etheric anatomy. This is the seat of vitality and corresponds to the Lower Dantian in Qi Gong.
Hasshu koyo. (八宗綱要). In Japanese, "Essentials of the Eight Traditions"; an influential history of Buddhism in Japan composed by the Japanese KEGONSHu (C. HUAYAN ZONG) monk GYoNEN (1240-1321). Gyonen first divides the teachings of the Buddha into the two vehicles of MAHĀYĀNA and HĪNAYĀNA, the two paths of the sRĀVAKA and BODHISATTVA, and the three baskets (PItAKA) of SuTRA, VINAYA, and ABHIDHARMA. He then proceeds to provide a brief history of the transmission of Buddhism from India to Japan. Gyonen subsequently details the division of the Buddha's teachings into the eight different traditions that dominated Japanese Buddhism during the Nara (710-794) and Heian (794-1185) periods. This outline provides a valuable summary of the teachings of each tradition, each of their histories, and the development of their distinctive doctrines in India, China, and Japan. The first roll describes the Kusha (see ABHIDHARMAKOsABHĀsYA), Jojitsu (*Tattvasiddhi; see CHENGSHI LUN), and RITSU (see VINAYA) traditions. The second roll describes the Hosso (see FAXIANG ZONG; YOGĀCĀRA), Sanron (see SAN LUN), TENDAI (see TIANTAI), Kegon (see HUAYAN), and SHINGON traditions. Brief introductions to the ZENSHu and JoDOSHu, which were more recent additions to Japanese Buddhism, appear at the end of the text. The Hasshu koyo has been widely used in Japan since the thirteenth century as a textbook of Buddhist history and thought. Indeed, Gyonen's portrayal of Japanese Buddhism as a collection of independent schools identified by discrete doctrines and independent lineages of transmission had a profound impact on Japanese Buddhist studies into the modern period.
Hayagrīva. (T. Rta mgrin; C. Matou Guanyin; J. Bato Kannon; K. Madu Kwanŭm 馬頭觀音). In Sanskrit, "Horse-Necked One"; an early Buddhist deity who developed from a YAKsA attendant of AVALOKITEsVARA into a tantric wrathful deity important in the second diffusion of Buddhism in Tibet. The name "Hayagrīva" belonged to two different Vedic deities, one an enemy of VIsnU, another a horse-headed avatāra, or manifestation, of that deity. Eventually the two merged, whence he was absorbed into the Buddhist pantheon. In early Buddhist art, Hayagrīva frequently appears as a smallish yaksa figure attending Avalokitesvara, Khasarpana, AMOGHAPĀsA, and TĀRĀ; by the mid-seventh century, however, Hayagrīva had merged with Avalokitesvara to become a wrathful form of that bodhisattva. He appears in this new form, Hayagrīva-Avalokitesvara, in the Avalokitesvara sections of the DhāranīsaMgraha (where his DHĀRAnĪs are said to be effective in destroying mundane obstacles) and later Chinese translations of the Amoghapāsahṛdaya, as well as in the MAHĀVAIROCANASuTRA. While he does appear with a horse's head in Japan (where he is considered a protective deity of horses), Hayagrīva is customarily shown with a horse head emerging from his flaming hair. In the tantric pantheon, Hayagrīva initially occupied outer rings of the MAndALA, but eventually came to be considered a YI DAM in his own right, a transformation that would grant him the status of a fully enlightened being. In Mongolia he is worshipped as the god of horses. In Tibet he is primarily worshipped as a LOKOTTARA (supramundane) DHARMAPĀLA (dharma protector).
heshang. (J. osho; K. hwasang 和尚). In Chinese, "monk," one of the most common Chinese designations for a senior Buddhist monk. The term is actually an early Chinese transcription of the Khotanese translation of the Sanskrit UPĀDHYĀYA, meaning "preceptor." The transcription heshang originally was used in Chinese to refer specifically to the upādhyāya, the monk who administered the precepts at the ordination of either a novice (sRĀMAnERA) or fully ordained monk (BHIKsU), but over time the term entered the vernacular Chinese lexicon to refer more generically to any senior monk. The term heshang has several variant readings in Japanese, depending on the sectarian affiliation: it is read OSHo in the JoDO and ZEN schools; WAJo in the Hosso (C. FAXIANG ZONG), SHINGON, and RITSU schools; and kasho in the TENDAI school.
hibutsu. (秘仏). In Japanese, "secret buddha." A hibutsu refers to a Buddhist icon in a Japanese monastery that is more or less kept out of public view. In some cases, the hibutsu icon is periodically brought out for public showing, but even then only once in perhaps several decades. The Amida (see AMITĀBHA) triad purportedly housed at the monastery of ZENKoJI is one famous example of a hibutsu.
Hieizan. (比叡山). In Japanese "Mt. Hiei," a sacred mountain best known as the headquarters of the TENDAISHu (see TIANTAI ZONG). Mt. Hiei is located northeast of Kyoto on the border of present-day Kyoto and Shiga prefectures, and rises to 2,600 feet (848 meters). In 785, SAICHo, founder of the Tendai school, left Nara for Hieizan after receiving ordination. Dissatisfied with the Nara Buddhist schools, he resided in a hut on the mountain and gradually attracted a small group of followers. In 788, Saicho built the hall Ichijo shikan'in (later renamed Konpon chudo), which became incorporated into the larger monastery of ENRYAKUJI, headquarters for the Tendai school. As Tendai Buddhism rose to dominance in medieval Japan, Hieizan became extremely influential not only in religious matters, but also in politics, the economy, and military affairs. In addition to Enryakuji and numerous other Tendai monasteries, the mountain also housed three aristocratic temples (monzeki), which further extended its ties to the court in Kyoto. Hieizan's power was not maintained without its share of violence. Conflict erupted in the late tenth century with the nearby Tendai temple Onjoji, when succession over the position of head priest at Enryakuji broke down in armed disputes between ENNIN and ENCHIN and their respective followers and warrior monks (SoHEI). In order to wrest control of Hieizan's military and economic strength, Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582) led an attack on the mountain in 1571, burning many of its monasteries to the ground. The mountain's influence was further supplanted during the Tokugawa period when Tenkai (1536?-1643), a Tendai priest and advisor to Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616), presided over the construction of Kan'eiji in 1625, which the Shogunate ranked above Hieizan. Hieizan also served as home to many KAMI, notably obie and Kobie (Great and Small Hie), who developed close ties with Tendai monasteries as early as the Heian period (794-1185) through a process known as SHINBUTSU SHuGo ("unity of spirits and buddhas"). SHUGENDo practices eventually took root on Hieizan as well. The practice of "circumambulating the mountain" (KAIHoGYo), which reputedly dates back to the ninth century, consists of ascetics running a course around the mountain for as many as one thousand days.
Higashi Honganjiha. (東本願寺派). In Japanese, "Eastern Honganji sect," the second largest of the two major subsects of JoDO SHINSHu; also known as the oTANIHA. See HONGANJI; oTANIHA.
hihan Bukkyo. (C. pipan Fojiao; K. pip'an Pulgyo 批判佛教). In Japanese, "critical Buddhism." A contemporary intellectual controversy fostered largely by the Japanese Buddhist scholars and SoToSHu ZEN priests Hakamaya Noriaki and Matsumoto Shiro and their followers. In a series of provocative essays and books, Hakamaya and Matsumoto have argued for a more engaged form of Buddhist scholarship that sought a critical pursuit of truth at the expense of the more traditional, accommodative approaches to Buddhist thought and history. "Critical" here refers to the critical analysis of Buddhist doctrines using modern historiographical and philological methodologies in order to ascertain the authentic teachings of Buddhism. "Critical" can also connote an authentic Buddhist perspective, which should be critical of intellectual misconstructions and/or societal faults. Critical Buddhists polemically dismiss many of the foundational doctrines long associated with East Asian Buddhism, and especially Japanese Zen, as corruptions of what they presume to have been the pristine, "original" teachings of the Buddha. In their interpretation, true Buddhist teachings derive from a critical perspective on the nature of reality, based on the doctrines of "dependent origination" (PRATĪTYASAMUTPĀDA) and "nonself" (ANĀTMAN); for this reason, the style of critical philosophical analysis used in the MADHYAMAKA school represents an authentic approach to Buddhism. By contrast, more accommodative strands of Buddhism that are derived from such teachings as the "embryo of buddhahood" (TATHĀGATAGARBHA), buddha-nature (FOXING), and original enlightenment (HONGAKU) were considered heretical, because they represented the corruption of the pristine Buddhist message by Brahmanical notions of a perduring self (ĀTMAN). The Mahāyāna notion of the nonduality between such dichotomies as SAMSĀRA and NIRVĀnA, the Critical Buddhists also claim, fostered a tendency toward antinomianism or moral ambiguity that had corrupted such Buddhist schools as CHAN or Zen and encouraged those schools to accept social inequities and class-based persecution (as in Soto Zen's acquiescence to the persecution of Japanese "untouchables," or burakumin). Opponents of "Critical Buddhism" suggest that efforts to locate what is "original" in the teachings of Buddhism are inevitably doomed to failure and ignore the many local forms Buddhism has taken throughout its long history; the "Critical Buddhism" movement is therefore sometimes viewed as social criticism rather than academic scholarship.
hijiri. (聖). In Japanese, "holy man" or "saint." The term hijiri is polysemous and may refer generally to an eminent monk or more specifically to those monks who have acquired great merit through rigorous cultivation. A hijiri may also refer to an ascetic monk who rejects monastic life in favor of a more reclusive, independent lifestyle and practice. Historically, the term hijiri was also often used to refer to itinerant preachers, who converted the masses by means of healing, divination, and thaumaturgy, as well as by building basic infrastructure, such as bridges, roads, and irrigation systems. The holy men of KoYASAN, the Koya hijiri, and the saints of the JISHu tradition, the Yugyo hijiri, are best known in Japan. See also ĀRYA.
Himitsu mandara jujushinron. (秘密曼荼羅十住心論). In Japanese, "Ten Abiding States of Mind According to the Sacred MAndALA"; a treatise composed by the Japanese SHINGONSHumonk KuKAI; often referred to more briefly as the Jujushinron. In 830, Kukai submitted this treatise in reply to Emperor Junna's (r. 823-833) request to each Buddhist tradition in Japan to provide an explanation of its teachings. In his treatise, Kukai systematically classified the various Buddhist teachings (see JIAOXIANG PANSHI) and placed them onto a spiritual map consisting of the ten stages of the mind (jujushin). The first and lowest stage of the mind ("the deluded, ram-like mind") is that of ignorant beings who, like animals, are driven by their uncontrolled desires for food and sex. The beings of the second stage ("the ignorant, childlike, but tempered mind") display ethical behavior consistent with the teachings of Confucius and the lay precepts of Buddhism. The third stage of mind ("the infantlike, fearless mind") is the state in which one worships the various gods and seeks rebirth in the various heavens, as would be the case in the non-Buddhist traditions of India and in Daoism. The fourth stage ("recognizing only SKANDHAs and no-self") corresponds to the sRĀVAKAYĀNA and the fifth stage ("mind free of karmic seeds") to that of the PRATYEKABUDDHAYĀNA. The sixth stage ("the mind of MAHĀYĀNA, which is concerned with others") corresponds to the YOGĀCĀRA teachings, the seventh ("mind awakened to its unborn nature") to MADHYAMAKA, the eighth ("mind of one path devoid of construction") to TIANTAI (J. TENDAI), and the ninth ("mind completely devoid of self-nature") to HUAYAN (J. Kegon). Kukai placed his own tradition of Shingon at the last and highest stage of mind ("the esoteric and adorned mind"). Kukai also likened each stage of mind to a palace and contended that these outer palaces surround an inner palace ruled by the buddha MAHĀVAIROCANA. To abide in the inner palace one must be initiated into the teachings of Shingon by receiving consecration (ABHIsEKA). Kukai thus provided a Buddhist (or Shingon) alternative to ideal rulership. To demonstrate his schema of the mind, Kukai frequently cites numerous scriptures and commentaries, which made his treatise extremely prolix; Kukai later provided an abbreviated version of his argument, without the numerous supporting references, in his HIZo HoYAKU.
hiragana "Japanese" The cursive formed Japanese {kana} syllabary. Hiragana is mostly used for grammatical particles, verb-inflection, and Japanese words which are not written in {kanji} or which are too difficult for an educated person to read or write in {kanji}. Hiragana are also used for {furigana}. (2001-03-18)
hiragana ::: (Japanese) The cursive formed Japanese kana syllabary. Hiragana is mostly used for grammatical particles, verb-inflection, and Japanese words which are not written in kanji or which are too difficult for an educated person to read or write in kanji. Hiragana are also used for furigana.(2001-03-18)
Hizo hoyaku. (秘藏寶鑰). In Japanese, "Jeweled Key to the Secret Treasury," a text composed by the Japanese SHINGONSHu monk KuKAI. The Hizo hoyaku is a summary (one-fifth the length) of Kukai's dense magnum opus HIMITSU MANDARA JuJuSHINRON. The title refers metaphorically to the "jeweled key" of the special teachings that will unlock the "secret treasury" that is the buddha-nature (C. FOXING) of all sentient beings. In contrast to the Himitsu mandara jujushinron, the Hizo hoyaku provides far fewer supporting references and introduces a fictional debate between a Confucian official and a Buddhist priest and a set of questions and answers from the Sok Mahayon non.
Hokke gisho. (法華義疏). In Japanese, "Commentary on the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA," attributed to the Japanese prince SHoTOKU TAISHI (574-622). Along with his commentaries on the sRĪMĀLĀDEVĪSIMHANĀDASuTRA and VIMALAKĪRTINIRDEsA, the Hokke gisho is known as one of the "three SuTRA commentaries" (sangyo gisho) of Shotoku Taishi. According to Shotoku Taishi's biography, the Hokke gisho was composed in 615, but the exact dates of its compilation remain uncertain. The Hokke gisho relies on the Chinese monk Fayun's (467-529) earlier commentary, the Fahua yiji, to KUMĀRAJĪVA's Chinese translation of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra. Because of its attribution to Shotoku Taishi, the Hokke gisho is considered an important source for studying the thought of this legendary figure in the evolution of Japanese Buddhism, but the extent of its influence on the early Japanese tradition remains a matter of debate.
Hokyoki. (寶慶). In Japanese, "Record from the Baoqing era," a treatise attributed to Japanese SoToSHu ZEN master DoGEN KIGEN. The Hokyoki was discovered after Dogen's death by his disciple Koun Ejo (1198-1280) and a preface was prepared in 1750. The Hokyoki is purportedly a record of Dogen's tutelage under the Chinese CAODONG ZONG master TIANTONG RUJING during his sojourn in China during the Baoqing reign era (1225-1227) of the Southern Song dynasty. The Hokyoki records specific instructions attributed to Rujing, including such topics as the "sloughing off body and mind" (J. SHINJIN DATSURAKU), seated meditation (J. zazen; C. ZUOCHAN), and his doctrinal teachings.
Honcho kosoden. (本朝高僧伝). In Japanese, "Biographies of Eminent Clerics of Japan"; a late Japanese biographic collection, written by the RINZAISHu ZEN monk Mangen Shiban (1626-1710) in 1702, in a total of seventy-five rolls. The Honcho kosoden includes the biographies of 1,662 Japanese priests affiliated with a variety of Buddhist sects (except, prominently, the JoDO SHINSHu and NICHIRENSHu) from the sixth century onward. Unlike Shiban's 1678 ENPo DENToROKU, which contains over one thousand biographies of only Zen clerics and lay practitioners, the Honcho kosoden also discusses clerics from other schools of Japanese Buddhism. The biographies are divided into ten general categories: founders, exegetes, meditators, thaumaturges, VINAYA specialists, propagators, ascetics, pilgrims, scriptural reciters, and others. As the most comprehensive and voluminous Japanese collection of biographies of eminent clerics, the text is an indispensable work for research into the lineage histories of many of the most important schools of Japanese Buddhism. In 1867, the SHINGONSHu monk Hosokawa Dokai (1816-1876) compiled a supplement to this collection, titled the Zoku Nippon kosoden ("Supplement to the Eminent Clerics of Japan"), which including biographies of over two hundred clerics of the premodern period, in a total of eleven rolls.
Honen. (法然) (1133-1212). Japanese monk regarded as the founder of the JoDOSHu, or PURE LAND school. Honen was a native of Mimasaka province. After his father's violent death, Honen was entrusted to his uncle, a monk at the nearby monastery of Bodaiji. Honen later headed for HIEIZAN in 1147 to received ordination. He began his studies under the TENDAISHu (C. TIANTAI ZONG) monks Genko (d.u.) and Koen (d. 1169), but the corruption he perceived within the Tendai community at ENRYAKUJI led Honen to seek teachings elsewhere. In 1150, he visited the master Eiku (d. 1179), a disciple of the monk RYoNIN, in Kurodani on Mt. Hiei, where he remained for the next twenty years. Under Eiku's guidance, Honen studied GENSHIN's influential treatise, the oJo YoSHu and became a specialist in the practice of nenbutsu ("recollecting the Buddha's name"; see C. NIANFO). Honen is also said to have devoted himself exclusively to the practice of invoking the name of the buddha AMITĀBHA (a type of nenbutsu) after perusing the Chinese monk SHANDAO's influential commentary on the GUAN WULIANGSHOU JING, the Guan Wuliangshou jing shu. In 1175, Honen left Mt. Hiei and established himself in the district of Higashiyama Yoshimizu in the capital Kyoto. His fame grew after his participation in the ohara discussion of 1186, which explored how pure land beliefs and practices could help overcome human suffering. Honen soon attracted many followers, including such prominent figures as the regent Kujo Kanezane (1149-1207). In 1198, Honen compiled his influential treatise, SENCHAKUSHu. Due perhaps to his growing influence and his purported rejection of the Tendai teachings of original enlightenment (HONGAKU), the monks of Enryakuji began attacking Honen, banning his practice of nenbutsu in 1204. The monks of the Nara monastery of KoFUKUJI also petitioned the retired emperor Gotoba (r. 1183-1198) to ban the practice in 1205. A scandal involving two of Honen's disciples led to his exile to Shikoku in 1207 and the execution of four of his disciples. He was later pardoned and returned to Kyoto in 1211. Due to illness, he died the next year in what is now known as the Seishido in the monastery of Chion'in. Honen preached that, in the current degeneration age of the dharma (J. mappo; C. MOFA), the exclusive practice of nenbutsu was the only way through which salvation could be achieved. Due in part to Honen's advocacy, nenbutsu eventually became one of the predominant practices of Japanese Buddhism. Honen's preeminent disciple was SHINRAN (1173-1262), who further radicalized pure land practice by insisting that salvation was only possible through the grace of Amitābha, rather than through continuous nenbutsu practice.
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hongaku. (本覺). In Japanese, "original enlightenment." The notion that enlightenment was a quality inherent in the minds of all sentient beings (SATTVA) initially developed in East Asia largely due to the influence of such presumptive APOCRYPHA as the DASHENG QIXIN LUN. The Dasheng qixin lun posited a distinction between the potentiality to become a buddha that was inherent in the minds of every sentient being, as expressed by the term "original enlightenment" (C. BENJUE; pronounced hongaku in Japanese); and the soteriological process through which that potential for enlightenment had to be put into practice, which it called "actualized enlightenment" (C. SHIJUE; J. shikaku). This distinction is akin to the notion that a person may in reality be enlightened (original enlightenment), but still needs to learn through a course of religious training how to act on that enlightenment (actualized enlightenment). This scheme was further developed in numerous treatises and commentaries written by Chinese exegetes in the DI LUN ZONG, HUAYAN ZONG, and TIANTAI ZONG. ¶ In medieval Japan, this imported soteriological interpretation of "original enlightenment" was reinterpreted into an ontological affirmation of things just as they are. Enlightenment was thence viewed not as a soteriological experience, but instead as something made manifest in the lived reality of everyday life. Hongaku thought also had wider cultural influences, and was used, for example, to justify conceptually incipient doctrines of the identity between the buddhas and bodhisattvas of Buddhism and the indigenous deities (KAMI) of Japan (see HONJI SUIGAKU; SHINBUTSU SHuGo). Distinctively Japanese treatments of original enlightenment thought begin in the mid-eleventh century, especially through oral transmissions (kuden) within the medieval TENDAISHu tradition. These interpretations were subsequently written down on short slips of paper (KIRIGAMI) that were gradually assembled into more extensive treatments. These interpretations ultimately came to be attributed by tradition to the great Tendai masters of old, such as SAICHo (767-822), but connections to these earlier teachers are dubious at best and the exact dates and attributions of these materials are unclear. During the late Heian and Kamakura periods, hongaku thought bifurcated into two major lineages, the Eshin and Danna (both of which subsequently divided into numerous subbranches). This bifurcation was largely a split between followers of the two major disciples of the Tendai monk RYoGEN: GENSHIN (942-1017) of Eshin'in in YOKAWA (the famous author of the oJo YoSHu); and Kakuun (953-1007) of Danna'in in the Eastern pagoda complex at ENRYAKUJI on HIEIZAN. The Tendai tradition claims that these two strands of interpretation derive from Saicho, who learned these different approaches while studying Tiantai thought in China under Daosui (J. Dosui/Dozui; d.u.) and Xingman (J. Gyoman; d.u.), and subsequently transmitted them to his successors in Japan; the distinctions between these two positions are, however, far from certain. Other indigenous Japanese schools of Buddhism that developed later during the Kamakura period, such as the JoDOSHu and JoDO SHINSHu, seem to have harbored more of a critical attitude toward the notion of original enlightenment. One of the common charges leveled against hongaku thought was that it fostered a radical antinomianism, which denied the need for either religious practice or ethical restraint. In the contemporary period, the notion of original enlightenment has been strongly criticized by advocates of "Critical Buddhism" (HIHAN BUKKYo) as an infiltration into Buddhism of Brahmanical notions of a perduring self (ĀTMAN); in addition, by valorizing the reality of the mundane world just as it is, hongaku thought was said to be an exploitative doctrine that had been used in Japan to justify societal inequality and political despotism. For broader East Asian perspectives on "original enlightenment," see BENJUE.
Honganji. (本願寺). In Japanese, "Original Vow Monastery." Honganji is the headquarters (honzan) of the JoDO SHINSHu sect in Japan; it is located in the Shimogyo district of Kyoto. In 1277, Kakushinni (1224-1283), the daughter of the Japanese PURE LAND monk SHINRAN, designated her father's grave in the otani district near Kyoto to be the primary memorial site for his worship. The site was later transformed into a temple, where an image of the buddha AMITĀBHA was installed. After a long period of factional disputes, the various groups of Shinran's followers were reunited by the eighth head priest of Honganji, RENNYO. In 1465, warrior monks from HIEIZAN razed Honganji and turned the site into one of their own branch temples (matsuji). In 1478, having gained enough support to counter any threat from Mt. Hiei, Rennyo moved Honganji to the Yamashina area of Kyoto. The move was completed in 1483 with the completion of the Amida hall. Under Rennyo's leadership, Honganji became the central monastery of the Jodo Shinshu tradition. Rennyo built a broad network of temples that was consolidated under the sole administration of Honganji. After a brief move to osaka, Honganji was relocated to its current site in Kyoto on the order of Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598). A split occurred between two factions shortly thereafter, and ever since the early seventeenth century the Nishi (West) and Higashi (East) Honganji complexes have served as the religious centers of these two major branches of Jodo Shinshu, the NISHI HONGANJIHA and the HIGASHI HONGANJIHA (also known as the oTANIHA).
honji suijaku. (本地垂迹). In Japanese, "manifestation from the original state"; an indigenous Japanese explanation of the way in which the imported religion of Buddhism interacted with local religious cults. In this interpretation, an originally Indian buddha, BODHISATTVA, or divinity (the "original ground," or "state"; J. honji) could manifest or incarnate in the form of a local Japanese deity (KAMI) or its icon, which was then designated the "trace it dropped" (J. suijaku). The notion of honji suijaku was derived from the earlier Buddhist doctrine of multiple buddha bodies (BUDDHAKĀYA), especially the so-called transformation body (NIRMĀnAKĀYA). The honji suijaku doctrine thus facilitated the systematic incorporation of local deities within Buddhism, speeding the localization of Buddhism within the religious culture of Japan. A movement forcefully to separate from Buddhism the local deities, now known collectively as SHINTo, occurred during the Meiji period (see HAIBUTSU KISHAKU). See also SHINBUTSU SHuGo.
honmon. (C. benmen; K. ponmun 本門). In Japanese, lit. "fundamental teaching" or "origin teaching"; the essential core of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"), which is detailed in the latter fourteen of the scripture's twenty-four chapters; in distinction to the SHAKUMON (lit. "trace teaching"), the provisional first half of the sutra. The term is especially important in both the TIANTAI (J. TENDAI) and NICHIREN-oriented schools of East Asian Buddhism. The honmon is regarded as the teaching preached by the true Buddha, who attained buddhahood an infinite number of KALPAs ago. Traditionally, the sixteenth chapter of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra, "The Longevity of the TATHĀGATA," is believed to constitute the central chapter of the honmon. In this chapter, the Buddha reveals his true identity: he became enlightened in the remote past, yet he appears to have a limited lifespan and to pass into NIRVĀnA in order to inspire sentient beings' spiritual practice, since if they were to know about the Buddha's eternal presence, they might not exert themselves. Honmon is also called the "effect" or "fruition" section of the scripture, since it preaches the omnipresence of the Buddha, which is a consequence of the long process of training that he undertook in the course of achieving enlightenment. The Tiantai master TIANTAI ZHIYI (538-597) first applied the two terms honmon and shakumon to distinguish these two parts of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra; he compared the two teachings to the moon in the sky and its reflection on the surface of a pond, respectively. Zhiyi considered the honmon to be different from the shakumon and other scriptural teachings in that it alone revealed the fundamental enlightenment of the Buddha in the distant past. He thus argued that, even though the honmon and shakumon are inconceivably one, the timeless principle of enlightenment itself is revealed in the honmon and all other teachings are merely the "traces" of this principle. The Japanese Tendai tradition offered a slightly different understanding of honmon: despite the fact that sĀKYAMUNI Buddha attained buddhahood numerous eons ago, his manifestation in this world served as a metaphor for the enlightenment inherent in all living things. Tendai thus understood honmon to mean "original enlightenment" (HONGAKU; see also C. BENJUE) and the dynamic phase of suchness (TATHATĀ) that accorded with phenomenal conditions, while "shakumon" was the "acquired enlightenment" (see C. SHIJUE) and the immutable phase of suchness as the unchanging truth. Most crucially, the Tendai tradition emphasized the superiority of honmon over shakumon. The two terms are also important in the various Nichiren-related schools of Japanese Buddhism. NICHIREN (1222-1282) maintained that myohorengekyo, the Japanese title (DAIMOKU) of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra, was in fact the true honmon of the sutra.
honmon no daimoku. (本門の題目). In Japanese, lit. "DAIMOKU of the essential teaching"; term used specifically in the NICHIREN and associated schools of Japanese Buddhism to refer to the essential teaching epitomized in the title of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"). The title of the sutra is presumed to summarize the gist of the entire scripture and it is recited in its Japanese pronunciation (see NAM MYoHoRENGEKYo) as a principal religious practice of the Nichiren and SoKA GAKKAI schools. Recitation of the title of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra was advocated as one of the "three great esoteric laws" (SANDAIHIHo) by the Japanese reformer NICHIREN (1222-1282) and was said to exemplify mastery of wisdom (PRAJNĀ) in the three trainings (TRIsIKsĀ).
Horyuji. (法隆寺). In Japanese, "Dharma Flourishing Monastery." Horyuji is considered one of the seven great monasteries in former capital of Nara. The monastery is currently affiliated with the Shotoku tradition and serves as the headquarters (honzan) of the Hosso school (C. FAXIANG ZONG). According to extant inscriptions, Empress Suiko (r. 592-628) and SHoTOKU TAISHI (574-622) built Horyuji in 607 to honor the deathbed wishes of retired Emperor Yomei (r. 585-587). Prince Shotoku's estate in Ikaruga was chosen as the site for the construction project. A famous Shaka (sĀKYAMUNI) triad produced perhaps in the early seventh century is installed in its Golden Hall (Kondo). Horyuji is also famous for its numerous ancient icons and ritual artifacts and also for its five-story pagoda and Golden Hall, which is one of the oldest standing wooden structures in Japan. The monastery is currently divided into eastern and western cloisters.
hotoke. (佛). A vernacular Japanese term for "buddha." Colloquially, hotoke is also used to refer to a deceased person or the soul of a deceased person.
Huanglong pai. (J. oryoha/oryuha; K. Hwangnyong p'a 龍派). In Chinese, "Huanglong school"; collateral lineage of the CHAN school's LINJI ZONG, one of the five houses and seven schools (WU JIA QI ZONG) of the Chan during the Northern Song dynasty (960-1126). The school's name comes from the toponym of its founder, HUANGLONG HUINAN (1002-1069), who taught at Mt. Huanglong in present-day Jiangxi province; Huinan was a disciple of Shishuang Chuyuan (986-1039), himself a sixth-generation successor in the Linji school. The Huanglong school was especially known for "lettered Chan" (WENZI CHAN), a style of Chan that valorized belle lettres, and especially poetry, in Chan practice. Many of the most influential monks in the Huanglong school exemplified a period when Chan entered the mainstream of Chinese intellectual life: their practice of Chan was framed and conceptualized in terms that drew from their wide learning and profound erudition, tendencies that helped make Chan writings particularly appealing to wider Chinese literati culture. JUEFAN HUIHONG (1071-1128), for example, decried the bibliophobic tendencies in Chan that were epitomized in the aphorism that Chan "does not establish words and letters" (BULI WENZI) and advocated that Chan insights were in fact made manifest in both Buddhist sutras and the uniquely Chan genres of discourse records (YULU), lineage histories (see CHUANDENG LU), and public-case anthologies (GONG'AN). Huanglong and YUNMEN ZONG masters made important contributions to the development of the Song Chan literary styles of songgu ([attaching] verses to ancient [cases]) and niangu (raising [and analyzing] ancient [cases]). Because of their pronounced literary tendencies, many Huanglong monks became close associates of such Song literati-officials as Su Shi (1036-1101), Huang Tingjian (1045-1105), and ZHANG SHANGYING (1043-1122). After the founder's death, discord appeared within the Huanglong lineage: the second-generation master Baofeng Kewen (1025-1102) and his disciple Juefan Huihong criticized the practices of another second-generation master Donglin Changzong (1025-1091) and his disciples as clinging to silence and simply waiting for enlightenment; this view may have influenced the subsequent criticism of the CAODONG ZONG by DAHUI ZONGGAO (1089-1163), who trained for a time with the Huanglong master Zhantang Wenjun (1061-1115). The Huanglong pai was the first school of Chan to be introduced to Japan: by MYoAN EISAI (1141-1215), who studied with the eighth-generation Huanglong teacher Xu'an Huaichang (d.u.). The Huanglong pai did not survive as a separate lineage in either country long after the twelfth century, as its rival YANGQI PAI came to prominence; it was eventually reabsorbed into the Yangqi lineage.
huatou. (J. wato; K. hwadu 話頭). In Chinese, "topic of inquiry"; in some contexts, "critical phrase" or "keyword." The Song-dynasty CHAN master DAHUI ZONGGAO, in the LINJI ZONG, popularized a meditative technique in which he urged his students (many of whom were educated literati) to use a Chan case (GONG'AN) as a "topic of meditative inquiry" (huatou) rather than interpret it from purely intellectual or literary perspectives. Perhaps the most famous and most widely used huatou is the topic "no" (WU) attributed to the Chan master ZHAOZHOU CONGSHEN: A monk asked Zhaozhou, "Does a dog have buddha-nature (FOXING), or not?," to which Zhaozhou replied "WU" ("no"; lit. "it does not have it"; see GOUZI WU FOXING; WU GONG'AN). Because of the widespread popularity of this particular one-word topic in China, Korea, and Japan, this huatou is often interpreted as a "critical phrase'" or "keyword," in which the word "wu" is presumed to be the principal topic and thus the "keyword," or "critical phrase," of the longer gong'an exchange. Because Zhaozhou's answer in this exchange goes against the grain of East Asian Mahāyāna Buddhism-which presumes that all sentient beings, including dogs, are inherently enlightened-the huatou helps to foster questioning, or technically "doubt" (YIQING), the focus of a new type of Chan meditation called KANHUA CHAN, "the Chan of investigating the huatou." Huatou (which literally means "head of speech," and thus "topic") might best be taken metaphorically as the "apex of speech," or the "point at which (or beyond which) speech exhausts itself." Speech is of course initiated by thought, so "speech" in this context refers to all the discriminative tendencies of the mind, viz., conceptualization. By leading to the very limits of speech-or more accurately thought-the huatou acts as a purification device that frees the mind of its conceptualizing tendencies, leaving it clear, attentive, and calm. Even though the huatou is typically a word or phrase taken from the teachings of previous Chan masters, it is a word that is claimed to bring an end to conceptualization, leaving the mind receptive to the influence of the unconditioned. As Dahui notes, huatou produces a "cleansing knowledge and vision" (see JNĀNADARsANA) that "removes the defects of conceptual understanding so that one may find the road leading to liberation." Huatou is thus sometimes interpreted in Chinese Buddhism as a type of meditative "homeopathy," in which one uses a small dosage of the poison of concepts to cure the disease of conceptualization. Dahui's use of the huatou technique was first taught in Korea by POJO CHINUL, where it is known by its Korean pronunciation as hwadu, and popularized by Chinul's successor, CHIN'GAK HYESIM. Investigation of the hwadu remains the most widespread type of meditation taught and practiced in Korean Buddhism. In Japanese Zen, the use of the wato became widespread within the RINZAISHu, due in large part to the efforts of HAKUIN EKAKU and his disciples.
Huayan jing helun. (J. Kegongyo goron; K. Hwaom kyong hap non 華嚴經合論). In Chinese, "A Comprehensive Exposition of the AVATAMSAKASuTRA," a commentary written by LI TONGXUAN in the Tang dynasty (618-907), a reclusive lay Huayan adept and contemporary of the HUAYAN patriarch FAZANG. The commentary is also known as the "Commentary to the New [Translation] of the AvataMsakasutra" (Xin Huayan jing lun), because it comments on sIKsĀNANDA's "new" eighty-roll translation of the AvataMsakasutra, rather than Buddhabhadra's "old" sixty-roll rendering, which had been the focus of all earlier Huayan commentarial writing. Li Tongxuan's "Exposition of the AvataMsakasutra" contained ideas that were quite distinct from standard Huayan interpretations, such as the emphasis on the centrality of the preliminary soteriological stage of the "ten faiths" (shixin), rather than the "ten abodes" (shizhu) that had been stressed in previous Huayan accounts. Li's work subsequently played a key role in the revitalization of the Chinese Huayan exegetical tradition, especially in the thought of the Huayan patriarch CHENGGUAN. Li's worked dropped out of circulation soon after its composition, but after centuries in obscurity, the exposition was rediscovered by Chinese CHAN adepts during the Song dynasty, such as DAHUI ZONGGAO, and by Korean SoN adepts during the Koryo dynasty for the provocative parallels they perceived between Li Tongxuan's treatment of Huayan soteriology and the Chan approach of sudden awakening (DUNWU). The Korean Son exegete POJO CHINUL (1158-1210) was so inspired by the text that he wrote a three-roll abridgment of it entitled "Excerpts from the Exposition of the AvataMsakasutra" (Hwaom non choryo), which he used to demonstrate the parallels between the Huayan soteriological schema and his preferred meditative approach of "sudden awakening followed by gradual cultivation" (K. tono chomsu; C. TUNWU JIANXIU). In Japan, Li Tongxuan's advocacy of meditating on the light emanating from the Buddha's body was also a major influence on MYoE KoBEN.
Huayan zong. (J. Kegonshu; K. Hwaom chong 華嚴宗). In Chinese, "Flower Garland School," an important exegetical tradition in East Asian Buddhism. Huayan takes its name from the Chinese translation of the title of its central scripture, the AVATAMSAKASuTRA (or perhaps BUDDHĀVATAMSAKASuTRA). The Huayan tradition is also sometimes referred to the Xianshou zong, after the sobriquet, Xianshou, of one of its greatest exegetes, FAZANG. A lineage of patriarchs, largely consisting of the tradition's great scholiasts, was retrospectively created by later followers. The putative first patriarch of the Huayan school is DUSHUN, who is followed by ZHIYAN, Fazang, CHENGGUAN, and GUIFENG ZONGMI. The work of these exegetes exerted much influence in Korea largely through the writings of ŬISANG (whose exegetical tradition is sometimes known as the Pusok chong) and WoNHYO. Hwaom teachings remained the foundation of Korean doctrinal exegesis from the Silla period onward, and continued to be influential in the synthesis that POJO CHINUL in the Koryo dynasty created between SoN (CHAN) and KYO (the teachings, viz., Hwaom). The Korean monk SIMSANG (J. Shinjo; d. 742), a disciple of Fazang, who transmitted the Huayan teachings to Japan in 740 at the instigation of RYoBEN (689-773), was instrumental in establishing the Kegon school in Japan. Subsequently, such teachers as MYoE KoBEN (1173-1232) and GYoNEN (1240-1321) continued Kegon exegesis into the Kamakura period. In China, other exegetical traditions such as the DI LUN ZONG, which focused on only one part of the AvataMsakasutra, were eventually absorbed into the Huayan tradition. The Huayan tradition was severely weakened in China after the depredations of the HUICHANG FANAN, and because of shifting interests within Chinese Buddhism away from sutra exegesis and toward Chan meditative practice and literature, and invoking the name of the buddha AMITĀBHA (see NIANFO). ¶ The Huayan school's worldview is derived from the central tenets of the imported Indian Buddhist tradition, but reworked in a distinctively East Asian fashion. Huayan is a systematization of the teachings of the AvataMsakasutra, which offered a vision of an infinite number of interconnected world systems, interfused in an all-encompassing realm of reality (DHARMADHĀTU). This profound interdependent and ecological vision of the universe led Huayan exegetes to engage in a creative reconsideration of the central Buddhist doctrine of dependent origination (PRATĪTYASAMUTPĀDA), which in their interpretation meant that all phenomena in the universe are mutually creating, and in turn are being mutually created by, all other phenomena. Precisely because in the traditional Buddhist view any individual phenomenon was devoid of a perduring self-nature of its own (ANĀTMAN), existence in the Huayan interpretation therefore meant to be in a constant state of multivalent interaction with all other things in the universe. The boundless interconnectedness that pertains between all things was termed "dependent origination of the dharmadhātu" (FAJIE YUANQI). Huayan also carefully examines the causal relationships between individual phenomena or events (SHI) and the fundamental principle or patterns (LI) that govern reality. These various relationships are systematized in Chengguan's teaching of the four realms of reality (dharmadhātu): the realm of principle (LI FAJIE), the realm of individual phenomena (SHI FAJIE), the realm of the unimpeded interpenetration between principle and phenomena (LISHI WU'AI FAJIE), and the realm of the unimpeded interpenetration between phenomenon and phenomena (SHISHI WU'AI FAJIE). Even after Huayan's decline as an independent school, it continued to exert profound influence on both traditional East Asian philosophy and modern social movements, including engaged Buddhism and Buddhist environmentalism.
huguo Fojiao. (J. gokoku Bukkyo; K. hoguk Pulgyo 護國佛敎). In Chinese, "state-protection Buddhism," referring to the sociopolitical role Buddhism played in East Asia to protect the state against war, insurrection, and natural disasters. The doctrinal justification for such a protective role for Buddhism derives from the "Guanshiyin pusa pumen pin" ("Chapter on the Unlimited Gate of the BODHISATTVA AVALOKITEsVARA") and the "Tuoluoni pin" (DHĀRAnĪ chapter) of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"), the "Huguo pin" ("Chapter on Protecting the State") of the RENWANG JING ("Scripture for Humane Kings"), and the "Zhenglun pin" ("Chapter on Right View") of the SUVARnAPRABHĀSOTTAMASuTRA ("Golden Light Sutra"). For example, the Suvarnaprabhāsottamasutra states that a ruler who accepts that sutra and has faith in the dharma will be protected by the four heavenly kings (CĀTURMAHĀRĀJAKĀYIKA); but if he neglects the dharma, the divinities will abandon his state and calamity will result. The "Huguo pin" of the Renwang jing notes that "when the state is thrown into chaos, facing all sorts of disasters and being destroyed by invading enemies," kings should set up in a grand hall one hundred buddha and bodhisattva images and one hundred seats, and then invite one hundred eminent monks to come there and teach the Renwang jing. This ritual, called the "Renwang Assembly of One-Hundred Seats" (C. Renwang baigaozuo hui; J. Ninno hyakukozae; K. Inwang paekkojwa hoe) would ward off any calamity facing the state and was held in China, Japan, and Korea from the late sixth century onward. In Japan, these three scriptures were used to justify the role Buddhism could play in protecting the state; and the Japanese reformist NICHIREN (1222-1282) cites the Suvarnaprabhāsottamasutra in his attempts to demonstrate that the calamities then facing Japan were a result of the divinities abandoning the state because of the government's neglect of the true teachings of Buddhism. The notion of state protection also figured in the introduction of ZEN to Japan. In 1198, the TENDAI and ZEN monk MYoAN EISAI (1141-1215) wrote his KoZEN GOKOKURON ("Treatise on the Promulgation of Zen as a Defense of the State"), which explained why the new teachings of Zen would both protect the state and allow the "perfect teachings" (see JIAOXIANG PANSHI) of Tendai to flourish. ¶ "State-protection Buddhism" has also been posited as one of the defining characteristics of Korean Buddhism. There are typically four types of evidence presented in support of this view. (1) Such rituals as the Inwang paekkojwa hoe (Renwang jing recitation) were held at court at least ten times during the Silla dynasty and increased dramatically to as many as one hundred twenty times during the succeeding Koryǒ dynasty. (2) Monasteries and STuPAs were constructed for their apotropaic value in warding off calamity. During the Silla dynasty, e.g., HWANGNYONGSA and its nine-story pagoda, as well as Sach'onwangsa (Four Heavenly Kings Monastery), were constructed for the protection of the royal family and the state during the peninsular unification wars. During the succeeding Koryo dynasty, the KORYo TAEJANGGYoNG (Korean Buddhism canon) was carved (twice) in the hopes that state support for this massive project would prompt the various buddhas and divinities (DEVA) to ward off foreign invaders and bring peace to the kingdom. (3) Eminent monks served as political advisors to the king and the government. For example, Kwangjong (r. 949-975), the fourth monarch of the Koryǒ dynasty, established the positions of wangsa (royal preceptor) and kuksa (state preceptor, C. GUOSHI), and these offices continued into the early Choson dynasty. (4) Monks were sometimes at the vanguard in repelling foreign invaders, such as the Hangmagun (Defeating Māra Troops) in twelfth-century Koryo, who fought against the Jurchen, and the Choson monks CH'oNGHo HYUJoNG (1520-1604) and SAMYoNG YUJoNG (1544-1610), who raised monks' militias to fight against the Japanese during the Hideyoshi invasions of the late sixteenth century. In the late twentieth century, revisionist historians argued that the notion of "state-protection Buddhism" in Korea may reflect as much the political situation of the modern and contemporary periods as any historical reality, and may derive from the concept of "chingo kokka" (protecting the state) advocated by Japanese apologists during the Buddhist persecution of the Meiji period (1868-1912).
Huiguo. (J. Keika; K. Hyegwa 惠果) (746-805). Tang-dynasty Chinese monk, reputed seventh patriarch of esoteric Buddhism (J. MIKKYo), and a master especially of the KONGoKAI and TAIZoKAI transmissions. Huiguo was a native of Shaanxi province. He became a monk at an early age and went to the monastery of Qinglongsi in the Chinese capital of Chang'an, where he became a student of the master (ĀCĀRYA) AMOGHAVAJRA's disciple Tanchen (d.u.). In 765, Huiguo received the full monastic precepts, after which he is said to have received the teachings on the VAJRAsEKHARASuTRA from Amoghavajra himself. Two years later, Huiguo is also said to have received instructions on the taizokai and the SUSIDDHIKARASuTRA from the obscure Korean monk Hyonch'o (d.u.), a purported disciple of ācārya sUBHAKARASIMHA. In 789, Huiguo won the support of Emperor Dezong (r. 779-805) by successfully praying for rain. Huiguo's renown was such that he received disciples from Korea, Japan, and even Java. In 805, Huiguo purportedly gave instructions on the kongokai and taizokai to the eminent Japanese pilgrim KuKAI during the three months prior to the master's death, and eventually performed the consecration ritual (ABHIsEKA) for his student. Kukai thus claimed that Huiguo was the Chinese progenitor of the Japanese SHINGONSHu. That same year, Huiguo passed away at his residence in the Eastern Pagoda cloister at Qinglongsi.
Humphreys, Christmas. (1901-1983). Early British popularizer of Buddhism and founder of the Buddhist Society, the oldest lay Buddhist organization in Europe. Born in London in 1901, Humphreys was the son of Sir Travers Humphreys (1867-1956), a barrister perhaps best known as the junior counsel in the prosecution of the Irish writer Oscar Wilde (1854-1900). Following in his father's footsteps, Humphreys studied law at Cambridge University and eventually became a senior prosecutor at the Old Bailey, London, the central criminal court, and later a circuit judge; he was also involved in the Tokyo war crimes trials as a prosecutor, a post he accepted so he could also further in Japan his studies of Buddhism. (Humphreys's later attempts to inject some Buddhist compassion into his courtroom led to him being called the "gentle judge," who gained a reputation for being lenient with felons. After handing down a six-month suspended sentence to an eighteen-year-old who had raped two women at knifepoint, the public outcry that ensued eventually led to his resignation from the bench in 1976.) Humphreys was interested in Buddhism from his youth and declared himself a Buddhist at age seventeen. In 1924, at the age of twenty-three, he founded the Buddhist Society, London, and served as its president until his death; he was also the first publisher of its journal, The Middle Way. Humphreys strongly advocated a nonsectarian approach to Buddhism, which embraced the individual schools of Buddhism as specific manifestations of the religion's central tenets. His interest in an overarching vision of the whole of the Buddhist tradition led him in 1945 to publish his famous Twelve Principles of Buddhism, which has been translated into fourteen languages. These principles focus on the need to recognize the conditioned nature of reality, the truth of impermanence and suffering, and the path that Buddhism provides to save oneself through "the intuition of the individual." A close associate of DAISETZ TEITARO SUZUKI and a contemporary of EDWARD CONZE, Humphreys himself wrote over thirty semischolarly and popular books and tracts on Buddhism, including Buddhism: An Introduction and Guide, published in 1951.
Hwaomsa. (華嚴寺). In Korean, "Flower Garland Monastery"; the nineteenth of the major district monasteries (PONSA) in the contemporary CHOGYE order and the largest monastery on the Buddhist sacred mountain of CHIRISAN. According to the Hwaomsa monastery history, the monastery was founded in 544 by the obscure monk Yon'gi (d.u.), an Indian monk who is claimed to have been the first figure to spread the teaching of the AVATAMSAKASuTRA in Korea. (Five works related to the AvataMsakasutra and the DASHENG QIXIN LUN are attributed to Yon'gi in Buddhist catalogues, but none are extant.) In 645, during the Silla dynasty, the VINAYA master CHAJANG constructed at the monastery a three-story stone STuPA with four lions at the base, in which to preserve the relics (sARĪRA) of the Buddha. The eminent scholiast WoNHYO (617-686) is said to have taught at the monastery the "flower boys" (hwarang) group of Silla elite young men. In 677, the important vaunt courier in the Korean Hwaom school, ŬISANG (625-702), constructed a main shrine hall, the Changyukchon, where a gold buddha image six-chang (sixty feet) high was installed, and had inscribed the eighty-roll recension of the AvataMsakasutra on the four stone walls of the hall; since his time, the monastery was known as one of the centers of the Hwaom school (HUAYAN ZONG) in Korea. In 1462, during the Choson dynasty, Hwaomsa was raised to the status of a main monastery in the Son school (CHAN ZONG) of Buddhism. The monastery burned down during the Japanese Hideyoshi invasion of (1592-1598) and was rebuilt several times afterward. In 1702, the Son monk Kyeba (d.u.) built a new main shrine hall, Kakhwangjon, to replace the ruined Changyukchon, and the monastery was elevated to a main monastery of both the Son and Kyo (Doctrine) schools. The monastery is the nineteenth of the major parish monasteries (PONSA) in the contemporary CHOGYE order.
hyalonema ::: n. --> A genus of hexactinelline sponges, having a long stem composed of very long, slender, transparent, siliceous fibres twisted together like the strands of a color. The stem of the Japanese species (H. Sieboldii), called glass-rope, has long been in use as an ornament. See Glass-rope.
hydrangea ::: n. --> A genus of shrubby plants bearing opposite leaves and large heads of showy flowers, white, or of various colors. H. hortensis, the common garden species, is a native of China or Japan.
ichinengi. (一念義). In Japanese, "the doctrine of a single recitation," in the Japanese PURE LAND traditions, the practice of a single verbal recitation of the buddha AMITĀBHA's name (J. nenbutsu; C. NIANFO). This doctrine refers to a position held by some of HoNEN's (1133-1212) major disciples in the early JoDOSHu, especially Jokakubo Kosai (1163-1247), and to a lesser extent SHINRAN (1163-1273). After Honen passed away, a debate emerged among his followers over whether salvation in Amitābha's pure land of SUKHĀVATĪ was attained through a "single recitation" of the Buddha's name, or "multiple recitations" (see TANENGI). The single-recitation position advocates that a single moment of faith would be sufficient to ensure rebirth in that pure land, because the person would then be receptive to Amitābha's grace. Due to this near-exclusive emphasis on the role of grace in effecting salvation, some of the proponents of single-recitation practice apparently engaged in antinomian behavior, such that the doctrine of ichinengi came to be associated with subversive political activities. The degree to which this single moment of faith arises from the "self-power" (JIRIKI) of the aspirant or the "other-power" (TARIKI) of Amitābha was also debated. Although Shinran seems to have favored the single-recitation position, he also argued that neither the single- nor multiple-recitation position provided a comprehensive perspective on the prospect of salvation. (For the JISHU practice of ippen nenbutsu, the one-time invocation of the Buddha's name as if it were the time of one's death, see IPPEN.)
Ikeda Daisaku. (池田大作) (b. 1928). Third president of SoKA GAKKAI, Japan's largest lay Buddhism organization, which is considered one of Japan's "new religions." Ikeda also helped found Soka Gakkai International (SGI), which in 2008 claimed twelve million members in 192 countries and territories. He is a prolific author, who also founded a number of institutions, including Soka University, the Komeito political party, the Institute of Oriental Philosophy, and the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum. Ikeda was born on January 2, 1928, in the Ota Ward of Tokyo, to parents who cultivated and sold seaweed. After graduating from Fuji Junior College, he took employment under Toda Josei (1900-1958), the second president of Soka Gakkai. Ikeda received intensive mentoring from Toda and accompanied him on most of his travels. Ikeda also helped carry out Toda's propagation (shakubuku) campaigns. Ikeda served as the third president of Soka Gakkai from 1960 to 1979 until disagreements with the NICHIREN SHoSHu priesthood, notably its head priest, Nikken (b. 1922), led to his resignation from the organization. In 1991, poor relations with the priesthood culminated in his excommunication. While remaining as Soka Gakkai's spiritual leader, Ikeda has additionally served as the president of SGI since its founding in 1975. Throughout his career with Soka Gakkai and SGI, Ikeda has met with both criticism and praise. At times, the organization's aggressive proselytizing efforts have made Ikeda and Soka Gakkai objects of suspicion, and its political activities have led to several scandals: the 1956 "osaka incident" in which he was charged with election fraud after engineering the election of a Komeito party member; and a 1979 controversy over the suppression of several publications that criticized Ikeda and Soka Gakkai. At the same time, Ikeda is respected as a leader on human rights and peace issues. He has been a strong supporter of the United Nations and has engaged in discussions with political leaders around the world. The expansive growth of both Soka Gakkai and SGI can in large measure be attributed to his leadership.
Ikkyu Sojun. (一休宗純) (1394-1481). Japanese ZEN master in the RINZAISHu, also known by his sobriquet Kyoun shi (Master Crazy Cloud). Materials on Ikkyu's life are an often indistinguishable mixture of history and legend. Little is known of Ikkyu's early years, but he is said to have been the illegitimate son of Emperor Gokomatsu (r. 1382-1392, 1392-1412). In 1399, Ikkyu was sent to the monastery of ANKOKUJI in Kyoto. In 1410, he left Ankokuji to study under Ken'o Soi (d. 1414), who belonged to the MYoSHINJI branch of Rinzai Zen. After Ken'o's death in 1414, Ikkyu continued his studies under the monk Kaso Sodon (1352-1428) in Katada (present-day Shiga prefecture) near Lake Biwa. Kaso gave him the name Ikkyu, which he continued to use. While studying under Kaso, Ikkyu had his first awakening experience and also acquired some notoriety for his antinomian behavior. Perhaps because of his rivalry with a fellow student named Yoso Soi (1378-1458), Ikkyu left Kaso shortly before his death and headed for the city of Sakai. During this transition period, Ikkyu is said to have briefly returned to lay life, marrying a blind singer and fathering a son. Ikkyu's life in Sakai is shrouded in legend (most of which date to the Tokugawa period). There, he is said to have led the life of a mad monk, preaching in taverns and brothels. In 1437, Ikkyu is also said to have torn up the certificate of enlightenment that his teacher Kaso had prepared for him before his death. In 1440, Ikkyu was called to serve as the abbot of the monastery of DAITOKUJI, but he resigned his post the next year. Ikkyu devoted much of his later life to his famous poetry and brushstroke art. Later, Ikkyu had a falling out with Yoso, who as abbot secured Daitokuji's prominent place in Kyoto. In 1455, Ikkyu published a collection of his poems, the Jikaishu ("Self-Admonishment Collection"), and publicly attacked Yoso. In 1456, Ikkyu restored the dilapidated temple Myoshoji in Takigi (located halfway between Sakai and Kyoto). There, he installed a portrait of the Zen master Daito (see SoHo MYoCHo). Ikkyu also began identifying himself with the Chinese Chan master XUTANG ZHIYU, the spiritual progenitor of the Daitokuji lineage(s), by transforming portraits of Xutang into those of himself. In 1474, Ikkyu was appointed abbot of Daitokuji, which had suffered from a devastating fire during the onin war, and he committed himself to its reconstruction, until his death in 1481. Among his writings, his poetry collection Kyounshu ("Crazy Cloud Anthology") is most famous. Also well known is his Gaikotsu ("Skeletons"), a work, illustrated by Ikkyu himself, about his conversations with skeletons. See also WU'AI XING.
Imje chong. (臨濟宗). The Korean pronunciation of the Chinese LINJI ZONG; the name of a short-lived school of Korean Buddhism during the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945). In 1910, shortly after Japan's formal annexation of Korea, Hoegwang Sason (1862-1933, a.k.a. Yi Hoegwang) and other Korean monks signed a seven-item treaty with the Japanese SoToSHu, which would have assimilated their newly formed Won chong (Consummate Order) of Korean Buddhism into the Soto order. In response to this threat to Korean Buddhist autonomy, such renowned monks as HANYoNG CHoNGHO (1870-1948), HAN YONGUN (1879-1944), and other Korean Buddhist leaders established the Imje chong, with its headquarters at the monastery of PoMoSA in Pusan. These monks adopted this name to demonstrate that they considered the practices of the Soto school to be anathema to the fundamentally Linji orientation of Korean Son practice. Both the Won chong and the Imje chong were ultimately disestablished in 1912 by the Japanese colonial administration after the promulgation of the 1911 Monastery Ordinance, in which all aspects of Korean Buddhist institutional life were brought under the administrative control of the Japanese government-general.
In addition to its more than five thousand main entries, this volume also contains a number of reference tools. Because the various historical periods and dynasties of India, China, Korea, and Japan appear repeatedly in the entries, historical chronologies of the Buddhist periods of those four countries have been provided. In order to compare what events were occurring across the Buddhist world at any given time, we have provided a timeline of Buddhism. Eight maps are provided, showing regions of the Buddhist world and of the traditional Buddhist cosmology. We have also included a List of Lists. Anyone with the slightest familiarity with Buddhism has been struck by the Buddhist propensity for making lists of almost anything. The MahAvyutpatti is in fact organized not alphabetically but by list, including such familiar lists as the four noble truths, the twelve links of dependent origination, and the thirty-two major marks of the Buddha, as well as less familiar lists, such as various kinds of grain (twenty items) and types of ornaments (sixty-four items). Here we have endeavored to include several of the most important lists, beginning with the one vehicle and ending with the one hundred dharmas of the YogAcAra school. After some discussion, we decided to forgo listing the 84,000 afflictions and their 84,000 antidotes.
In (Japanese) Equivalent to the Chinese yin; in Shintoism, the feminine principle of matter or earth, impregnated by Yo (the heavens), the male ethereal principle, and then precipitated into the universe. She forms the first ethereal, sexless objective being, and with him produces the seven divine spirits who emanate the seven creations.
inc ::: n. --> A Japanese measure of length equal to about two and one twelfth yards.
in'in ekishi. (因院易師). In Japanese, "changing teachers in accordance with the temple." Since the fifteenth century, members of the SoToSHu of the ZEN tradition have participated in the practice of taking the lineage of the monastery where one was appointed abbot, even if that lineage was different from one's own. The practice of inheriting the temple's lineage was known as the "temple dharma lineage" (GARANBo), and the practice of switching lineages was called in'in ekishi. Basing his claims on the teachings found in the SHoBoGENZo, the Soto Zen master MANZAN DoHAKU attempted to reform this practice by asserting the importance of the direct, face-to-face transmission (menju shiho) from one master to his disciple (isshi insho). In 1700, he made a request to the Agency of Temples and Shrine (jisha bugyo) to intervene in the garanbo system. Despite fierce opposition from such figures as TENKEI DENSON (1646-1735), the Tokugawa government banned the practice in 1703.
inka. (印可). In Japanese, "certification." See YINKE.
Integrated Services Digital Network "communications" (ISDN) A set of communications {standards} allowing a single wire or {optical fibre} to carry voice, digital network services and video. ISDN is intended to eventually replace the {plain old telephone system}. ISDN was first published as one of the 1984 {ITU-T} {Red Book} recommendations. The 1988 {Blue Book} recommendations added many new features. ISDN uses mostly existing {Public Switched Telephone Network} (PSTN) switches and wiring, upgraded so that the basic "call" is a 64 kilobits per second, all-digital end-to-end channel. {Packet} and {frame} modes are also provided in some places. There are different kinds of ISDN connection of varying bandwidth (see {DS level}): DS0 = 1 channel PCM at 64 kbps T1 or DS1 = 24 channels PCM at 1.54 Mbps T1C or DS1C = 48 channels PCM at 3.15 Mbps T2 or DS2 = 96 channels PCM at 6.31 Mbps T3 or DS3 = 672 channels PCM at 44.736 Mbps T4 or DS4 = 4032 channels PCM at 274.1 Mbps Each channel here is equivalent to one voice channel. DS0 is the lowest level of the circuit. T1C, T2 and T4 are rarely used, except maybe for T2 over microwave links. For some reason 64 kbps is never called "T0". A {Basic Rate Interface} (BRI) is two 64K "bearer" channels and a single "delta" channel ("2B+D"). A {Primary Rate Interface} (PRI) in North America and Japan consists of 24 channels, usually 23 B + 1 D channel with the same physical interface as T1. Elsewhere the PRI usually has 30 B + 1 D channel and an {E1} interface. A {Terminal Adaptor} (TA) can be used to connect ISDN channels to existing interfaces such as {EIA-232} and {V.35}. Different services may be requested by specifying different values in the "Bearer Capability" field in the call setup message. One ISDN service is "telephony" (i.e. voice), which can be provided using less than the full 64 kbps bandwidth (64 kbps would provide for 8192 eight-bit samples per second) but will require the same special processing or {bit diddling} as ordinary PSTN calls. Data calls have a Bearer Capability of "64 kbps unrestricted". ISDN is offered by local telephone companies, but most readily in Australia, France, Japan and Singapore, with the UK somewhat behind and availability in the USA rather spotty. (In March 1994) ISDN deployment in Germany is quite impressive, although (or perhaps, because) they use a specifically German signalling specification, called {1.TR.6}. The French {Numeris} also uses a non-standard protocol (called {VN4}; the 4th version), but the popularity of ISDN in France is probably lower than in Germany, given the ludicrous pricing. There is also a specifically-Belgian V1 experimental system. The whole of Europe is now phasing in {Euro-ISDN}. See also {Frame Relay}, {Network Termination}, {SAPI}. {FAQ (ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/usenet/news-info/comp.dcom.isdn/)}. {Usenet} newsgroup: {news:comp.dcom.isdn}. (1998-03-29)
Integrated Services Digital Network ::: (communications) (ISDN) A set of communications standards allowing a single wire or optical fibre to carry voice, digital network services and video. ISDN is intended to eventually replace the plain old telephone system.ISDN was first published as one of the 1984 ITU-T Red Book recommendations. The 1988 Blue Book recommendations added many new features. ISDN uses mostly so that the basic call is a 64 kilobits per second, all-digital end-to-end channel. Packet and frame modes are also provided in some places.There are different kinds of ISDN connection of varying bandwidth (see DS level): DS0 = 1 channel PCM at 64 kbpsT1 or DS1 = 24 channels PCM at 1.54 Mbps used, except maybe for T2 over microwave links. For some reason 64 kbps is never called T0.A Basic Rate Interface (BRI) is two 64K bearer channels and a single delta channel (2B+D). A Primary Rate Interface (PRI) in North America and Japan interface as T1. Elsewhere the PRI usually has 30 B + 1 D channel and an E1 interface.A Terminal Adaptor (TA) can be used to connect ISDN channels to existing interfaces such as EIA-232 and V.35.Different services may be requested by specifying different values in the Bearer Capability field in the call setup message. One ISDN service is require the same special processing or bit diddling as ordinary PSTN calls. Data calls have a Bearer Capability of 64 kbps unrestricted.ISDN is offered by local telephone companies, but most readily in Australia, France, Japan and Singapore, with the UK somewhat behind and availability in the USA rather spotty.(In March 1994) ISDN deployment in Germany is quite impressive, although (or perhaps, because) they use a specifically German signalling specification, Germany, given the ludicrous pricing. There is also a specifically-Belgian V1 experimental system. The whole of Europe is now phasing in Euro-ISDN.See also Frame Relay, Network Termination, SAPI. .Usenet newsgroup: comp.dcom.isdn. (1998-03-29)
internationalisation "programming" (i18n, globalisation, enabling, software enabling) The process and philosophy of making software portable to other {locales}. For successful {localisation}, products must be technically and culturally neutral. Effective internationalisation reduces the time and resources required for localisation, improving time-to-market abroad and allowing {simultaneous shipment}. In orther words, internationalisation abstracts out local details, localisation specifies those details for a particular locale. Technically this may include allowing {double-byte character sets} such as {unicode} or Japanese, local numbering, date and currency formats, and other local format conventions. It also includes the separation of {user interface} text e.g. in {dialog boxes} and {menus}. All the text used by an application may be kept in a separate file or directory, so that it can be translated all at once. User interfaces may require more screen space for text in other languages. The simplest form of internationalisation may be to make use of {operating system} calls that format time, date and currency values according to the operating system's configuration. The abbreviation i18n means "I - eighteen letters - N". (1999-06-28)
internationalisation ::: (programming) (i18n, globalisation, enabling, software enabling) The process and philosophy of making software portable to other locales.For successful localisation, products must be technically and culturally neutral. Effective internationalisation reduces the time and resources required shipment. In orther words, internationalisation abstracts out local details, localisation specifies those details for a particular locale.Technically this may include allowing double-byte character sets such as unicode or Japanese, local numbering, date and currency formats, and other local format conventions.It also includes the separation of user interface text e.g. in dialog boxes and menus. All the text used by an application may be kept in a separate file or directory, so that it can be translated all at once. User interfaces may require more screen space for text in other languages.The simplest form of internationalisation may be to make use of operating system calls that format time, date and currency values according to the operating system's configuration.The abbreviation i18n means I - eighteen letters - N. (1999-06-28)
International Telecommunications Union "body, standard" (ITU) ITU-T, the telecommunication standardisation sector of ITU, is responsible for making technical recommendations about telephone and data (including fax) communications systems for {PTTs} and suppliers. Before 1993-03-01 ITU-T was known as CCITT. Every four years they hold plenary sessions where they adopt new standards; there was one in 1992. ITU works closely with all {standards} organisations to form an international uniform standards system for communication. Study Group XVII is responsible for recommending standards for data communications over telephone networks. They publish the V.XX standards and X.n {protocols}. {V.21} is the same as {EIA}'s {EIA-232}. {V.24} is the same as EIA's {EIA-232C}. {V.28} is the same as EIA's {EIA-232D}. Address: International Telecommunication Union, Information Services Department, Place des Nations, 1211 Geneva 20, Switzerland. Telephone: +41 (22) 730 5554. Fax: +41 (22) 730 5337. E-mail: "helpdesk@itu.ch", "teledoc@itu.arcom.ch" (Mail body: HELP). {(http://itu.ch/)}. ITU-T standards can be obtained by {FTP} from {Korea (ftp://kum.kaist.ac.kr/doc/STANDARDS/ccitt)}; UK - {Imperial (ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/pub/computing/ccitt/ccitt-standards/)}, {HENSA (ftp://unix.hensa.ac.uk/pub/uunet/doc/literary/obi/Standards/CCITT)}; France - {INRIA (ftp://croton.inria.fr/ITU/ccitt)}, {IMAG (ftp://imag.imag.fr/doc/ccitt)}; {Israel (ftp://cs.huji.ac.il/pub/doc/standards/ccitt)}; FTP USA: {UUNET (ftp://ftp.uu.net/pub/lietrary/obi/Standards/CCITT)}, {gatekeeper (ftp://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/net/info/bruno.cs.colorado.edu/pub/standards/ccitt)}, {world.std.com (ftp://world.std.com/obi/Standards/CCITT)}; {Australia (ftp://metro.ucc.su.oz.au/pub/ccitt)}; {Germany (ftp://quepasa.cs.tu-berlin.de/pub/doc/CCITT)}; {Japan (ftp://sh.wide.ad.jp/CCITT)}; (1995-01-16)
Ippen. (一遍) (1239-1289). Japanese itinerant holy man (HIJIRI) and reputed founder of the JISHU school of the Japanese PURE LAND tradition. Due perhaps to his own antinomian proclivities, Ippen's life remains a mixture of history and legend. Ippen was a native of Iyo in Shikoku. In 1249, after his mother's death, Ippen became a monk at the urging of his father, a Buddhist monk, and was given the name Zuien. In 1251, Ippen traveled to Dazaifu in northern Kyushu, where he studied under the monk Shodatsu (d.u.). In 1263, having learned of his father's death, Ippen returned to Iyo and briefly married. In 1271, Ippen visited Shodatsu once more and made a pilgrimage to the monastery of ZENKoJI in Shinano to see its famous Amida (AMITĀBHA) triad. His visit to Zenkoji is said to have inspired Ippen to go on retreat, spending half a year in a hut that he built in his hometown of Iyo. The site of his retreat, Sugo, was widely known as a sacred place of practice for mountain ascetics (YAMABUSHI). In 1272, Ippen set out for the monastery of SHITENNoJI in osaka, where he is said to have received the ten precepts. At this time, Ippen also developed the eponymous practice known as ippen nenbutsu (one-time invocation of the name [see NIANFO] of the buddha Amitābha), which largely consists of the uttering the phrase NAMU AMIDABUTSU as if this one moment were the time of one's death. Ippen widely propagated this teaching wherever he went, and, to those who complied, he offered an amulet (fusan), which he said would assure rebirth in Amitābha's pure land. From Shitennoji, Ippen made a pilgrimage to KoYASAN and a shrine at KUMANO, where he is said to have had a revelation from a local manifestation of Amitābha. Ippen then began the life of an itinerant preacher, in the process acquiring a large following now known as the Jishu. In 1279, Ippen began performing nenbutsu while dancing with drums and bells, a practice known as odori nenbutsu and developed first by the monk KuYA. Ippen continued to wander through the country, spreading his teaching until his death. A famous set of twelve narrative hand scrolls known as the Ippen hijiri e ("The Illustrated Biography of the Holy Man Ippen") is an important source for the study of Ippen's life. Currently designated a Japanese national treasure (kokuho), the Ippen hijiri e was completed in 1299 on the tenth anniversary of Ippen's death. See also ICHINENGI.
Ishin Suden. (以心崇傳) (1569-1633). Japanese ZEN master in the RINZAISHu. Suden was born in Kii (present-day Wakayama prefecture) and, while still a youth, left home to become a monk at the Zen monastery of NANZENJI. In 1608, he was appointed the scribe of the new shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616). Suden was put in charge of foreign correspondence and was also given the important title of soroku, or registrar general of monks. As soroku, Suden established the hatto ("laws") for temples and monasteries and put them under the direct control of the bakufu government. Suden thus came to be known as the kokui no saisho, or "black-robed minister." With the assistance of the bakufu, Suden also restored Nanzenji to its former glory. Konchi'in, the name of Suden's residences at both Nanzenji and Edo, came to be synonymous with Suden and his policies. After Ieyasu's death, Suden continued to assist the second shogun Tokugawa Hidetada (1579-1632) in political and religious affairs. In 1626, Suden was given the honorary title Ensho Honko kokushi (State Preceptor Perfectly Illuminating, Original Radiance) from Emperor Gomizunoo (r. 1611-1629). His diary, the Honko kokushi nikki, is a valuable source for studying the sociopolitical history of the early Tokugawa bakufu. Suden also left a collection of poems known as the Kanrin gohoshu.
“It is the flower sacred to nature and her Gods, and represents the abstract and the Concrete Universes, standing as the emblem of the productive powers of both spiritual and physical nature. It was held sacred from the remotest antiquity by the Aryan Hindus, the Egyptians, and the Buddhists after them; revered in China and Japan, and adopted as a Christian emblem by the Greek and Latin Churches, who made of it a messenger as the Christians do now, who replace it with the water lily. It had, and still has, its mystic meaning which is identical with every nation on the earth” (SD 1:379).
itzibu ::: n. --> A silver coin of Japan, worth about thirty-four cents.
Izanagi and Izanami (Japanese) In Shintoism, the primordial male and female ancestors of humanity, who begot the first god of earth, Tenshoko doijin. “These ‘gods’ are simply our five races, Isanagi and Isanami being the two kinds of the ‘ancestors,’ the two preceding races which give birth to animal and to rational man” (SD 1:241). This heavenly pair was said to have created Japan from drops of brine. ( )
jakugo. (C. zhuoyu/zhuyu; K. ch'ago 著語). In Japanese, "annotation," "attached word," or "capping phrase." Such "annotations" abound in several early Chinese collections of CHAN "cases," or GONG'AN (J. koan), but they are most emblematic of the approach to koan training taught in the Japanese RINZAISHu of ZEN. The use of capping phrases in Japan is largely due to the influence of SoHo MYoCHo (1282-1337), who introduced them in his interpretations of koans. "Capping phrases" are brief phrases that are intended to offer a comment upon a specific Zen case, or koan, to express one's own enlightened understanding, or to catalyze insight in another. These phrases were originally composed in literary Chinese and are taken as often from secular Chinese literature as they are from the Zen tradition's own stories. These phrases range from as few as one word (e.g., Right!, Finished!) to parallel eight-character phrases ("But for the rule and the compass, the square and the round could not be determined,/ But for the plumb-line, the straight and the crooked could not be rectified"), but they are rarely more than twenty-five Sinographs in total. In the Japanese Rinzai system of koan meditative training, a student would demonstrate his understanding of the significance of a koan by submitting to the teacher an (or even the) appropriate jakugo, often taken from such traditional anthologies of these phrases as the seventeenth-century ZENRIN KUSHu ("An Anthology of Phrases from the Zen Grove"). Once the student's understanding of a specific koan was "passed" by the Zen master, the student would then continue on through a whole sequence of other koans, each answered in turn by another jakugo. See also KIRIKAMI.
Jakushitsu Genko. (C. Jishi Yuanguang 寂室元光) (1290-1367). Japanese ZEN monk in the RINZAISHu and founder of the Eigenji branch of the school. After entering the monastery at the age of thirteen, Jakushitsu studied under several Zen masters, including Yakuo Tokken (1244-1320) of ZENKoJI in Kamakura, who administered to him the complete monastic precepts (gusokukai) of a BHIKsU, and Yishan Yining (J. Issan Ichinei; 1247-1317) of NANZENJI in Kyoto, a Chinese LINJI ZONG monk who was active in Japan. Jakushitsu traveled to Yuan China in 1320 together with another Rinzai monk named Kao Sonen (d.1345). There, he studied with such eminent Linji Chan masters as ZHONGFENG MINGBEN (1263-1323), who gave him the cognomen Jishi (J. Jakushitsu), and Yuansou Xingduan (1255-1341). After returning to Japan in 1326, Jakushitsu spent the next twenty-five years traveling around the country as an itinerant monk, until 1362, when he assumed the abbacy of Eigenji, a monastery built for him by Sasaki Ujiyori (1326-1370) in omi no kuni (present-day Shiga prefecture). The emperor subsequently invited him to stay at Tenryuji in Kyoto and KENCHoJI in Kamakura, but he refused, choosing to remain at Eigenji for the remainder of his life. Jakushitsu is well known for his flute playing and his refined Zen poetry, which is considered some of the finest examples of the genre. He was given the posthumous title Enno Zenji (Zen Master Consummate Response).
japanese ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Japan, or its inhabitants. ::: n. sing. & pl. --> A native or inhabitant of Japan; collectively, the people of Japan.
The language of the people of Japan.
japanned ::: imp. & p. p. --> of Japan ::: a. --> Treated, or coated, with varnish in the Japanese manner.
japanner ::: n. --> One who varnishes in the manner of the Japanese, or one skilled in the art.
A bootblack.
japanning ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Japan ::: n. --> The art or act of varnishing in the Japanese manner.
japannish ::: a. --> After the manner of the Japanese; resembling japanned articles.
japan ::: n. --> Work varnished and figured in the Japanese manner; also, the varnish or lacquer used in japanning. ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to Japan, or to the lacquered work of that country; as, Japan ware.
japonica ::: n. --> A species of Camellia (Camellia Japonica), a native of Japan, bearing beautiful red or white flowers. Many other genera have species of the same name.
jianxing chengfo. (J. kensho jobutsu; K. kyonsong songbul 見性成佛). In Chinese, lit. "see one's nature and become a buddha"; a line summarizing the CHAN school's unique approach to Buddhist meditative practice and attributed retrospectively to the school's putative founder, BODHIDHARMA. This phrase seems to have first appeared in Baoliang's (444-509) Niepan jing ji jie but appears in conjunction with the meaning of Bodhidharma's "coming from the West" (XILAI YI) for the first time in HUANGBO XIYUN's CHUANXIN FAYAO. The phrase jianxing chengfo appears together with another phrase, ZHIZHI RENXIN ("directly point to the human mind"), in the Chuanxin fayao; these two phrases would eventually appear together later with two other phrases, BULI WENZI ("without establishing words or letters") and JIAOWAI BIECHUAN ("a special transmission outside the teachings"), in the ZUTING SHIYUAN, compiled in 1108. These four phrases subsequently became a normative teaching within the Chan school and also the foundation on which the Chan traditions constructed their self-identities in China, Korea, and Japan.
Jianzhen. (C) (鑑眞) (688-763). Chinese VINAYA master and reputed founder of the Japanese RITSU school (cf. NANSHAN LÜ ZONG) and the monastery of ToSHoDAIJI in Japan. See GANJIN.
Jingang pi. (J. Kongobei; K. Kŭmgang pi 金剛錍). In Chinese, "Adamantine Scalpel"; a treatise composed by the TIANTAI exegete JINGXI ZHANRAN. The adamantine (S. VAJRA) scalpel was an ancient Indian tool used in cataract surgery; the title of the text thus alludes to its function as a tool for removing the ignorance that obscures the vision of sentient beings. The Jingang pi is a narrative conveyed in the form of a dream, which is structured around a dialogue with an unidentified stranger. The Jingang pi is largely concerned with the issue of buddha-nature (FOXING), and particularly with the controversy over whether insentient beings possess the buddha-nature. Zhanran seems to be the first Tiantai exegete to advance the argument that the buddha-nature was inherent in even insentient things, such as grass, trees, tiles, and rocks, thus corroborating a statement that appears in the MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA. This argument was later adopted by Tiantai scholars of the Song dynasty and by TENDAI and ZEN exegetes in Japan.
Jingdu sanmei jing. (J. Jodo sanmaikyo; K. Chongdo sammae kyong 淨度三昧經). In Chinese, "SAMĀDHI-SuTRA on Liberation through Purification," sometimes also known as the Jingtu sanmei jing ("Samādhi-Sutra on the PURE LAND") and other variations; allegedly translated by Tanyao during the Northern Wei period (386-557) but suspected of being an indigenous Chinese scripture (see APOCRYPHA), perhaps composed in order to assist in the revival of Buddhism following the persecution (FANAN) that occurred from 446 to 452. This sanmei jing offers a detailed account of the thirty separate levels of the hells and the incumbent punishments meted out there. In order to avoid the torments of the hells and to secure the protection of guardian deities, promote long life, and ensure rebirth in the heavens, the scripture describes the merits that accrue to laypeople who observe the five precepts (PANCAsĪLA) and perform the "eight-restrictions feast" (BAGUAN ZHAI) on specific Chinese seasonal days, thus betraying its Chinese provenance. The scripture was discovered in both the DUNHUANG manuscript cache and in Japan manuscript collections.
jinglu. (J. kyoroku; K. kyongnok 經). In Chinese, "scriptural catalogues"; a genre of Buddhist literature unique to East Asian Buddhism. Because the Chinese state presumed the authority to authorize which texts (including Buddhist scriptures) were allowed to circulate, the Chinese Buddhist institution from early in its history began to compile catalogues of scriptures that were deemed authentic, and thus suitable for inclusion in the Buddhist canon (DAZANGJING), and texts that were deemed suspect and thus potentially to be excluded from the canon (see APOCRYPHA). Scriptural catalogues began to be compiled within a century of the beginnings of the translation of Buddhist texts into Chinese, or sometime around the middle of the third century, and some eighty catalogues were compiled over the next one thousand five hundred years, with the majority dating from the Tang dynasty (618-907) or before. As Buddhist canons came to be compiled in Korea and Japan as well, those countries also began to create their own catalogues. For the Chinese cataloguers, the main standard of scriptural authority was whether there was clear evidence that a scripture had been imported from outside China and then translated into Chinese; any evidence that indigenous material had intruded into texts, whether that evidence involved vocabulary, thought, or practice, could lead to those texts being judged as apocrypha. Important catalogues include DAO'AN's ZONGLI ZHONGJING MULU, the earliest catalogue, composed c. 374; Sengyou's CHU SANZANG JIJI from 515, which established the principal categories into which all subsequent cataloguers would classify texts; Fei Changfang's LIDAI SANBAO JI from 597, which fabricated many translator attributions to texts that had previously been listed as anonymous, so as to quash potential questions about the reliability of the Buddhist textual transmission; DAOXUAN's DA TANG NEIDIAN LU from 664; and Zhisheng's KAIYUAN SHIJIAO LU from 730, the catalogue par excellence, whose scriptural listings would provide the definitive content and organization of the East Asian Buddhist canon from that point onward.
jingtu sanbu jing. (J. jodo sanbukyo; K. chongt'o sambu kyong 淨土三部經). In Chinese, "the three scriptures on the pure land," a designation for three main sutras that focus on AMITĀBHA Buddha and his PURE LAND of SUKHĀVATĪ; these are generally considered to be the central canonical sutras of the pure land schools, and especially of the Japanese JoDOSHu and JoDO SHINSHu. The three scriptures are (1) SUKHĀVATĪVYuHASuTRA, the "[Larger] Sutra on the Buddha of Immeasurable Life" (Wuliangshou jing); (2) "Sutra on the Contemplation of the Buddha of Immeasurable Life" (GUAN WULIANGSHOU JING); and (3) AMITĀBHASuTRA, the "[Smaller] Sutra on the Buddha Amitābha" (Amituo jing). The writings of the pure land school are to a large extent commentaries on or exegeses of these three scriptures.
jingtu wuzu. (J. jodo no goso; K. chongt'o ojo 淨土五祖). In Chinese, the "five patriarchs of pure land"; according to the most common retrospective lineage, these are TANLUAN (476-?), DAOCHUO (562-645), SHANDAO (613-681), Huaigan (d.u.), and Shaokang (?-805). Of the five, Daochuo, Shandao, and Huaigan might actually have had at least a tenuous master-disciple relation, although this would not be sufficient in itself to constitute an authentic "pure land school" in China. It is among the Japanese pure land schools (e.g., JoDOSHu and JoDO SHINSHu) that these retrospective Chinese lineages carry real authority, since they authenticate the teachings and practices associated with those Japanese traditions.
Jingying Huiyuan. (J. Joyo Eon; K. Chongyong Hyewon 浄影慧遠) (523-592). Chinese monk and putative DI LUN exegete during the Sui dynasty. Huiyuan was a native of DUNHUANG. At an early age, he entered the monastery of Guxiangusi in Zezhou (present-day Shanxi province) where he was ordained by the monk Sengsi (d.u.). Huiyuan later studied various scriptures under the VINAYA master Lizhan (d.u.) in Ye, the capital of the Eastern Wei dynasty. In his nineteenth year, Huiyuan received the full monastic precepts from Fashang (495-580), ecclesiastical head of the SAMGHA at the time, and became his disciple. Huiyuan also began his training in the DHARMAGUPTAKA "Four-Part Vinaya" (SIFEN LÜ) under the vinaya master Dayin (d.u.). After he completed his studies, Huiyuan moved back to Zezhou and began his residence at the monastery Qinghuasi. In 577, Emperor Wu (r. 560-578) of Northern Zhou began a systematic persecution of Buddhism, and in response, Huiyuan is said to have engaged the emperor in debate; a transcript of the debate, in which Huiyuan defends Buddhism against criticisms of its foreign origins and its neglect of filial piety, is still extant. As the persecution continued, Huiyuan retreated to Mt. Xi in Jijun (present-day Henan province). Shortly after the rise of the Sui dynasty, Huiyuan was summoned by Emperor Wen (r. 581-604) to serve as overseer of the saMgha (shamendu) in Luozhou (present-day Henan). He subsequently spent his time undoing the damage of the earlier persecution. Huiyuan was later asked by Emperor Wen to reside at the monastery of Daxingshansi in the capital. The emperor also built Huiyuan a new monastery named Jingyingsi, which is often used as his toponym to distinguish him from LUSHAN HUIYUAN. Jingying Huiyuan was a prolific writer who composed numerous commentaries on such texts as the AVATAMSAKASuTRA, MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA, VIMALAKĪRTINIRDEsA, SUKHĀVATĪVYuHASuTRA, sRĪMĀLĀDEVĪSIMHANĀDASuTRA, SHIDI JING LUN (VASUBANDHU's commentary on the DAsABHuMIKASuTRA), DASHENG QIXIN LUN, and others. Among his works, the DASHENG YI ZHANG ("Compendium of the Purport of Mahāyāna"), a comprehensive encyclopedia of Mahāyāna doctrine, is perhaps the most influential and is extensively cited by traditional exegetes throughout East Asia. Jingying Huiyuan also plays a crucial role in the development of early PURE LAND doctrine in East Asia. His commentary on the GUAN WULIANGSHOU JING, the earliest extant treatise on this major pure land scripture, is critical in raising the profile of the Guan jing in East Asian Buddhism. His commentary to this text profoundly influenced Korean commentaries on the pure land scriptures during the Silla dynasty, which in turn were crucial in the the evolution of Japanese pure land thought during the Nara and Heian periods. Jingying Huiyuan's concept of the "dependent origination of the TATHĀGATAGARBHA" (rulaizang yuanqi)-in which tathāgatagarbha is viewed as the "essence" (TI) of both NIRVĀnA and SAMSĀRA, which are its "functioning" (YONG)-is later adapted and popularized by the third HUAYAN patriarch, FAZANG, and is an important precursor of later Huayan reconceptualizations of dependent origination (PRATĪTYASAMUTPĀDA; see FAJIE YUANQI).
jp "networking" The {country code} for Japan. (1999-01-27)
jp ::: (networking) The country code for Japan. (1999-01-27)
JSA ::: Japanese Standards Association.
JSA {Japanese Standards Association}
Kaizen - A Japanese term meaning continuous improvement, through the elimination of waste
kakemono ::: A Japanese paper or silk wall hanging, usually long and narrow, with a picture or inscription on it and a roller at the bottom.
kakemono ::: a Japanese paper or silk wall hanging, usually long and narrow, with a picture or inscription on it and a roller at the bottom.
Kami: A Japanese word translated as deity, god, goddess, etc. The original significance of kami is occult power, more or less like the meaning of mana (q.v.).
Kami: (Japanese) Originally denoting anything that inspires and overawes man with a sense of holiness, the word assumed a meaning in Japanese equivalent to spirit (also ancestral spirit), divinity, and God. It is a central concept in the pre-Confucian and pre-Buddhistic native religion which holds the sun supreme and still enjoys national support, while it may also take on a more abstract philosophic significance. -- K.F.L.
kami ::: n. pl. --> A title given to the celestial gods of the first mythical dynasty of Japan and extended to the demigods of the second dynasty, and then to the long line of spiritual princes still represented by the mikado.
kana "Japanese" The two Japanese syllabaries, {hiragana} and {katakana}. (2001-03-18)
kana ::: (Japanese) The two Japanese syllabaries, hiragana and katakana.(2001-03-18)
kanji ::: (human language, character) /kahn'jee/ (From the Japanese kan - the Chinese Han dynasty, and ji - glyph or letter of the alphabet. Not Japanese language in written, printed and displayed form. The term is also used for the collection of all kanji letters.US-ASCII doesn't include kanji characters, but some character encodings, including Unicode, do.The Japanese writing system also uses hiragana, katakana, and sometimes romaji (Roman alphabet letters). These characters are distinct from, though commonly used in combination with, kanji. Furigana are also added sometimes.(2000-12-30)
kanji "human language, character" /kahn'jee/ (From the Japanese "kan" - the Chinese Han dynasty, and "ji" - {glyph} or letter of the alphabet. Not capitalised. Plural "kanji") The Japanese word for a {Han character} used in Japanese. Kanji constitute a part of the {writing system} used to represent the Japanese language in written, printed and displayed form. The term is also used for the collection of all kanji {letters}. {US-ASCII} doesn't include kanji characters, but some {character encodings}, including {Unicode}, do. The Japanese writing system also uses hiragana, katakana, and sometimes romaji ({Roman alphabet} letters). These characters are distinct from, though commonly used in combination with, kanji. {Furigana} are also added sometimes. (2000-12-30)
katakana "Japanese" The square-formed Japanese {kana} syllabary. Katakana is mostly used to write foreign names, foreign words, and loan words as well as many onomatopeia, plant and animal names. (2001-03-18)
katakana ::: (Japanese) The square-formed Japanese kana syllabary. Katakana is mostly used to write foreign names, foreign words, and loan words as well as many onomatopeia, plant and animal names.(2001-03-18)
KL0 ::: Kernel Language 0.A sequential logic language based on Prolog, used in the Japanese ICOT project. (1994-11-18)
KL0 Kernel Language 0. A sequential {logic language} based on {Prolog}, used in the Japanese {ICOT} project. (1994-11-18)
KL1 ::: Kernel Language 1.An experimental AND-parallel version of KL0 for the ICOT project in Japan. KL1 is an implementation of FGHC.Not to be confused with KL-ONE.[Design of the Kernel Language for the Parallel Inference Machine, U. Kazunori et al, Computer J (Dec 1990)]. (1994-10-24)
KL1 Kernel Language 1. An experimental {AND-parallel} version of {KL0} for the {ICOT} project in Japan. KL1 is an implementation of {FGHC}. Not to be confused with {KL-ONE}. ["Design of the Kernel Language for the Parallel Inference Machine", U. Kazunori et al, Computer J (Dec 1990)]. (1994-10-24)
Koji-ki: The oldest extant Japanese historical document, compiled in 712 A.D. It begins with the myth of Creation and ends with 628 A.D.
Kon-ton, Konton (Japanese) The primordial chaotic essence of the Shinto cosmogony.
kumquat ::: n. --> A small tree of the genus Citrus (C. Japonica) growing in China and Japan; also, its small acid, orange-colored fruit used for preserves.
lacquer ::: n. --> A varnish, consisting of a solution of shell-lac in alcohol, often colored with gamboge, saffron, or the like; -- used for varnishing metals, papier-mache, and wood. The name is also given to varnishes made of other ingredients, esp. the tough, solid varnish of the Japanese, with which ornamental objects are made. ::: v. t.
LDL ::: [LDL: A Logic-Based Data-Language, S. Tsur et al, Proc VLDB 1986, Kyoto Japan, Aug 1986, pp.33-41].
LDL ["LDL: A Logic-Based Data-Language", S. Tsur et al, Proc VLDB 1986, Kyoto Japan, Aug 1986, pp.33-41].
lock-in "standard" When an existing standard becomes almost impossible to supersede because of the cost or logistical difficulties involved in convincing all its users to switch something different and, typically, {incompatible}. The common implication is that the existing standard is notably inferior to other comparable standards developed before or since. Things which have been accused of benefiting from lock-in in the absence of being truly worthwhile include: the {QWERTY} keyboard; any well-known {operating system} or programming language you don't like (e.g., see "{Unix conspiracy}"); every product ever made by {Microsoft Corporation}; and most currently deployed formats for transmitting or storing data of any kind (especially the {Internet Protocol}, 7-bit (or even 8-bit) {character sets}, analog video or audio broadcast formats and nearly any file format). Because of {network effects} outside of just computer networks, {Real World} examples of lock-in include the current spelling conventions for writing English (or French, Japanese, Hebrew, Arabic, etc.); the design of American money; the imperial (feet, inches, ounces, etc.) system of measurement; and the various and anachronistic aspects of the internal organisation of any government (e.g., the American Electoral College). (1998-01-15)
Lod Massacre ::: Three Japanese Red Army members, acting on behalf of the PFLP, attacked passengers in Lod International Airport. The attack marked the first Palestinian attempt to enlist non-Middle East terrorist support.
loquat ::: n. --> The fruit of the Japanese medlar (Photinia Japonica). It is as large as a small plum, but grows in clusters, and contains four or five large seeds. Also, the tree itself.
Madhav: “A kakemono is a Japanese painting which is hung on the wall. It is a print in many colours, many designs. And this world picture is compared to a kakemono of significant forms. Each form is significant, each line is meaningful.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Mahayana Buddhism: "Great Vehicle Buddhism", the Northern, Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese form of Buddhism (q.v.), extending as far as Korea and Japan, whose central theme is that Buddhahood means devotion to the salvation of others and thus manifests itself in the worship of Buddha and Bodhisattvas (q.v.). Apart from absorbing beliefs of a more primitive strain, it has also evolved metaphysical and epistemological systems, such as the Sunya-vada (q.v.) and Vijnana-vada (q.v.). -- K.F.L.
Mahayana Buddhism: “Great Vehicle Buddhism,” the Northern, Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese form of Buddhism (q.v.), extending as far as Korea and Japan, whose central theme is that Buddhahood means devotion to the salvation of others and thus manifests itself in the worship of Buddha and Bodhisattvas (q.v.). Apart from absorbing beliefs of a more primitive strain, it has also evolved metaphysical and epistemological systems, such as the Sunya-vada (q.v.) and Vijnana-vada (q.v.).
Mandala "language" A system based on {Concurrent Prolog}, developed at {ICOT}, Japan. ["Mandala: A Logic Based Knowledge Programming System", K. Furukawa et al, Intl Conf 5th Gen Comp Sys 1984]. (1995-11-23)
Mandala ::: (language) A system based on Concurrent Prolog, developed at ICOT, Japan.[Mandala: A Logic Based Knowledge Programming System, K. Furukawa et al, Intl Conf 5th Gen Comp Sys 1984]. (1995-11-23)
mikado ::: n. --> The popular designation of the hereditary sovereign of Japan.
mongolians ::: n. pl. --> One of the great races of man, including the greater part of the inhabitants of China, Japan, and the interior of Asia, with branches in Northern Europe and other parts of the world. By some American Indians are considered a branch of the Mongols. In a more restricted sense, the inhabitants of Mongolia and adjacent countries, including the Burats and the Kalmuks.
mu 1. "networking" The {country code} for Mauritius. 2. "philosophy" /moo/ The correct answer to the classic trick question "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?". Assuming that you have no wife or you have never beaten your wife, the answer "yes" is wrong because it implies that you used to beat your wife and then stopped, but "no" is worse because it suggests that you have one and are still beating her. According to various Discordians and Douglas Hofstadter the correct answer is usually "mu", a Japanese word alleged to mean "Your question cannot be answered because it depends on incorrect assumptions". Hackers tend to be sensitive to logical inadequacies in language, and many have adopted this suggestion with enthusiasm. The word "mu" is actually from Chinese, meaning "nothing"; it is used in mainstream Japanese in that sense, but native speakers do not recognise the Discordian question-denying use. It almost certainly derives from overgeneralisation of the answer in the following well-known Rinzei Zen teaching riddle: A monk asked Joshu, "Does a dog have the Buddha nature?" Joshu retorted, "Mu!" See also {has the X nature}, {AI Koan}. [Douglas Hofstadter, "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid"]. [{Jargon File}] (2000-11-22)
Mule "text, tool" A multi-lingual enhancement of {GNU Emacs}. Mule can handle not only {ASCII} characters (7 bit) and {ISO Latin 1} characters (8 bit), but also {16-bit characters} like Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. Mule can have a mixture of languages in a single buffer. Mule runs under the {X window system}, or on a {Hangul terminal}, {mterm} or {exterm}. {(ftp://etlport.etl.go.jp/pub/mule)}. (1996-01-28)
Mule ::: (text, tool) A multi-lingual enhancement of GNU Emacs. Mule can handle not only ASCII characters (7 bit) and ISO Latin 1 characters (8 bit), but also 16-bit characters like Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. Mule can have a mixture of languages in a single buffer.Mule runs under the X window system, or on a Hangul terminal, mterm or exterm.Latest version: 2.3. . (1996-01-28)
Nembutsu: In Japanese Buddhism, “thinking of Buddha,” the process of repeating the name of Buddha and meditating on him.
Nintendo "company, games" A Japanese {video game} hardware manufacturer and software publisher. Nintendo started by making playing cards, but was later dominant in video games throughout the 1980s and early 1990s worldwide. They make lots of games consoles including the Gameboy, Gameboy Advance SP, DS, DS Lite and the Wii. {Nintendo home (http://nintendo.com/)}. (2008-03-08)
no-gestures ::: the gestures or movements of a classical drama of Japan, with music and dance performed in a highly stylised manner by elaborately dressed performers on an almost bare stage.
norimon ::: n. --> A Japanese covered litter, carried by men.
Norito: Japanese prayers recited by Shinto priests in religious ceremonies, and high state officials in state ceremonies. These stately, dignified prayers, standardized in form, give thanks to Shinto deities, invoke their blessings, and are believed to have magical effect.
No single language crosses all of the linguistic and cultural boundaries of the Buddhist tradition. However, in order to present Buddhist terms that are used across this diverse expanse, it is convenient to employ a single linguistic vocabulary. For this reason European and North American scholars have, over the last century, come to use Sanskrit as the lingua franca of the academic discipline of Buddhist Studies. Following this scholarly convention we have used Sanskrit, and often Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit forms, in our main entry headings for the majority of Indic-origin terms that appear across the Buddhist traditions. PAli, Tibetan, or Chinese terms are occasionally used where that form is more commonly known in Western writings on Buddhism. We have attempted to avoid unattested Sanskrit equivalents for terms in PAli and other Middle Indic languages, generally marking any hypothetical forms with an asterisk. These main entry headings are accompanied by cognate forms in PAli, Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (abbreviated as P., T., C., J., and K., respectively), followed by the Sinographs (viz., Chinese characters) commonly used in the East Asian traditions. For those Indian terms that are known only or principally in the PAli tradition, the main entry heading is listed in PAli (e.g., bhavanga). Terms used across the East Asian traditions are typically listed by their Chinese pronunciation with Japanese and Korean cross-references, with occasional Japanese or Korean headings for terms that are especially important in those traditions. Tibetan terms are in Tibetan, with Sanskrit or Chinese cognates where relevant. In order that the reader may trace a standard term through any of the languages we cover in the dictionary, we also provide cross-references to each of the other languages at the end of the volume in a section called Cross-References by Language. In both the main entries and the Cross-References by Language, words have been alphabetized without consideration of diacritical marks and word breaks.
Oc "language" ("Oh see!") A {parallel} {logic language}. ["Self-Description of Oc and its Applications", M. Hirata, Proc 2nd Natl Conf Japan Soc Soft Sci Tech, pp. 153-156, 1984]. (1995-03-16)
Oc ::: (language) (Oh see!) A parallel logic language.[Self-Description of Oc and its Applications, M. Hirata, Proc 2nd Natl Conf Japan Soc Soft Sci Tech, pp. 153-156, 1984]. (1995-03-16)
OECD - Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development - (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, and United States).
Oharai; ohoharahi: Literally, great expulsion. The Japanese ritual of purification.
Ondine ["Concurrency Introduction to an Object-Oriented Language System Ondine", T. Ogihara et al, 3rd Natl Conf Record A-5-1, Japan Soc for Soft Sci Tech, Japan 1986]. (2012-12-31)
Ondine ::: [Concurrency Introduction to an Object-Oriented Language System Ondine, T. Ogihara et al, 3rd Natl Conf Record A-5-1, Japan Soc for Soft Sci Tech, Japan 1986].
Onokoro, Onogoro (Japanese) In Japanese cosmogony, the island-world fashioned by the divine hero Isanagi when he thrust his jeweled spear into the primeval chaotic mass of cloud and water.
optical fibre "communications" (fibre optics, FO, US "fiber", light pipe) A plastic or glass (silicon dioxide) fibre no thicker than a human hair used to transmit information using infra-red or even visible light as the carrier (usually a laser). The light beam is an electromagnetic signal with a frequency in the range of 10^14 to 10^15 Hertz. Optical fibre is less susceptible to external noise than other transmission media, and is cheaper to make than copper wire, but it is much more difficult to connect. Optical fibres are difficult to tamper with (to monitor or inject data in the middle of a connection), making them appropriate for secure communications. The light beams do not escape from the medium because the material used provides total internal reflection. {AT&T} {Bell Laboratories} in the United States managed to send information at a rate of 420 megabits per second, over 161.5 km through an optical fibre cable. In Japan, 445.8 megabits per second was achieved over a shorter distance. At this rate, the entire text of the Encyclopedia Britannica could be transmitted in one second. Currently, AT&T is working on a world network to support high volume data transmission, international computer networking, {electronic mail} and voice communications (a single fibre can transmit 200 million telephone conversations simultaneously). See also {FDDI}, {Optical Carrier n}, {SONET}. (1997-05-26)
Our first debt of gratitude is to the several generations of scholars of Buddhism around the world whose research we have mined shamelessly in the course of preparing our entries. We are unable to mention them by name, but those who remain during the present lifetime will recognize the fruits of their research as they read the entries. In addition to our collaborators listed on the title page, we would like to thank the following graduate students and colleagues, each of whom assisted with some of the myriad details of such a massive project: Wesley Borton, Bonnie Brereton, Tyler Cann, Caleb Carter, Mui-fong Choi, Shayne Clarke, Jacob Dalton, Martino Dibeltulo, Alexander Gardner, Heng Yi fashi (Chi Chen Ho), Anna Johnson, Min Ku Kim, Youme Kim, Alison Melnick, Karen Muldoon-Hules, Cuong Tu Nguyen, Aaron Proffitt, Cedar Bough Saeji, and Sherin Wing. In addition, we would like to thank our long-suffering colleagues: William Bodiford, Gregory Schopen, Natasha Heller, Stephanie Jamison, and Jennifer Jung-Kim at UCLA, and Madhav Deshpande, Luis Gómez, Robert Sharf, and James Robson, now or formerly at the University of Michigan. The map of Tibet was designed by Tsering Wangyal Shawa; the map of Japan and Korea was designed by Maya Stiller; all other maps were designed by Trevor Weltman. Christina Lee Buswell also provided invaluable assistance with preparing the lists of language cross-references.
pagoda ::: n. --> A term by which Europeans designate religious temples and tower-like buildings of the Hindoos and Buddhists of India, Farther India, China, and Japan, -- usually but not always, devoted to idol worship.
An idol.
A gold or silver coin, of various kinds and values, formerly current in India. The Madras gold pagoda was worth about three and a half rupees.
Pascal P4 ::: compiler and interpreterVersion ? 1compiler, assembler/interpreter, documentationUrs Ammann, Kesav Nori, Christian Jacobi .A compiler for Pascal written in Pascal, producing an intermediate code, with an assembler and interpreter for the code.reference: Pascal Implementation, by Steven Pemberton and Martin Daniels, published by Ellis Horwood, Chichester, UK (an imprint of Prentice Hall), ISBN: 0-13-653-0311. Also available in Japanese.E-mail: . (1993-07-05)
Pascal P4 compiler and interpreter Version ? 1 compiler, assembler/interpreter, documentation Urs Ammann, Kesav Nori, Christian Jacobi {(ftp://ftp.cwi.nl/pascal/)}. A compiler for Pascal written in Pascal, producing an intermediate code, with an assembler and interpreter for the code. reference: Pascal Implementation, by Steven Pemberton and Martin Daniels, published by Ellis Horwood, Chichester, UK (an imprint of Prentice Hall), ISBN: 0-13-653-0311. Also available in Japanese. E-mail: "Steven.Pemberton@cwi.nl". (1993-07-05)
PDSA cycle ::: Plan, Do, See, Approve (from Japan).
PDSA cycle Plan, Do, See, Approve (from Japan).
picul ::: n. --> A commercial weight varying in different countries and for different commodities. In Borneo it is 135/ lbs.; in China and Sumatra, 133/ lbs.; in Japan, 133/ lbs.; but sometimes 130 lbs., etc. Called also, by the Chinese, tan.
Plesiochronous Digital Hierarchy "communications" (PDH) A transmission system for voice communication using {plesiochronous} synchronisation. PDH is the conventional {multiplexing} technology for network transmission systems. The transmitter adds dummy information bits to allow multiple channels to be bit interleaved. The receiver discards these bits once the signals have been demultiplexed. PDH combines multiple 2 Mb/s ({E1}) channels in Europe and 1.544 Mb/s ({DS1}) channels in the US and Japan. PDH is being replaced by {SONET} and other SDH ({Synchronous Digital Hierarchy}) schemes. (2003-09-30)
Plesiochronous Digital Hierarchy ::: (communications) (PDH) A transmission system for voice communication using plesiochronous synchronisation.PDH is the conventional multiplexing technology for network transmission systems. The transmitter adds dummy information bits to allow multiple channels to be bit interleaved. The receiver discards these bits once the signals have been demultiplexed.PDH combines multiple 2 Mb/s (E1) channels in Europe and 1.544 Mb/s (DS1) channels in the US and Japan.PDH is being replaced by SONET and other SDH (Synchronous Digital Hierarchy) schemes.(2003-09-30)
Pokémon exception handling "programming, humour" A humourous term for a {try-catch} exception handling construct with no constraint on which exceptions will be caught, for when you just "Gotta Catch 'Em All." (a slogan used in the Pokémon media empire). Pokémon is a trademark of the Pokémon Company of Japan. [{Dodgy Coder (http://www.dodgycoder.net/2011/11/yoda-conditions-pokemon-exception.html)}]. (2012-07-10)
porcelain ::: n. --> Purslain.
A fine translucent or semitransculent kind of earthenware, made first in China and Japan, but now also in Europe and America; -- called also China, or China ware.
Primary Rate Interface ::: (PRI) A type of ISDN connection. In North America and Japan, this consists of 24 channels, usually divided into 23 B channels and 1 D channel, and runs over the same physical interface as T1. Elsewhere the PRI has 31 user channels, usually divided into 30 B channels and 1 D channel and is based on the E1 interface.PRI is typically used for connections such as one between a PBX (private branch exchange, a telephone exchange operated by the customer of a telephone company) and a CO (central office, of the telephone company) or IXC (inter exchange carrier, a long distance telephone company). (1995-01-18)
Primary Rate Interface (PRI) A type of {ISDN} connection. In North America and Japan, this consists of 24 channels, usually divided into 23 B channels and 1 D channel, and runs over the same physical interface as {T1}. Elsewhere the PRI has 31 user channels, usually divided into 30 B channels and 1 D channel and is based on the {E1} interface. PRI is typically used for connections such as one between a PBX (private branch exchange, a telephone exchange operated by the customer of a telephone company) and a CO (central office, of the telephone company) or IXC (inter exchange carrier, a long distance telephone company). (1995-01-18)
raku ware ::: --> A kind of earthenware made in Japan, resembling Satsuma ware, but having a paler color.
Rashomon Effect, Rashomon Syndrome, the: Term for the realization that everyone has different perceptions of reality, and that no definitive form of reality exists. From the Japanese play and movie of the same name.
relevance "information science" A measure of how closely a given object (file, {web page}, database {record}, etc.) matches a user's search for information. The relevance {algorithms} used in most large web {search engines} today are based on fairly simple word-occurence measurement: if the word "daffodil" occurs on a given page, then that page is considered relevant to a {query} on the word "daffodil"; and its relevance is quantised as a factor of the number of times the word occurs in the page, on whether "daffodil" occurs in title of the page or in its META keywords, in the first {N} words of the page, in a heading, and so on; and similarly for words that a {stemmer} says are based on "daffodil". More elaborate (and resource-expensive) relevance algorithms may involve thesaurus (or {synonym ring}) lookup; e.g. it might rank a document about narcissuses (but which may not mention the word "daffodil" anywhere) as relevant to a query on "daffodil", since narcissuses and daffodils are basically the same thing. Ditto for queries on "jail" and "gaol", etc. More elaborate forms of thesaurus lookup may involve multilingual thesauri (e.g. knowing that documents in Japanese which mention the Japanese word for "narcissus" are relevant to your search on "narcissus"), or may involve thesauri (often auto-generated) based not on equivalence of meaning, but on word-proximity, such that "bulb" or "bloom" may be in the thesaurus entry for "daffodil". {Word spamming} essentially attempts to falsely increase a web page's relevance to certain common searches. See also {subject index}. (1997-04-09)
relevance ::: (information science) A measure of how closely a given object (file, web page, database record, etc.) matches a user's search for information.The relevance algorithms used in most large web search engines today are based on fairly simple word-occurence measurement: if the word daffodil occurs on a or in its META keywords, in the first N words of the page, in a heading, and so on; and similarly for words that a stemmer says are based on daffodil.More elaborate (and resource-expensive) relevance algorithms may involve thesaurus (or synonym ring) lookup; e.g. it might rank a document about to a query on daffodil, since narcissuses and daffodils are basically the same thing. Ditto for queries on jail and gaol, etc.More elaborate forms of thesaurus lookup may involve multilingual thesauri (e.g. knowing that documents in Japanese which mention the Japanese word for word-proximity, such that bulb or bloom may be in the thesaurus entry for daffodil.Word spamming essentially attempts to falsely increase a web page's relevance to certain common searches.See also subject index. (1997-04-09)
saki ::: n. --> Any one of several species of South American monkeys of the genus Pithecia. They have large ears, and a long hairy tail which is not prehensile.
The alcoholic drink of Japan. It is made from rice.
samurai A hacker who hires out for legal cracking jobs, snooping for factions in corporate political fights, lawyers pursuing privacy-rights and First Amendment cases, and other parties with legitimate reasons to need an electronic locksmith. In 1991, mainstream media reported the existence of a loose-knit culture of samurai that meets electronically on BBS systems, mostly bright teenagers with personal micros; they have modelled themselves explicitly on the historical samurai of Japan and on the "net cowboys" of William Gibson's {cyberpunk} novels. Those interviewed claim to adhere to a rigid ethic of loyalty to their employers and to disdain the vandalism and theft practiced by criminal crackers as beneath them and contrary to the hacker ethic; some quote Miyamoto Musashi's "Book of Five Rings", a classic of historical samurai doctrine, in support of these principles. See also {Stupids}, {social engineering}, {cracker}, {hacker ethic}, and {dark-side hacker}. [{Jargon File}]
Satori: The Japanese Zen Buddhist term for “enlightenment,” as the culmination of meditation.
satsuma ware ::: --> A kind of ornamental hard-glazed pottery made at Satsuma in Kiushu, one of the Japanese islands.
sea lion ::: --> Any one of several large species of seals of the family Otariidae native of the Pacific Ocean, especially the southern sea lion (Otaria jubata) of the South American coast; the northern sea lion (Eumetopias Stelleri) found from California to Japan; and the black, or California, sea lion (Zalophus Californianus), which is common on the rocks near San Francisco.
sen ::: n. --> A Japanese coin, worth about one half of a cent. ::: adv., prep., & conj. --> Since.
Sen-rin: In Japanese mystic lore, hermits of the mountains, masters of all magic arts.
Shingon: The Japanese sect of Buddhism which claims that its esoteric doctrine was inspired by Vairochana, the greatest of all Buddhas who came to this earth.
Shintia: Japanese for god-body, the Shintoist name of material objects in which the divine spirit is said to dwell.
shintiism ::: n. --> One of the two great systems of religious belief in Japan. Its essence is ancestor worship, and sacrifice to dead heroes.
Shinto (Japanese) [from shin god + to, tao way, path] The way of the gods; applied to the popular religion in Japan prior to Buddhism. Japan was considered to be the land of the gods — a conception current among nearly all ancient peoples, each one of which looked upon its own land as the land of the original divine incarnations — and the ruler (mikado) as the direct descendant and actual representative of the sun goddess (Tensho Daijin). Spiritual agencies were attributed to all the processes of nature, and a reverential feeling inculcated toward the dead. Hero worship took the direction in the prevalent belief that noble-minded warriors should be exalted nearly to the position of demigods.
Shinto: The Japanese religion based on the worship of spirits and ancestors.
Shi-tenno: In Japanese terminology, the four guardians of the cardinal points of the compass.
shogun ::: n. --> A title originally conferred by the Mikado on the military governor of the eastern provinces of Japan. By gradual usurpation of power the Shoguns (known to foreigners as Tycoons) became finally the virtual rulers of Japan. The title was abolished in 1867.
soy ::: n. --> A Chinese and Japanese liquid sauce for fish, etc., made by subjecting boiled beans (esp. soja beans), or beans and meal, to long fermentation and then long digestion in salt and water.
The soja, a kind of bean. See Soja.
Supplementary Ideographic Plane "text, standard" (SIP) The third plane (plane 2) defined in {Unicode}/{ISO 10646}, designed to hold all the {ideographs} descended from Chinese writing (mainly found in Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese and Chinese) that aren't found in the {Basic Multilingual Plane}. The BMP was supposed to hold all ideographs in modern use; unfortunately, many Chinese dialects (like Cantonese and Hong Kong Chinese) were overlooked; to write these, characters from the SIP are necessary. This is one reason even non-academic software must support characters outside the BMP. {Unicode home (http://unicode.org)}. (2002-06-19)
tanate ::: n. --> An Asiatic wild dog (Canis procyonoides), native of Japan and adjacent countries. It has a short, bushy tail. Called also raccoon dog.
tanka: Similar to the haiku, the tanka is a type of Japanese poetry. It contains thirty-one syllables set in five lines of five / seven / five / seven / seven syllables.
T-carrier system ::: (communications) A series of wideband digital data transmission formats originally developed by the Bell System and used in North America and Japan.The basic unit of the T-carrier system is the DS0, which has a transmission rate of 64 Kbps, and is commonly used for one voice circuit.Originally the 1.544 megabit per second T1 format carried 24 pulse-code modulated, time-division multiplexed speech signals each encoded in 64 kilobit circuits channels carry multiple T1 channels multiplexed, resulting in transmission rates of up to 44.736 Mbps.The T-carrier system uses in-band signaling or bit-robbing, resulting in lower transmission rates than the E-carrier system. It uses a restored polar signal with 303-type data stations.Asynchronous signals can be transmitted via a standard which encodes each change of level into three bits; two which indicate the time (within the current indicates the direction of the transition. Although wasteful of line bandwidth, such use is usually only over small distances.T1 lines are made free of direct current signal components by in effect capacitor coupling the signal at the transmitter and restoring that lost component with a slicer at the receiver, leading to the description restored polar.[Telecommunications Transmission Engineering, Vol. 2, Facilities, AT&T, 1977].(2001-04-08)
T-carrier system "communications" A series of wideband digital data transmission formats originally developed by the {Bell System} and used in North America and Japan. The basic unit of the T-carrier system is the {DS0}, which has a transmission rate of 64 Kbps, and is commonly used for one {voice circuit}. Originally the 1.544 megabit per second {T1} format carried 24 pulse-code modulated, time-division multiplexed speech signals each encoded in 64 kilobit per second streams, leaving 8 kilobits per second of framing information which facilitates the synchronisation and demultiplexing at the receiver. {T2} and {T3} circuits channels carry multiple T1 channels multiplexed, resulting in transmission rates of up to 44.736 Mbps. The T-carrier system uses {in-band signaling}, resulting in lower transmission rates than the {E-carrier system}. It uses a restored polar signal with {303-type} data stations. Asynchronous signals can be transmitted via a standard which encodes each change of level into three bits; two which indicate the time (within the current synchronous frame) at which the transition occurred, and the third which indicates the direction of the transition. Although wasteful of line bandwidth, such use is usually only over small distances. T1 lines are made free of direct current signal components by in effect capacitor coupling the signal at the transmitter and restoring that lost component with a "slicer" at the receiver, leading to the description "restored polar". [Telecommunications Transmission Engineering, Vol. 2, Facilities, AT&T, 1977]. (2001-04-08)
Tendai: The Japanese “Pure Land” sect of Buddhism, which regards Amitabha the greatest of all Buddhas and centers its doctrine around him.
Tengus: Evil tree spirits (Japan), human in form but hatched from eggs.
Tenshoko Daijin or Ten Sho Dai Jiu (Japanese) The Shinto sun goddess, the first of the five generations of so-called earthly deities — two of which generations are yet to be evolved forth — these seven in their turn following the seven earlier generations of heavenly deities.
thea ::: n. --> A genus of plants found in China and Japan; the tea plant.
The dictionary uses the standard Romanization systems for East Asian languages: viz., pinyin for Chinese (rather than the now-superseded Wade-Giles system that most pre-1990s scholarship on Chinese Buddhism used), Revised Hepburn for Japanese, and McCune-Reischauer for Korean, with the transcriptions in some cases modified slightly to conform more closely to the Chinese parsing of compounds. While this dictionary was being compiled, the Korean government unveiled its latest iteration of a Revised Romanization system, but that system is still rarely used in academic writing in the West and its acceptance is uncertain; we therefore chose to employ McCune-Reischauer for this edition of the dictionary.
The Dojo Toolkit "library, programming" A modular, {open source} {JavaScript} library. Dojo is designed for easy development of JavaScript- or {AJAX} based applications and websites. It is supported by the Dojo Foundation, which is sponsored by {IBM}, {AOL}, {Sun} and others. The name is from the Japanese term meaning "place of the way", used for a formal place of training. (2008-07-23)
The gestures or movements of a classical drama of Japan, with music and dance performed in a highly stylised manner by elaborately dressed performers on an almost bare stage.
The Real-Time Operating System Nucleus ::: (project) (TRON) A project to develop an operating system and man-machine interface that can work with other operating systems to provide an environment by Dr. Ken Sakamura of the University of Tokyo and supported by most of the major Japanese computer makers and NTT. .(2003-05-23)
The Real-Time Operating System Nucleus "project" (TRON) A project to develop an {operating system} and {man-machine interface} that can work with other operating systems to provide an environment for many small distributed computers to cooperate in {real time}. TRON is headed by Dr. Ken Sakamura of the {University of Tokyo} and supported by most of the major Japanese computer makers and {NTT}. {(http://atip.org/public/atip.reports.91/tron.html)}. (2003-05-23)
The second Koryo canon was used as the basis of the modern Japanese TAISHo SHINSHu DAIZoKYo ("New Edition of the Buddhist Canon Compiled during the Taisho Reign Era"), edited by TAKAKUSU JUNJIRo and Watanabe Kaikyoku and published using movable-type printing between 1924 and 1935, which has become the standard reference source for East Asian Buddhist materials. The Taisho canon includes 2,920 texts in eighty-five volumes (each volume is about one thousand pages in length), along with twelve volumes devoted to iconography, and three volumes of bibliography and scriptural catalogues. The Taisho's arrangement is constructed following modern scholarly views regarding the historical development of the Buddhist scriptural tradition, with mainstream Buddhist scriptures opening the canon, followed by Indian Mahāyāna materials, indigenous Chinese writings, and Japanese writings:
This new dictionary seeks to address the needs of this present age. For the great majority of scholars of Buddhism, who do not command all of the major Buddhist languages, this reference book provides a repository of many of the most important terms used across the traditions, and their rendering in several Buddhist languages. For the college professor who teaches "Introduction to Buddhism" every year, requiring one to venture beyond one's particular area of geographical and doctrinal expertise, it provides descriptions of many of the important figures and texts in the major traditions. For the student of Buddhism, whether inside or outside the classroom, it offers information on many fundamental doctrines and practices of the various traditions of the religion. This dictionary is based primarily on six Buddhist languages and their traditions: Sanskrit, PAli, Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Also included, although appearing much less frequently, are terms and proper names in vernacular Burmese, Lao, Mongolian, Sinhalese, Thai, and Vietnamese. The majority of entries fall into three categories: the terminology of Buddhist doctrine and practice, the texts in which those teachings are set forth, and the persons (both human and divine) who wrote those texts or appear in their pages. In addition, there are entries on important places-including monasteries and sacred mountains-as well as on the major schools and sects of the various Buddhist traditions. The vast majority of the main entries are in their original language, although cross-references are sometimes provided to a common English rendering. Unlike many terminological dictionaries, which merely provide a brief listing of meanings with perhaps some of the equivalencies in various Buddhist languages, this work seeks to function as an encyclopedic dictionary. The main entries offer a short essay on the extended meaning and significance of the terms covered, typically in the range of two hundred to six hundred words, but sometimes substantially longer. To offer further assistance in understanding a term or tracing related concepts, an extensive set of internal cross-references (marked in small capital letters) guides the reader to related entries throughout the dictionary. But even with over a million words and five thousand entries, we constantly had to make difficult choices about what to include and how much to say. Given the long history and vast geographical scope of the Buddhist traditions, it is difficult to imagine any dictionary ever being truly comprehensive. Authors also write about what they know (or would like to know); so inevitably the dictionary reflects our own areas of scholarly expertise, academic interests, and judgments about what readers need to learn about the various Buddhist traditions.
Three senses of "Ockhamism" may be distinguished: Logical, indicating usage of the terminology and technique of logical analysis developed by Ockham in his Summa totius logicae; in particular, use of the concept of supposition (suppositio) in the significative analysis of terms. Epistemological, indicating the thesis that universality is attributable only to terms and propositions, and not to things as existing apart from discourse. Theological, indicating the thesis that no tneological doctrines, such as those of God's existence or of the immortality of the soul, are evident or demonstrable philosophically, so that religious doctrine rests solely on faith, without metaphysical or scientific support. It is in this sense that Luther is often called an Ockhamist. Bibliography: B. Geyer, Ueberwegs Grundriss d. Gesch. d. Phil., Bd. II (11th ed., Berlin 1928), pp. 571-612 and 781-786; N. Abbagnano, Guglielmo di Ockham (Lanciano, Italy, 1931); E. A. Moody, The Logic of William of Ockham (N. Y. & London, 1935); F. Ehrle, Peter von Candia (Muenster, 1925); G. Ritter, Studien zur Spaetscholastik, I-II (Heidelberg, 1921-1922). --E.A.M. Om, aum: (Skr.) Mystic, holy syllable as a symbol for the indefinable Absolute. See Aksara, Vac, Sabda. --K.F.L. Omniscience: In philosophy and theology it means the complete and perfect knowledge of God, of Himself and of all other beings, past, present, and future, or merely possible, as well as all their activities, real or possible, including the future free actions of human beings. --J.J.R. One: Philosophically, not a number but equivalent to unit, unity, individuality, in contradistinction from multiplicity and the mani-foldness of sensory experience. In metaphysics, the Supreme Idea (Plato), the absolute first principle (Neo-platonism), the universe (Parmenides), Being as such and divine in nature (Plotinus), God (Nicolaus Cusanus), the soul (Lotze). Religious philosophy and mysticism, beginning with Indian philosophy (s.v.), has favored the designation of the One for the metaphysical world-ground, the ultimate icility, the world-soul, the principle of the world conceived as reason, nous, or more personally. The One may be conceived as an independent whole or as a sum, as analytic or synthetic, as principle or ontologically. Except by mysticism, it is rarely declared a fact of sensory experience, while its transcendent or transcendental, abstract nature is stressed, e.g., in epistemology where the "I" or self is considered the unitary background of personal experience, the identity of self-consciousness, or the unity of consciousness in the synthesis of the manifoldness of ideas (Kant). --K.F.L. One-one: A relation R is one-many if for every y in the converse domain there is a unique x such that xRy. A relation R is many-one if for every x in the domain there is a unique y such that xRy. (See the article relation.) A relation is one-one, or one-to-one, if it is at the same time one-many and many-one. A one-one relation is said to be, or to determine, a one-to-one correspondence between its domain and its converse domain. --A.C. On-handedness: (Ger. Vorhandenheit) Things exist in the mode of thereness, lying- passively in a neutral space. A "deficient" form of a more basic relationship, termed at-handedness (Zuhandenheit). (Heidegger.) --H.H. Ontological argument: Name by which later authors, especially Kant, designate the alleged proof for God's existence devised by Anselm of Canterbury. Under the name of God, so the argument runs, everyone understands that greater than which nothing can be thought. Since anything being the greatest and lacking existence is less then the greatest having also existence, the former is not really the greater. The greatest, therefore, has to exist. Anselm has been reproached, already by his contemporary Gaunilo, for unduly passing from the field of logical to the field of ontological or existential reasoning. This criticism has been repeated by many authors, among them Aquinas. The argument has, however, been used, if in a somewhat modified form, by Duns Scotus, Descartes, and Leibniz. --R.A. Ontological Object: (Gr. onta, existing things + logos, science) The real or existing object of an act of knowledge as distinguished from the epistemological object. See Epistemological Object. --L.W. Ontologism: (Gr. on, being) In contrast to psychologism, is called any speculative system which starts philosophizing by positing absolute being, or deriving the existence of entities independently of experience merely on the basis of their being thought, or assuming that we have immediate and certain knowledge of the ground of being or God. Generally speaking any rationalistic, a priori metaphysical doctrine, specifically the philosophies of Rosmini-Serbati and Vincenzo Gioberti. As a philosophic method censored by skeptics and criticists alike, as a scholastic doctrine formerly strongly supported, revived in Italy and Belgium in the 19th century, but no longer countenanced. --K.F.L. Ontology: (Gr. on, being + logos, logic) The theory of being qua being. For Aristotle, the First Philosophy, the science of the essence of things. Introduced as a term into philosophy by Wolff. The science of fundamental principles, the doctrine of the categories. Ultimate philosophy; rational cosmology. Syn. with metaphysics. See Cosmology, First Principles, Metaphysics, Theology. --J.K.F. Operation: "(Lit. operari, to work) Any act, mental or physical, constituting a phase of the reflective process, and performed with a view to acquiring1 knowledge or information about a certain subject-nntter. --A.C.B. In logic, see Operationism. In philosophy of science, see Pragmatism, Scientific Empiricism. Operationism: The doctrine that the meaning of a concept is given by a set of operations. 1. The operational meaning of a term (word or symbol) is given by a semantical rule relating the term to some concrete process, object or event, or to a class of such processes, objectj or events. 2. Sentences formed by combining operationally defined terms into propositions are operationally meaningful when the assertions are testable by means of performable operations. Thus, under operational rules, terms have semantical significance, propositions have empirical significance. Operationism makes explicit the distinction between formal (q.v.) and empirical sentences. Formal propositions are signs arranged according to syntactical rules but lacking operational reference. Such propositions, common in mathematics, logic and syntax, derive their sanction from convention, whereas an empirical proposition is acceptable (1) when its structure obeys syntactical rules and (2) when there exists a concrete procedure (a set of operations) for determining its truth or falsity (cf. Verification). Propositions purporting to be empirical are sometimes amenable to no operational test because they contain terms obeying no definite semantical rules. These sentences are sometimes called pseudo-propositions and are said to be operationally meaningless. They may, however, be 'meaningful" in other ways, e.g. emotionally or aesthetically (cf. Meaning). Unlike a formal statement, the "truth" of an empirical sentence is never absolute and its operational confirmation serves only to increase the degree of its validity. Similarly, the semantical rule comprising the operational definition of a term has never absolute precision. Ordinarily a term denotes a class of operations and the precision of its definition depends upon how definite are the rules governing inclusion in the class. The difference between Operationism and Logical Positivism (q.v.) is one of emphasis. Operationism's stress of empirical matters derives from the fact that it was first employed to purge physics of such concepts as absolute space and absolute time, when the theory of relativity had forced upon physicists the view that space and time are most profitably defined in terms of the operations by which they are measured. Although different methods of measuring length at first give rise to different concepts of length, wherever the equivalence of certain of these measures can be established by other operations, the concepts may legitimately be combined. In psychology the operational criterion of meaningfulness is commonly associated with a behavioristic point of view. See Behaviorism. Since only those propositions which are testable by public and repeatable operations are admissible in science, the definition of such concepti as mind and sensation must rest upon observable aspects of the organism or its behavior. Operational psychology deals with experience only as it is indicated by the operation of differential behavior, including verbal report. Discriminations, or the concrete differential reactions of organisms to internal or external environmental states, are by some authors regarded as the most basic of all operations. For a discussion of the role of operational definition in phvsics. see P. W. Bridgman, The Logic of Modern Physics, (New York, 1928) and The Nature of Physical Theory (Princeton, 1936). "The extension of operationism to psychology is discussed by C. C. Pratt in The Logic of Modem Psychology (New York. 1939.) For a discussion and annotated bibliography relating to Operationism and Logical Positivism, see S. S. Stevens, Psychology and the Science of Science, Psychol. Bull., 36, 1939, 221-263. --S.S.S. Ophelimity: Noun derived from the Greek, ophelimos useful, employed by Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) in economics as the equivalent of utility, or the capacity to provide satisfaction. --J.J.R. Opinion: (Lat. opinio, from opinor, to think) An hypothesis or proposition entertained on rational grounds but concerning which doubt can reasonably exist. A belief. See Hypothesis, Certainty, Knowledge. --J.K.F- Opposition: (Lat. oppositus, pp. of oppono, to oppose) Positive actual contradiction. One of Aristotle's Post-predicaments. In logic any contrariety or contradiction, illustrated by the "Square of Opposition". Syn. with: conflict. See Logic, formal, § 4. --J.K.F. Optimism: (Lat. optimus, the best) The view inspired by wishful thinking, success, faith, or philosophic reflection, that the world as it exists is not so bad or even the best possible, life is good, and man's destiny is bright. Philosophically most persuasively propounded by Leibniz in his Theodicee, according to which God in his wisdom would have created a better world had he known or willed such a one to exist. Not even he could remove moral wrong and evil unless he destroyed the power of self-determination and hence the basis of morality. All systems of ethics that recognize a supreme good (Plato and many idealists), subscribe to the doctrines of progressivism (Turgot, Herder, Comte, and others), regard evil as a fragmentary view (Josiah Royce et al.) or illusory, or believe in indemnification (Henry David Thoreau) or melioration (Emerson), are inclined optimistically. Practically all theologies advocating a plan of creation and salvation, are optimistic though they make the good or the better dependent on moral effort, right thinking, or belief, promising it in a future existence. Metaphysical speculation is optimistic if it provides for perfection, evolution to something higher, more valuable, or makes room for harmonies or a teleology. See Pessimism. --K.F.L. Order: A class is said to be partially ordered by a dyadic relation R if it coincides with the field of R, and R is transitive and reflexive, and xRy and yRx never both hold when x and y are different. If in addition R is connected, the class is said to be ordered (or simply ordered) by R, and R is called an ordering relation. Whitehcid and Russell apply the term serial relation to relations which are transitive, irreflexive, and connected (and, in consequence, also asymmetric). However, the use of serial relations in this sense, instead ordering relations as just defined, is awkward in connection with the notion of order for unit classes. Examples: The relation not greater than among leal numbers is an ordering relation. The relation less than among real numbers is a serial relation. The real numbers are simply ordered by the former relation. In the algebra of classes (logic formal, § 7), the classes are partially ordered by the relation of class inclusion. For explanation of the terminology used in making the above definitions, see the articles connexity, reflexivity, relation, symmetry, transitivity. --A.C. Order type: See relation-number. Ordinal number: A class b is well-ordered by a dyadic relation R if it is ordered by R (see order) and, for every class a such that a ⊂ b, there is a member x of a, such that xRy holds for every member y of a; and R is then called a well-ordering relation. The ordinal number of a class b well-ordered by a relation R, or of a well-ordering relation R, is defined to be the relation-number (q. v.) of R. The ordinal numbers of finite classes (well-ordered by appropriate relations) are called finite ordinal numbers. These are 0, 1, 2, ... (to be distinguished, of course, from the finite cardinal numbers 0, 1, 2, . . .). The first non-finite (transfinite or infinite) ordinal number is the ordinal number of the class of finite ordinal numbers, well-ordered in their natural order, 0, 1, 2, . . .; it is usually denoted by the small Greek letter omega. --A.C. G. Cantor, Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers, translated and with an introduction by P. E. B. Jourdain, Chicago and London, 1915. (new ed. 1941); Whitehead and Russell, Princtpia Mathematica. vol. 3. Orexis: (Gr. orexis) Striving; desire; the conative aspect of mind, as distinguished from the cognitive and emotional (Aristotle). --G.R.M.. Organicism: A theory of biology that life consists in the organization or dynamic system of the organism. Opposed to mechanism and vitalism. --J.K.F. Organism: An individual animal or plant, biologically interpreted. A. N. Whitehead uses the term to include also physical bodies and to signify anything material spreading through space and enduring in time. --R.B.W. Organismic Psychology: (Lat. organum, from Gr. organon, an instrument) A system of theoretical psychology which construes the structure of the mind in organic rather than atomistic terms. See Gestalt Psychology; Psychological Atomism. --L.W. Organization: (Lat. organum, from Gr. organon, work) A structured whole. The systematic unity of parts in a purposive whole. A dynamic system. Order in something actual. --J.K.F. Organon: (Gr. organon) The title traditionally given to the body of Aristotle's logical treatises. The designation appears to have originated among the Peripatetics after Aristotle's time, and expresses their view that logic is not a part of philosophy (as the Stoics maintained) but rather the instrument (organon) of philosophical inquiry. See Aristotelianism. --G.R.M. In Kant. A system of principles by which pure knowledge may be acquired and established. Cf. Fr. Bacon's Novum Organum. --O.F.K. Oriental Philosophy: A general designation used loosely to cover philosophic tradition exclusive of that grown on Greek soil and including the beginnings of philosophical speculation in Egypt, Arabia, Iran, India, and China, the elaborate systems of India, Greater India, China, and Japan, and sometimes also the religion-bound thought of all these countries with that of the complex cultures of Asia Minor, extending far into antiquity. Oriental philosophy, though by no means presenting a homogeneous picture, nevertheless shares one characteristic, i.e., the practical outlook on life (ethics linked with metaphysics) and the absence of clear-cut distinctions between pure speculation and religious motivation, and on lower levels between folklore, folk-etymology, practical wisdom, pre-scientiiic speculation, even magic, and flashes of philosophic insight. Bonds with Western, particularly Greek philosophy have no doubt existed even in ancient times. Mutual influences have often been conjectured on the basis of striking similarities, but their scientific establishment is often difficult or even impossible. Comparative philosophy (see especially the work of Masson-Oursel) provides a useful method. Yet a thorough treatment of Oriental Philosophy is possible only when the many languages in which it is deposited have been more thoroughly studied, the psychological and historical elements involved in the various cultures better investigated, and translations of the relevant documents prepared not merely from a philological point of view or out of missionary zeal, but by competent philosophers who also have some linguistic training. Much has been accomplished in this direction in Indian and Chinese Philosophy (q.v.). A great deal remains to be done however before a definitive history of Oriental Philosophy may be written. See also Arabian, and Persian Philosophy. --K.F.L. Origen: (185-254) The principal founder of Christian theology who tried to enrich the ecclesiastic thought of his day by reconciling it with the treasures of Greek philosophy. Cf. Migne PL. --R.B.W. Ormazd: (New Persian) Same as Ahura Mazdah (q.v.), the good principle in Zoroastrianism, and opposed to Ahriman (q.v.). --K.F.L. Orphic Literature: The mystic writings, extant only in fragments, of a Greek religious-philosophical movement of the 6th century B.C., allegedly started by the mythical Orpheus. In their mysteries, in which mythology and rational thinking mingled, the Orphics concerned themselves with cosmogony, theogony, man's original creation and his destiny after death which they sought to influence to the better by pure living and austerity. They taught a symbolism in which, e.g., the relationship of the One to the many was clearly enunciated, and believed in the soul as involved in reincarnation. Pythagoras, Empedocles, and Plato were influenced by them. --K.F.L. Ortega y Gasset, Jose: Born in Madrid, May 9, 1883. At present in Buenos Aires, Argentine. Son of Ortega y Munillo, the famous Spanish journalist. Studied at the College of Jesuits in Miraflores and at the Central University of Madrid. In the latter he presented his Doctor's dissertation, El Milenario, in 1904, thereby obtaining his Ph.D. degree. After studies in Leipzig, Berlin, Marburg, under the special influence of Hermann Cohen, the great exponent of Kant, who taught him the love for the scientific method and awoke in him the interest in educational philosophy, Ortega came to Spain where, after the death of Nicolas Salmeron, he occupied the professorship of metaphysics at the Central University of Madrid. The following may be considered the most important works of Ortega y Gasset: Meditaciones del Quijote, 1914; El Espectador, I-VIII, 1916-1935; El Tema de Nuestro Tiempo, 1921; España Invertebrada, 1922; Kant, 1924; La Deshumanizacion del Arte, 1925; Espiritu de la Letra, 1927; La Rebelion de las Masas, 1929; Goethe desde Adentio, 1934; Estudios sobre el Amor, 1939; Ensimismamiento y Alteracion, 1939; El Libro de las Misiones, 1940; Ideas y Creencias, 1940; and others. Although brought up in the Marburg school of thought, Ortega is not exactly a neo-Kantian. At the basis of his Weltanschauung one finds a denial of the fundamental presuppositions which characterized European Rationalism. It is life and not thought which is primary. Things have a sense and a value which must be affirmed independently. Things, however, are to be conceived as the totality of situations which constitute the circumstances of a man's life. Hence, Ortega's first philosophical principle: "I am myself plus my circumstances". Life as a problem, however, is but one of the poles of his formula. Reason is the other. The two together function, not by dialectical opposition, but by necessary coexistence. Life, according to Ortega, does not consist in being, but rather, in coming to be, and as such it is of the nature of direction, program building, purpose to be achieved, value to be realized. In this sense the future as a time dimension acquires new dignity, and even the present and the past become articulate and meaning-full only in relation to the future. Even History demands a new point of departure and becomes militant with new visions. --J.A.F. Orthodoxy: Beliefs which are declared by a group to be true and normative. Heresy is a departure from and relative to a given orthodoxy. --V.S. Orthos Logos: See Right Reason. Ostensible Object: (Lat. ostendere, to show) The object envisaged by cognitive act irrespective of its actual existence. See Epistemological Object. --L.W. Ostensive: (Lat. ostendere, to show) Property of a concept or predicate by virtue of which it refers to and is clarified by reference to its instances. --A.C.B. Ostwald, Wilhelm: (1853-1932) German chemist. Winner of the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1909. In Die Uberwindung des wissenschaftlichen Materialistmus and in Naturphilosophie, his two best known works in the field of philosophy, he advocates a dynamic theory in opposition to materialism and mechanism. All properties of matter, and the psychic as well, are special forms of energy. --L.E.D. Oupnekhat: Anquetil Duperron's Latin translation of the Persian translation of 50 Upanishads (q.v.), a work praised by Schopenhauer as giving him complete consolation. --K.F.L. Outness: A term employed by Berkeley to express the experience of externality, that is the ideas of space and things placed at a distance. Hume used it in the sense of distance Hamilton understood it as the state of being outside of consciousness in a really existing world of material things. --J.J.R. Overindividual: Term used by H. Münsterberg to translate the German überindividuell. The term is applied to any cognitive or value object which transcends the individual subject. --L.W. P
Toshiba Corporation ::: (company) A Japanese technology manufacturer with 364 subsidiaries worldwide. Toshiba makes and sells electronics for home, office, industry and components, heavy electrical apparatus, consumer products and medical diagnostic imaging equipment.In FY 2003-4, Toshiba employed 161,286 people and sales were � 5,579B (UK� 30B, US$ 50B). .(2005-01-19)
Toshiba Corporation "company" A Japanese technology manufacturer with 364 subsidiaries worldwide. Toshiba makes and sells electronics for home, office, industry and health care including information and communication systems, electronic components, heavy electrical apparatus, consumer products and medical diagnostic imaging equipment. In FY 2003-4, Toshiba employed 161,286 people. {Toshiba Home (http://toshiba.co.jp/)}. (2005-01-19)
tycoon ::: n. --> The title by which the shogun, or former commander in chief of the Japanese army, was known to foreigners.
whitebait ::: n. --> The young of several species of herrings, especially of the common herring, esteemed a great delicacy by epicures in England.
A small translucent fish (Salanx Chinensis) abundant at certain seasons on the coasts of China and Japan, and used in the same manner as the European whitebait.
Wind River Systems ::: (company) A company founded in 1981, now a world leader in embedded systems, providing real-time operating systems and development tools. Wind River's development tools enable customers to standardise designs across projects and quickly develop feature-rich products.Wind River Systems employs over 500 people worldwide (1998). Service and support is provided through its U.S. headquarters and overseas operations in the U.K., France, Germany, Scandinavia and Japan. .Address: Alameda, California, USA. (1998-11-06)
Wind River Systems "company" A company founded in 1981, now a world leader in {embedded systems}, providing {real-time operating systems} and development tools. Wind River's development tools enable customers to standardise designs across projects and quickly develop feature-rich products. Wind River Systems employs over 500 people worldwide (1998). Service and support is provided through its U.S. headquarters and overseas operations in the U.K., France, Germany, Scandinavia and Japan. {(http://wrs.com/)}. Address: Alameda, California, USA. (1998-11-06)
Wolfram Research, Inc. ::: (company) The company founded by Stephen Wolfram in August 1987 to develop Mathematica which was released in June 1988 for the Macintosh and is now available on over 20 platforms. The company has offices in the United Kingdom and Tokyo, Japan. .E-mail: . (1995-02-10)
Wolfram Research, Inc. "company" The company founded by Stephen Wolfram in August 1987 to develop {Mathematica} which was released in June 1988 for the {Macintosh} and is now available on over 20 {platforms}. The company has offices in the United Kingdom and Tokyo, Japan. {(http://wri.com/)}. E-mail: "info@wri.com". (1995-02-10)
xanthoxylene ::: n. --> A liquid hydrocarbon of the terpene series extracted from the seeds of a Japanese prickly ash (Xanthoxylum pipertium) as an aromatic oil.
Yamabushi (Japanese) A sect in Japan of ancient origin, but now inclining to Buddhism. Often regarded as the fighting monks, inasmuch as they have not hesitated to take up arms in case of necessity somewhat like certain yogis in Rajputana or the lamas in Tibet. They are perhaps most numerous near Kyoto, where they are famed for their healing powers. Yamabushi hold a “Japanese Secret Science of the Buddhist Mystics,” calling their seven mystery-teachings the seven precious things or jewels (SD 1:67).
Yamaha ::: (company) A Japanese company best known for consumer electronics and motorbikes. They make music synthesizers, CD-Rom Writers and HiFi sound equipment. . (1997-04-29)
Yamaha "company" A Japanese company best known for consumer electronics and motorbikes. They make music synthesizers, {CD-Rom Writers} and HiFi sound equipment. {(http://yamaha.com/)}. (1997-04-29)
yen ::: pl. --> of Ye ::: n. --> The unit of value and account in Japan. Since Japan&
Yo (Japanese) The male ethereal essence or substance of Shinto cosmogony, which in conjunction with In, the female essence, produces manifestation. Equivalent to the Chinese yang.
Yomi: In Japanese occultism, the spirit world or astral world.
Zen Buddhism: The Japanese “mediation school” of Buddhism, based on the theories of the “universality of Buddha-nature” and the possibility of “becoming a Buddha in this very body.” It teaches the way of attaining Buddhahood fundamentally by meditation.
KEYS (10k)
4 Japanese Proverb
1 Jien
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
36 Vladimir Putin
26 Donald Trump
21 Anonymous
20 Shinzo Abe
15 Haruki Murakami
14 Jamie Dimon
12 Marie Kond
11 Hideki Tojo
10 William Gibson
10 Lafcadio Hearn
9 Niall Ferguson
9 Frederick Lenz
8 Naoto Kan
8 Dave Barry
8 Barry Eisler
7 Travis Rice
6 Utada Hikaru
6 Tadao Ando
6 Shigeru Yoshida
6 Pico Iyer
1:The genius of Japan lies in imitation and improvement, that of India in origination. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, The Asiatic Role, #KEYS
2:No matter how much I wanted to sing Western songs, they were all very difficult. Had I, born in Japan, no choice but to sing Japanese songs? Was there a Japanese song that expressed my present sentiment - a traveler who had immersed himself in love and the arts in France but was now going back to the extreme end of the Orient where only death would follow monotonous life? ... I felt totally forsaken. I belonged to a nation that had no music to express swelling emotions and agonized feelings. ~ Kafu Nagai, #KEYS
3:In Japanese language, kata (though written as 方) is a frequently-used suffix meaning way of doing, with emphasis on the form and order of the process. Other meanings are training method and formal exercise. The goal of a painter's practicing, for example, is to merge his consciousness with his brush; the potter's with his clay; the garden designer's with the materials of the garden. Once such mastery is achieved, the theory goes, the doing of a thing perfectly is as easy as thinking it
~ Boye De Mente, Japan's Secret Weapon - The Kata Factor,#KEYS
4:This eternal lila is the eternal truth, and, therefore, its this eternal lila - the playful love-making of Radha and Krishna, which the Vaishnava poets desired to enjoy. If we analyse the Gitagovinda of Jayadeva we shall find not even a single statement which shows the poet's desire to have union with Krishna as Radha had,- he only sings praises the lila of Radha and Krishna and hankers after a chance just to have peep into the divine lila, and this peep into the divine lila is the highest spiritual gain which poets could think of. ~ Gautam Dasgupta (1976:125-26), quoted by Wimal Dissanayake, in Narratives of Agency: Self-making in China, India, and Japan, p. 132 #KEYS
5:Apotheosis ::: One of the most powerful and beloved of the Bodhisattvas of the Mahayana Buddhism of Tibet, China, and Japan is the Lotus Bearer, Avalokiteshvara, "The Lord Looking Down in Pity," so called because he regards with compassion all sentient creatures suffering the evils of existence. To him goes the millionfold repeated prayer of the prayer wheels and temple gongs of Tibet: Om mani padme hum, "The jewel is in the lotus." To him go perhaps more prayers per minute than to any single divinity known to man; for when, during his final life on earth as a human being, he shattered for himself the bounds of the last threshold (which moment opened to him the timelessness of the void beyond the frustrating mirage-enigmas of the named and bounded cosmos), he paused: he made a vow that before entering the void he would bring all creatures without exception to enlightenment; and since then he has permeated the whole texture of existence with the divine grace of his assisting presence, so that the least prayer addressed to him, throughout the vast spiritual empire of the Buddha, is graciously heard. Under differing forms he traverses the ten thousand worlds, and appears in the hour of need and prayer. He reveals himself in human form with two arms, in superhuman forms with four arms, or with six, or twelve, or a thousand, and he holds in one of his left hands the lotus of the world.
Like the Buddha himself, this godlike being is a pattern of the divine state to which the human hero attains who has gone beyond the last terrors of ignorance. "When the envelopment of consciousness has been annihilated, then he becomes free of all fear, beyond the reach of change." This is the release potential within us all, and which anyone can attain-through herohood; for, as we read: "All things are Buddha-things"; or again (and this is the other way of making the same statement) : "All beings are without self."
The world is filled and illumined by, but does not hold, the Bodhisattva ("he whose being is enlightenment"); rather, it is he who holds the world, the lotus. Pain and pleasure do not enclose him, he encloses them-and with profound repose. And since he is what all of us may be, his presence, his image, the mere naming of him, helps. "He wears a garland of eight thousand rays, in which is seen fully reflected a state of perfect beauty.
The color of his body is purple gold. His palms have the mixed color of five hundred lotuses, while each finger tip has eighty-four thousand signet-marks, and each mark eighty-four thousand colors; each color has eighty-four thousand rays which are soft and mild and shine over all things that exist. With these jewel hands he draws and embraces all beings. The halo surrounding his head is studded with five hundred Buddhas, miraculously transformed, each attended by five hundred Bodhisattvas, who are attended, in turn, by numberless gods. And when he puts his feet down to the ground, the flowers of diamonds and jewels that are scattered cover everything in all directions. The color of his face is gold. While in his towering crown of gems stands a Buddha, two hundred and fifty miles high." - Amitayur-Dhyana Sutra, 19; ibid., pp. 182-183. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Apotheosis,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:It is hard to be an individual in Japan. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 2:The United States trades more with the province of Ontario alone than with Japan. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 3:Turkey, Japan do great work because they can keep under control their little personal selfishness, egoism, jealousy, etc. when they get down to work. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove 4:I myself have been on my own and utterly independent since I graduated. I haven't belonged to any company or any system. It isn't easy to live like this in Japan. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 5:Kramer, on cultural differences: "See, here, you're just another apple, but in Japan, you're an exotic fruit. Like an orange. Which is rare there. Seinfeld TV show ~ jerry-seinfeld, @wisdomtrove 6:There are monasteries in Japan where they teach Zen with rules, more rules than you can imagine, and you might feel comfortable with that. I don't teach that type of Zen. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 7:Members of the Rae Chorze-Fwaz order trace their origins back through Tibet, Japan, China, India, and ancient Egypt to the place the order was founded, the lost continent of Atlantis. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 8:In Japan they prefer the realistic style. They like answers and conclusions, but my stories have none. I want to leave them wide open to every possibility. I think my readers understand that openness. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 9:Everyone who lives in an industrialized society is obliged gradually to give up the past, but in certain countries, such as the United States and Japan, the break with the past has been particularly traumatic. ~ susan-sontag, @wisdomtrove 10:In Japan, the writers have made up a literary community, a circle, a society. I think 90 percent of Japan's writers live in Tokyo. Naturally, they make a community. There are groups and customs, and so they are tied up in a way. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 11:It is only in the last 800 years that the rules have come into being and conservative Zen has surfaced. It is not particularly popular in Japan at all. Hardly anybody practices Zen any more because it's just too strict; there are too many rules. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 12:And when you come back to Japan next summer, let's have that date or whatever you want to call it. We can go to the zoo or the botanical garden or the aquarium, and then we'll have the most politically correct and scrumptious omelets we can find. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 13:And it is impossible to treat human beings as human beings if you label them, if you term them, if you give them a name as Hindus, Russians, or what you will. It is so much easier to label people, for then you can pass by and kick them, drop a bomb on India or Japan. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 14:But I didn't walk a single step. I stopped a lot to stretch, but I never walked. I didn't come here to walk. I came to run. That's the reason-the only reason-I flew all the way to the northern tip of Japan. No matter how slow I might run, I wasn't about to walk. That was the rule. ~ haruki-murakami, @wisdomtrove 15:Japan's very interesting. Some people think it copies things. I don't think that anymore. I think what they do is reinvent things. They will get something that's already been invented and study it until they thoroughly understand it. In some cases, they understand it better than the original inventor. ~ steve-jobs, @wisdomtrove 16:There will be a shifting of the poles. There will be upheavals in the Arctic and the Antarctic that will make fotr the eruption of volcanos in the Torrid areas... The upper portion of Europe will be changed in the blink of an eye. The earth will be broken up in the western portion of America. The greater portion of Japan must go into the sea. ~ edgar-cayce, @wisdomtrove 17:Since World War II, Japan has spawned enormous numbers of new religions featuring the supernatural... . In Thailand, diseases are treated with pills manufactured from pulverized sacred Scripture. Witches are today being burned in South Africa... . The worldwide TM [Transcendental Meditation] organization has an estimated valuation of $3 billion. For a fee, they promise to make you invisible, to enable you to fly. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 18:The birds sang, the proles sang. the Party did not sing. All round the world, in London and New York, in Africa and Brazil, and in the mysterious, forbidden lands beyond the frontiers, in the streets of Paris and Berlin, in the villages of the endless Russian plain, in the bazaars of China and Japan everywhere stood the same solid unconquerable figure, made monstrous by work and childbearing, toiling from birth to death and still singing. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 19:I received a letter just before I left office from a man. I don't know why he chose to write it, but I'm glad he did. He wrote that you can go to live in France, but you can't become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Italy, but you can't become a German, an Italian. He went through Turkey, Greece, Japan and other countries. But he said anyone, from any corner of the world, can come to live in the United States and become an American. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove 20:In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 21:Norway, Iceland, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark, and the United Kingdom are among the least religious societies on earth. According to the United Nations' Human Development Report (2005), they are also the healthiest, as indicated by life expectancy, adult literacy, per capita income, educational attainment, gender equality, homicide rate, and infant mortality. . . . Conversely, the fifty nations now ranked lowest in terms of the United Nations' human development index are unwaveringly religious. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 22:Listen - God only exists in people's minds. Especially in Japan, God's always been kind of a flexible concept. Look at what happened after the war. Douglas MacArthur ordered the divine emperor to quit being God, and he did, making a speech saying he was just an ordinary person. So after 1946 he wasn't God anymore. That's what Japanese gods are like& 23:Today Hindu revivalists, pious Muslims, Japanese nationalists and Chinese communists may declare their adherence to very different values and goals, but they have all come to believe that economic growth is the key to realising their disparate goals. Thus in 2014 the devout Hindu Narendra Modi was elected prime minister of India thanks largely to his success in boosting economic growth in his home state of Gujarat, and to the widely held view that only he could reinvigorate the sluggish national economy. Analogous views have kept the Islamist Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in power in Turkey since 2003. The name of his party – the Justice and Development Party – highlights its commitment to economic development, and the Erdoğan government has indeed managed to maintain impressive growth rates for more than a decade. Japan’s prime minister, the nationalist Shinzō Abe, came to office in 2012 pledging to jolt the Japanese economy out of two decades of stagnation. His aggressive and somewhat unusual measures to achieve this have been nicknamed Abenomics. Meanwhile in neighbouring China the Communist Party still pays lip service to traditional Marxist–Leninist ideals, but in practice is guided by Deng Xiaoping’s famous maxims that ‘development is the only hard truth’ and that ‘it doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice’. Which means, in plain language: do whatever it takes to promote economic growth, even if Marx and Lenin wouldn’t have been happy with it. In Singapore, as befits that no-nonsense city-state, they pursue this line of thinking even further, and peg ministerial salaries to the national GDP. When the Singaporean economy grows, government ministers get a raise, as if that is what their jobs are all about. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:I play a nobody in Japan. ~ Jackie Chan, #NFDB
2:Empress of Japan, noted ~ Claude M Bristol, #NFDB
3:special trip to Japan with ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
4:Half my fan mail comes from Japan. ~ Ben Barnes, #NFDB
5:Japan will need to foster deep ~ George Friedman, #NFDB
6:My clothes are very popular in Japan. ~ Vivienne Westwood, #NFDB
7:It is hard to be an individual in Japan. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
8:I love Japan, and Tokyo is my favorite city. ~ Barry Eisler, #NFDB
9:China will be the answer to Japan's problems. ~ Carlos Ghosn, #NFDB
10:It looks like they've been watching old Japan tapes! ~ CM Punk, #NFDB
11:In Japan, we say that “words make our reality.” The ~ Marie Kond, #NFDB
12:Christianity, to be effective in Japan, must change. ~ Shusaku Endo, #NFDB
13:No wonder this circuit failed. It says 'Made in Japan'. ~ Doc Brown, #NFDB
14:Japan is doing a big number on the yen, devaluing it. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
15:I really didn't intend to be a musician when I left Japan. ~ Ikue Mori, #NFDB
16:In Japan, people don't really sing about sexual content. ~ Utada Hikaru, #NFDB
17:Japan's biggest problems are conservatism and cowardice. ~ Tadashi Yanai, #NFDB
18:Japan, for me, will always be my inspiration source. ~ Nicola Formichetti, #NFDB
19:Japan is a great nation. It should begin to act like one. ~ John C Danforth, #NFDB
20:In Japan, artists and fans are rather far apart from each other. ~ Tite Kubo, #NFDB
21:We want full-scale normalisation of relations [with Japan]. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
22:If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan. ~ Alan Perlis, #NFDB
23:Turkey, Australia, and Japan are three of my top destinations. ~ Rick Riordan, #NFDB
24:The only thing that can change Japan is a change in government. ~ Katsuya Okada, #NFDB
25:I say, isn't that a shame [a trade with Japan], it's so one-sided. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
26:We can't defend Japan, a behemoth, selling us cars by the million. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
27:Yeah, I'd be happy to go back to Mexico or Japan to make another film. ~ Alex Cox, #NFDB
28:During the lifetime of Japan I became very neurotic, very paranoid. ~ David Sylvian, #NFDB
29:In Japan, Australia, and England there is such a strong youth culture. ~ Marc Newson, #NFDB
30:Japan is the perfect example of make plans, and watch God laugh. ~ Christopher Titus, #NFDB
31:When I finally got to go ride the mountains in Japan, it blew my mind. ~ Travis Rice, #NFDB
32:I might have played a little bit more in Europe than I have in Japan. ~ Billy Higgins, #NFDB
33:Clearly, Japan is a most important market for digital consumer products. ~ David Milne, #NFDB
34:Everything in Japan is hidden. Real life has an unlisted phone number. ~ Fran Lebowitz, #NFDB
35:Hippopotamus,
As the leaves fall to the ground
Mechs now leave Japan ~ Jo Walton,#NFDB
36:I can't tell you how important it was for us to be successful in japan. ~ Trip Hawkins, #NFDB
37:In Japan, organizations and people in the organization are synonymous. ~ Kenichi Ohmae, #NFDB
38:I want to go to Egypt and Japan and open orphanages... a chain of them. ~ Lindsay Lohan, #NFDB
39:Japan offers as much novelty perhaps as an excursion to another planet. ~ Isabella Bird, #NFDB
40:Yes, the European model remains superior to that of America and Japan. ~ Jacques Delors, #NFDB
41:Japanese is sort of a hobby of mine, and I can get around Japan with ease. ~ Dick Cavett, #NFDB
42:I went to the Tokyo Film Festival in Japan because I love Japanese cinema. ~ Leslie Caron, #NFDB
43:Japan appears to be the birthplace of the soup and the home of the stew. ~ Neil MacGregor, #NFDB
44:There's a tremendous amount of energy in Japan and, increasingly, in China. ~ Vinton Cerf, #NFDB
45:In Japan, there is less a culture of preserving old buildings than in Europe. ~ Tadao Ando, #NFDB
46:We aim to achieve general progress in relations between North Korea and Japan. ~ Shinzo Abe, #NFDB
47:My goal with the Canadian border is the same goal I have for Japan and Korea. ~ Mike Johanns, #NFDB
48:I had whale tartare when I was in Japan, but I probably wouldn't have it again. ~ Sasha Cohen, #NFDB
49:If plan A doesn't work, the alphabet has 25 more letters - 204 if you're in Japan. ~ Claire Cook, #NFDB
50:Japan never considers time together as time wasted. Rather, it is time invested. ~ Donald Richie, #NFDB
51:The recent trend in Japan is to utilize time in the early morning to take seminars. ~ Marie Kond, #NFDB
52:The new architecture of transparency and lightness comes from Japan and Europe. ~ Arthur Erickson, #NFDB
53:The new fans of Japan won’t be Orientalists, but they will be anime-savvy. ~ Morinosuke Kawaguchi, #NFDB
54:The United States trades more with the province of Ontario alone than with Japan. ~ Ronald Reagan, #NFDB
55:America is behind Europe and Japan in terms of accepting adult ideas in animation. ~ Bill Plympton, #NFDB
56:I've always said that playing rugby in Spain is like being a bullfighter in Japan. ~ Javier Bardem, #NFDB
57:Japan, Europe, [and] America probably [are] better than last year [2015], not China. ~ Jamie Dimon, #NFDB
58:Japan is really advanced. They don't go to the beach. The beach comes to them. ~ Gilbert Gottfried, #NFDB
59:The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up is a best seller in Japan, Germany, and the UK, ~ Marie Kond, #NFDB
60:I don't really do Japanese interviews. I don't think there's much call for me in Japan. ~ Nick Cave, #NFDB
61:This is almost the most famous story The last samurai - Samurai story - in Japan. ~ Hiroyuki Sanada, #NFDB
62:From Japan to Thailand, I keep discovering amazing talent, cuisine and food markets. ~ Daniel Boulud, #NFDB
63:I actually enjoyed getting lost in Japan's backroads, finding myself in a wasabi farm. ~ Travis Rice, #NFDB
64:Half of Japan still couldn't tell the difference between crime and politics. ~ Jon Courtenay Grimwood, #NFDB
65:I also won one from the emperor of Japan, with a prize for the arts. That's important. ~ Marcel Carne, #NFDB
66:India and Japan should develop a complementary relationship in information technology. ~ Yoshiro Mori, #NFDB
67:Is it true the green tea they serve in Japan at the end of your meal comes free? ~ Hiroshi Sakurazaka, #NFDB
68:lean manufacturing, a process that originated in Japan with the Toyota Production System, ~ Eric Ries, #NFDB
69:The help (in Japan) is very polite. They bow so much, you don't know which end to talk to. ~ Bob Hope, #NFDB
70:Japan and China, major buyers of Western-made aircraft, are now developing their own jets. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
71:They were ridiculous times. After I won my World Championship in 1976, I went to Japan. ~ Barry Sheene, #NFDB
72:I had become an atheist at the age of thirteen, when atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. ~ Paul Krassner, #NFDB
73:So, Japan as a country has lost its vigor, it feels very much closed in for various reasons. ~ Naoto Kan, #NFDB
74:Chopsticks box! I didn't know before and put them on the table and my Japan friends scolded me. ~ Seungri, #NFDB
75:espionage—against countries as diverse as Belgium, Japan, Brazil, and Germany—in stark terms: ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
76:The price of mackerel!” says Madame Fontineau.” You’d think they had to sail to Japan for it! ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
77:A lot of country making films in English, but in Japan we are very shy to speak English. ~ Hiroyuki Sanada, #NFDB
78:I'm flying to China and Japan - if you think Beckham is a big name, you should see me there. ~ Phil Taylor, #NFDB
79:It is possible for Japan to become the model of a society that does not rely on nuclear power. ~ Naoto Kan, #NFDB
80:I've done a lot of Samurai film in Japan, and sometimes done the choreography by myself. ~ Hiroyuki Sanada, #NFDB
81:Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. ~ Pema ChödrönBuddha | Kamakura, Japan, #NFDB
82:It would be really nice to have a venue stop in Japan someday. Japan would be perfect for it. ~ Travis Rice, #NFDB
83:Sarah Palin finally heard what happened in Japan and she's demanding that we invade 'Tsunami.' ~ Bill Maher, #NFDB
84:I promise to protect Japan's land and sea, and the lives of the Japanese people no matter what. ~ Shinzo Abe, #NFDB
85:People in Japan have experienced many tsunamis and various earthquakes throughout the ages. ~ Hayao Miyazaki, #NFDB
86:Japan will not abandon the fight for the Philippines even if Tokyo should be reduced to ashes! ~ Iwane Matsui, #NFDB
87:Let them bomb Japan with that nasty missile. Their missile cannot load a nuclear warhead. ~ Shintaro Ishihara, #NFDB
88:It is mainly because of the unorganized state of the Chinese masses that Japan dares to bully us. ~ Mao Zedong, #NFDB
89:My staff was unanimous in believing that Japan was on the point of collapse and surrender. ~ Douglas MacArthur, #NFDB
90:Americans are somehow obsessed with her, and something about me hit a spot with people in Japan. ~ Utada Hikaru, #NFDB
91:Donald Trump's idea that more nations should get nuclear weapons. Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea. ~ Tim Kaine, #NFDB
92:[My muse] feels nostalgic for Japan, and, perhaps strangely, for the pioneer days of America. ~ Quentin S Crisp, #NFDB
93:We say in Japan that those who travel for love find a thousand miles not longer than one. Though ~ Marc Cameron, #NFDB
94:You have your own culture and your own ways of doing things. I hope Japan continues on this path. ~ Jamie Dimon, #NFDB
95:America cannot afford to defend Saudi Arabia, Japan, Germany, South Korea, and many other places. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
96:Foreigners who think of Japan as a polite society have never ridden the Yamanote at rush hour. The ~ Barry Eisler, #NFDB
97:On a mountain above the clouds once lived a man who had been the gardener of the emperor of Japan. ~ Tan Twan Eng, #NFDB
98:Reading about Japan in the West is often like looking at a funhouse mirror through a kaleidoscope. ~ Nick Mamatas, #NFDB
99:You should hear the guy who dubs me in Japan. I like him the most. He has a high squeaky voice. ~ James MacArthur, #NFDB
100:Among the other enthusiastic dumpers were Russia, China, Japan and nearly all the nations of Europe. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
101:I speak of the old Japan, because out of the ashes of the old Japan there has risen a new Japan. ~ Shigeru Yoshida, #NFDB
102:I started my career as a singer in Japan, but left it all behind to focus on my dancing career. ~ Carrie Ann Inaba, #NFDB
103:Japan is our rival, not our enemy. Japan is a competitor... Bashing a Toyota won't make a better car. ~ Ross Perot, #NFDB
104:The bond between America and Japan and the friendship between our two peoples runs very, very deep. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
105:If Facebook were a country, it would be the 8th most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan. ~ Mark Zuckerberg, #NFDB
106:In Japan people drive on the left. In China people drive on the right. In Vietnam it doesn't matter. ~ P J O Rourke, #NFDB
107:21. With Erin in Kyoto, 2010: Like Reed and Lisa, she got a special trip to Japan with her father. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
108:A vote for Japan is a vote for the future of rugby. We will do our best to make rugby a global sport. ~ Yoshiro Mori, #NFDB
109:Each time I visit Japan, I am reminded of how Canadian I am and how little racial connection matters. ~ David Suzuki, #NFDB
110:For all our talk about modern enlightenment, Japan is still quite openly a land of kept women. ~ Ry nosuke Akutagawa, #NFDB
111:The Russians could have some (warheads) aimed at Japan, so if we act up they can destroy our economy. ~ P J O Rourke, #NFDB
112:The thing I can say about Japan is they were progressive for a country that is very male dominant. ~ Brandi Chastain, #NFDB
113:The desire to see Okinawa returned to Japan developed into a broad national consensus among our people. ~ Eisaku Sato, #NFDB
114:Basically, people in other countries don't want to have to work quite as flat-out as they do in Japan. ~ Tadanobu Asano, #NFDB
115:I've been to Japan so many times, but I still constantly stumble across things that are so foreign to me. ~ Travis Rice, #NFDB
116:Yes, I will take Japan’s ersatz politeness over Moldova’s genuine rudeness any time. Thank you very much. ~ Eric Weiner, #NFDB
117:I want Japan to think and say that we are better off for JPMorgan having been here through thick and thin. ~ Jamie Dimon, #NFDB
118:I was told that [Japan journalists] wanted to see my dog, Yume. You can see that she is in great shape. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
119:We pray that henceforth not only Japan but all mankind may know the blessings of harmony and progress. ~ Shigeru Yoshida, #NFDB
120:I have experienced failure as a politician and for that very reason, I am ready to give everything for Japan. ~ Shinzo Abe, #NFDB
121:Well actually, we are working on the live album from the shows in Japan. I'm trying to get that finished. ~ Bootsy Collins, #NFDB
122:If America would withdraw from South Korea, there could be a power struggle between such as China and Japan. ~ Kim Dae jung, #NFDB
123:One must learn, if one is to see the beauty in Japan, to like an extraordinarily restrained and delicate loveliness ~ Miriam, #NFDB
124:Since 2010, America has put more people back to work than Europe, Japan, and all advanced economies combined. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
125:We're a country that owes $20 trillion. They [Japan, Germany, South Korea, Saudi Arabia] have to help us out. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
126:After college, I wanted to learned about myself as an American, so I left the United States and went to Japan. ~ Bruce Feiler, #NFDB
127:I was a star in Italy, Austrailia, Germany and Japan before the American stations ever paid attention at all. ~ Nancy Sinatra, #NFDB
128:V-J Day, or Victory in Japan Day, marks the date of the Japanese surrender that ended fighting in the Pacific. ~ Doc Hastings, #NFDB
129:Compared to industry in Europe or Japan, where industry was based on a craft tradition, we are sadly behind. ~ Arthur Erickson, #NFDB
130:In Japan, first names are only for who you're married to, or if you're being rude,' the watchmaker explained. ~ Natasha Pulley, #NFDB
131:Anime fans in Japan have been petitioning the government for the right to legally marry a two-dimensional character. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
132:I get constantly mistaken for Elijah Wood. I was in Japan and someone held out a photo of him for me to sign. ~ Daniel Radcliffe, #NFDB
133:From the way of Go the beauty of Japan and the Orient had fled. Everything had become science and regulation. ~ Yasunari Kawabata, #NFDB
134:I only go to Japan when there's someone who can afford to bring me there, and consequently I may never go again! ~ William Gibson, #NFDB
135:We have new developing ties with Japan whom always supports our democratic process and economic development. ~ Ali Abdullah Saleh, #NFDB
136:Fish from all over the world, from deep in the sea, wind up in countries from Germany to Japan. That is just crazy. ~ Sylvia Earle, #NFDB
137:The people in Japan know more about the history of jazz and the musicians than the people in the United States do. ~ Billy Higgins, #NFDB
138:The vine that we know by the name “kudzu” arrived in Philadelphia as a gift from Japan to honor the 1876 centennial. ~ Hope Jahren, #NFDB
139:For a century and a half now, America and Japan have formed one of the great and enduring alliances of modern times. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
140:I assure you that interest in Japanese culture in Russia is just as strong as interest in Russian culture in Japan. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
141:The principal linkages between Japan and the U.S. global economies are trade, financial markets, and commodity markets. ~ Mark Zandi, #NFDB
142:I will say that the food in both Japan and Italy was immaculate. I don't remember having bad food in either country. ~ Daniel Gillies, #NFDB
143:The Japan-U.S. alliance is an irreplaceable alliance. And I would like to further consolidate and broaden that alliance. ~ Shinzo Abe, #NFDB
144:After the Second World War, people in Japan no longer died for their country, and even that expression was no longer used. ~ Naoto Kan, #NFDB
145:But, I've made films in Japan, in Yugoslavia, all over Europe, all over the United States, Mexico, but not Hollywood. ~ Sydney Pollack, #NFDB
146:I was born into a very important family in Japan. My grandfather was a descendant of the Emperor, and we were very wealthy. ~ Yoko Ono, #NFDB
147:My God, how long would you have let me wander around Prague before you said 'hold up a minute, Helga, this isn't Japan! ~ Abigail Roux, #NFDB
148:We represent companies from around the world who say, "I want to look at Japanese companies. I want to invest in Japan." ~ Jamie Dimon, #NFDB
149:When I race in Australia or Korea or Japan I know it will be a big change for me because Ferrari fans are worldwide. ~ Fernando Alonso, #NFDB
150:In America, unlike England, unlike Israel, unlike Japan, other democracies, we have elections that have staggered terms. ~ Barney Frank, #NFDB
151:It's only interesting when you're from somewhere else, like America or Japan. The further away the more interesting it is. ~ Aphex Twin, #NFDB
152:Miyazaki's films in Japan are bigger than Titanic. He's an incredible rock star there. In the US, they don't do as well. ~ Henry Selick, #NFDB
153:Japan, newly emerging on the world scene in the late nineteenth century, sought its science and engineering in Scotland. ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
154:Japan needs to cooperate with China economically. This is understood better by the business community than the government. ~ Sadako Ogata, #NFDB
155:The basic stupidity of modern Japan is that we’ve learned absolutely nothing from our contact with other Asian peoples. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
156:There are two types of depreciation. There is one where you're manipulating currencies. And that's not what Japan is doing. ~ Jamie Dimon, #NFDB
157:In Japan, it is the custom to send New Year’s cards to convey New Year’s greetings (many have lottery numbers at the bottom). ~ Marie Kond, #NFDB
158:The defensive perimeter [of the United States in East Asia] runs along the Aleutians to Japan and then goes to the Ryukyus. ~ Dean Acheson, #NFDB
159:The worldwide, agelong struggle between fascism and democracy will not stop when the fighting ends in Germany and Japan. ~ Henry A Wallace, #NFDB
160:When I became a man, I put away childish things and got more elaborate and expensive childish things from France and Japan. ~ P J O Rourke, #NFDB
161:By the way, Japan is also known to be actively engaged in manned space flights as part of the International Space Station. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
162:I do think there will be more Japanese companies expanding out of Japan, and there will be more cross-border flow from Japan. ~ Jamie Dimon, #NFDB
163:post·ing n. 1 CHIEFLY BRIT. an appointment to a job, esp. one abroad or in the armed forces: he requested a posting to Japan. ~ Erin McKean, #NFDB
164:The genius of Japan lies in imitation and improvement, that of India in origination. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram - II, The Asiatic Role, #NFDB
165:We're at war with Japan. We were attacked by Japan. Do you want to kill Japanese, or would you rather have Americans killed? ~ Curtis LeMay, #NFDB
166:Yes. Japan will overrun us," the scholar said. "But we will turn them into Chinese. Give us five hundred years. You wait. ~ Kiana Davenport, #NFDB
167:In fact, the Senkaku Islands are... inherent territory of Japan that is recognized in our history and also by international law. ~ Naoto Kan, #NFDB
168:It is important that both Japan and the United States continue to invest very heavily in the alliance to build up our defense. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
169:President Obama went to India, South Korea, then Japan. He's going to keep travelling until he finds his birth certificate. ~ David Letterman, #NFDB
170:I guess they needed a maze in Japan, where everything's neat and tidy. In America everybody's already wandering around lost. ~ Jonathan Lethem, #NFDB
171:I'm not a big star in Japan. I'm an actor. I have a very normal life. Four days a week, I cook at home. A star doesn't do that. ~ Ken Watanabe, #NFDB
172:I would like to inform you with great satisfaction of a new step forward on establishing partnership between Russia and Japan ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
173:Mrs. Japan and Mrs. Romania had unpronounceable names, the former free-floating with vowels, the latter fortressed by consonants. ~ Monica Wood, #NFDB
174:Word has it . . . the stone is from Japan, it's very ancient, it belonged to a shogun in the eleventh century." - a taxidermist ~ Anthony Doerr, #NFDB
175:You have to be able to negotiate our trade deals. You have to be able to negotiate, that's right, with Japan, with Saudi Arabia. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
176:Girly’ products can spur Japan’s growth in this century every bit as much as, if not more than, the ‘manly’ technologies. ~ Morinosuke Kawaguchi, #NFDB
177:Rock and roll is catching on all over . . . France . . . England . . . They even have it in Japan, only over there they call it judo. ~ Bob Hope, #NFDB
178:When doing business in Japan, process, manners, and how you work on something is more important than the final results ~ Hector Garcia Puigcerver, #NFDB
179:Abe’s grandfather was Kishi Nobusuke, a wily old fox who was the minister in charge of war industry from 1941 until Japan’s surrender. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
180:Americans are so often thrown by Japan. It looks familiar but, an inch below the surface, it isn't anything like the West at all. ~ Cathy Davidson, #NFDB
181:Galileo and Kepler had "dangerous thoughts" (as they are called in Japan), and so have the most intelligent men of our own day. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
182:Imperialism and slavery are no white male monopoly, but are everywhere from Egypt, Assyria, and Persia to India, China and Japan. ~ Camille Paglia, #NFDB
183:In Japan censorship is practiced not only by the government when it tampers with textbooks but by the media, which police themselves. ~ Iris Chang, #NFDB
184:Japan Air’s orbital terminus was a white toroid studded with domes and ringed with the dark-rimmed oval openings of docking bays. ~ William Gibson, #NFDB
185:We will do everything in our power to protect our allies, South Korea and Japan, including installing even more missile defense. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
186:Everything can draw inspiration: a vintage cloth, a book, a street-when I was in Japan, I was deeply inspired by Japanese pharmacies. ~ Renzo Rosso, #NFDB
187:I want to reassure our allies in Japan and South Korea and elsewhere that we have mutual defense treaties and we will honor them. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
188:Japan can't get anything on the market very cheaply because it has a large, relatively highly paid workforce which you can't fire. ~ Howard Stringer, #NFDB
189:The United States has renewed our leadership in the Asia-Pacific, prime Minister Abe is leading Japan to a new role on the world stage. ~ Shinzo Abe, #NFDB
190:Whatever doubts or vexations one has in Japan, it is only necessary to ask one's self: "Well, who are the best people to live with? ~ Lafcadio Hearn, #NFDB
191:I can take pot or leave it. I got busted in Japan for it. I was nine days without it and there wasn't a hint of withdrawal, nothing. ~ Paul McCartney, #NFDB
192:I first met Hanson over in Japan and they gave me some great advice about the fans and they seem real down to earth. They're great. ~ Meredith Brooks, #NFDB
193:I just want everybody to understand and fully know that the United States of America stands behind Japan, its great ally, 100 percent. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
194:[People] are tired of being ripped off by every single country that does business with us. Whether it's China, Japan, Mexico, Vietnam. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
195:For decades, Japan has been a friend and reliable trading partner with the United States, and I anticipate that relationship will prosper. ~ Jim Costa, #NFDB
196:I've never really wanted to go to Japan. Simply because I don’t like eating fish. And I know that's very popular out there in Africa. ~ Britney Spears, #NFDB
197:Japan: A stranger hands you a stone and asks you to hold it. Puzzled, you take it. The stone grows. And grows until you are crushed ~ Eliot Weinberger, #NFDB
198:Our failure to properly deal with Germany and Japan early cost the world dearly later on. We dare not make the same mistake with China. ~ Steve Forbes, #NFDB
199:I love playing in Japan! It's always like being in the ancient past and the future at the same time. And the fans sing along to every word. ~ Lisa Loeb, #NFDB
200:I was born in Japan and raised in Japan, but those are the only things that make me Japanese, I've grown up reading books from all over. ~ Hideo Kojima, #NFDB
201:Japan has more specialists of Immanuel Kant than Germany does
[RIS 2016 Lecture on A Young Muslim's Guide to the Modern World] ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr,#NFDB
202:3.6) In Japan"The most important work assigned to women in Japan is child-making. Maternity is considered as the principal role of woman..." ~ The Mother, #NFDB
203:As the largest and most developed democracies of Asia (India and Japan), we have a mutual stake in each other's progress and prosperity. ~ Manmohan Singh, #NFDB
204:The Japanese Prime Minister has apologized for Japan's part in World War II. However, he still hasn't mentioned anything about karaoke. ~ David Letterman, #NFDB
205:The role of Italy and of Austria has diminished as has that of France and Britain; Germany and Japan have suffered catastrophically. ~ Emily Greene Balch, #NFDB
206:Whenever I go overseas I buy funny eyelashes. For example the same brand that are in Japan and England are different styles. So I bought both. ~ Park Bom, #NFDB
207:Modern life is so thin and shallow and fake. I look forward to when developers go bankrupt, Japan gets poorer and wild grasses take over. ~ Hayao Miyazaki, #NFDB
208:The last time I was in Japan as President of Russia was 11 years ago, if memory serves. I later visited in my capacity as Prime Minister. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
209:CCC wanted everyone to believe that he had done what he set out to do – sailed west to find Japan in the east. He made his men swear an oath… ~ Terry Deary, #NFDB
210:For me, trying to expand the energy to make one movie in Hollywood would be the equivalent in terms of energy to making 10 movies in Japan. ~ Takashi Miike, #NFDB
211:For sheer majestic geography and sublime scale, nothing beats Alaska and the Yukon. For culture, Japan. And for all-around affection, Australia. ~ Sam Abell, #NFDB
212:But anything that you hear about Japan is nothing like what you see when you actually go over there and see it, you know, in a real situation. ~ Billy Higgins, #NFDB
213:Disciple : But the radio and telephone are a great success in Japan and in Europe; one can listen to the best musicians for four to six hours. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
214:I think that people here expect miracles. American management thinks that they can just copy from Japan - but they don't know what to copy! ~ W Edwards Deming, #NFDB
215:country. The youngsters became independent; the idea of living isolated in a poor imitation of Japan was finished. We integrated into America. ~ Isabel Allende, #NFDB
216:Japan has a low crime rate, unless you count the fact that approximately every fifteen minutes the entire Cabinet gets indicted for taking bribes. ~ Dave Barry, #NFDB
217:Russia, China, Japan, Mexico, all countries will respect America far more when I'm leading it, far more than they do under past administrations. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
218:The goal of what Japan's central bank is doing is to create growth. If it actually creates growth, in the long run, it will lead to appreciation. ~ Jamie Dimon, #NFDB
219:About 70 percent of total robot sales take place in Japan, China, the United States, South Korea, and Germany—known as the “big five” in robotics. ~ Alec J Ross, #NFDB
220:In Japan, so many emoticons have been created that it’s reasonable to assume Japanese appreciate their convenience more than anyone else. ~ Morinosuke Kawaguchi, #NFDB
221:In Japan, we say that “words make our reality.” The words we see and with which we come into contact tend to bring about events of the same nature. ~ Marie Kond, #NFDB
222:...Poetic injustice...having made over Japan in our own image. The Japanese, ...are now, next to us, the greatest consumers of meat in the world. ~ Mother Jones, #NFDB
223:After the tsunami in Japan, we were open for business. In fact, I flew there 10 days after the tsunami to show our support for the Japanese people. ~ Jamie Dimon, #NFDB
224:And so I told him how living in Japan would give him a leisure no mere tourist has, to know the rhythms of the place, a land of tiny poems. ~ Donna George Storey, #NFDB
225:Nobody likes being criticised, particularly by players who will be in Disneyland this summer on their holidays rather than the World Cup in Japan ~ Phil Thompson, #NFDB
226:We find Japan a little more difficult to understand because it has proven its 20th century prowess though the ancient traditions still persist. ~ Arthur Erickson, #NFDB
227:I have friends from China - by the way I love China. I love Japan. I have people that buy my apartments, I have people that work for me from China. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
228:It was like being born in Germany after World War II, being from Japan after Pearl Harbor, or America after Hiroshima. History was a bitch sometimes. ~ Kami Garcia, #NFDB
229:In Japan, mothers insist on achievement and accomplishment as a sign of love and respect. Thus to fail places children in a highly shamed situation. ~ Michael Lewis, #NFDB
230:Japan was taming her own Wild West as the Americans had theirs: by bringing the light of civilization through divine war against a barbaric enemy. ~ James D Bradley, #NFDB
231:We've had great conversations with the United Kingdom and meetings, Israel, Mexico, Japan, China and Canada, really, really productive conversations. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
232:Japan and Singapore never had more than a sprinkling of inhabitants of European descent, yet they are as prosperous as many parts of Western Europe. ~ Daron Acemo lu, #NFDB
233:No compromise is possible and the victory of the democracies can only be complete with the utter defeat of the war machines of Germany and Japan. ~ George C Marshall, #NFDB
234:This quake, tsunami and the nuclear accident are the biggest crises for Japan [in decades] ... We will continue to handle it in a state of maximum alert. ~ Naoto Kan, #NFDB
235:Tokyo is like the New York of Asia. Although the people there are all basically from Japan, they celebrate what they like about various cultures. ~ Pharrell Williams, #NFDB
236:Turkey, Japan do great work because they can keep under control their little personal selfishness, egoism, jealousy, etc. when they get down to work. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
237:Almost a century has passed since Japan first entered the world community by concluding a treaty of amity with the United States of America in 1854. ~ Shigeru Yoshida, #NFDB
238:I was born in Japan, so for me, Uniqlo is a family brand. My granny used to wear Uniqlo. And my Italian dad wore Uniqlo. I wore Uniqlo, of course. ~ Nicola Formichetti, #NFDB
239:The neck is kind of what's sexy in Japan, so you have to have the kimono a little bit back. It was just a whole different way of appealing to what was sexy. ~ Lucy Liu, #NFDB
240:I was an actor in Japan and I'm a regular on about three shows. I'm grateful for all of it. My personal activities like that help Big Bang as a whole as well. ~ Seungri, #NFDB
241:As much as I'd wanted to stay in Japan to be with him, the real reason was that I wanted control of my life. I was connected to the ink and I belonged here. ~ Amanda Sun, #NFDB
242:I haven't changed. If it seems I'm becoming more mainstream, doesn't that mean instead that Japan is aligning itself with me? I haven't changed one bit. ~ Takafumi Horie, #NFDB
243:I wanted to have a title that wasn't in English so that someone in France, for instance, could ask for 'dix-huit' or the someone in Japan could ask for 'juhachi.' ~ Moby, #NFDB
244:Just like we did in Japan, in South Korea. Just like is happening in Iraq. Laura [Bush] and I feel very strongly that if the United States were to leave. ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
245:We Americans have to tell Japan in a very nice way, we have to tell Germany, all of these countries, South Korea, we have to say, you have to help us out. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
246:As much as I'd wanted to stay in Japan to be with him, the real reason was that I wanted control of my life. I was connected to the ink, and I belonged here. ~ Amanda Sun, #NFDB
247:California Marijuana farmers are worried that radiation from Japan could affect their crops. Or maybe for some strange reason they're just being paranoid. ~ Conan O Brien, #NFDB
248:I guess I can swing it,then." A night free from cow print and grease? Bleep yes I could swing it. "So where to? Italy? Iceland? Ooh,I could go for Japan. ~ Kiersten White, #NFDB
249:In 1977 we played America and Europe three times, and Japan - my marriage suffered as a result. My then wife took the kids to Canada to be near her parents ~ Phil Collins, #NFDB
250:In Japan, violence isn't as controversial as it is in the West. Pornography is more restricted, but it's not hard to make a crazy, extremely violent film. ~ Takashi Miike, #NFDB
251:Japan is dealing us a dead hand. For two years we have watched the Japanese drag their feet and we can't let them continue to slam the door in our faces. ~ Craig L Thomas, #NFDB
252:What I worry about is not just Nissan, but Japanese manufacturers losing motivation to maintain production in Japan. The high yen is definitely a headwind. ~ Carlos Ghosn, #NFDB
253:Al Gore wants us to clean up our factories...when China and other countries couldn't care less. China, Japan, and India are laughing at America's stupidity. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
254:Japan's inexplicable lack of response to even consider a move to re-open their market to U.S. beef will sorely tempt economic trade action against Japan. ~ Saxby Chambliss, #NFDB
255:The city of 500,000 is wedged between a granite spine of mountains zigzagging up and down the coast and the Sea of Japan, which Koreans call the East Sea. ~ Barbara Demick, #NFDB
256:The future of Japan's economic growth depends on us having the willpower and the courage to sail without hesitation onto the rough seas of global competition. ~ Shinzo Abe, #NFDB
257:We believe in fair exchange rates and Japan doesn't practice that. They have massive U.S. dollar reserves, and they use them to intervene regularly. ~ G Richard Wagoner Jr, #NFDB
258:We can take our Japanese clients around the world. We can take them to Brazil, Europe, anywhere. And we also take companies from around the world into Japan. ~ Jamie Dimon, #NFDB
259:Compared to Canada, Japan, or any nation in western Europe, the United States combines by far the most expensive system with the shortest life expectancy. ~ Robert J Gordon, #NFDB
260:I've been to Japan, I've been to China, I've been to Africa, I've been to the Middle East, I've been to Europe a little bit. I've never been to South America. ~ Colin Quinn, #NFDB
261:The American oligarchy increasingly has less in common with the American people than it does with the equivalent oligarchies in Germany or Mexico or Japan. ~ Lewis H Lapham, #NFDB
262:The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan. ~ Chester W Nimitz, #NFDB
263:The US bombed them back to traditional values – feminism does not exist in Japan. While I don’t like judging an entire culture…that does not excuse them. ~ Anita Sarkeesian, #NFDB
264:We believe we have no territorial problems at all. It is only Japan that believes it has territorial problems with Russia. We are ready to talk about this. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
265:So such an American troops presence in Korea in the South and Japan, total some 100,000 should stay there forever, even after unification of Korean peninsula. ~ Kim Dae jung, #NFDB
266:That’s not because journalists know more about Japan. It’s because they knew less: they had the ability to sort through what they knew and find a pattern. ~ Malcolm Gladwell, #NFDB
267:In case Japan ventures to attack the Mongolian People's Republic, seeking to destroy its independence, we will have to assist the Mongolian People's Republic. ~ Joseph Stalin, #NFDB
268:Japan would live and die by the race card—defining (and demonizing) America as “white” and thus Japan as a kindred but clearly superior “yellow” people. ~ Victor Davis Hanson, #NFDB
269:One of the real challenges, since we're working in so many places - Mexico, Japan, Brazil - is understanding variations, both in terms of culture and context. ~ Richard Meier, #NFDB
270:The method (of learning Japanese) recommended by experts is to be born as a Japanese baby and raised by a Japanese family, in Japan. And even then it's not easy. ~ Dave Barry, #NFDB
271:A people that has licked a more formidable enemy than Germany or Japan, primitive North America . . . a country whose national motto has been "root, hog, or die." ~ D W Brogan, #NFDB
272:I'll be honest, I never saw myself making a ninja movie, never entertained the idea. I think ninja films can be quite cheesy unless you do them in feudal Japan. ~ Scott Adkins, #NFDB
273:The rickshaw was invented by an American missionary, Jonathan Scobie, who first used it to wheel his invalid wife through the streets of Yokohama, Japan, in 1869. ~ John Lloyd, #NFDB
274:[Yasuhiro] Yamashita is a respected judo master not only in Japan but across the world. To me, he is an example of an outstanding athlete and a very good man. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
275:If America could get along with Russia - and by the way, China and Japan and everyone. If we could get along, it would be a positive thing, not a negative thing. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
276:In my opinion, there are two focal points of the war danger. The first focal point is the Far East zone of Japan. The second focal point in the zone is Germany. ~ Joseph Stalin, #NFDB
277:Japan, Germany, South Korea, these are very rich, powerful countries. Saudi Arabia, nothing but money. We Americans protect Saudi Arabia. Why aren't they paying? ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
278:The absence of a peace treaty [with Japan] is an anachronism we inherited from the past and it must be removed. However, how to do this is a complicated issue. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
279:You can go to Japan, China, all the European, African, Arab, and South American countries, and man, they know me. I can't name a nation where they don't know me. ~ Muhammad Ali, #NFDB
280:Additionally, I will be respectfully asking countries, such as Germany, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, to pay more for the tremendous security we provide them. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
281:I loved Japan. I used to read a lot about it when I was a child. And I always wanted to go. And it was delightful. I absolutely loved it. What a smashing place. ~ Billy Connolly, #NFDB
282:I'm going to quit music. Then the government of Japan asked me to write a piano concerto - that was an offer I couldn't refuse, so that brought me back to music again. ~ Yoshiki, #NFDB
283:Whenever I sat down to write something it was never anything I took lightly. It was something that I'd want you, somebody in Japan, and somebody [over there to hear it]. ~ Rakim, #NFDB
284:Books become my refuge. Reading keeps me hopeful. I fall in love with small poems, the shorter the better- haiku from Japan, and tiny rhymes by Emily Dickinson. ~ Margarita Engle, #NFDB
285:I do not think any reasonable person can doubt that in India, China and Japan, if the knowledge of birth control existed, the birthrate would fall very rapidly ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
286:I noticed that democracy was broken and tried to work on fixing that in Japan. Then I realized that it was broken all over the place and decided to work on that too. ~ Joichi Ito, #NFDB
287:It seems the best approach for any venture is a combo platter - Japan's quality-consciousness paired with America's willingness to experiment and (sometimes) fail. ~ Daniel H Pink, #NFDB
288:A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness.
Imperial Hotel note paper, Tokyo Japan, 1922 ~ Albert Einstein,#NFDB
289:I myself have been on my own and utterly independent since I graduated. I haven't belonged to any company or any system. It isn't easy to live like this in Japan. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
290:In Seoul, people like me get called Japanese bastards, and in Japan, I'm just another dirty Korean no matter how much money I make or how nice I am. So what the fuck? ~ Min Jin Lee, #NFDB
291:Self-deception ultimately explains Japan's plight. The Japanese have never accepted that change is in their interest - and not merely a response to U.S. criticism. ~ Paul Samuelson, #NFDB
292:Another question has been raised rather widely in Europe, in Japan as well as in the United States is what, to what extent will the euro become a reserve currency. ~ Robert C Solomon, #NFDB
293:I believe it is no secret that I like Japan very much - Japanese culture, sport, including judo, but it will not offend anyone if I say that I like Russia even more. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
294:I have a huge interest in Japan, which is well known, including its history and culture, and so it will be very interesting for me to see and learn more about Japan. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
295:My Christmas present to myself each year is to see how much air travel can open up the world and take me to places as far from sheltered California and Japan as possible. ~ Pico Iyer, #NFDB
296:Pam has always been my glamorous big sister - 13 years older than I. She played on the women's circuit for nine years and came home to tell me stories of France, Japan. ~ Tracy Austin, #NFDB
297:The ongoing dispute over the relocation of U.S. Marines on Okinawa should be quickly settled. This isn't just an issue for the U.S. and Japan. It has regional implications. ~ Ed Royce, #NFDB
298:I believe that this is not only the view of the people on both sides of the Strait. It is also the common expectation of the US, Japan and the international community. ~ Chen Shui bian, #NFDB
299:Nevertheless, China was unfortunately unable to understand Japan's real position, and it is greatly to be regretted that the Sino-Japanese War became one of long duration ~ Hideki Tojo, #NFDB
300:Since ancient times, people from throughout Asia have brought to Japan their talents, knowledge and energy, helping to lay the basis for Japan's existence as a country. ~ Daisaku Ikeda, #NFDB
301:Still, he had been a charismatic, talented scoundrel who almost certainly was on to a new woman after a week in Japan; there was nothing to long for or feel sorry for. ~ J Ryan Stradal, #NFDB
302:If you’re in Sacramento, Seattle, Canberra, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Phnom Penh, Cairo, Beijing, central Japan, central Sri Lanka, or Portland, space is closer than the sea. ~ Randall Munroe, #NFDB
303:In contrast to New Orleans, there was only minimal looting after the horrendous 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan - because, when you get down to it, Japanese aren't blacks. ~ Steve Sailer, #NFDB
304:I feel like Alain Delon, who once said, "It doesn't matter that I'm not a star in America because I'm a huge star in France, I'm a legend in Spain, and I'm a god in Japan. ~ James Toback, #NFDB
305:In Europe and Japan, bourgeois life lingers on. In Britain and America it has become the stuff of theme parks. The middle class is a luxury capitalism can no longer afford. ~ John N Gray, #NFDB
306:I've done Last Samurai in Japan, in LA, in New Zealand. Even in Japan it is very hard to shoot, because there's been so many changes. Only around a temple can we shoot. ~ Hiroyuki Sanada, #NFDB
307:On the other hand, the vast majority of all westernized countries, including every single European country along with Israel and Japan, do not offer birthright citizenship. ~ Nathan Deal, #NFDB
308:1. Japan reshuffles Cabinet. Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe reshuffled his inner circle on Wednesday, the first such move since he returned to office nearly two years ago. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
309:America's health care system is second only to Japan, Canada, Sweden, Great Britain, well ... all of Europe. But you can thank your lucky starts we don't live in Paraguay! ~ Matt Groening, #NFDB
310:I recently got into Haiku in Japan and I just think it's fantastic. Obviously, when you get rid of a whole section of illusion in your mind you're left with great precision. ~ John Lennon, #NFDB
311:There are monasteries in Japan where they teach Zen with rules, more rules than you can imagine, and you might feel comfortable with that. I don't teach that type of Zen. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
312:We don't mind that we still have troops in Germany, or that we still have troops in Japan or Korea. But they are not in danger, and we know that they are in danger in Iraq. ~ Thelma Drake, #NFDB
313:Every time I go to Japan and meet Capcom it is like going to see the Umbrella Corporation. You ask them things and they won't give you a straight answer about anything. ~ Paul W S Anderson, #NFDB
314:For me, creation can only come out of a certain kind of unhappiness. They say in Japan, this thing like the hungry spirit - the hungry mind - is what gets you going forward. ~ Rei Kawakubo, #NFDB
315:In the past, Japan through its colonial rule and aggression caused tremendous damage and suffering for the people of many countries, particularly those of Asian nations. ~ Junichiro Koizumi, #NFDB
316:Today osteoporosis affects more than 75 million people in the United States, Europe and Japan and causes more than 2.3 million fractures in the USA and Europe alone. ~ Gro Harlem Brundtland, #NFDB
317:I wouldn't call myself anti-nuclear. I seek a society non-reliant on nuclear energy, a society that can do without nuclear energy, and Japan can prove a role model. It’s possible. ~ Naoto Kan, #NFDB
318:Japan is an important ally of ours. Japan and the United States of the Western industrialized capacity, 60 percent of the GNP, two countries. That's a statement in and of itself. ~ Dan Quayle, #NFDB
319:The Prime Minister [Shindzo Abe] and I will negotiate proceeding from our national interests: the interests of Russia and the interests of Japan. We should find a compromise. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
320:Yes. I do about 70 shows a year, in the past year I've been to Italy, Australia, Japan, China, just about everywhere. I do it because I love singing. The money is a bonus. ~ Katherine Jenkins, #NFDB
321:Japan is very much a TV-centered entertainment industry. So, when you talk about big stars in Japan, generally they are people who are on television. I work mostly in movies. ~ Chiaki Kuriyama, #NFDB
322:People don't think that bread is part of Asian culture or Asian food culture, but it's quite prevalent in Northern China, and you see it throughout Japan and as you go to Taiwan. ~ David Chang, #NFDB
323:The greatest problem all around the world today, whether in America, Japan, China, Russia, India or anywhere else in the world, is that people are not in peace. People want peace. ~ Prem Rawat, #NFDB
324:Undoubtedly Internet has reduced the possibilities of taxation. Why should I buy something here if I can buy it from a company in Japan or England or Brazil with a lower tax? ~ Milton Friedman, #NFDB
325:Being Taiwanese in Japan was like being a guitar-playing monkey: their fluent Japanese elicited awe from the people they met, yet they were considered not-quite-whole people. ~ Shawna Yang Ryan, #NFDB
326:For some reason, I grew up generally believing that Japan and Korea were quite friendly. I do know that there is some bad history and the extremists on both sides are unreasonable. ~ Joichi Ito, #NFDB
327:For the version of this CD released in Japan, a translation of the English lyrics is included, but there are lots of places where meanings are lost in the process of translation. ~ Utada Hikaru, #NFDB
328:In Japan there is a lot of manga, but around manga there are video games, manga on cellphones, manga in card games... so people not only enjoy manga but also the products around it. ~ Tite Kubo, #NFDB
329:In Japan, violence in games is pretty much self-regulated.There's more violence in games in the U.S., in things like Mortal Kombat, where they rip out hearts and cut off heads. ~ Satoshi Tajiri, #NFDB
330:So that between the Cape of St. Maria and Japan we were four months and twenty-two days; at which time there were no more than six besides myself that could stand upon his feet. ~ William Adams, #NFDB
331:When I went to a school in Japan, they told me that both the teachers and students perform cleaning tasks here to keep the schools clean. I wondered why can't we do it in India. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB
332:After my first visit to Japan, in 1960, to work on a joint model building project at Osaka University, I maintained a continuing interest in the country and the entire Far East. ~ Lawrence Klein, #NFDB
333:I don't think anybody who is already with Donald Trump is going to be peeled off by his not knowing about NATO or why Japan does not have nuclear weapons, or things of that sort. ~ James Fallows, #NFDB
334:I have to decide Japanese strategy - shall we invade Japan proper or shall we bomb and blockade? That is my hardest decision to date. But I'll make it when I have all the facts. ~ Harry S Truman, #NFDB
335:I remember a great America where we made everything. There was a time when the only thing you got from Japan was a really bad cheap transistor radio that some aunt gave you for Christmas. ~ Cher, #NFDB
336:Japan learned from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that the tragedy wrought by nuclear weapons must never be repeated and that humanity and nuclear weapons cannot coexist. ~ Daisaku Ikeda, #NFDB
337:North Korea has nukes. Japan has a problem with that. I mean, they have a big problem with that. Maybe they would in fact be better off if they defend themselves from North Korea. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
338:The enemy of our games was always Japan, and the courses were so thorough that after the start of World War II, nothing that happened in the Pacific was strange or unexpected. ~ Chester W Nimitz, #NFDB
339:Doing anything in Japan as a sort of architecture - related project is just fantastic because they do everything so perfectly and so quickly. It's unlike anywhere else in the world. ~ Marc Newson, #NFDB
340:Japan and Europe seem to have a little more cultural education and so the crowds have been a little more big and enthusiastic, and the places I've played seem a little more classy. ~ Terry Bozzio, #NFDB
341:True combat power is arms multiplied by fighting spirit. If one of them is infinitely strong, you will succeed. —Asahi Shimbun newspaper, quoted in Japan at War: An Oral History ~ James D Bradley, #NFDB
342:For a German and a Finn, the truth is the truth. In Japan and Britain it is all right if it doesn’t rock the boat. In China there is no absolute truth. In Italy it is negotiable. ~ Richard D Lewis, #NFDB
343:In fact, the whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people.... The Japanese people are ... simply a mode of style, an exquisite fancy of art. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
344:When Elvira, Mistress Of The Dark came out, I got to go to Japan and Australia and France, Italy, Germany, everywhere with the movie. That was great, because I love traveling. ~ Cassandra Peterson, #NFDB
345:English is not the primary language for universities in China, Korea, and Japan, but they are being evaluated on the basis of publications in English and courses taught in English. ~ Henry Rosovsky, #NFDB
346:I knew I wanted to shoot in Japan early on. Years ago, we did a Japan segment in "The Community Project," and at the time I felt it was one of the better Japan segments ever captured. ~ Travis Rice, #NFDB
347:I wanted out of the navy so bad in '45, I faked homo to get a discharge. It didn't matter that the Germans surrendered, I knew we were heading to Japan and I was done with that scene. ~ Lenny Bruce, #NFDB
348:I would like to hook up with one of the great Japanese filmmakers, like the master that made Ringu, and I would like to take 'The Wicker Man' to Japan, except this time he's a ghost. ~ Nicolas Cage, #NFDB
349:God will destroy America by the hands of the Muslims. God will not give Japan or Europe the honor of bringing down the United States; this is an honor God will bestow upon Muslims. ~ Louis Farrakhan, #NFDB
350:I love going somewhere like Japan where you can't understand a word of the advertising - you just see it for its aesthetic beauty, without feeling that you're being sold something. ~ Stanley Donwood, #NFDB
351:Japan had held 132,134 western POWs and 35,756 of them died in detention, a death rate of 27 percent. In contrast, only 4 percent of the POWs held by the Germans and Italians died. ~ James D Bradley, #NFDB
352:Sitting on the floor of a room in Japan, looking out on a small garden with flowers blooming and dragonflies hovering in space, I suddenly felt as if I had been too long above my boots. ~ Mark Tobey, #NFDB
353:There's an interesting book called The Fugu Plan, written by Marvin Tokayer and Mary Swartz, which describes the circumstances when European Jews came to Japan, a semi-feudal society. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
354:This morning’s lecture was on how to avoid ninjas, which might have been interesting if step one hadn’t been “Stay out of Japan.” Furthermore, Crandall had quickly become sidetracked, ~ Stuart Gibbs, #NFDB
355:If you look at China - and frankly, Vietnam now is doing a big number, and you look at Japan and India and Mexico - Mexico's killing us at the border and they're killing us with trade. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
356:It is difficult to say which is more menacing. But both of [points of war danger -Japan and Germany] exist and both are smoldering. In comparison with these two principal focal points ~ Joseph Stalin, #NFDB
357:I would point out that Japan's proposal at the Versailles Peace Conference on the principle of racial equality was rejected by delegates such as those from Britain and the United States ~ Hideki Tojo, #NFDB
358:Japan has really great fans for all kinds of music. I think they're keeping metal alive. They're really great supporters, and they really love music. I think it's a total outlet for them. ~ P J Soles, #NFDB
359:Using the Japan-U.S. alliance as a basis, it is important that we maintain and develop cooperative relations with our neighboring countries such as China, South Korea, and Russia. ~ Junichiro Koizumi, #NFDB
360:In Japan they're definitely more over the top. They had four Boogie stacks and 20 guitars. But otherwise it's pretty much the same thing, except there's a translator. It's really nice. ~ John Petrucci, #NFDB
361:Members of the Rae Chorze-Fwaz order trace their origins back through Tibet, Japan, China, India, and ancient Egypt to the place the order was founded, the lost continent of Atlantis. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
362:Nations such as Finland, Canada, Japan, and South Korea spend time and resources improving the skills of their teachers, not selectively firing them in relation to student test scores. ~ Diane Ravitch, #NFDB
363:Sure, President Bush can say that the U.S. government won't fund stem cell research, but believe me, Japan is applauding. Because they will just do it first and get all the patents. ~ Kevin J Anderson, #NFDB
364:The way I formed my studio and how I organize things actually came out of the model of the Japanese animation studio and the manga industry. The manga industry is gigantic in Japan. ~ Takashi Murakami, #NFDB
365:We're not necessarily the ski boat, we're the skier. There are countries like Japan and Korea and others who are the ski boat at this point, but we're getting pulled right behind them. ~ Steve Largent, #NFDB
366:Japan in the 1930s became a garrison state.43 But it was one which carried within it the promise of a ‘warfare-welfare state’, offered social security in return for military sacrifice. ~ Niall Ferguson, #NFDB
367:Tour
Near a shrine in Japan he'd swept the path
and then placed camellia blossoms there.
Or -- we had no way of knowing -- he'd swept the path
between fallen camellias.
~ Carol Snow,#NFDB
368:Even if I'm in Japan and I don't speak Japanese and the woman facing me doesn't speak French but she's dressed in Rykiel, and she recognizes me, then we have a common language right away. ~ Sonia Rykiel, #NFDB
369:Every year far more people kill themselves in Japan than die through war or terrorism in Iraq. We go on and on about other countries, but I think Japanese society is pretty cruel too. ~ Fuminori Nakamura, #NFDB
370:I celebrated my 18th birthday in Japan, which was quite memorable; I was quite fascinated by the different traditions and the culture; it was so completely different to Australian culture. ~ Miranda Kerr, #NFDB
371:I sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended by my attempt at humor regarding the tragedy in Japan. I meant no disrespect, and my thoughts are with the victims and their families. ~ Gilbert Gottfried, #NFDB
372:One of the things I've always loved about anime is that, even though it comes from Japan, it's so international - so much of the big anime I love takes place in Italy or France or New York. ~ Ezra Koenig, #NFDB
373:I will aim to restore the Japan-U.S. alliance and Japan's strong diplomatic capabilities. Japan can't pursue a strong foreign policy without strengthening its alliance with the United States. ~ Shinzo Abe, #NFDB
374:Japan has joined the sanctions against the Russian Federation. How are we going to further economic relations on a new and much higher basis, at a higher level under the sanctions regime? ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
375:We do not trade territories although concluding a peace treaty with Japan is certainly a key issue and we would like to find a solution to this problem together with our Japanese friends. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
376:Finding a master of the dark art of ninjutsu in modern westernized Japan seems as unlikely as finding an active practitioner of the magic of Merlin in contemporary industrialized England. ~ Stephen K Hayes, #NFDB
377:If we do it, if we work to achieve all this [cultural exchange with Japan], we can and should talk about joint efforts toward ensuring international security, and not only in the Far East. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
378:Japan is the first nation in the world to accord 'comic books'--originally a 'humorous' form of entertainment mainly for young people--nearly the same social status as novels and films. ~ Frederik L Schodt, #NFDB
379:Next year [2017], we are going to hold a series of events there that we would like to call Russian Seasons [in Japan]. Over 40 different activities - and what is more, in different cities. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
380:The "third arrow" (of structural reform) is critically important. Japan has some of the best companies in the world, and if you look at their technology, their capability, it's extraordinary. ~ Jamie Dimon, #NFDB
381:America and Japan are the two leading world economies in terms of technology and innovative products. And in software, information-age technology and biotechnology the U.S. has an amazing lead. ~ Bill Gates, #NFDB
382:I was recording stuff with my dad when I was like five, six years old. I played with him on tour. I'd gone with him to Japan in '91, played some gigs, did a couple shows at the Albert Hall. ~ Dhani Harrison, #NFDB
383:Japan announced that it would not comply with this declaration [ 1956]. Later on, the Soviet Union also declared that the declaration could not be fulfilled unilaterally, by the USSR alone. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
384:My aesthetic sense was formed at a young age by what surrounded me: the narrow residential spaces of Japan and the mental escapes from those spaces that took the forms of manga and anime. ~ Takashi Murakami, #NFDB
385:The problem of Italy is not really a question of age. Japan has an older population, and it is now in full economic recovery. The problem is that Italy is old in the structure of the society. ~ Romano Prodi, #NFDB
386:The reason was the failure of both Japan and China to understand each other and the inability of America and the European powers to sympathize, without prejudice, with the peoples of East Asia ~ Hideki Tojo, #NFDB
387:There is a popular saying in Japan that goes “Tada yori takai mono wa nai,” meaning: “Nothing is more costly than something given free of charge.” THE UNSPOKEN WAY, MICHIHIRO MATSUMOTO, 1988 ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB
388:They kill hundreds of people, those pilots. I would have loved to have flown the plane that dropped the bomb on Japan. A couple of dudes killed hundreds of thousands. That f****** rules! Yeah! ~ Evan Wright, #NFDB
389:China is now expected to surpass Japan as the 2nd richest country in the world. They could become the richest, but that's only if we pay them the money we owe them, and that's not going to happen. ~ Jay Leno, #NFDB
390:She did not want to say it, because it made no practical sense, but in the end she went to Japan for the delicate sake cups, resting in her hand like a blossom; she went to Japan for loveliness. ~ Z Z Packer, #NFDB
391:But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade? ~ Alan Greenspan, #NFDB
392:So you set out to travel to Rome... and end up in Istanbul. You set off for Japan... and you end up on a train across Siberia. The journey, not the destination, becomes a source of wonder. ~ Loreena McKennitt, #NFDB
393:Everybody understands a slap in the face. In Japan, Belgium, or America, a punch is a punch. Comedy will be different in Europe or America or Japan, so my movies are very international. ~ Jean Claude Van Damme, #NFDB
394:Stay away from Europe, stay away from Japan, Australia. If you go to the Western world, you're gonna pay more money. You can spend five months in Bali for what you'd spend in one month in Europe. ~ Rita Gelman, #NFDB
395:Amsterdam must have more than a million people. But the only area where jazz is really profitable and successful in an economic sense is in Japan. That's because they haven't been exposed enough. ~ Norman Granz, #NFDB
396:Going there [Japan] in the early 80s was quite a culture shock. I think the bombardment of Shinjuku and all that would have filtered through, which certainly informed things we later filmed. ~ Stephen Mallinder, #NFDB
397:Golf's really fun in Japan because of the women caddies. ... I saw one guy start out playing alone with his caddie. By the 9th hole they were engaged and when they finished on 18 they had a foursome. ~ Bob Hope, #NFDB
398:I discovered not only Hana-ogi's enormous love but I also discovered her land, the tragic , doomed land of Japan, and from it I learned the fundamental secret of her country: too many people. ~ James A Michener, #NFDB
399:It is the love of ordinary people, in Burma, in Japan or anywhere else in the world, for justice and peace and freedom that is our surest defense against the forces of unreason and extremism. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi, #NFDB
400:It's not Africa that is destroying the African rainforest, it's selling concessions to timber companies that are not African, they are from the developed world - Japan, America, Germany, Britain. ~ Jane Goodall, #NFDB
401:I'm very sad to be compared with Warhol and The Factory, because I have no drugs, you know. We have no drug culture in Japan! Maybe it's because our attitude toward labor is totally different. ~ Takashi Murakami, #NFDB
402:In Japan, a new machine is able to select ripe strawberries based on subtle color variations and then pick a strawberry every eight seconds—working continuously and doing most of the work at night. ~ Martin Ford, #NFDB
403:I saw the various museum displays including scenes of torture while feeling heartfelt remorse and sorrow over the great pain and suffering inflicted on South Koreans by Japan's colonial rule. ~ Junichiro Koizumi, #NFDB
404:It took Congress less than an hour to vote unanimously for war on Japan—except for one nay vote by the longtime Montana pacifist Jeannette Rankin, who had also voted against entering World War I. ~ Winston Groom, #NFDB
405:My list would be Russia, Morocco, Turkey, and South Africa I'm doing which is somewhere I've wanted to go, Australia, Japan maybe, and China, if I have the energy to go and play at all those places. ~ A R Rahman, #NFDB
406:When I lived in Japan in the 1980s, I once was mistaken for Paul Newman, and I didn't have much more hair than I do now. My first reaction was that staying in Japan might be good for my social life. ~ Paul Saffo, #NFDB
407:Japan has introduced fiscal stimulus five times in the past seven or eight years and each time it's been a failure and that's not a surprise. Fiscal stimulus is not stimulating in and of itself. ~ Milton Friedman, #NFDB
408:I'd heard a lot of Asian people were rooting for me, but I had no idea. I was stunned. They were... impassioned, especially compared to Japan. I couldn't even have anticipated that kind of welcome ~ Ayumi Hamasaki, #NFDB
409:Although North Korea's position differs (from Tokyo's), Japan's basic stance remains unchanged ? to seek sincere responses from the North Korean side to resolve the abduction and nuclear issues. ~ Junichiro Koizumi, #NFDB
410:And then the industry itself was so cocky about what they were doing that they weren't seeing what was coming on the horizon with Japan and Germany and other places that were building smaller cars. ~ David Maraniss, #NFDB
411:Japan has a lot of really great beef, like Matsuzaka, but outside of Japan only Kobe is known,” said Troy Lee, an Australian who is the head chef at the Oak Door steakhouse at the Grand Hyatt Tokyo. ~ Larry Olmsted, #NFDB
412:There is fear as to whether Japan, reduced to such a predicament, could ever manage to pay reparations to certain designated Allied Powers without shifting the burden upon the other Allied Powers. ~ Shigeru Yoshida, #NFDB
413:Well the most likely emerging countries are Japan, Turkey, and Poland. So I would say Eastern Europe, the Middle East and a maritime war by Japan with the United States enjoying its own pleasures. ~ George Friedman, #NFDB
414:And of course, Japan, with the highest suicide statistics in the world, a country with an unquenchable thirst for the bizarre, the cruel and the terrible, would provide the perfect last refuge for him. ~ Ian Fleming, #NFDB
415:In Japan, the average age of agricultural workers is 65.8. When the aging of its population is accelerating so rapidly, it will be very difficult to sustain the sector whether we liberalize trade or not. ~ Naoto Kan, #NFDB
416:It is 60 years since the restoration of diplomatic relations, but relations between Japan and Russia have much deeper roots. In all, our diplomatic ties date back 150 years, more than 150 years now. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
417:It's not that I'm not interested in politics, but rather, I think that the people who become politicians in Japan are not very dynamic. Honestly, I find business much more interesting than politics. ~ Takafumi Horie, #NFDB
418:We're on the brink of a world in which the wealthiest nations, from Canada to Norway to Japan, can barely project meaningful force to their own borders while the nickel 'n' dime basket-cases go nuclear. ~ Mark Steyn, #NFDB
419:But Japan drew from the challenge the opposite conclusion as China: it threw open its doors to foreign technology and overhauled its institutions in an attempt to replicate the Western powers’ rise. ~ Henry Kissinger, #NFDB
420:From the streets of Cairo and the Arab Spring, to Occupy Wall Street, from the busy political calendar to the aftermath of the tsunami in Japan, social media was not only sharing the news but driving it. ~ Dan Rather, #NFDB
421:Look, they have taken our jobs, they have taken our money, and on top of that they have loaned the money to us and we actually pay them interest now on money. We owe China and Japan each $1.4 trillion. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
422:I'm thinking of people in rural Japan and China, where McDonald's hasn't yet arrived. These are the thinnest, healthiest, longest-lived people with the least risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. ~ Neal Barnard, #NFDB
423:It doesn't worry me a bit that China and Japan hold so much US debt. In a way, it seems foolish for them to do it because they get lower returns than they might elsewhere. But that is their business. ~ Milton Friedman, #NFDB
424:I think it is the responsibility of anyone involved in politics to always think of what Japan can do to contribute more to the peace and stability not just of Japan and the region but of the entire world. ~ Shinzo Abe, #NFDB
425:The first country that I went to outside of America was Japan and I was completely shocked - especially since I was 16 and over there by myself. I was like: "I don't get it; there's nothing in English!" ~ Cameron Diaz, #NFDB
426:We spent a month in Japan last year, a week in Istanbul for the United Nations, and nearly three months in my native Nova Scotia, where my two brothers have homes; and we'll go back there this summer. ~ Robert MacNeil, #NFDB
427:Because I don't belong entirely to Britain or the U.S. or India or Japan, I build my foundations in some way deeper than mere passports, and more in the light of where I'm going than of "where I come from." ~ Pico Iyer, #NFDB
428:In Japan they prefer the realistic style. They like answers and conclusions, but my stories have none. I want to leave them wide open to every possibility. I think my readers understand that openness. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
429:In Japan, usually, once you become prime minister, you do not have a second chance. Probably the reason why that was not the case this time is because Japan is facing an increasingly challenging situation. ~ Shinzo Abe, #NFDB
430:In Japan, you have no idea what they are saying, and they can't help you either. Nothing makes any sense. They're very polite, but you feel like a joke is being played on you the entire time you're there. ~ Bill Murray, #NFDB
431:As far as Japan is concerned, I want to help all of our allies, but we are losing billions and billions of dollars. We cannot be the policemen of the world. We cannot protect countries all over the world. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
432:If a movie is nominated for, say, an Academy award, that movie will instantly become popular in Japan. There's always been a bit of a complex the Japanese have about being taken seriously in the West. ~ Hirokazu Koreeda, #NFDB
433:Did you know that the word 'tsunami,' which is now being used worldwide, is a Japanese word? This is indicative of the extent to which Japan has been subject to frequent tsunami disasters in the past. ~ Junichiro Koizumi, #NFDB
434:In two or three minutes Mr. Roosevelt came through. “Mr. President, what’s this about Japan?” “It’s quite true,” he replied. “They have attacked us at Pearl Harbour. We are all in the same boat now. ~ Winston S Churchill, #NFDB
435:Right now, a majority of the debt is owed to foreign interests, Japan being the largest purchaser of government debt today, soon to be surpassed by China as the number one purchaser of our debt in this Nation. ~ Ron Kind, #NFDB
436:We've also started promoting in Japan, and compared to TVXQ sunbaes, we still have to secure a place. We all like TVXQ very much. We hope this time we'll use the chance to become more intimate with the members. ~ Taeyang, #NFDB
437:And that's how I quit being a North Korean resident of Japan, busted out of the tiny confines of Korean school, and dove into the "wide world." That decision, it turned out, came with some.... challenges. ~ Kazuki Kaneshiro, #NFDB
438:In ten days and 1,600 sorties the Twentieth Air Force burned out 32 square miles of the centers of Japan’s four largest cities and killed at least 150,000 people and almost certainly tens of thousands more. ~ Richard Rhodes, #NFDB
439:I've always said that growing up in postwar Japan, I never felt any connection to my work through those experiences. The work I do really comes from inside myself. For me, being born in Japan was an accident. ~ Rei Kawakubo, #NFDB
440:They [ Germany, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia] will fully understand. They're economic behemoths. They're tremendously successful countries, but we're subsidizing them for billions and billions of dollars. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
441:We discussed the history of postwar Japan and how Japan had missed an opportunity to build a more functional democracy because of the focus on fighting communism driven in large part by the American occupation. ~ Joichi Ito, #NFDB
442:Well, in Japan, I have got a group of musicians that I have worked with a lot, that concentrate just on the hardcore stuff, say, that Naked City has been working on. We have like a repertoire of sixty songs now. ~ John Zorn, #NFDB
443:At some point a few years ago Japan unilaterally stopped those talks and broke off contacts with us. It was not we who broke off contacts with Japan, it was the Japanese side that broke off contacts with us. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
444:Everyone who lives in an industrialized society is obliged gradually to give up the past, but in certain countries, such as the United States and Japan, the break with the past has been particularly traumatic. ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
445:I don't want to be president. Like, "Today your job is Libya, Japan, unemployment, the government shutdown - oh, and by the way, Yemen, Syria and Jordan. That's your job today. And you'd better get it right." ~ Rachel Maddow, #NFDB
446:I was in Japan a couple of months ago, I saw a preview for the movie Pearl Harbor. And they showed the Japanese airplanes coming in to bomb Pearl Harbor, and I applauded. Nobody else in the theater applauded. ~ Bobby Fischer, #NFDB
447:The Prime Minister [Shinzō Abe] proposed advancing to a new level of economic engagement, putting forward eight lines of cooperation in the most important and interesting areas both for Russia and for Japan. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
448:The salt water tingled my feet and made them feel so good all the rest of the day, and just to think, the same water that bathes the shores of China and Japan came clear across the ocean and bathed my feet. ~ Caroline Fraser, #NFDB
449:Americans, I’d learned, walked less than any other industrialized nation on earth, with the average US native taking 5,117 steps daily compared to 9,695 in Australia, 7,168 in Japan and 9,650 in Switzerland. ~ Martin Lindstrom, #NFDB
450:Contemporary China is thought of as the inheritor of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, or even of the humiliation incurred by the Opium Wars of the nineteenth century, but rarely as the product of the war against Japan. ~ Rana Mitter, #NFDB
451:Especially when there are difficulties in our relations, parties and statesmen in China and Japan should look over the situation from a higher point of view and preserve the political foundation of bilateral ties. ~ Wu Bangguo, #NFDB
452:If you go to Japan for instance, you should know that they have a different way of playing Beethoven or Brahms. But if you play with them Mozart, Debussy, Mendelssohn, they have a wonderful light feeling for that. ~ Kurt Masur, #NFDB
453:Japan is the only country in the world to have suffered the ravages of atomic bombing. That experience left an indelible mark on the hearts of our people, making them passionately determined to renounce all wars. ~ Eisaku Sato, #NFDB
454:Therefore, I do not think we should go only 60 years back but should look deeper, centuries back. Maybe this will give us [Russia and Japan] an opportunity to look at the future from a more remote perspective. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
455:They say that Japan's rigorous building codes and regulations saved thousands of lives over there. Or, as Republicans here saw it, it 'fostered a socialist, anti-business environment that's worse than being dead.' ~ Bill Maher, #NFDB
456:In Japan, people believe that things like cleaning your room and keeping your bathroom spick-and-span bring good luck, but if your house is cluttered, the effect of polishing the toilet bowl is going to be limited. ~ Marie Kond, #NFDB
457:Maybe that was the price of ignorance, I thought, looking at the naked vagrant. Maybe Japan had to pay for the ignorant things it did in Nanking. Because ignorance as I'd got tired of hearing, is no excuse for evil. ~ Mo Hayder, #NFDB
458:My total focus was on building up our military, building up our strength, building up our borders, making sure that China, Japan, Mexico, both at the border and in trade, no longer takes advantage of our country. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
459:Japan and South Korea are on high alert after North Korea successfully launched a long-range rocket. Both countries are surprised by North Korea's successful launch, but definitely not as surprised as North Korea. ~ Jimmy Fallon, #NFDB
460:Ours is the most wasteful nation on Earth. We waste more energy than we import. With about the same standard of living, we use twice as much energy per person as do other countries like Germany, Japan, and Sweden. ~ Jimmy Carter, #NFDB
461:There is no madder nation than Japan. ... And that nation has the highest rate of suicide, has the highest rate of thick-lens glasses and did the most suicidal trick a few years ago. It's the doggonedest country. ~ L Ron Hubbard, #NFDB
462:Whatever happens in the country, whatever warfare harasses our land, we will never relinquish our hold on Western learning. As long as this school of ours stands, Japan remains a civilized nation of the world. ~ Fukuzawa Yukichi, #NFDB
463:The causes of the China Incident were the exclusion and insult of Japan throughout China, the exclusion of Japanese goods, the persecution of Japanese residents in China, and the illegal violation of Japanese rights ~ Hideki Tojo, #NFDB
464:When you look at Japanese traditional architecture, you have to look at Japanese culture and its relationship with nature. You can actually live in a harmonious, close contact with nature - this very unique to Japan. ~ Tadao Ando, #NFDB
465:A movie of mine is going to be released in Japan next year. I play a waitress who's a really regular girl in this movie. The English title isn't decided yet, but in Japanese it's I'll Get on the A Train Sometime. ~ Chiaki Kuriyama, #NFDB
466:beauty is often very relative, just as what is decent in Japan is indecent in Rome, and what is fashionable in Paris, is not fashionable in Pekin; and he saved himself the trouble of composing a long treatise on beauty. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
467:...he wanted to be all poetic, but in an instant he forgot Joe's poem about Japan except the part about 'you are the bell, and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,' and a new sound entered his life... ~ Melina Marchetta, #NFDB
468:However, personally, I see this as not having the right to abuse this trust [among the citizens of Russia and Japan], and any decision we reach should correspond to the national interests of the Russian Federation. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
469:In Japan, they have TV sets in cars right now, where you can punch up traffic routes, weather, everything! You can get Internet access already in cars in Japan, so within the next 2 to 3 years it's gonna be so crazy! ~ Glenn Danzig, #NFDB
470:In Turkey it was always 1952, in Malaysia 1937; Afghanistan was 1910 and Bolivia 1949. It is 20 years ago in the Soviet Union, 10 in Norway, five in France. It is always last year in Australia and next week in Japan. ~ Paul Theroux, #NFDB
471:It was one thing to contain the Soviet Union in Europe because Britain, France, and Germany were all willing to join in. But will Japan and other Asian countries be willing to join in the containment of China? ~ Samuel P Huntington, #NFDB
472:May 15, 0850 JST (May 14, 7.50 p.m. EDT) Bank of Japan data is expected to show wholesale prices fell 2.1 percent in the year to April, the first drop since March 2013, partly as effects of the sales tax hike taper off. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
473:I would like to say, you know, that, unfortunately, we have many unresolved problems. But a great number of people in Russia know Japan and love Japan, and I am sure that eventually we will resolve all our problems. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
474:With the terrible earthquake and resulting tsunami that have devastated Japan, the only good news is that anyone exposed to excess radiation from the nuclear power plants is now probably much less likely to get cancer. ~ Ann Coulter, #NFDB
475:The second half of the twentieth century in Japan saw the birth of scores of new religions – a phenomenon to which the Japanese have applied the appealing label kamigami no rasshu-awa, “the rush hour of the gods. ~ John Michael Greer, #NFDB
476:I love chicken. I love chicken products: fried chicken, roasted chicken, chicken nuggets - whatever. And going to Japan, I would see that these chicken were smoked and then grilled and then have this amazing crispy skin. ~ David Chang, #NFDB
477:So he [Shoko Asahara] was insane but managed to convince a couple thousand people that he was enlightened. Western culture, which Japan is now definitely a part of, doesn't have an understanding of what Enlightenment is. ~ Brad Warner, #NFDB
478:[Donald Trump] suggestions that the United States should leave the Pacific and let Japan, South Korea, or whoever else wants to develop nuclear weapons. These are incredibly dangerous ideas that need to be confronted. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
479:America has hundreds of billions of dollars of losses on a yearly basis - hundreds of billions with China on trade and trade imbalance, with Japan, with Mexico, with just about everybody. We don't make good deals anymore. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
480:From Japan to Monaco, from globetrotting single mothers to multimillionaire racecar drivers, the basic rules of successful NR are surprisingly uniform and predictably divergent from what the rest of the world is doing. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
481:What sets Tibetan Buddhism apart from other Buddhist traditions—such as the Zen Buddhism of Japan or the Theravada tradition in Sri Lanka—is that while Tibetans aim to become enlightened, they don’t want to enter Nirvana. ~ Scott Carney, #NFDB
482:When did it become necessary to explain what's so cool about Japan? Everyone was quite obsessed with it 15 years ago. I suppose it's the only Asian country that developed an imaginary entree to me. That's why I go back. ~ William Gibson, #NFDB
483:Every country that meets Buddhism molds it into their own indigenous religion, as America will. A very clear example of this is Japan, which threw out almost all the dharma, and just kept that essence, which spoke to them. ~ Tenzin Palmo, #NFDB
484:I have worked with this red all over the world - in Japan, California, France, Britain, Australia - a vein running round the earth. It has taught me about the flow, energy and life that connects one place with another. ~ Andy Goldsworthy, #NFDB
485:Japan is a model already to the lie that economic growth is the key to our future. If they can really show an alternative to nukes and fossil fuels, then they will be the poster boy for the renewable energy for the future. ~ David Suzuki, #NFDB
486:The world is divided into 2 streams - the one of 'Vistarvaad' & and the other of 'Vikasvaad'. Vikasvaad is indispensable in 21st Century! India & Japan need to join hands to take the pride of Vikasvaad to greater heights. ~ Narendra Modi, #NFDB
487:We are natural partners [with Japan] in the world and the Far East, but the absence of a peace treaty does not allow us to develop the full range of our relations. Therefore, we will naturally strive to sign this treaty. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
488:People like to say the West is a guilt-based culture, while that of Japan is based on shame, with the chief distinction being that the former is an internalized emotion while the latter depends on the presence of a group. But ~ Barry Eisler, #NFDB
489:In Japan, people have something called their charm point. A coy smile, a twinkle in the eye, a faultless sense of humour, or a laugh no one has heard in the history of laughs before. The thing that makes others love you. ~ Christopher Barzak, #NFDB
490:It's a mistake to think things are as bad everywhere, because in Japan and China there is more cash than in the States. They are full of liquid assets. The big problem is that all the world wants to copy the American system. ~ Domenico Dolce, #NFDB
491:Comics in the United States have become such a caricature. You have to have incredible people doing incredible things, but in Japan it seems like the most popular comics are the comics of normal people doing normal things. ~ Frederik L Schodt, #NFDB
492:Interestingly enough, we also find another cultural association borrowed from ancient Egypt (somehow into Japan) between the crab and the Ka with the Heikegani as reincarnations of the spirits of the deceased Heike warriors. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
493:His girlfriend of eight years, Lindsay Mills, joined him in June on Oahu, which means ‘the gathering place’. Mills grew up in Baltimore, graduated from Maryland Institute College of Art, and had been living with Snowden in Japan. ~ Luke Harding, #NFDB
494:I had sort of had a 21st birthday when I was 17, 18-years-old living in Japan. I had all of that stuff sort of happen earlier for me, which happens to a lot of people. My 21st birthday was just a little boring. Not a great story. ~ Sarah Wright, #NFDB
495:In most places that are rich in guitar culture, everyone uses their fingers, like in Spain or Africa. In Japan there are string instruments played that way. It is not until you get in the States that you find people using picks. ~ Kevin Eubanks, #NFDB
496:To be a superstar is incredible pressure. And also in our country, I'm going to speak about this, America. We have a way of kind of making it hard on our superstars. I don't sense it when I go to Europe or I go to Japan. ~ Narada Michael Walden, #NFDB
497:I don't really think that audiences are that much different. I think that a fan is the same whether you are from here or from Japan - you come to a show because you like the music. I don't really see much of a difference anywhere. ~ Jason Aldean, #NFDB
498:It has been believed for a long time in Japan that things such as the constitution can never be changed. I say we should change our constitution now. The U.S. has amended its constitution six times, but Japan has done it zero times. ~ Shinzo Abe, #NFDB
499:I have to express sympathy from the bottom of my heart to those people who were taken as wartime comfort women. As a human being, I would like to express my sympathies, and also as prime minister of Japan I need to apologize to them. ~ Shinzo Abe, #NFDB
500:In Japan if you say “the war,” people know you mean World War II, because that was the last one that Japan fought in. In America it’s different. America is constantly fighting wars all over the place, so you have to be more specific. ~ Ruth Ozeki, #NFDB
501:In Japan, the writers have made up a literary community, a circle, a society. I think 90 percent of Japan's writers live in Tokyo. Naturally, they make a community. There are groups and customs, and so they are tied up in a way. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
502:It was like being born in Germany after World War II, being from Japan after Pearl Harbor, or America after Hiroshima. History was a bitch sometimes. You couldn't change where you were from. But still, you didn't have to stay there. ~ Kami Garcia, #NFDB
503:I received from my experience in Japan an incredible sense of respect for the art of creating, not just the creative product. We're all about the product. To me, the process was also an incredibly important aspect of the total form. ~ Julie Taymor, #NFDB
504:Japan lives with drastic segregation between the sublime, the ugly, and the utterly without qualities. Dominance of the last 2 categories makes mere presence of the first stunning: when beauty 'happens', it is absolutely surprising. ~ Rem Koolhaas, #NFDB
505:Nazi realm. Japan continued its brutal and genocidal war against the Chinese; and in Russia, Stalin was presiding over show trials, deporting thousands to Siberia, and summarily executing his rivals in the Communist party. The Spanish ~ Tom Brokaw, #NFDB
506:There is always a chance [for negotiations with Japan], or else it makes no sense to talk. How great is it? Right now, it is difficult for me to say, because this will depend, among other things, on the flexibility of our partners. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
507:I couldn't speak Japanese very well, passport regulations were changing, I felt British and my future was in Britain. And it would also make me eligible for literary awards. But I still think I'm regarded as one of their own in Japan. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro, #NFDB
508:It has nothing to do with any kind of exchange or sale [of Kuril island to Japan]. It is about the search for a solution when neither party would be at a disadvantage, when neither party would perceive itself as conquered or defeated. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
509:Japan's beautiful seas and its territory are under threat, and young people are having trouble finding hope in the future amid economic slump. I promise to protect Japan's land and sea, and the lives of the Japanese people no matter what. ~ Shinzo Abe, #NFDB
510:Therefore, if one were to consider that there was virtually no possibility of success through the US-Japan negotiations, the military and economic pressures would only force Japan into further crisis if time were allowed to pass in vain. ~ Hideki Tojo, #NFDB
511:Geisha because when I was living in Japan, I met a fellow whose mother was a geisha, and I thought that was kind of fascinating and ended up reading about the subject just about the same time I was getting interested in writing fiction. ~ Arthur Golden, #NFDB
512:Bean Throwing Day (Japan): Usually February 3 or q,. A day to toss away your bad luck and welcome good fortune. Try making a bean salad, then plant at least one of the beans in the earth near your home for providence all year.
So ~ Patricia J Telesco,#NFDB
513:Despite Japan's desires and efforts, unfortunate differences in the ways that Japan, England, the United States, and China understood circumstances, together with misunderstandings of attitudes, made it impossible for the parties to agree. ~ Hideki Tojo, #NFDB
514:Yesterday, December 7, 1941 a date which will live in infamy the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan... We will gain the inevitable triumph so help us God. ~ Franklin D Roosevelt, #NFDB
515:Japan became an imperialist country in many ways, but that was much later, after it had already made big progress. I dont think Japans wealth was based on exploiting China. Japans wealth was based on its expansion in international trade. ~ Amartya Sen, #NFDB
516:If we could muster the same determination and sense of responsibility that saves a country like Japan - or a company like Xerox - then investing to save women and children who are dying in the developing world would be very good business. ~ Anne M Mulcahy, #NFDB
517:So they told us all about how other kids were deceived by their parents, how the toys the grown-ups claimed were made by little elves wearing bell caps in their workshop at the North Pole actually had labels on them saying MADE IN JAPAN. ~ Jeannette Walls, #NFDB
518:I loved cowboy films and TV series, and I learned bits of English from them. My favorite was 'Laramie', with Robert Fuller and John Smith. I used to watch 'The Lone Ranger', which had been famous in Japan as well. I idolized these cowboys. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro, #NFDB
519:Well, Japanese fans braced me since 1991 that was my first time I have been to Japan. So I know that Japanese fans has supported me over the years. So it just a lot of love and Wayne Wonder will release more music, more music and more music! ~ Wayne Wonder, #NFDB
520:If these assets were set up as a revolving fund with which Japan could import raw materials for its industries, Japanese exports could again enter the channels of world trade-and Japanese workers would have employment and something to eat. ~ James Forrestal, #NFDB
521:In reality, at the end of World War II, America imposed democracy at the point of a bayonet on Japan and Germany, and it has proved a resounding success in both countries. The problem with liberals is that they never give bayonets a chance. ~ Dinesh D Souza, #NFDB
522:Sōseki is an unusually intimate writer— the public world is only his concern by implication— and in Japan (again as in the England that I know) intimacy is shown not by all that you can say to someone else, but by all that you don’t need to say. ~ Pico Iyer, #NFDB
523:Of course, we will work towards that end. Of course, we will work to achieve this result. However, you have just mentioned the 1956 agreement, and one may recall that these negotiations were later terminated, in effect, on Japan's initiative. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
524:There will always be nations. The United States will last a long, long time, I believe. France and Germany and Japan, China, other nations, they're going to exist. But they're losing their significance and ability to deal with certain matters. ~ Alan Cranston, #NFDB
525:But it speaks for an inner world— and again this is evident in Murakami— that sits in a different dimension from the smooth-running, flawlessly attentive, and all but anonymous machine that keeps public order moving forward so efficiently in Japan. ~ Pico Iyer, #NFDB
526:The countries who do the best in international comparisons, whether it's Finland or Japan, Denmark or Singapore, do well because they have professional teachers who are respected, and they also have family and community which support learning. ~ Howard Gardner, #NFDB
527:To combat the confusion and depression that assault me when I come off the road in the middle of a tour, I seek the most oblivionated music possible. When it's the 'way out there' that I seek, I go right to my stash of amazing music from Japan. ~ Henry Rollins, #NFDB
528:The Tokyo Dome Big Air contest (in 2003) was my first trip to Japan. I think I won it with a double back or something. Those events were fun. I was underaged, like 19 or 20, and going over to Japan in the very beginning was insane. It was amazing. ~ Travis Rice, #NFDB
529:It is only in the last 800 years that the rules have come into being and conservative Zen has surfaced. It is not particularly popular in Japan at all. Hardly anybody practices Zen any more because it's just too strict; there are too many rules. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
530:When I think of countries that I enjoyed visiting, that I would want to go back to, Italy would be one, Japan would be another. I've only been to Indonesia once or twice and it seems like such a fascinating country. I guess India certainly. ~ Samuel P Huntington, #NFDB
531:Hackers are unruly. That is the essence of hacking. And it is also the essence of Americanness. It is no accident that Silicon Valley is in America, and not France, or Germany, or England, or Japan. In those countries, people color inside the lines. ~ Paul Graham, #NFDB
532:I married my Japanese wife Mayumi who I'm so happy with, she's been so supportive. I live part time in Japan at her house, so I've been always very influenced by Japan. Since I guess the 70's or so. I've come to appreciate so much of their culture. ~ Terry Bozzio, #NFDB
533:Japan will change. Let's create a country where innovation is constantly happening, giving birth to new industries to lead the world, when I visit Silicon Valley I want to think about how we can take Silicon Valley's ways and make them work in Japan. ~ Shinzo Abe, #NFDB
534:outcome of the present struggle between Russia and Japan, its significance lies in the fact that a nation of the East, equipped with Western weapons and girding itself with Western energy of will, is deliberately measuring strength against one of ~ Lafcadio Hearn, #NFDB
535:Since my tour (in Japan) just finished, I started writing songs. I was inspired a lot while on the road and I have a lot to say and feel. I want to process those and write it down on paper and put my hands on the keyboard before they become the past. ~ Angela Aki, #NFDB
536:And when you come back to Japan next summer, let's have that date or whatever you want to call it. We can go to the zoo or the botanical garden or the aquarium, and then we'll have the most politically correct and scrumptious omelets we can find. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
537:The main American naval forces were shifted to the Pacific region and an American admiral made a strong declaration to the effect that if war were to break out between Japan and the United States, the Japanese navy could be sunk in a matter of weeks. ~ Hideki Tojo, #NFDB
538:The perks of working in Japan are that you might go for two weeks every three or four months, so you do work an abbreviated schedule. But you really make up for the abbreviated schedule by how hard you have to fight, how much you've got to be in shape. ~ Owen Hart, #NFDB
539:Japan should get more involved in mediating disputes between countries and seek to play the role of a peace broker. To make this possible, we must train people so they have a solid understanding of international politics and great negotiation skills. ~ Sadako Ogata, #NFDB
540:In Japan, their written language doesn't translate to keyboards well. So they have problem communicating with computers, so they really feel that what's missing from telephones and computer interfaces is this ability to move around in three-space. ~ Howard Rheingold, #NFDB
541:We haven't had a world war in a long time. We do have mass movements of people out of Syria and North Africa. But, fundamentally, if you take Japan, you're complaining that the economy isn't booming, they'd like to have slightly higher inflation. ~ Michael Bloomberg, #NFDB
542:When I was first writing about Japan, it was at the peak of the Bubble. Bubble popped, but they kept on going. Japanese street style feeds American iconics back into America in somewhat the way English rock once fed American blues back into America. ~ William Gibson, #NFDB
543:I'm sure that President Johnson would never have pursued the war in Vietnam if he'd ever had a Fulbright to Japan, or say Bangkok, or had any feeling for what these people are like and why they acted the way they did. He was completely ignorant. ~ J William Fulbright, #NFDB
544:The big question about the American depression is not whether war with Germany and Japan ended it. It is why the Depression lasted until that war. From 1929 to 1940, from Hoover to Roosevelt, government intervention helped to make the Depression Great. ~ Amity Shlaes, #NFDB
545:I just went along for the ride. It was a God-given gift. It is. So you can't say well, you wasted your life because you spent all of it acting, but I think gosh, I've never been to China, I've never been to Japan. I've never been to Yellowstone Park. ~ Angela Lansbury, #NFDB
546:I do not want to speak about our cooperation with Japan now. Thank God, we have had no such problems there. Nor would we want any to arise in the future. Therefore, everything needs to be pre-calculated, and we need to agree upon everything in advance. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
547:I used to have a silk dressing gown an uncle bought in Japan and when I came downstairs in it, my dad used to call me Davinia. There was never embarrassment about that kind of thing. My sister used to dress me up a lot. She thought I was a little doll. ~ David Walliams, #NFDB
548:On paper, Chinese workers are afforded generous rights and protections, but since the introduction of market reforms in the 1980s, factory owners, many of them multinational companies from Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong, have often set the terms of employment. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
549:The 20th century was a century in which human rights were infringed upon in numerous parts of the world, and Japan also bears responsibility in that regard. I believe that we have to look at our own history with humility and think about our responsibility. ~ Shinzo Abe, #NFDB
550:We want to make America great again. We want to bring back our industry, we want to bring back our jobs from China and Japan, and by the way Mexico, which has taken so many of our jobs. And that's what it's about. I have not heard about these incidences. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
551:I lived in Japan for about two years. I spent my time equally between religiously studying Aikido in Shinjuku by day and hard partying in Shibuya and Roppongi by night. On more than a few nights, those subways were my own personal stage coach to hell. ~ Sturgill Simpson, #NFDB
552:In Japan, I took part in a tea ceremony. You go into a small room, tea is served, and that's it really, except that everything is done with so much ritual and ceremony that a banal daily event is transformed into a moment of communion with the universe. ~ Okakura Kakuzo, #NFDB
553:I said to myself, 'the champion of the whole world can whoop every man in Russia, every man in America, every man in China, every man in Japan, every man in Europe - every man in the whole world'.It sounds big, didn't it? So I kept working until I did it. ~ Muhammad Ali, #NFDB
554:Carrie lay on the bed and gazed at the ceiling. She was back in business. It was a day to remember. December 7, the same day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The next day America declared war on Japan.
America declared war. And she was a whore again. ~ Jackie Collins,#NFDB
555:Well, that's the old story I heard about the Jackie Chan films. That, like, Jackie Chan will just keep going and when crew members drop he just replaces them. I don't know if that's true but after having worked in Japan I believe it might be true. ~ Sarah Michelle Gellar, #NFDB
556:I grew up in the north of Chile, and this is why there are a lot of religious symbols in my pictures, because the Catholic Church in Latin America is very strong. If I was born in Japan, I would speak about Buddhism, but I was born in South America. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky, #NFDB
557:I'll just be the first to say that Ken [Watanabe] should be a national treasure in Japan, because he is an unbelievably talented actor. You couldn't find more of a gentleman. He's sweet, he's kind and he's extremely thoughtful in the work that he does. ~ Leonardo DiCaprio, #NFDB
558:Part of [Japanese companies] growing and expanding around the world is ... going to help the Japanese keep their lifestyles [despite Japan's] demographics, as a declining population, and [to] make it more conducive to women to go to work, I think, is a plus. ~ Jamie Dimon, #NFDB
559:The next big accelerator might be the ILC in Japan, a linear collider which might be able to probe the boundaries of string theory. So we physicists have to learn how to engage the public so that taxpayers money is used to explore the nature of the universe. ~ Michio Kaku, #NFDB
560:Jamaica is one of the most musically influential nations in the world. Throughout the entire globe, there are pockets that are constantly in touch with what goes on in the dancehall community, from Germany to Japan, to different parts of Africa like Ghana. ~ Kreesha Turner, #NFDB
561:Walking along, I occasionally had to stop by the side of the road to spit out the mucus that kept rising in my throat. It rather pleased me to think of the malignant tubercle bacilli that I had brought from Japan being scorched to death under the tropical sun. ~ Sh hei oka, #NFDB
562:And what does he have to say to the impressionable young student at his side? That all poets must eventually bow before the haiku. Bow before the haiku! Can you imagine.” “For my part,” contributed the Count, “I am glad that Homer wasn’t born in Japan.” Mishka ~ Amor Towles, #NFDB
563:The tough-minded ... respect difference. Their goal is a world made safe for differences, where the United States may be American to the hilt without threatening the peace of the world, and France may be France, and Japan may be Japan on the same conditions. ~ Ruth Benedict, #NFDB
564:When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the United States struck back. She didn't go and bomb - she bombed any part of Japan. She dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Those people in Hiroshima probably hadn't even, some of them; most of them hadn't even killed anybody. ~ Malcolm X, #NFDB
565:Japan should not intervene in other countries' conflicts by using military power. And I don't think Japan is capable of doing such things. For starters, I don't believe our country has sufficient human resources to make that type of international contribution. ~ Sadako Ogata, #NFDB
566:The goal in Japan is not to isolate the criminal from society, but precisely the opposite. A convict is sent back to his neighborhood, family, and job so that the social pressure to fit in and the pain of being shamed before the group will lead him to go straight. ~ T R Reid, #NFDB
567:What are Japan’s resources?” he asks, “I’m particularly thinking about traditional aesthetics. I’ve identified four keywords related to this: sensai (delicateness), chimitsu (meticulousness), teinei (thoroughness or attention to detail) and kanketsu (simplicity). ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
568:News of the Indian Mutiny had taken forty-six days to reach London in 1857, travelling at an effective speed of 3.8 miles an hour. News of the huge Nobi earthquake in Japan in 1891 took a single day, travelling at 246 miles an hour, sixty-five times faster.50 ~ Niall Ferguson, #NFDB
569:The sluggish economy is creating a situation where the young people in Japan cannot cherish their desires or have prospects for their future. Also, the decline in Japan's economic capability is resulting in a declining presence for Japan's foreign policy as well. ~ Shinzo Abe, #NFDB
570:I'd entirely forgotten about Pass The Distance, and then I went to Japan in 2000, and was asked to do interviews with all these journalists, who were showing up with bootlegs of this record, asking me to talk about it. I was astonished. It kind of gained momentum. ~ David Toop, #NFDB
571:In America, I get a lot of younger kids, but there's teens and adults too, ... In Europe, for some reason, I see a lot more males in the audience. In Japan, I don't even notice any kids, partially because they're a lot more strict about fan behavior over there. ~ Avril Lavigne, #NFDB
572:Allowing Islamic Sharia law into the constitutions of the U.S-created Islamic (!) Republic of Afghanistan and Republic of Iraq in 2004 and 2005 was as foolhardy as it would have been to write emperor-worship and Shinto militarism into Japan's 1946 constitution. ~ Robert Spencer, #NFDB
573:I’d heard rumors of “love hotels”—which are what they sound like: hotels specifically built for hooking up. But, of course, this being Japan, they sometimes have really amazing decor—there’s even a Jurassic Park–themed one. Seriously, this exists. I am not joking. ~ Aziz Ansari, #NFDB
574:Those Oriental people work like dogs. That’s why they’re successful in life. I went to Seoul, South Korea, I went to Taipei, Taiwan. I went to Tokyo, Japan. That’s why these people are so hard workers. I’m telling you, the Oriental people, they’re slowly taking over. ~ Rob Ford, #NFDB
575:Japan is the most intoxicating place for me. In Kyoto, there's an inn called the Tawaraya which is quite extraordinary. The Japanese culture fascinates me: the food, the dress, the manners and the traditions. It's the travel experience that has moved me the most. ~ Roman Coppola, #NFDB
576:The physical impact of taiko music, along with the sheer visual poetry of a choreographed ensemble presenting its music in perfect synchrony, is so powerful and inviting that taiko is beginning to catch on as Japan's most influential and lasting gift to world music. ~ Gil Asakawa, #NFDB
577:There are also other areas. For example, culture. This is extremely important. We keep revisiting sport, judo, because I practice it, but other than that, there is also culture. Every year events that are in some way or other related to Russia take place in Japan. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
578:There's an ancient saying in Japan, that life is like walking from one side of infinite darkness to another, on a bridge of dreams. They say that we're all crossing the bridge of dreams together. That there's nothing more than that. Just us, on the bridge of dreams. ~ M T Anderson, #NFDB
579:Rei Shimura Books in Order The Salaryman’s Wife Zen Attitude The Flower Master The Floating Girl The Bride’s Kimono The Samurai’s Daughter The Pearl Diver The Typhoon Lover Girl In A Box Shimura Trouble The Convenience Boy And Other Stories Of Japan The Kizuna Coast ~ Sujata Massey, #NFDB
580:Throughout that period, Japan had made honest efforts to keep the destruction of war from spreading and, based on the belief that all nations of the world should find their places, had followed a policy designed to restore an expeditious peace between Japan and China. ~ Hideki Tojo, #NFDB
581:Here's an uplifting story. Congratulations to the Little League team from Huntington Beach, California. Yeah, they beat Japan to win the Little League World Series. That's pretty good. See, that proves that when math and science aren't involved, our kids can beat anybody. ~ Jay Leno, #NFDB
582:It's a lesser-known story, but the Japanese government (after the Russian-Nazi pact, which split Poland) did allow Polish Jews to come to Japan, with the expectation that they would then be sent to the United States. But they weren't accepted, so they stayed in Japan. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
583:THE HUMAN CONDITION The Daily Show reported recently that scientists in Japan had invented a robot that is capable of recognizing its own reflection in a mirror. "When the robot learns to hate what it sees," said Jon Stewart, "it will have achieved full humanity. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
584:We have been teaching together [with Kaz] now for more than twenty years in sesshins, in international travel programs in Japan and China, as well as intensives on Buddhism that focus on the work of Zen Master Dogen and Ryokan, as well as on many of the Mahayana sutras. ~ Joan Halifax, #NFDB
585:I think actually what I'm going to do when I'm done and take my next vacation, is I'm going to go over and start unions in Japan. I'm going to unionize Japan. Because the way they work those crews is so criminal. There's no overtime, so they can just keep going. ~ Sarah Michelle Gellar, #NFDB
586:To borrow a phrase from my friend Erskine Bowles on the Fiscal Commission, we are the healthiest looking horse in the glue factory. That means America is still a step ahead of the European nations who are confronting a debt crisis, of Japan that's in its second lost decade. ~ Paul Ryan, #NFDB
587:A diplomatic passport for a Tal Zahavi, with a current photo of Yael-1. The same birth date as in the other passport. The interior must have had fifty entry stamps for European and South American countries, plus the U.S., Japan, and South Korea. The woman traveled a lot. ~ John Sandford, #NFDB
588:I like America anyway. In Japan we are much more formal. If two friends are separated for a long time and they meet they bow and bow and bow. They keep bowing without exchanging a word. Here they slap each other on the back and say: Hello, old man, how goes everything. ~ Sessue Hayakawa, #NFDB
589:And it is impossible to treat human beings as human beings if you label them, if you term them, if you give them a name as Hindus, Russians, or what you will. It is so much easier to label people, for then you can pass by and kick them, drop a bomb on India or Japan. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
590:For economists, Argentina is a perplexing country. To illustrate how difficult it was to understand Argentina, the Nobel Prize–winning economist Simon Kuznets once famously remarked that there were four sorts of countries: developed, underdeveloped, Japan, and Argentina. ~ Daron Acemo lu, #NFDB
591:How can you have a world of today where India is not represented in the Security Council; Japan, the second contributor, is not there; the whole continent of Africa, soon to be 54 countries, don't have a single permanent seat; and Latin America is absent? It's not realistic. ~ Kofi Annan, #NFDB
592:We have listened here to the delegates who have recalled the terrible human suffering, and the great material destruction of the late war in the Pacific. It is with feelings of sorrow that we recall the part played in that catastrophic human experience by the old Japan. ~ Shigeru Yoshida, #NFDB
593:I really liked the food in Japan. There is something so organized, neat, and methodical about it. They put a lot of care and quality into their cooking. I also love Mediterranean, New American, and Italian food, because the cuisines borrow influences from all over the world. ~ Sasha Cohen, #NFDB
594:I think the biggest difficulty is that when I'm here in America, there's a necessity of using English, so I really have a great sense of really wanting to learn, but unfortunately when I head back to Japan, the necessity vanishes and so does my enthusiasm about learning. ~ Chiaki Kuriyama, #NFDB
595:There is some virtue to be learnt from every part of the world — teamwork from Japan, precision from Germany, marketing and negotiation skills from the United States, courtesy, decency and refinement from the British, and human values from the villages of India. You ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, #NFDB
596:Japan." Not about the Japanese, but about moments of perfection. Commit it to memory and make good use of it. Because if I come home and you're still pining over this little girl without having given her a chance, I will call you a chicken shit for the rest of your life. ~ Melina Marchetta, #NFDB
597:There's an ancient saying in Japan, that life is like walking from one side of infinite darkness to another, on a bridge of dreams. They say that we're all crossing the bridge of dreams together. That there's nothing more than that. Just us, on the bridge of dreams. ~ Matthew Tobin Anderson, #NFDB
598:When I go visit my brother monks in Japan and sit down with other Zen Masters, they look at my crazy clothes and my strange expression, but they feel the power that emanates from my dedication to the practice. So they are comfortable with me, yet they're very uncomfortable. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
599:Exports to China increased 13.6 percent, while imports from that country jumped 31.6 percent. That left the politically sensitive U.S.-China trade deficit at $31.2 billion, up 38.6 percent from February. The U.S. trade deficit with Japan was the largest in two years. (Reporting by ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
600:I would say that the single most important conclusion I reached, after traveling through Japan, as well as countless hours reading, studying, and analyzing this fascinating culture, is that you should always tighten the cap on the shampoo bottle before you put it in your suitcase. ~ Dave Barry, #NFDB
601:'Tampopo' is a deeply odd film about Japan, ramen noodles, love and sex. It made me very hungry and desperate to travel to Japan. It started my love affair with this amazing country, its culture, its food, its cinema and made me buy my first ticket to the land of the rising sun. ~ Jamie Cullum, #NFDB
602:The people who invented the twenty-first century were pot-smoking, sandal-wearing hippies from the West Coast like Steve, because they saw differently,” he said. “The hierarchical systems of the East Coast, England, Germany, and Japan do not encourage this different thinking. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
603:We used to be a serious country. When we got attacked at Pearl Harbor, we took on Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. We beat all three in less than four years. We're about to enter the seventh year of this phony war against ... [terrorist groups], and we're losing. ~ Newt Gingrich, #NFDB
604:China has become a major presence for most countries around the world but notably for its neighboring countries in Asia. So I think it is a common position for Japan and its Asian neighbors that we certainly would strive to maintain as much as possible friendly relations with China. ~ Naoto Kan, #NFDB
605:The Germans will be beaten in a few months. And Japan will be beaten a few months after that. If I were to give up my life now, it wouldn't be for my country. It would be for Cathcart and Korn. So I'm turning my bombsight in for the duration. From now on I'm thinking only of me. ~ Joseph Heller, #NFDB
606:The language of North Korea is always bombastic. But what has really changed is the acceleration of their nuclear program, the likelihood that they have more and more weapons, and the acceleration of the testing of ballistic missiles in very, very aggressive ways towards Japan. ~ Michael Leiter, #NFDB
607:I always enjoy working with an international crew and director. But on the set of a Hollywood action film - now that's a whole other world. The sheer grand scale of the way things are done over there makes me envious; it's just so different from the way things are done in Japan. ~ Tadanobu Asano, #NFDB
608:In a world that is deepening its mutual interdependence, inward-focused thinking is no longer able to safeguard the peace of Japan. We will fully defend the lives and assets of our nationals as well as our territory, territorial waters, and territorial airspace in a resolute manner. ~ Shinzo Abe, #NFDB
609:There were flurries of concern in the West when shells landed on foreign concessions or threatened ships. But, as in Manchuria, nobody would take practical steps to hold back Japan even when its army landed at the end of February and marched in to bolster the lacklustre marines. ~ Jonathan Fenby, #NFDB
610:The visits Prime Minister Koizumi made to the Yasukuni Shrine, I believe, had nothing to do with approval ratings. He paid respects at the Yasukuni Shrine to pay respects to the people of Japan who fought and lost their lives for the country and to pray for the peace of their souls. ~ Shinzo Abe, #NFDB
611:You can say that I lived in Asia for a long time and in Japan I became close to several CIA agents. And you could say that I became an adviser to several CIA agents in the field and, through my friends in the CIA, met many powerful people and did special works and special favors. ~ Steven Seagal, #NFDB
612:In Japan, even when you're alone, you're never really that lonely. But the loneliness you feel living among people with differently coloured skin and eyes, whose language you don't even speak very well - that sort of loneliness is something you feel down to the marrow of your bones. ~ Ry Murakami, #NFDB
613:I told all kinds of stories about going to Japan, about playing ball with my father... I wanted to record my life in case it was going to end soon. So, I wrote that and it was very comforting to have that practice in the afternoons in my living room. I just wrote about my life. ~ Natalie Goldberg, #NFDB
614:Here you had the top professional soldier in Japan, and to think he didn’t know how to kill himself with a gun! They took him straight to the hospital, he got the best care the American medical team could give him, recovered, then was tried and hanged. It’s a terrible way to die. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
615:If we did not believe that truth is universal, why should so many missionaries endure these hardships? It is precisely because truth is common to all countries and all times that we call it truth. If a true doctrine were not true alike in Portugal and Japan we could not call it true. ~ Sh saku End, #NFDB
616:Japan has the oldest population in the world, and the Japanese go to the doctor more than anybody—about fourteen office visits per year, compared with five for the average American. And yet Japan spends about $3,400 per person on health care each year; we burn through $7,400 per person. ~ T R Reid, #NFDB
617:Notably, it was only possible [ negotiating on the Tarabarov Island], and this is very important, due to the high level of trust Russia and China reached in their relations by that time. If we reach the same level of trust with Japan, we might be able to reach certain compromises. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
618:the Japanese had won by being more European than the Russians; their ships were more modern, their troops better disciplined, their artillery more effective. To Leo Tolstoy, the titan of Russian letters, Japan’s victory looked like a straightforward triumph of Western materialism. ~ Niall Ferguson, #NFDB
619:We have seen many instances where the free world didn't seem to understand the nature of evil or the battle against evil in their time. We've watched Nazism and fascism and imperial Japan and communism and totalitarianism, and now it seems to be we're all battling against terrorism. ~ Sean Hannity, #NFDB
620:You don't implement change easily in Japan unless you explain very clearly why you need to do this change, how you're going to do this change and what's going to be the outcome of this change. If you offset or you forget to explain one of these three steps you're not going to do it. ~ Carlos Ghosn, #NFDB
621:But I didn't walk a single step. I stopped a lot to stretch, but I never walked. I didn't come here to walk. I came to run. That's the reason-the only reason-I flew all the way to the northern tip of Japan. No matter how slow I might run, I wasn't about to walk. That was the rule. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
622:The largest source of greenhouse gases in the coming decades will not be the US, Western Europe and Japan, but the developing economies of East Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. The coming eruption of carbon emissions from the poor world will dwarf any reductions in the North. ~ Ross Gelbspan, #NFDB
623:The method of producing comics in Japan is very hectic, but it's also rewarding because it's possible to do both the story and art all by yourself. In this way, it's possibly to bring out one's individuality. If this idea appeals to you, I call on you to try drawing your own manga. ~ Akira Toriyama, #NFDB
624:Using virtual world, a scientist in Japan can conduct an experiment using a special facility in California, watching the entire thing via a live stream - and possibly controlling the experimental equipment remotely. We can use that same kind of technology to control a robot on Mars. ~ Annalee Newitz, #NFDB
625:What's that?' Thaniel said, curious. The postmarks and stamps weren't English or Japanese.
'A painting. There's a depressed Dutchman who does countryside scenes and flowers and things. It's ugly, but I have to maintain the estates in Japan and modern art is a good investment. ~ Natasha Pulley,#NFDB
626:When the regime changed in Japan, the Japanese changed; Russians too can change, as long as the conditions for it are present once again. Today, we are on the verge of a very uncertain situation when either everything will end in catastrophe, or better people will come to power. ~ Vladimir Voinovich, #NFDB
627:How to adjust to a world in which the climax of a scene— and sometimes the central event— is going to sleep? We’re going to have to adapt, maybe even invert our sense of priority and our assumptions about what constitutes drama, as most of us foreigners have to do when traveling to Japan. ~ Pico Iyer, #NFDB
628:The film is ambiguous, an ambiguity that reflects on Japan today, and a world in which nothing is clear. Once I made the film [Takeshis'], I realized it was about this feeling of vague disquiet in Japan and in the rest of the world, a feeling that is gaining on us, getting less vague. ~ Takeshi Kitano, #NFDB
629:That’s the way the system worked for most of Japan. Work hard, work late hours, work on the weekends, spend the night at work, anything for work. I had worked a lot when I had an office job, but it never seemed to be enough. People would sleep at their desk overnight, and I just couldn’t. ~ S J Pajonas, #NFDB
630:The world is very disparate, in terms of the US using the most energy per person, and then the other rich countries - Europe, Japan, New Zealand - using about half of what we do, and then the world average being about a fifth of what we use, with China just now surpassing the world average. ~ Bill Gates, #NFDB
631:In Japan, a young man pedals a stationary bike as scientists use infrared light sensors to monitor the blood flow in his brain. Just fifteen minutes of biking is sufficient to increase activity in circuits responsible for emotional control and to raise levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin.2 ~ Alex Korb, #NFDB
632:Look, there is parliamentary democracy in most European countries, there is parliamentary democracy in Japan, there is parliamentary democracy in many countries, but in the United States, for some reason, the State is organized differently, there is quite a stringent presidential republic. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
633:Starbucks being an extension of peoples home and work. The sense of community, human connection. That appears to be as relevant in Turkey, China, Japan and Spain as it is here in America. And Starbucks I think is creating something for people all over the world that has not existed before. ~ Howard Schultz, #NFDB
634:That's why you have to keep your mind open - so that you can be given the privilege to have five weeks in Japan and take all of that in. I mean, that's privilege to be able to do that. And you have to give that privilege back - it doesn't belong to you. It belongs to the madding crowd. ~ Polly Allen Mellen, #NFDB
635:The fact of the matter is that Buddhism has changed a lot. When St. Francis of Xavier arrived in Japan, he wrote back to the Vatican and made a joke. "It is unfortunate," he said, "that the Lutherans were here before me." By this he meant that Pure Land Buddhism was so much like Lutheranism. ~ Ninian Smart, #NFDB
636:You should not be esteemed by others if you have no real inner virtue. People here in Japan esteem others on the basis of outward appearances, without knowing anything about real inner virtue; so students lacking the spirit of the Way are dragged down into bad habits and become subject to temptation. ~ D gen, #NFDB
637:Byron had learned from a monk he’d met during his graduate work in Japan: The obstacle is the path. Meaning what wouldn’t kill Aria would just make her stronger. But when she imagined moving in with Meredith, a more appropriate quote came to mind: There are some remedies worse than the disease. ~ Sara Shepard, #NFDB
638:I once said that it was unacceptable for Japan to remain "an isolated prosperous island." At one time, it might have been all right for Japan to avoid sending any citizens to dangerous areas [even as part of international efforts] and just wish for its own people's happiness. That time is gone. ~ Sadako Ogata, #NFDB
639:the chief if not the sole cause of the enslavement of the Indian peoples by the English lies in this very absence of a religious consciousness and of the guidance for conduct which should flow from it—a lack common in our day to all nations East and West, from Japan to England and America alike. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
640:The energy of book titles and the words inside them are very powerful. In Japan, we say that “words make our reality.” The words we see and with which we come into contact tend to bring about events of the same nature. In that sense, you will become the person who matches the books you have kept. ~ Marie Kond, #NFDB
641:...I was not prepared for the feel of the noodles in my mouth, or the purity of the taste. I had been in Japan for almost a month, but I had never experiences anything like this. The noodles quivered as if they were alive, and leapt into my mouth where they vibrated as if playing inaudible music. ~ Ruth Reichl, #NFDB
642:Radiation doesn't recognize borders. A meltdown in Japan or India, say, is a danger to the whole world. Wind circulates the radiation everywhere. Water quality is affected. We all eat the same fish. We use products from all over the world - if something is contaminated, it will cause harm. ~ Wladimir Klitschko, #NFDB
643:The effects of this shift to irregular work have not always been visible. One reason is parents’ benevolence. Millions of young workers remain living at home, rent-free. But once the older generation that drove Japan’s post-war boom goes, underlying poverty will become more evident, says Ms Katada. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
644:In overworked countries like Japan, Turkey, and, of course, the United States, people watch an absurd amount of television. Up to five hours a day in the U.S., which adds up to nine years over a lifetime. American children spend half again as much time in front of the TV as they do at school.56 ~ Rutger Bregman, #NFDB
645:Space is about 100 kilometers away. That’s far away—I wouldn’t want to climb a ladder to get there—but it isn’t that far away. If you’re in Sacramento, Seattle, Canberra, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Phnom Penh, Cairo, Beijing, central Japan, central Sri Lanka, or Portland, space is closer than the sea. ~ Randall Munroe, #NFDB
646:Two things stand out: The zen-like demeanor of the Japanese amidst such a huge disaster, and the realization that if there is a place on earth that I want to be with my family and friends (current and extended), when (God forbid) such a disaster ever struck again, then it's this country, Japan. ~ Jake Adelstein, #NFDB
647:It goes without saying that the stability of the Middle East is the foundation for peace and prosperity for the world, and of course for Japan. Should we leave terrorism or weapons of mass destruction to spread in this region, the loss imparted upon the international community would be immeasurable. ~ Shinzo Abe, #NFDB
648:This is the difference between Eldric and me. Had it been my job to transform the garden, I would have removed the clothesline. Clotheslines always make me think of undergarments, and although I’ve never been to Japan, I don’t imagine a memory-whiff of undergarments is at all À la Japonaise. ~ Franny Billingsley, #NFDB
649:I think Japans work really hard, and when they have a chance to listen to music, they just go crazy. And the Ramones would be a natural fit for Japan, because Japan invented the cartoon, and the Ramones, especially in Rock 'N' Roll High School, are very cartoonish. So it'd be a perfect group for them. ~ P J Soles, #NFDB
650:I've been round Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, and China in the last few months and the message that I've been taking is that New Zealand is building an up market dynamic into a connected economy. And that we are not the old-fashioned, ship mutton kind of product the people associate their export in work. ~ Helen Clark, #NFDB
651:On December 7, 1941, an event took place that had nothing to do with me or my family and yet which had devastating consequences for all of us - Japan bombed Pearl Harbour in a surprise attack. With that event began one of the shoddiest chapters in the tortuous history of democracy in North America. ~ David Suzuki, #NFDB
652:People don't put as much of an emphasis in expanding their choices, so that, you know, one of the things that I learned when I was in Japan way back in the 1990's and there were all these quarrels happening between the U.S. and Japan about allowing more American products into the Japanese market. ~ Sheena Iyengar, #NFDB
653:Japan. So successful was the Japanese ‘welfare superpower’ that by the 1970s life expectancy in Japan had become the longest in the world. But that, combined with a falling birth rate, has produced the world’s oldest society, with more than 21 per cent of the population already over the age of 65. ~ Niall Ferguson, #NFDB
654:Japan's very interesting. Some people think it copies things. I don't think that anymore. I think what they do is reinvent things. They will get something that's already been invented and study it until they thoroughly understand it. In some cases, they understand it better than the original inventor. ~ Steve Jobs, #NFDB
655:I do not believe there is the slightest chance of war with Japan in our lifetime. The Japanese are our allies.... Japan is at the other end of the world. She cannot menace our vital security in any way.... War with Japan is not a possibility which any reasonable government need take into account. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
656:The 1905 draft of a treaty between Russia and Japan, written in both French and English, treated the English control and French contrôler as synonyms when in fact the English form means “to dominate or hold power” while the French means simply “to inspect.” The treaty nearly fell apart as a result. The ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
657:The Japanese people were rapidly succumbing to what would later be called shoribyo, or “victory disease”—a faith that Japan was invincible, and could afford to treat its enemies with contempt. Its symptoms were overconfidence, a failure to weigh risks properly, and a basic misunderstanding of the enemy. ~ Ian W Toll, #NFDB
658:I like other sports, too, including skiing and swimming, and I am learning to play ice hockey now. But judo is definitely part of my life, a very big part, and I am glad that judo was the first sport I took up and that I have practiced it regularly and seriously. I am also grateful to Japan for this. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
659:Japan used to beat China routinely in wars. You know that, right? Japan used to beat China, they routinely beat China. Why are we defending? You know the pact we have with Japan is interesting. Because if somebody attacks us, Japan does not have to help.If somebody attacks Japan, we have to help Japan. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
660:Back in 1956, we signed a treaty and surprisingly it was ratified both by the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union and the Japanese Parliament. But then Japan refused to implement it and after that the Soviet Union also, so to say, nullified all the agreements reached within the framework of the treaty. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
661:I lost about 60 pounds. I don't really have a moment specifically that made me do it. I remember little things, like, when I was in Japan, I remember looking around at the portion sizes of a fast food restaurant and being like, 'Well, this has something to do with it.' Americans definitely eat too much. ~ Patrick Stump, #NFDB
662:Shin [Biyajima] rides down with this big ol' Japanese grin and giggle and I'm like what? Two years later, when I started planning the trip, I knew Shin was from the Hakuba area, and I didn't want to come film in Japan without a Japanese rider. Shin had the time and availability, and it worked out perfect. ~ Travis Rice, #NFDB
663:In our victory over Japan, airpower was unquestionably decisive. That the planned invasion of the Japanese Home islands was unnecessary is clear evidence that airpower has evolved into a force in war co-equal with land and sea power, decisive in its own right and worthy of the faith of its prophets. ~ Carl Andrew Spaatz, #NFDB
664:We can't attribute a long history of democratic traditions to Japan, either, but today Japan boasts a fully-fledged democracy in which governments change according to democratic procedures. It's no coincidence that the Taiwanese, Japanese, and South Korean economies are among the most innovative in Asia. ~ Garry Kasparov, #NFDB
665:According to the supermarkets, there is no such thing as “out of season.” Berries in the middle of February? Why not? Seafood flown in from Japan? Sure. While it all adds up to appetizing and varied meals throughout the year, regardless of the weather, it comes with a price tag - both ethical and financial. ~ Homaro Cantu, #NFDB
666:In Russia a café like this would have been closed down in a moment. In Europe they would have put the owner in prison. In the USA the proprietor would have been hit with an absolutely massive fine. And in Japan the boss of an establishment like this would have committed seppuku out of a sense of shame. ~ Sergei Lukyanenko, #NFDB
667:It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender... In being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. ~ William D Leahy, #NFDB
668:The big story will come when the Yen decisively breaks down through 121,” Edwards said. “Then you will get another round of deflation being sent from Japan to the rest of the world. Japan has had enough importing everyone else’s deflation for the last 20 years. They are giving it back to the rest of the world. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
669:When I went to Japan I sang in Japanese; when I went to Greece I sang in Greek. When I went to Spain, I sang in Spanish. I couldn't speak it very well, but I sang, I was beautiful in singing it. These things just constantly attracted people to the uniqueness of who I was and the way in which I performed. ~ Harry Belafonte, #NFDB
670:I grew up as a fifth-generation Jew in the American South, at the confluence of two great storytelling traditions. After graduating from Yale in the 1980s, I moved to Japan. For young adventure seekers like myself, the white-hot Japanese miracle held a similar appeal as Russia in 1920s or Paris in the 1950s. ~ Bruce Feiler, #NFDB
671:I remember being in Japan when Destiny's Child put out 'Independent Women,' and women there were saying how proud they were to have their own jobs, their own independent thinking, their own goals. It made me feel so good, and I realized that one of my responsibilities was to inspire women in a deeper way. ~ Beyonce Knowles, #NFDB
672:Well, there's lots of different things going on at the moment, I'm in talks with some people from Japan to do something and I'm also talking to Hugo Boss to do a very small line, which I want to keep to just 10-12 pieces, but what I want to do is sit with the designers for a couple of days bashing some stuff out. ~ Jay Kay, #NFDB
673:American media attention to the controversy helped fuel the spread of the movement in the United States, until government agencies like the CDC were able to spread enough vaccine education to quell the panic. But by then the fear had spread across Europe, Japan, the Soviet Union, Australia, and Canada. ~ Shawn Lawrence Otto, #NFDB
674:I want completing the single market to be our driving mission. I want us to be at the forefront of transformative trade deals with the US, Japan and India as part of the drive towards global free trade. And I want us to be pushing to exempt Europe's smallest entrepreneurial companies from more EU directives. ~ David Cameron, #NFDB
675:We started out making a film [ The Fourth Phase] about the incredible snow we get at home in Wyoming, the journey soon macroed out into this epic 16,000 mile trip around the North Pacific, taking us to locations in Japan, Alaska, the Kamchatka Peninsula in far-eastern Russia, and back to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. ~ Travis Rice, #NFDB
676:I always had a sense that I would fall in love with Tokyo. In retrospect I guess it's not that surprising. I was of the generation that had grown up in the '80s when Japan was ascendant (born aloft by a bubble whose burst crippled its economy for decades), and I'd fed on a steady diet of anime and samurai films. ~ Junot Diaz, #NFDB
677:With every story that TV covers, somebody - some corporation, some shareholders - are making money. That's true whether covering Libya, Iraq, the tsunami in Japan, Osama bin Laden, whatever story there is. That day, the shareholders are making money off it. Every newspaper that's sold, somebody's making a dime. ~ Nancy Grace, #NFDB
678:in the last two years alone, more Americans died from gunshot wounds than were killed during the entire Vietnam War. By contrast, in all of Japan (with a population of 120 million people), the number of young men shot to death in a year is equal to the number killed in New York City in a single busy weekend. ~ Gavin de Becker, #NFDB
679:Take Germany and Japan, both defeated in the Second World War. Germany has acknowledged its monstrous crimes to a certain extent, has paid reparations and so on. Japan, in contrast, apologizes for nothing and has paid no reparations, with one exception: It pays reparations to the United States, but not to Asia. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
680:I found this really fantastic used record store in Japan, and I bought all these different records and different 45s, and one of the 45s was just, it had the theme, "Green Leaves of Summer," the theme to "The Alamo" on one side, and then on the flip side was a theme to, the theme to "The Magnificent Seven." ~ Quentin Tarantino, #NFDB
681:The United Nations research states that men with the longest life expectancy are from Japan, followed by Switzerland. I am rather surprised at this result as since time immemorial we have been doing the Karva Chauth fast to make sure our men have long lives, and the results should have definitely shown by now. ~ Twinkle Khanna, #NFDB
682:SALT: your mouth waters itself. Flakes from Brittany, liquescent on contact. Blocks of pink salt from the Himalayas, matte gray clumps from Japan. And endless stream of kosher salt, falling from Chef’s hand. Salting the most nuanced of enterprises, the food always requesting more, but the tipping point fatal. ~ Stephanie Danler, #NFDB
683:The President of the United States ordered me to break through the Japanese lines and proceed from Corregidor to Australia for the purpose, as I understand it, of organizing the American offensive against Japan, a primary objective of which is the relief of the Philippines. I came through and I shall return. ~ Douglas MacArthur, #NFDB
684:I'm sure that growing up in the Midwest played a role in my chronic escapism. In fact, before I lived in France, I lived in Japan, England, and Bulgaria. I was determined to experience other places and cultures, particularly because I had the perception that I'd been cut off from these experiences as a child. ~ Danielle Trussoni, #NFDB
685:KOBE BEEF OUTSIDE JAPAN This is much trickier, and the only three places in the United States I consider reliable are the restaurants in the Wynn Las Vegas casino resort, 212 Steakhouse in New York City, and Hawaii’s Teppanyaki Ginza Sumikawa, the sole spots in this country certified by the Kobe Beef Association. ~ Larry Olmsted, #NFDB
686:Japan likewise put her hopes of victory on a different basis from that prevalent in the United States. (...) Even when she was winning, her civilian statesmen, her High Command, and her soldiers repeated that this was no contest between armaments; it was pitting of our faith in things against their faith in spirit. ~ Ruth Benedict, #NFDB
687:The Imperial Household, as represented by the Emperor, has been praying for the welfare of the people while nurturing harmonious relationship with them. Based on the people's respect and adoration for the Emperor, the Japanese people have stayed united. That is the essence of Japan's national heritage, I believe. ~ Yoshiko Sakurai, #NFDB
688:I really am a recluse. I just enjoy watching the wind blow through the trees. In America someone who sits around and does that is at the bottom of the ladder, but in Japan, say, someone who goes up into the mountains is accorded great respect. I guess I am somewhere in between. I enjoy reclusion: it clears my mind. ~ Robert M Pirsig, #NFDB
689:The stems she is examining have been on a miraculous journey. Picked a few days ago, perhaps in Ecuador, maybe in Japan or Thailand, they were doused in herbicides, driven to an airport and stuck in the belly of a passenger plane, along with the two other great globetrotting perishables of the jet age, sushi and corpses. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
690:When Japanese went to Hawaii they would go straight and buy the same thing that they would buy in Japan. They just got it cheaper, which they liked. And so they would still eat the red bean ice cream or the green tea ice cream, but they didn't really take advantage of the variety and it wasn't clear that they cared. ~ Sheena Iyengar, #NFDB
691:In Japan, it is said that words of the soul reside in a spirit called kotodama or the spirit of words, and the act of speaking words has the power to change the world. We all know that words have an enormous influence on the way we think and feel, and that things generally go more smoothly when positive words are used. ~ Masaru Emoto, #NFDB
692:It is good that since the outbreak of the war with Japan, more and more revolutionary writers have been coming to Yan'an... But it does not necessarily follow that... they have integrated themselves completely with the masses here. The two must be completely integrated if we are to push ahead with our revolutionary work. ~ Mao Zedong, #NFDB
693:Perhaps more than an American high school, Japan is like an English public school. You are supposed to learn, excel, and win athletic distinctions—not for yourself, but for the house and for the country, for being Japanese. First on the field, all for the sake of your school. And then, the emptiness when you graduate. ~ Donald Richie, #NFDB
694:If the European discovery had been delayed for a century or two, it is possible that the Aztec in Mexico or the Iroquois in North America would have established strong native states capable of adopting European war tactics and maintaining their independence to this day, as Japan kept her independence from China. ~ Samuel Eliot Morison, #NFDB
695:Japan's diplomatic efforts could have had a broader international perspective. Relations with the U.S. are, of course, the cornerstone of Japan's diplomacy, but the U.S. acts on its global strategy. For instance, Washington suddenly got closer to China in the early 1970s as part of its strategy against the Soviet Union. ~ Sadako Ogata, #NFDB
696:Everything is going killer. It's loud and dirty and everything that people expect from DOPE . This situation is nothing new for any of us and so far it's been pretty effortless. We are all crazy excited to get back to Japan and party our asses off, not to mention that we can't wait to kick some Japanese ass on Halloween. ~ Brian Ebejer, #NFDB
697:withdrawing the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, a regional free trade deal negotiated under Obama that lowered tariffs and provided a forum to resolve intellectual property and labor disputes between the U.S. and 11 other nations, including Japan, Canada and numerous countries in Southeast Asia. ~ Bob Woodward, #NFDB
698:Japanese food is very pretty and undoubtedly a suitable cuisine in Japan, which is largely populated by people of below average size. Hostesses hell-bent on serving such food to occidentals would be well advised to supplement it with something more substantial and to keep in mind that almost everybody likes french fries. ~ Fran Lebowitz, #NFDB
699:The book has had one unexpected side effect: by disdaining Koreans' complaints, it actually touches upon Japan's less-then-noble history with Korea, which is something the Ministry of Education has worked hard to keep out of the public school system. Apparently not knowing history means never having to say you're story. ~ Jake Adelstein, #NFDB
700:When I grew up, in Taiwan, the Korean War was seen as a good war, where America protected Asia. It was sort of an extension of World War II. And it was, of course, the peak of the Cold War. People in Taiwan were generally proAmerican. The Korean War made Japan. And then the Vietnam War made Taiwan. There is some truth to that. ~ Ang Lee, #NFDB
701:these investigators, too, concluded that differences in cancer rates could be explained by differences in fat consumption and animal-fat consumption, particularly between Japan and the United States. They did not serve science well by ignoring sugar consumption and the difference between refined and unrefined carbohydrates. ~ Gary Taubes, #NFDB
702:God and Caesar, church and state, spiritual authority and temporal authority, have been a prevailing dualism in Western culture. Only in Hindu civilization were religion and politics also so distinctly separated. In Islam, God is Caesar; in China and Japan, Caesar is God; in Orthodoxy, God is Caesar’s junior partner. ~ Samuel P Huntington, #NFDB
703:If you hit a hole in one when playing golf in Japan, you should know that it is customary to throw a lavish celebration for your friends. Don’t worry if the cost of this is worrying you though, as you could join the four million Japanese citizens who have taken out ‘hole-in-one insurance’, covering them for half a million Yen. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
704:During my travels in Iraq, Israel, Gaza, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, Europe and all over the United States, I have seen and heard the voices of people who want change. They want the stabilization of the economy, education and healthcare for all, renewable energy and an environmental vision with an eye on generations to come. ~ Michael Franti, #NFDB
705:If you look at Caterpillar now [in Japan] with what's going on. [Shinzō] Abe is a great leader. Who is our chief negotiator? Essentially it is Caroline Kennedy. I mean give me a break. She doesn't even know she's alive. It's Caroline Kennedy. So Caterpillar is having a hard time selling because Komatsu is under-cutting them. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
706:Japan is neither willing nor able to conclude the war at present, nor has her strategic offensive yet come to an end, but, as the general trend shows, her offensive is confined within certain limits, which is the inevitable consequence of her three weaknesses; she cannot go on indefinitely till she swallows the whole of China. ~ Mao Zedong, #NFDB
707:The CIA was born out of the disaster at Pearl Harbor. Despite warning signals, Japan achieved complete and overwhelming surprise in the December 7, 1941, attack that took the lives of more than twenty-four hundred Americans, sunk or damaged twenty-one ships in the U.S. Pacific Fleet, and thrust the United States into war. ~ David E Hoffman, #NFDB
708:I'd been very influenced by what I'd seen in Japan. Part of what I greatly admired there - and part of what we were lacking in our factory - was as sense of teamwork and discipline. If we didn't have the discipline to keep that place spotless, then we weren't going to have the discipline to keep all those machines running. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
709:It was good to launch the economy in the '50s. Japan did this; China did this; even South Korea did this. All the East Asians did this - import substitution. I think all countries followed import substitution in the '50s and in the '60s, but I think by the '70s, countries were getting out of that first phase of the strategy. ~ Jairam Ramesh, #NFDB
710:When I was in Japan on tour in 2010, I felt like I was 30 years into the future. I love technology and they are so advanced with their phones, computers, everything. I think they had the iPhone way before we did in the U.S. I love gadgets, games, social media and I try to stay ahead on all that stuff, but they get it all first. ~ Soulja Boy, #NFDB
711:herbivore man.” This is a term that has become ubiquitous in Japan over the past few years to describe Japanese men who are very shy and passive and show no interest in sex and romantic relationships. Surveys suggest that about 60 percent of male singles in their twenties and thirties in Japan identify themselves as herbivores. ~ Aziz Ansari, #NFDB
712:They fought together as brothers in arms; they died together and now they sleep side by side...To them, we have a solemn obligation...to ensure that their sacrifice will help make this a better and safer world in which to live.”—Admiral Nimitz at the official surrender of Japan on September 2, 1945, in Tokyo Bay. ~ Bathroom Readers Institute, #NFDB
713:Maitake mushrooms are known in Japan as “the dancing mushroom.” According to a Japanese legend, a group of Buddhist nuns and woodcutters met on a mountain trail, where they discovered a fruiting of maitake mushrooms emerging from the forest floor. Rejoicing at their discovery of this delicious mushroom, they danced to celebrate. ~ Paul Stamets, #NFDB
714:Mohnish Pabrai in the United States, Prem Watsa in Canada, Massimo Fuggetta in the United Kingdom, Guy Spier in Switzerland, François Badelon in France, Francisco García Paramés in Spain, Ciccio Azzollini in Italy, Jochen Wermuth in Russia, Rahul Saraogi in India, Christopher Swasbrook in New Zealand, and Shuhei Abe in Japan. ~ John Mihaljevic, #NFDB
715:It was the most ordinary thing in the world, but it felt like we were lovers or something, because in Japan dads don't generally hug and kiss their kids. Don't ask me why. They just don't. But we kissed and hugged because we were American, at least in our hearts, and then we'd both step away really fast in case anyone was watching. ~ Ruth Ozeki, #NFDB
716:We're working better with China than we ever have. We are determined to take care of South Korea, which is why we have our mission there, working and that, as well. And then we're going to continue to take care of Japan. The entire international community isolate North Korea and let them know that this nuclear tests not acceptable. ~ Nikki Haley, #NFDB
717:While our responses to the problems facing us immediately are also important, we cannot forget to carve out the future of Japan ten or one hundred years into the future. In doing so, we must not resort to superficial measures. Instead, it is imperative to engage in true reforms that ascertain the state of society we seek to achieve. ~ Shinzo Abe, #NFDB
718:You know, Russia today is, what, 200 million people? In land mass, it's probably 50 times the size [of Japan], in natural resources a hundred times the size! Russia's not doing all that badly. The public there - not everybody - but they have things that the West offered, [that] were only available in the West a long time ago. ~ Michael Bloomberg, #NFDB
719:I believe that the civilization India evolved is not to be beaten in the world. Nothing can equal the seeds sown by our ancestors, Rome went, Greece shared the same fate; the might of the Pharaohs was broken; Japan has become Westernized; of China nothing can be said; but India is still, somehow or other, sound at the foundation. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
720:I was 12 or 13, and I had seen a demo about origami at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. My dad, my step-mom, and I were at the Japan pavilion of Epcot, and my dad was going to get me an origami book. They had these really sick origami books with an overleaf, but those packs can sometimes blow, because they give you, like, eight sheets. ~ Adam Richman, #NFDB
721:The economy is very sick. We're losing our jobs to China to Japan to every country. We're making horrible trade deals. We are losing jobs in this country. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of jobs are being lost. And part of the reason is our taxes are so high in this country. I'm also cutting, you know they don't talk about that. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
722:By Royal Brougham’s calculations, done that night on a bar napkin, in four years of college rowing, each of them had rowed approximately 4,344 miles, far enough to take him from Seattle to Japan. Along the way, each had taken roughly 469,000 strokes with his oar, all in preparation for only 28 miles of actual collegiate racing. ~ Daniel James Brown, #NFDB
723:If there is one point on which all authorities on Japan are in agreement, it is that Japanese institutions, whether business or government agencies, make decisions by consensus. The Japanese, we are told, debate a proposed decision throughout the organization until there is agreement on it. And only then do they make the decision. ~ Peter F Drucker, #NFDB
724:We are on the verge of losing the traditional idea of the family, especially in Japan, where the declining birth rate shows no signs of stopping. This is precisely why I think we should consider with a sense of urgency what the new image of "family" should be like, and not fall into the nostalgism that days gone by were just better. ~ Mamoru Hosoda, #NFDB
725:According to S. A. Nilus, a secret Jewish council known as the Sanhedrin had hypnotized the Japanese into believing they were one of the tribes of Israel; it was the Jews’ aim, Nilus insisted, ‘to set a distraught Russia awash with blood and to inundate it, and then Europe, with the yellow hordes of a resurgent China guided by Japan’. ~ Niall Ferguson, #NFDB
726:I thought I heard an axe chop in the woods
It broke the dream; and woke up dreaming on a train.
It must have been a thousand years ago
In some old mountain sawmill of Japan.
A horde of excess poets and unwed girls
And I that night prowled Tokyo like a bear
Tracking the human future
Of intelligence and despair. ~ Gary Snyder,#NFDB
727:[After Easy Rider] I couldn't get another movie, so I lived in Mexico City for a couple of years. I lived in Paris for a couple of years. I didn't take any photographs, and then I went to Japan and saw a Nikon used. I bought it, and I just started, like an alcoholic. I shot 300 rolls of film. That was the beginning of me starting again. ~ Dennis Hopper, #NFDB
728:In an instant he forgot Joe's poem about Japan except the part about 'you are the bell, and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,' and a new sound entered his life, like when he was a kid and he first heard the sound of horses clip-clopping and he asked his mother in wonder, "What's that sound, because I've never heard it before? ~ Melina Marchetta, #NFDB
729:Jesus must have been a really great artist in creating enemies because he was only thirty-three when he was crucified, and there were only three years of work because he appeared at the age of thirty. Up to that time he was with the mystery schools, going around the world to Egypt, to India, and the possibility is even to Tibet and to Japan. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
730:To protect people's lives and keep our children safe, we must implement public-works spending and do so proudly. If possible, I'd like to see the Bank of Japan purchase all of the construction bonds that we need to issue to cover the cost. That would also forcefully circulate money in the market. That would be positive for the economy, too. ~ Shinzo Abe, #NFDB
731:All of Japan once a year will get up on their rooftops, because that's the night that the shepherd boy from one side of the Milky Way gets to meet the weaver girl on the other side of the Milky Way. They all get up on their roofs and watch that night. So they long for 365 days and then on the 365th night, they see the result of that longing. ~ Robert Bly, #NFDB
732:I gave 2s. 3d. a yard for my flannel, and I fancy it is not very good, but it is so disgraceful and contemptible an article in itself that its being comparatively good or bad is of little importance. I bought some Japan ink likewise, and next week shall begin my operations on my hat, on which you know my principal hopes of happiness depend. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
733:I hate the phrase “One thing led to another”. What kind of lazy writing is that? Isn't it your job as a writer to tell me how that made this happen? “Adolf Hitler was rejected as a young man in his application to an art school. One thing led to anotherand the United States ended up dropping two atomic bombs on the sovereign nation of Japan”. ~ Brian Regan, #NFDB
734:I have learned that I, we, are a dollar-a-day people (which is terrible, they say, because a cow in Japan is worth $9 a day). This means that a Japanese cow would be a middle class Kenyan... a $9-a-day cow from Japan could very well head a humanitarian NGO in Kenya. Massages are very cheap in Nairobi, so the cow would be comfortable. ~ Binyavanga Wainaina, #NFDB
735:Love is this elusive bird," he said. "You're the lifelong bird-watcher, looking for this rare red-plumed quail people spend entire lives trying to see for three seconds in a cherry tree on a mountaintop in Japan."
"You're mistaking love for perfection," I said. "Real love when it's there? It's just there. It's a metal folding chair. ~ Marisha Pessl,#NFDB
736:World War Two was a world war in space. It spread from Europe to Japan, to the Soviet Union, etc. World War Two was quite different from World War One which was geographically limited to Europe. But in the case of the Gulf War, we are dealing with a war which is extremely local in space, but global in time, since it is the first 'live' war. ~ Paul Virilio, #NFDB
737:There will be a shifting of the poles. There will be upheavals in the Arctic and the Antarctic that will make fotr the eruption of volcanos in the Torrid areas... The upper portion of Europe will be changed in the blink of an eye. The earth will be broken up in the western portion of America. The greater portion of Japan must go into the sea. ~ Edgar Cayce, #NFDB
738:We stick to the magical places in the world,” Asahi clarified.
“Places like the MBRC, the Redwood forest of California, the less populated parts of New Zealand and Japan, Disney World, and Atlantis,” Madeline listed, ticking the places off on her fingers.
“Wait, Disney World?” I interrupted.
“The most magical place on Earth. ~ K M Shea,#NFDB
739:After a trip to Japan Mitchell famously predicted that the next war would be fought in the Pacific after a Japanese sneak attack on a Sunday morning in Hawaii. Eddie Rickenbacker, who had served as Mitchell’s driver before becoming an ace combat pilot, wryly quipped that “the only people who paid any attention to him were the Japanese.” Most ~ Winston Groom, #NFDB
740:All of those broken bones in northern Japan, all of those broken lives and those broken homes prompt us to remember what in calmer times we are invariably minded to forget: the most stern and chilling of mantras, which holds, quite simply, that mankind inhabits this earth subject to geological consent - which can be withdrawn at any time. ~ Simon Winchester, #NFDB
741:I just think that's the most amazing thing to be able to go to places like Japan and surf all day and then that night, play music. It's never been one of those things that's disrupted the flow of one and other, they've just enhanced one and other. It's incredible. It's beautiful that I found these two things that help each other out. ~ Donavon Frankenreiter, #NFDB
742:It was a different sense of isolation from what he normally felt in Japan. And not such a bad feeling, he decided. Being alone in two senses of the word was maybe like a double negation of isolation. In other words, it made perfect sense for him, a foreigner, to feel isolated here. The thought calmed him. He was in exactly the right place. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
743:Me being from a Celtic culture that tends to emphasize directness, conflict, openness has a big effect on my living in Japan, which tends to focus on indirectness, avoidance of conflict and keeping things close to your chest. So that has led to quite a lot of cultural misunderstandings in dealing with this East Asian culture I live in. ~ Sean Michael Wilson, #NFDB
744:Global central banks are working hard to lift their economies through an aggressively easy monetary policy. The ECB [European Central Bank] and BOJ [Bank of Japan] are buying tens of billions of bonds and other financial securities each month in an effort to stimulate their economies, which is pushing down rates everywhere, including in the U.S. ~ Mark Zandi, #NFDB
745:The same goes for our dealings with sheep. Sheep raising in Japan has failed precisely because we’ve viewed sheep merely as a source of wool and meat. The daily-life level is missing from our thinking. We minimize the time factor to maximize the results. It’s like that with everything. In other words, we don’t have our feet on solid ground. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
746:History suggests consumers will adapt fast. In 20 years, miracle cures for the old will come from Japan, the best web apps from India and couture from China. And cornflakes, once a cutting-edge food, will be rivalled by congee and dosas, sold in boxes by a global brand. Asian capitalism will change the world—even, maybe, what it has for breakfast. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
747:I followed a girl I met in Japan to Los Angeles and ended up working in a motorcycle store. I quit the job one night, went to a party in the Hollywood Hills and ended up yelling at a bunch of people. Someone saw me yelling and asked me to be in a play. The first night, there was an agent in the audience who took me on and sent me out for jobs. ~ Norman Reedus, #NFDB
748:Irrespective of when this may happen, it would not be an exaggeration to say that today millions of people living in Russia and, I am sure, millions of people living in Japan have an urge to get to know each other, cooperate and exchange useful information, as well as a sincere desire that all problems that still remain unresolved be resolved. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
749:In Japan, I learned the hard way that the moment of exchanging business cards signals an important ritual. We Americans are prone to casually pocketing the card without looking, which there indicates disrespect. I was told you should take the card carefully, hold it in both hands, and study it for a while before putting it away in a special case ~ Daniel Goleman, #NFDB
750:This was the last party Mrs. Radford would attend in San Francisco. One month later she left on a boat filled with missionaries going to Hawaii. One year later she was one of only seven white women in Edo, Japan. From there she sailed to Russia; from there she made her way to Peking. She died somewhere near Chunking at the age of seventy-four. ~ Karen Joy Fowler, #NFDB
751:Population diminishing, even in Japan and Italy, the population is diminishing. When society can reach a sustainable place or gain comfortable income, then people tend to have fewer children. Poverty makes a chain reaction of having many children. So when society reaches some kind of level, then it will turn toward getting a smaller population. ~ Hiroshi Sugimoto, #NFDB
752:Selling five million units in less than 14 months means DS is the fastest among any game machines ever launched in Japan to hit that level. To achieve this rapid growth, we were required not only to go after frequent game players, but to reel back people who had left games and to make video games enjoyable for those who had not played games at all. ~ Satoru Iwata, #NFDB
753:Anyway, the US, as in most issues, is the best, has the best capability to lead, and really needs to lead. It doesn't [mean] that other countries won't pick different tacks and emphasize different things. In aggregate, they're almost half of the energy R&D. Europe, China, Japan - it's very important that they come along and contribute to these things. ~ Bill Gates, #NFDB
754:The Ondřej feeling swept over him. The very thing he tried to explain to Sheila over the phone from France. The feeling that drove him to fly to Japan. You fall too fast, Brian Caleb. Please don’t be a pathetic idiot again. You be careful. His logical side screamed at him as he walked over to Jason and helped him down from the examination table. ~ Barry Brennessel, #NFDB
755:The worst part of what we heard Donald [trump] say has been about nuclear weapons. He has said repeatedly that he didn't care if other nations got nuclear weapons, Japan, South Korea, even Saudi Arabia. It has been the policy of the United States, Democrats and Republicans, to do everything we could to reduce the proliferation of nuclear weapons. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
756:In a free country, America, or India, and Japan, and many places, democracy country, free country, but still within the sort of rule of law, some injustice, some sort of problems, some discrimination, and also some sort of scandals or the corruptions. These things, you see, they are always in my mind, I think many people agree, lack of moral principle. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
757:the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu concluded that Europeans and Christianity posed a threat to the stability of the shogunate and Japan. (In retrospect, when one considers how European military intervention followed the arrival of apparently innocent traders and missionaries in China, India, and many other countries, the threat foreseen by Ieyasu was real.) ~ Jared Diamond, #NFDB
758:Anyone who values freedom and democracy should fight when they are threatened. Tyranny anywhere in the world must be snuffed out. We in the free world should have learned that in the 1930s, when bullies began to rear their heads in Germany, Italy, and Japan. Tyranny feeds upon itself and spreads like a great cancer. If we do not stop it, then who will? ~ Mark Berent, #NFDB
759:how every character is effectively a tiny figure in a suffocating world of associations and obligations; where many an American novel might send its protagonist out into the world to make his own destiny, in Sōsuke’s Japan he cannot move for all his competing (and unmeetable) responsibilities to his aunt, his younger brother, his wife, and society itself. ~ Pico Iyer, #NFDB
760:As a matter of fact 25% of our U.S. investment banking business comes out of our commercial bank. So it's a competitive advantage for both the investment bank - which gets a huge volume of business - and the commercial bank because the commercial bank can walk into a company and say, "Oh, if you need X, Y and Z in Japan or China, we can do that for you." ~ Jamie Dimon, #NFDB
761:fiction has served to propagate the notion that courtesans ply their trade in the area and that geiko spend the night with their customers. Once an idea like this is planted in the general culture it takes on a life of its own. I understand that there are some scholars of Japan in foreign countries who also believe these misconceptions to be true. But ~ Mineko Iwasaki, #NFDB
762:It was the most ordinary thing in the world, but it felt like we were doing something illegal, lovers or something, because in Japan dads don't generally hug and kiss their kids. Don't ask me why. They just don't. But we kissed and hugged because we were American, at least in our hearts, and then we'd both step away really fast in case anyone was watching. ~ Ruth Ozeki, #NFDB
763:The U.N.-backed International Labor Organization had carried out a study funded by the Japanese government, on the state of human trafficking in Japan. The report was scathing: Japan had failed to punish human traffickers or to take care of the victims. The Japanese government ordered the ILO to keep the report under wraps; it would never be published. ~ Jake Adelstein, #NFDB
764:Virtually every news source lists the greater number of Palestinians killed in Arab-Israeli wars in order to depict the Israelis as guilty (of ‘disproportionate response’). Had similar reporting taken place during World War II, the Western Allies would have been deemed the villains since Germany and Japan lost far more civilians than America or Britain. ~ Dennis Prager, #NFDB
765:The air they breathe, being a living element with both physical and psychical properties, carries a subtle vital energy. This in India is named by the Sanskrit word prana; in Tibet it is called sugs, in Aikido, Japan, ki, and in China, chi. By controlling its circulation throughout the body, man is able to attain spiritual enlightenment or illumination. ~ Frank Waters, #NFDB
766:Some Western readers commonly use the Japanese word manga to mean serious comic-book literature. According to one of my Japanese friends, this usage is wrong. The word manga means “idle picture” and is used in Japan to describe collections of trivial comic-book stories. The correct word for serious comic-book literature is gekiga, meaning “dramatic picture. ~ Freeman Dyson, #NFDB
767:Many of the countries outpacing the United States in the deployment of high speed Internet services, including Canada, Japan and South Korea, have successfully combined municipal systems with privately deployed networks to wire their countries, .. As a country, we cannot afford to cut off any successful strategy if we want to remain internationally competitive. ~ John McCain, #NFDB
768:The reactors in Japan are stable in the same way that a ticking time bomb is also stable. It wouldn't take much to light the fuse - a 6.6 earthquake, like what happened today in Japan, a pipe break, an over-pressurized containment vessel - anything could set it off, in which case we would have another Chernobyl, three times the magnitude of a Chernobyl accident. ~ Michio Kaku, #NFDB
769:second largest and other similar comparisons often lead writers astray: ‘Japan is the second largest drugs market in the world after the United States’ (The Times). Not quite. It is the largest drugs market in the world after the United States or it is the second largest drugs market in the world. The sentence above could be fixed by placing a comma after ‘world’. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
770:There are thirty-seven million people in the United States without any form of medical insurance. Every other leading industrial nation in the world—Germany, Italy, France, Japan, England, Canada, and all the others—supplies health care to all its citizens, at a fraction of what the world’s richest country spends for inadequate health care. It’s our national shame. ~ Noah Gordon, #NFDB
771:In 2000 the then Prime Minister of Japan [Yoshirō Mori] asked me to return to this process, this conversation, these talks, and to do so, incidentally, on the basis of the 1956 declaration. I agreed. Since then we have conducted dialogue in this regard but I cannot say that our Japanese partners and friends have remained within the limits of the 1956 declaration. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
772:The trick was to refuse to allow your pain to prevent you from living honorably. In Japan, she said, a person learned not to complain or be distracted by suffering. To persevere was always a reflection of the state of one’s inner life, one’s philosophy, and one’s perspective. It was best to accept old age, death, injustice, hardship – all of these were part of living ~ David Guterson, #NFDB
773:Actually when I was wounded and recovering in Japan. I went to church there and I remember on the air base where their hospital was, I remember coming out of that church and feeling like I had been - at that point I just felt very, very close to God and that I'd done the right thing with my life. And I knew I wasn't going back to Vietnam. I just knew I wasn't going back. ~ Wesley Clark, #NFDB
774:The US economy, because it's so energy wasteful, is much less efficient than either the European or Japanese economies. It takes us twice as much energy to produce a unit of GDP as it does in Europe and Japan. So, we're fundamentally less efficient and therefore less competitive, and the sooner we begin to tighten up, the better it will be for our economy and society. ~ Hazel Henderson, #NFDB
775:Parakeets in Paris … It could be the name of a hypnotic Matisse painting, but since the 1970s it has been a very realistic image for the French capital. In fact, the ring-necked parakeet (Psittacula krameri) is one of the birds that has been most successful in invading cities in Europe (on a smaller scale, also in Japan, North America, the Middle East, and Australia). ~ Menno Schilthuizen, #NFDB
776:When you have the countries like Germany, China, and Russia decline, and be replaced by others, that's when systemic wars start. That's when it gets dangerous, because they haven't yet reached a balance. So Germany united in 1871 and all hell broke loose. Japan rose in the early 20th century, and then you had chaos. So we're looking at a systemic shift. Be ready for war. ~ George Friedman, #NFDB
777:If I have trust in Catholicism, it is because I find in it much more possibility than in any other religion for presenting the full symphony of humanity. The other religions have almost no fullness; they have but solo parts. Only Catholicism can present the full symphony. And unless there is in that symphony a part that corresponds to Japan . . . it cannot be a true religion. ~ Sh saku End, #NFDB
778:One of the more problematic aspects of the current state of cinema in Japan is that the movies playing in the theaters are by and large made not by film studios but by broadcasting companies. They're either extensions of popular television dramas or adaptations of manga or anime. Younger Japanese are simply not being exposed to good films. That situation needs to change. ~ Hirokazu Koreeda, #NFDB
779:The people who invented the twenty-first century were pot-smoking, sandal-wearing hippies from the West Coast like Steve, because they saw differently,” he said. "The hierarchical systems of the East Coast, England, Germany, and Japan do not encourage this different thinking. The sixties produced an anarchic mind-set that is great for imagining a world not yet in existence. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
780:The people who invented the twenty-first century were pot-smoking, sandal-wearing hippies from the West Coast like Steve, because they saw differently,” he said. “The hierarchical systems of the East Coast, England, Germany, and Japan do not encourage this different thinking. The sixties produced an anarchic mind-set that is great for imagining a world not yet in existence. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
781:The ten most violent countries in the world in 2014 – Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan and North Korea – are all among the least capitalist. The ten most peaceful – Iceland, Denmark, Austria, New Zealand, Switzerland, Finland, Canada, Japan, Belgium and Norway – are all firmly capitalist. ~ Matt Ridley, #NFDB
782:Donald Trump believes that the world will be safer if more nations have nuclear weapons. He's said Saudi Arabia should get them, Japan should get them, Korea should get them. And when he was confronted with this and told, wait a minute, terrorists could get those, proliferation could lead to nuclear war, here's what Donald Trump said, and I quote, go ahead, folks, enjoy yourselves. ~ Tim Kaine, #NFDB
783:This reticence has little to do with trying to protect oneself and everything to do with trying to protect others from one’s problems, which shouldn’t be theirs; it’s one reason Japan is so confounding to foreigners, as its people faultlessly sparkle and attend to one another in in public, while often seeming passive and unconvinced of their ability to do anything decisive at home. ~ Pico Iyer, #NFDB
784:As for these 60 years, and in general more than a hundred years, we have had different periods in relations and there have been tragic pages in our history, but since 1956 when we restored diplomatic relations, regrettably, we have not had a foundation on which to build ties that would correspond to our wishes and that are currently required in bilateral cooperation with Japan. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
785:Every day, priests minutely examine the Law And endlessly chant complicated sutras. Before doing that, though, they should learn How to read the love letters sent by the wind and rain, the snow and moon. [bk1sm.gif] -- from Ikkyu and the Crazy Cloud Anthology: A Zen Poet of Medieval Japan, by Ikkyu / Translated by Sonya Arutzen
~ Ikkyu, Every day, priests minutely examine the Law
,#NFDB
786:He thus reaps the full fruits which result from his toil and labors with the incentive of free enterprise to maximize his effort to achieve increasing production. Representing over a half of Japan's total population, the agriculture workers have become an invincible barrier against the advance of socialistic ideas which would relegate all to the indignity of state servitude. ~ Douglas MacArthur, #NFDB
787:If you go to Japan, they're still buying vinyl, and they want the education. They know who's playing on what tracks from the '60s and the '70s - who the guitar player is, who the drummer is, who the producer was, what studio it was recorded in. That's how I grew up listening to music. We bought albums. We read the liner notes. It was important to know the whole history behind it. ~ Lenny Kravitz, #NFDB
788:Julie Taymor. She is my gold standard of stage directors. I think she has a comprehensive knowledge of theatrical form, since she lived in Indonesia, Java, Japan and France. Her knowledge of form is limitless. Whenever I get painted in a corner, I think about what form she would use, because that is what she practices. It's about accessing the theater traditions of the whole world. ~ Harry Lennix, #NFDB
789:I guess Sakurai's father loved to talk. For a while, he talked my ear off about a lot of different things. He was a graduate of Tokyo University. He was involved in the student protest movement in the late sixties. He was a salaryman at a famous trading company. H really loved jazz. He called black people 'African Americans.' He called Indians 'Native Americans.' He hated Japan. ~ Kazuki Kaneshiro, #NFDB
790:I painted the words "GREAT ADVENTURE" in Beijing, Dallas, San Francisco, Copenhagen, and Japan. What it means to me is completely different to everybody else. And that's what I love about random words and phrases taken out of context: everyone applies their own context. If you want to apply something political or meaningful to a word I wrote on the side of the wall, then it's up to you. ~ Ben Eine, #NFDB
791:Tessio Zizmo had been a virgin when she married Milton Stephanides at the age of 22. Their engagement,which coincided with the Second World War, had been a chaste affair. My mother was proud of the way she'd managed to simultaneously kindle and snuff my father's flame,keeping him at a low burn for the duration of a global cataclysm.... She didn't surrender until after Japan had. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides, #NFDB
792:The ROH guys looking at the New Japan guys coming over, we're just psyched. We think, "oh great this is just going to make our show even better." The respect level with New Japan and ROH is at an all-time high. And anytime we get a company like New Japan Pro Wrestling on a ROH show, it just benefits our show. It has everybody all jacked up, ready to do the best we can like we always do. ~ Adam Cole, #NFDB
793:Thus, immigrants from Korea really did make a big contribution to the modern Japanese, though we cannot yet say whether that was because of massive immigration or else modest immigration amplified by a high rate of population increase. The Ainu are more nearly the descendants of Japan’s ancient Jomon inhabitants, mixed with Korean genes of Yayoi colonists and of the modern Japanese. ~ Jared Diamond, #NFDB
794:When I was working in Japan, I created a system for ensuring that intelligence data was globally recoverable in the event of a disaster. I was not aware of the scope of mass surveillance. I came across some legal questions when I was creating it. My superiors pushed back and were like, "Well, how are we going to deal with this data?" And I was like, "I didn't even know it existed." ~ Edward Snowden, #NFDB
795:We made our debut in Japan about few years ago and when we went on a morning show there to promote our album, I did a brief interview in Japanese using simple expressions such as "Yoroshiku onegaishimasu." But one of the members of our group said, "Stay quiet if you can't speak Japanese! It's embarrassing!" So that's when I told myself that I'd show how good I am by studying Japanese hard. ~ Seungri, #NFDB
796:Donald Trump believes that the world will be safer if more nations have nuclear weapons. And he's said Saudi Arabia should get them, Japan should get them, Korea should get them. And when he was confronted with this, and told, wait a minute, terrorists could get those, proliferation could lead to nuclear war, here's what Donald Trump said, and I quote: "Go ahead, folks, enjoy yourselves." ~ Tim Kaine, #NFDB
797:I was employed for many years as a senior research scientist developing naval underwater weapon systems at the Technical Research and Development Institute of the Ministry of Defense, Japan, and I often suspected there existed extraordinary technologies developed by the world’s superpowers. I am of the opinion that most of these technologies have been concealed from the public’s eyes. ~ Takaaki Musha, #NFDB
798:I will not offer my thoughts on what Japan could and should have done, this is none of my business, it is the business of the Japanese leadership. But we should understand how practicable all our agreements are as a whole given the allied obligations Japan has assumed, how much independence there is in making those decision, and what we can hope for, what we can ultimately arrive at. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
799:Antonio was fascinated by Isabel's razor-sharp knives from Japan. He made 'kia' sounds like a karate expert as he sliced the tomatoes and added them to the pan. there were some unexpected ingredients, things Tess would never dream of putting in tomato sauce- whole star anise, a vanilla bean split down the middle, a sprinkling of sugar, a sprig of thyme and bay leaves from the herb garden. ~ Susan Wiggs, #NFDB
800:According to Beth-Anne, the next reporter is Nico Renault from Hollywood Japan Network. Nico's recently had his face tattooed to look like the Kabuki-made-up Gene Simmons of the pre-FUS rock band Kiss. He wears his hair in bright blond spikes. He also wears the body of a cow suit without the head, the rubber udders protruding at crotch level, lending the getup a rather multipenised look. ~ Ryan Boudinot, #NFDB
801:It’s insane, but no more insane than Japan shutting down its entire nuclear reactor fleet in the middle of a heat wave because an extreme tsunami washed over one plant, or the USA invading a noninvolved Middle Eastern nation because a gang of crazies from somewhere else knocked down two skyscrapers. In a sufficiently large crisis, sane and measured responses go out the window. But sanity ~ Charles Stross, #NFDB
802:To sum up, global inequality ranges from regions in which the per capita income is on the order of 150–250 euros per month (sub-Saharan Africa, India) to regions where it is as high as 2,500–3,000 euros per month (Western Europe, North America, Japan), that is, ten to twenty times higher. The global average, which is roughly equal to the Chinese average, is around 600–800 euros per month. ~ Thomas Piketty, #NFDB
803:By the time children are ten years old, generally speaking, they’ve learned to eat like the people around them. Once food prejudices are set, it is no simple task to dissolve them. In a separate study, Rozin presented sixty-eight American college students with a grasshopper snack, this time a commercially prepared honey-covered variety sold in Japan. Only 12 percent were willing to try one. So ~ Mary Roach, #NFDB
804:From my perspective, there wasn’t much difference between a socialist movement, a nationalist movement, and a brutal brawl in the black market. All of these people had a couple of things in common. They all had their own personal histories in Japan—and they were all poor. They just wanted to assert their own existence. And that meant fighting however they could to gain some kind of power. ~ Masaji Ishikawa, #NFDB
805:To make the quickest progress, you don't have to take huge leaps. You just have to take baby steps-and keep on taking them. In Japan, they call this approach kaizen, which literally translates as 'continual improvement.' Using kaizen, great and lasting success is achieved through small, consistent steps. It turns out that slow and steady is the best way to overcome your resistance to change. ~ Marci Shimoff, #NFDB
806:One night in Tokyo we watched two Japanese businessmen saying good-night to each other after what had clearly been a long night of drinking, a major participant sport in Japan. These men were totally snockered, having reached the stage of inebriation wherein every air molecule that struck caused them to wobble slightly, but they still managed to behave more formally than Americans do at funerals. ~ Dave Barry, #NFDB
807:A very enjoyable meditation on the curious thing called 'Zen' -not the Japanese religious tradition but rather the Western clich of Zen that is embraced in advertising, self-help books, and much more. . . . Yamada, who is both a scholar of Buddhism and a student of archery, offers refreshing insight into Western stereotypes of Japan and Japanese culture, and how these are received in Japan. ~ Alexander Gardner, #NFDB
808:For 500 years the West patented six killer applications that set it apart. The first to download them was Japan. Over the last century, one Asian country after another has downloaded these killer apps- competition, modern science, the rule of law and private property rights, modern medicine, the consumer society and the work ethic. Those six things are the secret sauce of Western civilization. ~ Niall Ferguson, #NFDB
809:The fact that you see salarymen reading manga and pornography on the trains and being unafraid, unashamed or anything, is something you wouldn’t have seen 30 years ago, with people who grew up under a different system of government. They would have been far too embarrassed to open a book of cartoons or dirty pictures on a train. But that’s what we have now in Japan. We are a country of children. ~ Hideaki Anno, #NFDB
810:Jay had learned that in Japan, sushi chefs might put a touch of wasabi inside a nigiri, using a larger dab of wasabi with fatty fish, and a smaller one with lean. But they never served extra wasabi on the side. They would serve a pinch on the side with sashimi—plain raw fish, without rice. But diners certainly weren’t supposed to mix the wasabi into their soy sauce and apply it indiscriminately. ~ Trevor Corson, #NFDB
811:McMullen came out of Japan racked by nightmares and so nervous that he was barely able to speak cogently. When he told his story to his family, his father accused him of lying and forbade him to speak of the war. Shattered and deeply depressed, McMullen couldn’t eat, and his weight plunged back down to ninety pounds. He went to a veterans’ hospital, but the doctors simply gave him B12 shots. ~ Laura Hillenbrand, #NFDB
812:Aomori Water is a sound collage piece made in 1998, in Aomori Japan. I was in a residency with other artists. A Japanese sculptor was making a round house and wanted a sound piece to play in it. I recorded some very gentle waves lapping the beach, for the first part. And a very small mountain stream, flowing, for the second part. I layered 8 tracks. This was the first work that I did in ProTools. ~ Phill Niblock, #NFDB
813:Nuclear is the single greatest threat. Just to go down the list, we defend Japan, we defend Germany, we defend South Korea, we defend Saudi Arabia, we defend countries. They do not pay us. But they should be paying us, because we are providing tremendous service and we're losing a fortune. That's why we're losing - we're losing - we lose on everything. I say, who makes these - we lose on everything. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
814:Recent history shows us the difference between victors who have earned the friendship of the vanquished and those who have conquered and sown the seeds of hate. Israel still has a chance to choose. It can emulate the example of the United States, which in defeating Japan and Germany made them its allies, or that of Russia, which, even in liberating Poland and Hungary, created revulsion towards Moscow. ~ Tarek Fatah, #NFDB
815:A handful of men working within the Zen sect of Buddhism created gardens in fifteenth-century Japan which were, and still are, far more than merely an aesthetic expression. And what is left of the earlier Mogul gardens in India suggests that their makers were acquainted with what lay behind the flowering of the Sufi movement in High Asia and so sought to add further dimensions to their garden scenes. ~ Russell Page, #NFDB
816:South Korea from a country that had relatively little primary education became close to universal literacy in the course of 25, 30 years, in a way trying to replicate what Japan had done earlier. They were learning to some extent from the Japanese experience too. So I think, in a sense, the East Asians were following a path, which all other countries including South Asia could follow but chose not too. ~ Amartya Sen, #NFDB
817:The United States is broke — fiscally, morally, intellectually — and the Fed has incited a global currency war Japan just signed up, the Brazilians and Chinese are angry, and the German-dominated euro zone is crumbling that will soon overwhelm it. When the latest bubble pops, there will be nothing to stop the collapse. If this sounds like advice to get out of the markets and hide out in cash, it is. ~ David Stockman, #NFDB
818:we have now won the battle of the laboratories as we have won the other battles. We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city, said Harry Truman. We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan’s power to make war. It was to spare— ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
819:Toshiba and Hitachi made better sets at the time, only they showed them on the Ginza in Tokyo and in the big-city department stores, making it pretty clear that farmers were not particularly welcome in such elegant surroundings. Matsushita went to the farmers and sold its televisions door-to-door, something no one in Japan had ever done before for anything more expensive than cotton pants or aprons. ~ Peter F Drucker, #NFDB
820:For example, in the mid-1960s there were direct flights from London to Interlaken (with British Eagle), and in the late 1980s Brits were still the most numerous hotel guests in Interlaken, outnumbering even the Swiss. However, in 2012 Britain only managed No. 8, overtaken by the likes of India, Korea, China and Japan. The British century (and a half) in Switzerland is over; the Asian one has just begun. ~ Diccon Bewes, #NFDB
821:I think the retirement crisis globally is a major problem. I think it's especially prevalant in countries such as Japan, where immigration is an issue. I think the US is more shielded from it than most countries in the world. It has a higher birth rate than Japan, immigration is tolerated here unlike probably it is in Japan. I don't think it's as big an issue in the US as it is elsewhere in the world. ~ Martin Gilbert, #NFDB
822:Life on earth survives thanks to diversity, says Sekunda, because changing circumstances means today's winners can suddenly become tomorrow's losers. When the meteor hits, when the Green Revolution fails, when the bees unexpectedly die, the kind of anomalous diversity found in the Galapagos Islands—or in the technology of Japan—is exactly what will save us from the most dangerous failure of all: global success. ~ Momus, #NFDB
823:We are thus in the position of having to borrow from Europe to defend Europe, of having to borrow from China and Japan to defend Chinese and Japanese access to Gulf oil, and of having to borrow from Arab emirs, sultans and monarchs to make Iraq safe for democracy. We borrow from the nations we defend so that we may continue to defend them. To question this is an unpardonable heresy called 'isolationism.' ~ Pat Buchanan, #NFDB
824:But then foreign critics right away made sweeping comparisons to haiku, noh theater, and directors like Ozu, as if the movie were somehow representative of Japan - which was, well, not what I was after. Similarly, with After Life, I deliberately set out to make a movie that was unlike what I imagined the foreign conception of Japan to be, and I figured non-Japanese wouldn't find it interesting at all. ~ Hirokazu Koreeda, #NFDB
825:In a sense, the earth is mounting an immune response against the human species. It is beginning to react to the human parasite, the flooding infection of people, the dead spots of concrete all over the planet, the cancerous rot-outs in Europe, Japan, and the United States, thick with replicating primates, the colonies enlarging and spreading and threatening to shock the biosphere with mass extinctions. ~ Richard Preston, #NFDB
826:Kevin's mother Kayleigh Day and Riko's uncle Tetsuji Moriyama created the sport roughly thirty years ago while Kayleigh was studying abroad in Fukui, Japan. What started as an experiment spread from their campus to local street teams, then across the ocean to the rest of the world. Kayleigh brought it home with her to Ireland after completing her degree and the United States picked it up soon after. Kevin ~ Nora Sakavic, #NFDB
827:There's something nearly mystical about certain words and phrases that float through our lives. It's computer mysticism. Words that are computer generated to be used on products that might be sold anywhere from Japan to Denmark - words devised to be pronounceable in a hundred languages. And when you detach one of these words from the product it was designed to serve, the words acquires a chantlike quality. ~ Don DeLillo, #NFDB
828:I'm happy that my films were discovered by chance by foreign film festivals. That makes me realise more that there is a world outside Japan too. For me, it's an occasion to meet many people and to experience directly the response of international audiences to my films. But for me as a director, my attitude towards making films hasn't changed with the fame. I feel it's not good to change as a person anyway ~ Takashi Miike, #NFDB
829:I didn't even need America, I was so popular outside the country, until the prosecutin' attorney came from Washington, and said, judge, we cannot let this man go to Japan and fight, because they are anti-American.Now, if I want to leave the country, I know how to leave. Tomorrow. Quick. Easy. If I really want to leave. That's not the intention. The intention is to stop me from makin' a livin'. To punish me. ~ Muhammad Ali, #NFDB
830:I was writing a film criticism book on Sergio Corbucci, the director who did the original Django. So, I was kind of getting immersed in his world. Towards the end of the Inglourious Basterds press tour I was in Japan. Spaghetti Westerns are really popular there, so I picked up a bunch of soundtracks and spent my day off listening to all these scores. And all of a sudden the opening scene just came to me. ~ Quentin Tarantino, #NFDB
831:Since World War II, Japan has spawned enormous numbers of new religions featuring the supernatural.... In Thailand, diseases are treated with pills manufactured from pulverized sacred Scripture. Witches are today being burned in South Africa.... The worldwide TM [Transcendental Meditation] organization has an estimated valuation of $3 billion. For a fee, they promise to make you invisible, to enable you to fly. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
832:The comfort-women agreement that we made with Japan during the last administration is not accepted by the people of Korea, particularly by the victims. They are against this agreement. The core to resolving the issue is for Japan to take legal responsibility for its actions and to make an official apology. But we should not block the advancement of Korea-Japan bilateral relations just because of this one issue. ~ Moon Jae in, #NFDB
833:There was a single argument he made, Clapper said, that the North Koreans had not pushed back on during his 2014 visit. The United States, he had argued, has no permanent enemies. Look, he said, we had a war with Japan and Germany but now are friends with both. We had a war with Vietnam but now we are friends. Clapper had recently visited Vietnam. Even after a full-scale war, peaceful coexistence was possible. ~ Bob Woodward, #NFDB
834:Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945 and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. ~ Paul Nitze, #NFDB
835:To be sure, Americans, and American Air Force planners in particular, were the only people in the world who believed that they had won a war by bombing, and, particularly in Japan, by bombing civilians. But the nuclear era eventually put that demonic temptation—to deter, defeat, or punish an adversary by an operational capability to annihilate most of its civilian population—within the reach of many nations. ~ Daniel Ellsberg, #NFDB
836:What the complacent Russians forgot was that their strengths – above all, their technological superiority – were not a permanent monopoly conferred by Providence on people with white skin. There was in fact nothing biological to prevent Asians from adopting Western forms of economic and political organization, nor from replicating Western inventions. The first Asian country to work out how to do so was Japan. ~ Niall Ferguson, #NFDB
837:I was really delighted when in June that year the U.S State Department put Japan on a watch list of countries doing a piss-poor job of addressing human trafficking problems. In terms of willingness to act, Japan was ranked only slightly above North Korea. For the Japanese, that was like pushing a button. Never underestimate the power of national humiliation to make the Japanese government get off its lazy ass. ~ Jake Adelstein, #NFDB
838:One small but scientifically sound study from Japan found that jogging thirty minutes just two or three times a week for twelve weeks improved executive function. But it's important to mix in some form of activity that demands coordination beyond putting one foot in front of the other.... Aerobic exercise and complex activity have different beneficial effects on the brain. The good news is they're complementary. ~ John J Ratey, #NFDB
839:So far as I can see, the atomic bomb has deadened the finest feeling that has sustained for ages. There used to be so-called laws of war, which made it tolerable. Now we know the truth. War knows no law except that of might. The atomic bomb brought an empty victory but it resulted for the time being in destroying the soul of Japan. What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet too early to see. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
840:There seems also to be a tremendous risk to indigenous cultures if we insist that all scholarship be conducted in English. We are, for example, dealing with ancient and very highly-developed cultures in Korea, Japan, China and the Middle East. What is the impact on cultural and scholarly vitality forcing everyone to do their work in English? I do not have an answer, but this issue has been very much on my mind. ~ Henry Rosovsky, #NFDB
841:...by serving as the dominant power in the Gulf, WE maintain a 'stranglehold' over the economies of other nations. This gives us extraordinary leverage in world affairs, and explains to some degree why states like Japan, Britain, France, and Germany - states that are even more dependent on Persian Gulf oil than we are - defer to Washington on major international issues (like Iraq) even when they disagree with us. ~ Michael Klare, #NFDB
842:With communism wicking across the Far East, America’s leaders began to see a future alliance with Japan as critical to national security. The sticking point was the war-crimes issue; the trials were intensely unpopular in Japan, spurring a movement seeking the release of all convicted war criminals. With the pursuit of justice for POWs suddenly in conflict with America’s security goals, something had to give. ~ Laura Hillenbrand, #NFDB
843:Japan is a wonderful country, a strange mixture of ancient mystique and cyberpunk saturation. It's a monolith of society's achievements, yet maintains a foothold in the past, creating an amazing backdrop for tourings and natives alive. Japan captures the imagination like no other. You never feel quite so far from home as you do in Japan, yet there are no other people on the planet that make you feel as comfortable. ~ Corey Taylor, #NFDB
844:The stock market in Japan was half the world market and where has the Japan economy gone since the 1990s? Nowhere. They've been struggling for two decades in the aftermath of a massive bubble that's collapsed. They've tried to work their way out of it by printing even more money and it hasn't worked. Now, I'm saying this is what all the central banks are doing. There is no honest interest rate in the world today. ~ David Stockman, #NFDB
845:Between 1965 (the beginning of LBJ's "Great Society") and 1994, welfare spending has cost the taxpayers $5.4 trillion in constant 1993 dollars. The War on Poverty has cost us 70 % more than the total price tag for defeating both Germany and Japan in World War II, after adjusting for inflation. Many believe that Welfare has destroyed millions of families and cost a huge portion of our national wealth in the process. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
846:It was not only from Europe that so much could be learned! This modern age had provided many breasts to suckle me - from among the Natives themselves, from Japan, China, America, India, Arabia, from all the peoples on the face of this earth... In humility, I realized I am a child of all nations, of all ages, past and present. Place and time of birth, parents, all are coincidence: such things are not sacred. ~ Pramoedya Ananta Toer, #NFDB
847:The enemy is still proud and powerful. He is hard to get at. He still possesses enormous armies, vast resources, and invaluable strategic territories...No one can tell what new complications and perils might arise in four or five more years of war. And it is in the dragging-out of the war at enormous expense, until the democracies are tired or bored or split that the main hopes of Germany and Japan must reside. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
848:You look at Japan and Hayao Miyazaki's films are the biggest films ever made in Japan; domestically there and they play to critical acclaim around the world. He won't put more then 5 or 10 percent computer imagery in his movies. It's disappointing to me. It's a silly choice that some studios made to move out of animation. It's part of the unfortuneate preconception that I think the public has going into see animation. ~ Chris Wedge, #NFDB
849:A central economic problem of developed societies during the next twenty or thirty years is surely going to be capital formation; only in Japan is it still adequate for the economy’s needs. We therefore can ill afford to have activities conducted as ‘non-profit’, that is, as activities that devour capital rather than form it, if they can be organized as activities that form capital, as activities that make a profit. ~ Peter F Drucker, #NFDB
850:Our country is in serious trouble. We don't win anymore.We don't beat China in trade. We don't beat Japan, with their millions and millions of cars coming into this country, in trade. We can't beat Mexico, at the border or in trade.We can't do anything right. Our military has to be strengthened. Our vets have to be taken care of. We have to end Obamacare, and we have to make our country great again, and I will do that. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
851:The colored people gonna have hydrogen bombs all their own,” he said. “They working on it right now. Pretty soon gonna be Japan’s turn to drop one. The rest of the colored folks gonna give them the honor of dropping the first one.” “Where they going to drop it?” I said. “China, most likely,” he said. “On other colored people?” I said. He looked at me pityingly. “Who ever told you a Chinaman was a colored man?” he said. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
852:During the period of the Japanese Empire, thousands upon thousands of Koreans had been brought to Japan against their will to serve as slave laborers and, later, cannon fodder. Now, the government was afraid that these Koreans and their families, discriminated against and poverty-stricken in the postwar years, might become a source of social unrest. Sending them back to Korea was a solution to a problem. Nothing more. ~ Masaji Ishikawa, #NFDB
853:None of the Asian countries that have moved closer to the developed countries of the West in recent years has benefited from large foreign investments, whether it be Japan, South Korea, or Taiwan and more recently China. In essence, all of these countries themselves financed the necessary investments in physical capital and, even more, in human capital, which the latest research holds to be the key to long-term growth. ~ Thomas Piketty, #NFDB
854:In Japan we have the phrase, "Shoshin," which means "beginner's mind." Our "original mind" includes everything within itself. It is always rich and sufficient within itself. This does not mean a closed mind, but actually an empty mind and a ready mind. If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything. It is open to everything. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few. ~ Shunryu Suzuki, #NFDB
855:I was living in Japan at the time, Shoko Asahara was an important figure and you could say his name and people would immediately know who you were talking about but since being back in America I've realized most people don't know who he is, which I find odd because he was far worse than Charles Manson. He killed many more people than Manson and was actually trying to kill thousands but wasn't careful enough in his process. ~ Brad Warner, #NFDB
856:There was a sentence, buried somewhere in the paperwork, that stated, “Once you have settled in North Korea, you will not be allowed to return to Japan without official Japanese authorization.” I tried to convince myself that since I was Japanese by birth, it wouldn’t be a problem for me to come back someday. But as we went through the various bureaucratic steps, I couldn’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of dread. ~ Masaji Ishikawa, #NFDB
857:What is a war criminal? Was not war itself a crime against God and humanity, and, therefore, were not all those who sanctioned, engineered, and conducted wars, war criminals? War criminals are not confined to the Axis Powers alone. Roosevelt and Churchill are no less war criminals than Hitler and Mussolini. England, America and Russia have all of them got their hands dyed more or less red - not merely Germany and Japan. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
858:About ten years ago, while visiting Japan, I toured a Toyota car manufacturing plant that was able to produce five hundred cars per day with only four hundred employees because of automation. I thought to myself, ‘Imagine if you could take this automation and productivity out of the factory and put it into our everyday lives?’ I believe this will increase our global economy by orders of magnitude in the decades ahead. ~ Peter H Diamandis, #NFDB
859:The only reason there is a crisis about Social Security in the US and pensions in Europe and Japan is that you cannot maintain a "Ponzi" scheme indefinitely. We have collected from today's young to pay today's old and counted on tomorrow's young to keep doing so. That was a fine scheme as long as the number of young people was rising faster than old people. When that ratio comes to an end, such a system also has to end. ~ Milton Friedman, #NFDB
860:There was nothing he could say or do. I was helpless as well. I was furious that this thug had taken advantage of him like that, but I knew the police would never listen. There was just no way around the corruption. My father never truly recovered from that brutal beating. As he grew weaker, I kept picturing him as he had once been back in Japan. The Tiger. Brawny beyond belief. By 1994, he couldn’t stand up on his own, ~ Masaji Ishikawa, #NFDB
861:Japan’s beds sucked big time—or make that small time. Had they never seen someone taller than five and a half feet, for God’s sake? He had already ordered a king-sized bed, but because this was Japan–with almost the entire nation preferring to sleep on floor mats called tatami, his special order would take about two weeks for delivery. Two weeks of having to sleep with almost half of his body off the bed, dammit!
- Park ~ Marian Tee,#NFDB
862:You know what I did this morning? I played the voice of a toy. Some terrible robot toys from Japan that changed from one thing to another. The Japanese have funded a full-length animated cartoon about the doings of these toys, which is all bad outer-space stuff. I play a planet. I menace somebody called Something-or-other. Then I'm destroyed. My plan to destroy Whoever-it-is is thwarted and I tear myself apart on the screen. ~ Orson Welles, #NFDB
863:Our foreign ministries will simply need to sort out some purely technical matters. I see no political restraints here. The same applies to economic matters. We, on our part, are ready. However, let me repeat once again, given that Japan has joined the anti-Russian sanctions, how ready is Japan and how can it do that without breaching its commitments to its allies? We do not know the answer. Only Japan itself knows the answer. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
864:I built a global brand Mugler, and we did things that inspired so many people. I'm proud to have helped some amazing people express themselves in new ways. What I appreciate most in the world is to have met and befriended incredible geniuses, like David Bowie and Cyd Charisse and Celia Cruz, who was the goddess of salsa. I saw people kneeling on the streets for her. Which they did for me in Japan. That was really embarrassing. ~ Thierry Mugler, #NFDB
865:Well, if that was the case, concluded the Count, then in the new era, the duels should have been fought at no less than ten thousand paces. In fact, having thrown down the gauntlet, appointed seconds, and chosen weapons, the offender should board a steamer bound for America as the offended boards another for Japan where, upon arrival, the two men could don their finest coats, descend their gangplanks, turn on the docks, and fire. ~ Amor Towles, #NFDB
866:The following year, 1959, the Japanese Red Cross Society and the Korean Red Cross Society secretly negotiated a “Return Agreement” in Calcutta. Four months later, the first shipload of returnees left the Japanese port of Niigata. Shortly after that, people affiliated with the League of Koreans in Japan started showing up on our doorstep, eager to persuade us to make the journey. They were all in favor of the mass repatriation. ~ Masaji Ishikawa, #NFDB
867:The drilling idea is spherically senseless - it's senseless from whatever point of view you look at it. It'd take 10 years to bring any oil online, and it would probably go to Japan. It sure wouldn't help gasoline prices here. All the economists say gasoline is still too cheap in the United States anyway. So here we're having this huge debate over offshore drilling that is just straightforward nonsense, which won't surprise you. ~ Paul R Ehrlich, #NFDB
868:He walked rapidly, ate rapidly, and loved to drive fast horses. He was fond of antique furniture, books (especially biographies), travel (his church sent him to Europe and once he sailed as far as Japan), sweets, and iced drinks. His cup of coffee began as a cup of sugar, then the coffee was poured in! In spite of his mother’s pleas, Brooks continued to smoke; his ideal vacation was made up of “plenty of books and time and tobacco. ~ Warren W Wiersbe, #NFDB
869:What I have done is to draw and redraw my portrait in front of the backdrop of Japan. I have exemplified what Helen Mears devoted Japan, Mirror for Americans to. You look into this country and find yourself reflected.
It is not a simple process. You can do this only if you describe the place as it is. Only then, through what you emphasize and what you do not, does your own form become visible. I am the empty places in my books. ~ Donald Richie,#NFDB
870:Old Jiko says that nowadays we young Japanese people are heiwaboke.112 I don’t know how to translate it, but basically it means that we’re spaced out and careless because we don’t understand about war. She says we think Japan is a peaceful nation, because we were born after the war ended and peace is all we can remember, and we like it that way, but actually our whole lives are shaped by the war and the past and we should understand that. ~ Ruth Ozeki, #NFDB
871:The cool thing is, when we first did our joint Ring Of Honour-New Japanies Wrestlers, I think that definitely existed. I think the ROH guys were like, "we can't let these New Japan guys outshine us" the new japan guys were ready to make a statement as it was this really big event in America. But the cool thing about this relationship is we've literally become a family now. A lot of us are friends with each. We obviously respect each other. ~ Adam Cole, #NFDB
872:There's a saying in Japan, and it has to do with cherry-blossom viewing: hana yori dango (Dumplings over flowers). It basically means that someone should value needs over wants, substance over appearance. As in, make sure you have food and shelter before you burn money on something extravagant. And, you know, choose genuine friends who will be there for you over pretty, shallow ones. Don't get carried away by beauty if it leaves you empty. ~ Amanda Sun, #NFDB
873:Judo has been part of Japanese culture for a long time. It makes sense to me that this sport, which is both athletic and philosophical, was created in Japan. It is based on respect for the partner and for our elders as our teachers, which is very important and makes a strong, positive contribution to human relationships, and not only in sports. I am happy that life brought me to this wonderful sport as a child. It is like my first love. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
874:I think East Asian countries, I think they're very fortunate to have Buddhism survive as a strong influence because right from the time when Buddha himself, 2,500 years ago, made the point about the importance of education, and the word "Buddha" also means enlighten[ed] or educated. So all the Buddhist countries, not only Japan and Korea and China and Hong Kong and Thailand but also even Burma and Sri Lanka, had a higher level of education. ~ Amartya Sen, #NFDB
875:Hachiro’s contemporary Hayashi Tadao was another fatalist, strongly opposed to the war. His diary repeatedly expressed disgust towards his own country. He asked himself: “Japan, why don’t I love and respect you? … I feel that I have to accept the fate of my generation to fight in the war and die … We have to go to the battlefield without being able to express our opinions, criticise and argue pros and cons of issues … it is a great tragedy. ~ Max Hastings, #NFDB
876:Ronald Wilson Reagan: America represents something universal in the human spirit. I received a letter not long ago from a man who said, “You can go to Japan to live, but you cannot become Japanese. You can go to France to live and not become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey, and you won’t become a German or a Turk.” But then he added, “Anybody from any corner of the world can come to America to live and become an American. ~ John McCain, #NFDB
877:The birds sang, the proles sang. the Party did not sing. All round the world, in London and New York, in Africa and Brazil, and in the mysterious, forbidden lands beyond the frontiers, in the streets of Paris and Berlin, in the villages of the endless Russian plain, in the bazaars of China and Japan — everywhere stood the same solid unconquerable figure, made monstrous by work and childbearing, toiling from birth to death and still singing. ~ George Orwell, #NFDB
878:In the short term, it would not have made it possible to resume relations, because in the Chinese mind, the humiliation of China started with the annexation of Taiwan by Japan. If the United States had suddenly declared Taiwan as a separate state - for which we would have had no support among other nations - the consequences would have been giving up our relationship with China and committing ourselves to a long-term conflict with China. ~ Henry A Kissinger, #NFDB
879:Japan was a closed book. Western ignorance of Japan was not the fault of the westerners but the design of the Japanese. For two hundred years, Japan had been shut tight. By national law, a Japanese could not leave Japan and no outsider was allowed in. Death sentences were meted out to any who gave foreigners information about the land of the gods. Almost no maps and no books existed in the English-speaking world describing the closed land. ~ James D Bradley, #NFDB
880:Shankman did something unconventional. He booked a round-trip business-class ticket to Tokyo. He wrote during the whole flight to Japan, drank an espresso in the business class lounge once he arrived in Japan, then turned around and flew back, once again writing the whole way—arriving back in the States only thirty hours after he first left with a completed manuscript now in hand. “The trip cost $4,000 and was worth every penny,” he explained. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
881:This view was prevalent in Japan in the sixth century A.D., when Buddhism first reached that country. The Government, being in doubt as to the truth of the new religion, ordered one of the courtiers to adopt it experimentally; if he prospered more than the others, the religion was to be adopted universally. This is the method (with modifications to suit modern times) which the pragmatists advocate in regard to all religious controversies. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
882:Before any modern man talks with authority about loving men, I insist (I insist with violence) that he shall always be very much pleased when his barber tries to talk to him. His barber is humanity: let him love that. If he is not pleased at this, I will not accept any substitute in the way of interest in the Congo or the future of Japan. If a man cannot love his barber whom he has seen, how shall he love the Japanese whom he has not seen? It ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
883:In Japan, no one could dictate effectively to either army or navy. To an extraordinary degree, the two services—each with its own air force—pursued independent war policies, though the soldiers wielded much greater clout. The foremost characteristic of the army general staff, and especially of its dominant operations department, the First Bureau, was absolute indifference to the diplomatic or economic consequences of any military action. Mamoru ~ Max Hastings, #NFDB
884:My advice? Get out the Norton I left you, and you better bloody still have it because if you lost it like you did my Slade Alive! LP, I will hunt you down, son. Page 1902. “Japan.” Not about the Japanese, but about moments of perfection. Commit it to memory and make good use of it. Because if I come home and you’re still pining over this little girl without having given her a chance, I will call you a chicken shit for the rest of your life. ~ Melina Marchetta, #NFDB
885:Yet our interests, the interests of the Russian Federation, include the normalisation of relations with Japan, which is not at the bottom of the agenda. The whole range of what will be proposed for a solution, the entire range of matters related to the normalisation of our relations and what that would bring after normalisation, this is the whole range of issues to be discussed and decided, and those decisions should be of a practical nature. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
886:I received a letter just before I left office from a man. I don't know why he chose to write it, but I'm glad he did. He wrote that you can go to live in France, but you can't become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Italy, but you can't become a German, an Italian. He went through Turkey, Greece, Japan and other countries. But he said anyone, from any corner of the world, can come to live in the United States and become an American. ~ Ronald Reagan, #NFDB
887:American involvement in the Persian Gulf has not been in order to secure energy supplies for the United States, but instead to supply energy for its energy-starved Bretton Woods partners in Europe and Asia. Put more directly, the Americans do not protect the Persian Gulf kingdoms and emirates so that the Americans can use Middle Eastern oil, but so that their Bretton Woods partners in Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Thailand, India, and Pakistan can. ~ Peter Zeihan, #NFDB
888:Our agreements on creating the conditions for preparing a peace treaty [with Japan] should be rooted in this trust. This may be achieved, for example, by large-scale economic activities that will also cover the Kuril Islands. It may be achieved by solving purely humanitarian issues, for instance, unhindered visa-free travel by former residents of the Southern Kuril Islands to where they used to live: visiting cemeteries, native places and so on. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
889:Mia, stop!" My voice bounces off her bedroom walls. "We are not in high school anymore!"
She looks at me, a question hanging in the air.
"Look, my tour doesn't start for another week."
A feather of hope starts to float across the space between us.
"And you know, I was thinking I was craving some sushi."
Her smile is sad and rueful, not exactly what I was going for. "You'd come to Japan with me?"
"I'm already there. ~ Gayle Forman,#NFDB
890:For hundreds of years, more than half of the face of this earth has been controlled by European countries and turned in to colonies, and the Europeans have sucked up whatever they could find, brought it all home, and made themselves rich. But not Germany and Japan; they didn’t get anything. But now they have just as much power as any other developed country, and so they are demanding their share. That is the origin of this war, a war between greedy nations. ~ Eka Kurniawan, #NFDB
891:For her first summer vacation, my sister went to California with a couple of friends on a package tour put together by her agency. One of the members of the tour group was a computer engineer a year her senior, and she started dating him when they came back to Japan. This kind of thing happens all the time, but it's not for me. First of all, I hate package tours, and the thought of getting serious about somebody you meet in a group like that makes me sick. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
892:I have concluded that most PhD economists under appraise the power of the common-stock-based "wealth effect," under current extreme conditions... "Wealth effects" involve mathematical puzzles that are not nearly so well worked out as physics theories and never can be... What has happened in Japan over roughly the last ten years has shaken up academic economics, as it obviously should, creating strong worries about recession from "wealth effects" in reverse. ~ Charlie Munger, #NFDB
893:It's pretentious to say, but my art is like a little Zen story, a story with a question mark at the end. People can take from it what they need. If somebody says, "Your art is very funny," I say, "You are totally right." If somebody says, "Your art is very sad," I say, "You are totally right." In Japan they say, "Your art is very Japanese, you even look Japanese.Your great-grandfather was most surely a Japanese man." And I say, "You are totally right." ~ Christian Boltanski, #NFDB
894:Clearly, sustained low inflation implies less uncertainty about the future, and lower risk premiums imply higher prices of stocks and other earning assets. We can see that in the inverse relationship exhibited by price/earnings ratios and the rate of inflation in the past. But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade? ~ Alan Greenspan, #NFDB
895:I traveled the world ten times over doing something I never thought I'd do in a million years. I found myself in Tokyo, Japan. I (was in) a Dell Computer commercial, the first thing I had ever done, and I fell in love with it. I fell in love with the green screens, I fell in love with (everything). The translator was explaining everything to me. It was a passion like I had never felt before. I came back and it took me five years to really accept that that was okay. ~ Drew Waters, #NFDB
896:I believe there are a lot of questions today that require expert analysis by various agencies: political agencies, foreign ministries, economic agencies and security agencies. We need to assess everything and understand what we can agree on and what the implications will be both for Japan and for Russia so that both the Russian people and the Japanese people come to the conclusion that these compromise solutions are acceptable and are in our countries' interests. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
897:Rue Family
April makes no difference
to the Lavalle cork tree
imported from central Japan;
to the Sakhalin cork,
its diamond bark
rising into branches
from a trunk of plated sand.
In the city park, this family of trees
wears its rue as buds
traveled into leaf each year—
predictably, invisibly,
as your sister wears hers
on a South Dakota highway:
there behind her knee, tempering
the air above her hand.
~ Christina Pugh,#NFDB
898:when you arrive in Japan, you realize that sake means “alcoholic drink” in general. Thus, if you drink a beer, you are drinking sake; if you drink whiskey, you are drinking sake; and if you drink rum, you are drinking sake. So, when we order sake in a Japanese restaurant outside Japan, what is the specific name for the drink they serve us? It will probably be nihonshu, which is the Japanese word used to refer to the alcoholic beverage obtained from rice. ~ Hector Garcia Puigcerver, #NFDB
899:For most displaced Koreans living in Japan at the time, the key point was a much simpler promise: “If you come back to your homeland, the government will guarantee you a stable life and a first-class education for your children.” For the countless Koreans who were unemployed, underpaid, and laboring away at whatever odd jobs they could get, the abstract promises of socialism held far less sway than the hope for a stable life and a bright future for their children. ~ Masaji Ishikawa, #NFDB
900:In keeping with the American effort to reconcile with Japan, all of them, including those serving life sentences, would soon be paroled. It appears that even Sueharu Kitamura, “the Quack,” was set free, in spite of his death sentence. By 1958, every war criminal who had not been executed would be free, and on December 30 of that year, all would be granted amnesty. Sugamo would be torn down, and the epic ordeals of POWs in Japan would fade from the world’s memory. ~ Laura Hillenbrand, #NFDB
901:In most collectivist cultures, direct confrontation of another person is considered rude and undesirable. The word no is seldom used, because saying “no” is a confrontation; “you may be right” and “we will think about it” are examples of polite ways of turning down a request. In the same vein, the word yes should not necessarily be inferred as an approval, since it is used to maintain the line of communication: “yes, I heard you” is the meaning it has in Japan. ~ Geert Hofstede, #NFDB
902:However, there is a fundamental difference between the issue related to Japan's history and our negotiations with China. What is it all about? The Japanese issue resulted from World War II and is stipulated in the international instruments on the outcomes of World War II, while our discussions on border issues with our Chinese counterparts have nothing to do with World War II or any other military conflicts. This is the first, or rather, I should say, the second point. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
903:Dreamt by a Man in a Field
I am thinking of the dead
Who are still with us.
They are not like us, they are
Young and beautiful,
On their way in the rain
To meet their lovers.
On their way with their dark umbrellas,
Always laughing, so quick,
Like limbs flying back
In a boat before night,
So constant,
Like the glass floats
The fisherman use in Japan.
But for them there is no moon,
For us the same news
We do not receive. ~ Frank Stanford,#NFDB
904:Indeed, there were those who maintained that Russia’s defeat at the hands of the Japanese was itself the result of a Jewish conspiracy. According to S. A. Nilus, a secret Jewish council known as the Sanhedrin had hypnotized the Japanese into believing they were one of the tribes of Israel; it was the Jews’ aim, Nilus insisted, ‘to set a distraught Russia awash with blood and to inundate it, and then Europe, with the yellow hordes of a resurgent China guided by Japan’. The ~ Niall Ferguson, #NFDB
905:The discovery of the Jewish virus is one of the greatest revolutions that have taken place in the world. The battle in which we are engaged to-day is of the same sort as the battle waged, during the last century, by Pasteur and Koch. How many diseases have their origin in the Jewish virus !
Japan would have been contaminated, too, if it had stayed open to the Jews.
We shall regain our health only by eliminating the Jew. Everything has a cause, nothing comes by chance. ~ Adolf Hitler,#NFDB
906:In the sunny flats, kudzu from last year had climbed to wrap trees and telephone poles in dry, brown leaves. Whole buildings looked as if they had been bagged. Introduced from Japan in the thirties to help control erosion that had damaged eighty-five percent of the tillable land, kudzu has consumed entire fields, and no one has found a good way to stop it. Kudzu and water hyacinth, another Japanese import, have run through Dixie showing less restraint than Sherman. ~ William Least Heat Moon, #NFDB
907:On secondhand smoke, the good news (sort of) was that there was plenty of evidence on human exposure and the results were consistent. Lots of smoke produced lots of cancer.33 Less smoke produced less cancer. The effects were seen in the United States, Germany, and Japan, despite other differences in lifestyle, diet, and the like. The weight of evidence was heavy, indeed.34 The EPA called it “conclusive.”35 Who could deny all that? The answer: Both Fred Seitz and Fred Singer. ~ Naomi Oreskes, #NFDB
908:I have told how Skorzeny wrote in this respect: Hitler had confessed to him he would not use the atomic bomb to win the war. It is very possible the bomb the American used against Japan was the one the Germans did not use against them. By doing so Hitler would not have won the war, he would have lost it, since he would have Judaized his own world, using an extreme Jew method. He would have used the weapon of the enemy. He would have lost by winning. Instead he won by losing. ~ Miguel Serrano, #NFDB
909:I will never forget the experience I had when I was in Japan, a place that never heard of the Fall and the Garden of Eden. One of the Shinto texts says that the processes of nature cannot be evil. Every natural impulse is not to be corrected but to be sublimated, to be beautified. There is a glorious interest in the beauty of nature and cooperation with nature, so that in some of those gardens you don’t know where nature begins and art ends—this was a tremendous experience. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
910:We don't get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? So this is what we've chosen to do with our life. We could be sitting in a monastery somewhere in Japan. We could be out sailing. Some of the team could be playing golf. They could be running other companies. And we've all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it. And we think it is. ~ Steve Jobs, #NFDB
911:According to Wal-Mart expert Bob Ortega, Sam Walton got the idea for the cheer on a 1975 trip to Japan, “where he was deeply impressed by factory workers doing group calisthenics and company cheers.” Ortega describes Walton conducting a cheer: “‘Gimme a W!’ he’d shout. ‘W!’ the workers would shout back, and on through the Wal-Mart name. At the hyphen, Walton would shout ‘Gimme a squiggly!’ and squat and twist his hips at the same time; the workers would squiggle right back ~ Barbara Ehrenreich, #NFDB
912:It was like being born in Germany after World War II, being from Japan after Pearl Harbour, or America after Hiroshima. History was a bitch sometimes. You couldn't change where you were from. But still, you didn't have to stay there. You didn't have to stay stuck in the past, like the ladies in the DAR, or the Gatlin Historical Society, or the Sisters. And you didn't have to accept that things had to be the way they were, like Lena. Ethan Carte Wate hadn't, and I couldn't either. ~ Kami Garcia, #NFDB
913:You recalled the 1956 declaration, and this declaration established the rules that should be followed by both sides and that should be put into the foundation of a peace treaty. If you carefully read the text of this document, you will see that the declaration will take effect after we sign a peace treaty and the two islands [Kunashir and Shikotan] are transferred to Japan. It does not say on what terms they should be transferred and what side will exercise sovereignty over them. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
914:I don’t know how history is taught here in Japan, “ he told the audience when he traveled there in 1985 to give an acceptance speech, ”but in the United States in my college days, most of the time was spent on the study of political leaders and wars – Ceasars, Napoleons, and Hitlers. I think this is totally wrong. The important people and events of history are the thinkers and innovators, the Darwins, Newtons, Beethovens whose work continues to grow in influence in a positive fashion ~ Jon Gertner, #NFDB
915:MOST NATIONS HAVE AT ONE TIME OR OTHER BOTH condoned and practiced slavery. Greece and Rome founded their societies on it. India and Japan handled this state of affairs by creating untouchable classes which continue to this day. Arabia clung to formal slavery longer than most, while black countries like Ethiopia and Burundi were notorious. In the New World each colonial power devised a system precisely suited to its peculiar needs and in conformance with its national customs. The ~ James A Michener, #NFDB
916:Mmm," said Ares, without turning his head. "This war on terror isn't producing enough casualties. Bringing in Iran is the obvious choice, but I don't think they've got enough fire power yet. I wonder if I could somehow antagonize Japan."
...
"There's always Russia," said Ares, "but they've been harder to provoke since the end of the Cold War. Why are mortals so hung up on peace?" He shuffled through his papers. "Or maybe it's time to broaden out some of the African civil wars? ~ Marie Phillips,#NFDB
917:Much attention has been focused on the MMR shot itself, whereas in all probability it is a combination of the three factors listed above: the increasing number of vaccines, the large amount of mercury, and the inherent danger of the triple vaccine.....The MMR vaccine is also especially suspect because laboratories in England, Ireland, and Japan have found evidence of MMR vaccine viruses in the intestinal tracts of autistic children, but not in control group, non-autistic children. ~ Bernard Rimland, #NFDB
918:I would not even attempt to do a history of world television. I did a half dozen years where I was a juror at the Banff World Media Festival, and you get the best TV in the world there, and I was astounded at my ignorance. I would be watching a documentary made in Japan, and it was astounding, and I would never have heard of that otherwise. We're seeing more and more imports in the last years, and my dream for the next generation of TV is that somehow we get to tap into all of that. ~ David Bianculli, #NFDB
919:In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. ~ George Orwell, #NFDB
920:Like any great and good country, Japan has a culture of gathering- weddings, holidays, seasonal celebrations- with food at the core. In the fall, harvest celebrations mark the changing of the guard with roasted chestnuts, sweet potatoes, and skewers of grilled gingko nuts. As the cherry blossoms bloom, festive picnics called hanami usher in the spring with elaborate spreads of miso salmon, mountain vegetables, colorful bento, and fresh mochi turned pink with sakura petals. ~ Matt Goulding, #NFDB
921:Do you know what I wish?” Skylar held Xander’s hand tight as he looked up at the falling leaves. “I wish we could stand like this in Japan, under real cherry trees. Ones in bloom.”
“We have real cherry trees in the United States, you know.”
“The ones in Japan feel more real, somehow.”
Xander smiled. “Then let’s make it a vow. Someday we’ll stand under cherry blossoms in Japan.”
Skylar smiled back, and there was only weariness, no more shadows in his face now. “It’s a promise. ~ Heidi Cullinan,#NFDB
922:No matter how much I wanted to sing Western songs, they were all very difficult. Had I, born in Japan, no choice but to sing Japanese songs? Was there a Japanese song that expressed my present sentiment - a traveler who had immersed himself in love and the arts in France but was now going back to the extreme end of the Orient where only death would follow monotonous life? ... I felt totally forsaken. I belonged to a nation that had no music to express swelling emotions and agonized feelings. ~ Kafu Nagai, #NFDB
923:Every big company has some little guy who is an enthusiast off in the corner working on technology. In Japan, it is integrated into their high-level strategy. They see it as a communication medium, because for them, just the words - and this is the problem that they have with Americans - just the words they say to you is not the complete message. Their facial expressions, their body language, there is a lot of context. Also, their written language doesn't translate to keyboards well. ~ Howard Rheingold, #NFDB
924:Though frosts come down
night after night,
what does it matter?
they melt in the morning sun.
Though the snow falls
each passing year,
what does it matter?
with spring days it thaws.
Yet once let them settle
on a mans head,
fall and pile up,
go on piling up
then the new year
may come and go,
but never youll see them fade away
Ryokan
translated by Burton Watson
From the book Ryokan: Zen Monk-Poet of Japan.
~ Taigu Ryokan, Though Frosts come down
,#NFDB
925:Taking on all at once Germany, Japan, and Italy - diverse enemies all - did not require the weeding out of all the fascists and their supporters in Mexico, Argentina, Eastern Europe, and the Arab world. Instead, those in jackboots and armbands worldwide quietly stowed all their emblems away as organized fascism died on the vine once the roots were torn out in Berlin, Rome, and Tokyo. So too will the terrorists, once their sanctuaries and capital shrivel up - as is happening as we speak. ~ Victor Davis Hanson, #NFDB
926:Instead of disbursing her annual millions for these dye stuffs, England will, beyond question, at no distant day become herself the greatest coloring producing country in the world; nay, by the very strangest of revolutions she may ere long send her coal-derived blues to indigo-growing India, her tar-distilled crimson to cochineal-producing Mexico, and her fossil substitutes for quercitron and safflower to China, Japan and the other countries whence these articles are now derived. ~ August Wilhelm von Hofmann, #NFDB
927:Is diversity our strength? Or anybody’s strength, anywhere in the world? Does Japan’s homogeneous population cause the Japanese to suffer? Have the Balkans been blessed by their heterogeneity — or does the very word “Balkanization” remind us of centuries of strife, bloodshed and unspeakable atrocities, extending into our own times? Has Europe become a safer place after importing vast numbers of people from the Middle East, with cultures hostile to the fundamental values of Western civilization? ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
928:secret 1984 work plan showed. The KGB’s “global priorities” included a long list of active measures. These were to be done covertly. According to Andrew and Gordievsky, the second-most-important priority was to “deepen disagreements inside NATO over its approach to implementing specific aspects of the bloc’s military policy.” And: “exacerbating contradictions between the USA, Western Europe and Japan on other matters of principle.” The Times reported that Trump had recently returned from Russia. ~ Luke Harding, #NFDB
929:The new century demands new partnerships for peace and security. The United Nations plays a crucial role, with allies sharing burdens America might otherwise bear alone. America needs a strong and effective U.N. I want to work with this new Congress to pay our dues and our debts. We must continue to support security and stability in Europe and Asia - expanding NATO and defining its new missions, maintaining our alliance with Japan, with Korea, with our other Asian allies, and engaging China. ~ William J Clinton, #NFDB
930:In How to Be an American Housewife Margaret Dilloway creates an irresistible heroine. Shoko is stubborn, contrary, proud, a wonderful housewife and full of deeply conflicted feelings. I wanted to shake her, even as I was cheering her on, and this cunningly structured novel allowed me to do both. It also took me on two intricate journeys, from post-war Japan and the shadow of Nagasaki to contemporary California, and from motherhood to daughterhood and back again. A profound and suspenseful debut. ~ Margot Livesey, #NFDB
931:Should hostilities once break out between Japan and the United States, it is not enough that we take Guam and the Philippines, nor even Hawaii and San Francisco. To make victory certain, we would have to march into Washington and dictate the terms of peace in the White House. I wonder if our politicians, among whom armchair arguments about war are being glibly bandied about in the name of state politics, have confidence as to the final outcome and are prepared to make the necessary sacrifices. ~ Isoroku Yamamoto, #NFDB
932:The South Koreans built a self-sustaining economy with a cumulative aid input from the US of only $15 billion since 1950 by avoiding confrontation with America and by cooperating with erstwhile enemy Japan. Pakistan received $40 billion in bilateral US aid over the same period. Instead of utilizing aid as a catalyst for indigenous growth, Pakistan has ended up becoming dependent on aid. Donor funding serves as a substitute for revenue generation while wars and terrorism have deterred investment. ~ Husain Haqqani, #NFDB
933:It was still hard for a Korean to become a Japanese citizen, and there were many who considered such a thing shameful—for a Korean to try to become a citizen of its former oppressor. When she told her friends in New York about this curious historical anomaly and the pervasive ethnic bias, they were incredulous at the thought that the friendly, well-mannered Japanese they knew could ever think she was somehow criminal, lazy, filthy, or aggressive—the negative stereotypical traits of Koreans in Japan. ~ Min Jin Lee, #NFDB
934:Japan had a more radical experience of future shock than any other nation in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. They were this feudal place, locked in the past, but then they bought the whole Industrial Revolution kit from England, blew their cultural brains out with it, became the first industrialized Asian nation, tried to take over their side of the world, got nuked by the United States for their trouble, and discovered Steve McQueen! Their take on iconic menswear emerges from that matrix. ~ William Gibson, #NFDB
935:The Japanese army is now prepared to use every means within its power to subdue its opponents. The objectives of the Japanese Expeditionary Forces are, as clearly set forth in statements issued by the Japanese Government, not only to protect the vested interests of Japan and the lives and property of the Japanese residents in the affected area, but also to scourge the Chinese Government and army who have een pursuing anti-foreign and anti-Japanese policies in collaboration with Communist influences. ~ Iwane Matsui, #NFDB
936:Does it really look like Japan?" Thaniel asked as they went by a shrine housing a painted figure that might have been a god, or something that ate gods. A little boy put a coin in its bowl and rang the bell inside.
The watchmaker nodded. "Near enough. The weather is better in Japan, and it would be difficult to find English food. But I think they do draw the line here at brown tea."
Thaniel could smell the bitterness of green tea now. "What's wrong with brown?"
"Don't be stupid. ~ Natasha Pulley,#NFDB
937:In the early days of the so-called repatriation, some seventy thousand people left Japan and crossed the sea to North Korea. With the exception of a brief three-and-a-half-year hiatus, the process continued until 1984. During this period, some one hundred thousand Koreans and two thousand Japanese wives crossed over to North Korea. That’s one hell of a mass migration. In fact, it was the first (and only) time in history that so many people from a capitalist country had moved to a socialist country. ~ Masaji Ishikawa, #NFDB
938:Art, to be fully appreciated, must be true to contemporaneous life. It is not that we should ignore the claims of posterity, but that we should seek to enjoy the present more. It is not that we should disregard the creations of the past, but that we should try to assimilate them into our consciousness. Slavish conformity to traditions and formulas fetters the expression of individuality in architecture. We can but weep over the senseless imitations of European buildings which one beholds in modern Japan. ~ Kakuz Okakura, #NFDB
939:I think the strangest thing probably is when I went to Japan, and I don't know what the hell I was eating, but there was this one thing that seemed to be in a lot of soups and things there - I always called it pond scum. It looked exactly like the green stuff that floats on top of a pond. I would say, "Oh my God, this has pond scum in it!" I would eat it, to be polite, because we were usually with Japanese people and I didn't want to gag or spit it out or anything. And I still don't know what it was. ~ Cassandra Peterson, #NFDB
940:We forget everything: the books we read, the temples of Japan, the tombs of Luxor, the airline queues, our own foolishness. And so we gradually return to identifying happiness with elsewhere: twin rooms overlooking a harbour, a hilltop church boasting the remains of the Sicilian martyr St Agatha, a palm-fringed bungalow with complimentary evening buffet service. We recover an appetite for packing, hoping and screaming. We will need to go back and learn the important lessons of the airport all over again soon. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
941:Since it was Thanksgiving, the in-flight meal was turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. Since we were bound for Japan, there was also raw tuna, miso soup, and hot sake. I ate it all, while reading the paperbacks I’d stuffed into my backpack. The Catcher in the Rye and Naked Lunch. I identified with Holden Caulfield, the teenage introvert seeking his place in the world, but Burroughs went right over my head. The junk merchant doesn’t sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. Too ~ Phil Knight, #NFDB
942:South Korea at the end of the Second World War had a very low level of literacy. But suddenly, like in Japan, they determined they were going in that direction. In 20 years' time, they had transformed themselves. So when people go on saying that it's all because of perennial culture, which you cannot change, that's not the way the South Korean economy was viewed before the war ended. But again within 30 years, people went on saying there's an ancient culture in Korea that has been pro-education, which is true. ~ Amartya Sen, #NFDB
943:There may be countries [where] there's no gender inequality in schooling, even in higher education, but [where there is] gender inequality in high business. Japan is a very good example of that. You might find cases in the United States where at one level women's equality has progressed tremendously. You don't have the kind of problem of higher women's mortality as you see in South Asia, North Africa, and East Asia, China, too, and yet for American women there are some fields in which equality hasn't yet come. ~ Amartya Sen, #NFDB
944:And what is “the West”? It is not a geographical entity, since it includes Australia and Poland and excludes nations such as Egypt and Morocco that are further west than some of the included nations. And, as Beinart notes, it is not a political or economic term either, since Japan, South Korea, and India are not included. Basically, it is an appeal to shared religion and shared racial identity: to Christianity (with some Jews included) and to whiteness (since Latin America does not appear to be included). ~ Martha C Nussbaum, #NFDB
945:would be hard to think of a more monocultural, insular and self-complacent nation than Japan—and vet the Japanese are among the leading participants in the international economy, in international scientific and technological developments, as well as in international travel and tourism. This is not a defense of insularity or of the Japanese, It is simply a piece of empirical evidence to highlight the non sequitur of the claim that international participation requires the multicultural ideology or agenda. Another ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
946:Carter then proceeded to kill any chance he had of securing reelection. In American political discourse, fundamental threats are by definition external. Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, or international communism could threaten the United States. That very year, Iran’s Islamic revolutionaries had emerged to pose another such threat. That the actions of everyday Americans might pose a comparable threat amounted to rank heresy. Yet Carter now dared to suggest that the real danger to American democracy lay within. ~ Andrew J Bacevich, #NFDB
947:With respect to the creation of the program, I introduced the bill in September 1945, immediately after the end of the war with Japan, in August of that year. A number of considerations, of course, entered into my decision to introduce the bill, growing from my own experience as a Rhodes scholar and the experiences our government had had with the first Word War debts, [Herbert] Hoover's efforts in establishing the Belgian-American Education Foundation after World War I, [and] the Boxer Rebellion indemnity. ~ J William Fulbright, #NFDB
948:Carrion crows use passing cars to crush especially tough nuts, such as walnuts, that won’t break by simply falling on pavement. The now-famous video of these crows in a city in Japan shows one stationed above a pedestrian crossing. When the light turns red, it positions its nut on the crossing, then flies back to the perch and waits while the light changes and traffic passes; when the light turns red again, it flutters down to safely collect the cracked nut. If no car smashed the nut, the bird repositions it. ~ Jennifer Ackerman, #NFDB
949:It’s true that while instructors and schools offer courses in everything from cooking and how to wear a kimono to yoga and Zen meditation, you’ll be hard-pressed to find classes on how to tidy. The general assumption, in Japan at least, is that tidying doesn’t need to be taught but rather is picked up naturally. Cooking skills and recipes are passed down as family traditions from grandmother to mother to daughter, yet one never hears of anyone passing on the family secrets of tidying, even within the same household. ~ Marie Kond, #NFDB
950:individual can fully exercise his or her abilities and skills. “We shall distribute the company’s surplus earnings to all employees in an appropriate manner, and we shall assist them in a practical manner to secure a stable life. In return, all employees shall exert their utmost effort into their job.” Finally, his new company would help his country. Its formally stated national intent was to help “reconstruct Japan, and to elevate the nation’s culture through dynamic cultural and technological activities.” Yet ~ Simon Winchester, #NFDB
951:Japan's "Fujiyama" is ''wonderful" to Westerners simply
because they've heard so much about it and yearned so long to
see it; but how much appeal would Fuji hold for one who's never
been exposed to such popular propaganda, for one whose heart is
simple and pure and free of preconceptions? It would, perhaps,
strike that person as almost pathetic, as mountains go. It's short. In
relation to the width of its base, quite short. Any mountain with a
base that size should be at least half again as tall. ~ Osamu Dazai,#NFDB
952:Some cultures, for instance, are collectivist; others are individualistic. Collectivist cultures, like Japan and other Confucian nations, value social harmony more than any one person’s happiness. Individualistic cultures, like the United States, value personal satisfaction more than communal harmony. That’s why the Japanese have a well-known expression: “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.” In America, the nail that sticks out gets a promotion or a shot at American Idol. We are a nation of protruding nails. ~ Eric Weiner, #NFDB
953:More recently, the Bank of Japan, eager to move away from zero interest rates, had tightened policy in 2000 and again in 2007. Each time, the move had proved premature and the bank was forced to reverse itself. Still, in the interest of good planning, I thought it made sense for the FOMC to discuss and agree on the mechanics of normalizing policy. And making clear that we had a workable strategy for tightening policy when the time came might ease the concerns of both the hawks inside the Fed and our external critics. ~ Ben S Bernanke, #NFDB
954:Prime Minister Abe is reported to have proposed “a strategy whereby Australia, India, Japan and the US state of Hawaii form a diamond to safeguard the maritime commons stretching from the Indian Ocean region to the Western Pacific… I am prepared to invest to the greater possible extent, Japan’s capabilities in this security diamond.” The Indian Prime Minister spoke of India and Japan as “natural and indispensable partners for…a peaceful, stable, cooperative and prosperous future for the Asia Pacific and Indian Ocean regions. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
955:Even now, I sometimes wonder why my father was so different in North Korea from the man he’d been in Japan. I used to think it was related to his physical strength. In Japan, that was the thing that had given him real power. But in North Korea, his strength was meaningless. In fact, it was more of a liability than an asset. But I think the issue was more complicated than that. In Japan, he faced endless bigotry, prejudice, and discrimination. The only way he could express his feelings and fight back was through violence ~ Masaji Ishikawa, #NFDB
956:There was a lot of nervous tension at that time on all levels of society over the alarming developments in Europe and Asia. Magazines speculated grimly on whether war with Japan was inevitable. Then our attention was diverted from Japanese aggression in China to the Nazi conquests in Europe. On December 7, 1941, we were thrown into war by the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, and I was thrown out of the Multimixer business. Supplies of copper, used in winding the motors for Multimixer, were restricted by the war effort. A ~ Ray Kroc, #NFDB
957:The other me, who did not mean to drown herself, went under the sea and remained there for a long time. Eventually she surfaced near Japan and people gave her gifts but she had been so long under the sea she did not recognize what they were. She is a sly one. Mostly at night we commune. Night. Harbinger of dream and nightmare and bearer of omens which defy the music of words. In the morning the fear of her going is very real and very alarming. It can make one tremble. Not that she cares. She is the muse. I am the messenger. ~ Edna O Brien, #NFDB
958:For the 1,300 years prior to the Japanese occupation, Korea had been a unified country governed by the Chosun dynasty, one of the longest-lived monarchies in world history. Before the Chosun dynasty, there were three kingdoms vying for power on the peninsula. Political schisms tended to run north to south, the east gravitating naturally toward Japan and the west to China. The bifurcation between north and south was an entirely foreign creation, cooked up in Washington and stamped on the Koreans without any input from them. ~ Barbara Demick, #NFDB
959:It is from these cold, hard facts that Truman’s advisers estimated that between 250,000 and 1 million American lives would be lost in an invasion of Japan.59 General Douglas MacArthur estimated that there could be a 22:1 ratio of Japanese to American deaths, which translates to a minimum death toll of 5.5 million Japanese.60 By comparison (cold though it may sound), the body count from both atomic bombs—about 200,000 to 300,000 total (Hiroshima: 90,000 to 166,000 deaths, Nagasaki: 60,000 to 80,000 deaths61)—was a bargain. ~ Michael Shermer, #NFDB
960:I was in Los Angeles. I saw the biggest ships you have ever seen with cars pouring off from Japan, into Los Angeles. Just pouring off these ships, and I am saying to myself, we send them beef, it's a tiny fraction, and, by the way, they don't even want it, they have to fight in order to take it in because they don't even want it, and it's very perishable, they'll send it back, they'll find reasons not to take it. And yet the ships, the boats, the ships are loaded up with cars, thousands of cars and they are just pouring off. ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
961:Other countries whose educational systems achieve more than ours often do so in part by attempting less. While school children in Japan are learning science, mathematics, and a foreign language, American school children are sitting around in circles, unburdening their psyches and “expressing themselves” on scientific, economic and military issues for which they lack even the rudiments of competence. Worse than what they are not learning is what they are learning—presumptuous superficiality, taught by practitioners of it. The ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
962:Various cultures can point to games that involved kicking a ball, but, for all the claims of Rome, Greece, Egypt, the Caribbean, Mexico, China or Japan to be the home of football, the modern sport has its roots in the mob game of medieval Britain. Rules – in as much as they existed at all – varied from place to place, but the game essentially involved two teams each trying to force a roughly spherical object to a target at opposite ends of a notional pitch. It was violent, unruly and anarchic, and it was repeatedly outlawed. ~ Jonathan Wilson, #NFDB
963:I explain that “poor developing countries” no longer exist as a distinct group. That there is no gap. Today, most people, 75 percent, live in middle-income countries. Not poor, not rich, but somewhere in the middle and starting to live a reasonable life. At one end of the scale there are still countries with a majority living in extreme and unacceptable poverty; at the other is the wealthy world (of North America and Europe and a few others like Japan, South Korea, and Singapore). But the vast majority are already in the middle. ~ Hans Rosling, #NFDB
964:In Japanese language, kata (though written as 方) is a frequently-used suffix meaning way of doing, with emphasis on the form and order of the process. Other meanings are training method and formal exercise. The goal of a painter's practicing, for example, is to merge his consciousness with his brush; the potter's with his clay; the garden designer's with the materials of the garden. Once such mastery is achieved, the theory goes, the doing of a thing perfectly is as easy as thinking it
~ Boye De Mente, Japan's Secret Weapon - The Kata Factor,#NFDB
965:With the first glass of wine, the stilted silence prevails. A plate of warm buffalo mozzarella appears, speckled with pink peppercorns, and something about that combination of tang and spice, cream and crunch, tells you that tonight will be different from the others you've spent in Japan.
With the second glass of wine, your neighbors look over and offer a kanpai. Another plate arrives, this one a few pieces of seared octopus, the purple tentacles curled like crawling vines around a warm mound of barely mashed potatoes. ~ Matt Goulding,#NFDB
966:Walking the streets of Tokyo with Hawking in his wheelchair ... I felt as if I were taking a walk through Galilee with Jesus Christ [as] crowds of Japanese silently streamed after us, stretching out their hands to touch Hawking's wheelchair. ... The crowds had streamed after Einstein [on Einstein's visit to Japan in 1922] as they streamed after Hawking seventy years later. ... They showed exquisite choice in their heroes. ... Somehow they understood that Einstein and Hawking were not just great scientists, but great human beings. ~ Freeman Dyson, #NFDB
967:Did the International Committee of the Red Cross know anything about this? Did the United States? The UN? Yes, yes, and yes. And what did they do about it? Nothing. In the early days of the so-called repatriation, some seventy thousand people left Japan and crossed the sea to North Korea. With the exception of a brief three-and-a-half-year hiatus, the process continued until 1984. During this period, some one hundred thousand Koreans and two thousand Japanese wives crossed over to North Korea. That’s one hell of a mass migration ~ Masaji Ishikawa, #NFDB
968:When I met Akira Kurosawa in Japan, one question he asked me was, "How did you actually make the children act the way they do? I do have children in my films but I find that I reduce and reduce their presence until I have to get rid of them because there's no way that I can direct them." My own thought is that one is very grand, like an emperor on a horse, and it's very hard for a child to relate to that. In order to be able to cooperate with a child, you have to come down to below their level in order to communicate with them. ~ Abbas Kiarostami, #NFDB
969:The buddha-dharma does not invite us to dabble in abstract notions. Rather, the task it presents us with is to attend to what we actually experience, right in this moment. You don't have to look "over there." You don't have to figure anything out. You don't have to acquire anything. And you don't have to run off to Tibet, or Japan, or anywhere else. You wake up right here. In fact, you can only wake up right here. So you don't have to do the long search, the frantic chase, the painful quest. You're already right where you need to be. ~ Steve Hagen, #NFDB
970:In North America and Europe, there is no lack of odious and incompetent leaders; but there is a sense of creative friction and of evolution, of a political marketplace in which ideas and individuals less popular and effective yield, over time, to those that prove themselves fitter for purpose, and where politics—even if it has its wrong turns and dead ends—is at least in constant motion. In Japan, this is not the case; even seventy years after the war, a genuinely competitive multiparty system has still not established itself. ~ Richard Lloyd Parry, #NFDB
971:Not only does Japan have an economic need and the technological know-how for robots, but it also has a cultural predisposition. The ancient Shinto religion, practiced by 80 percent of Japanese, includes a belief in animism, which holds that both objects and human beings have spirits. As a result, Japanese culture tends to be more accepting of robot companions as actual companions than is Western culture, which views robots as soulless machines. In a culture where the inanimate can be considered to be just as alive as the animate, robots ~ Alec J Ross, #NFDB
972:The Daily Telegraph reported on April 9, 1937: 'Since M. Litvinoff ousted Chicherin, no Russian has ever held a high post in the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs.' It seems that the Daily Telegraph was unaware that Chicherin's mother was a Jewess. The Russian Molotov, who became Foreign Minister later, has a Jewish wife, and one of his two assistants is the Jew, Lozovsky. It was the last-named who renewed the treaty with Japan in 1942, by which the Kamchatka fisheries provided the Japanese with an essential part of their food supplies. ~ Arnold Leese, #NFDB
973:I had been conscious a feeling of depression and so I voiced to [Secretary Of War Stimson] my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at this very moment, seeking a way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face.' ~ Dwight D Eisenhower, #NFDB
974:Norway, Iceland, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark, and the United Kingdom are among the least religious societies on earth. According to the United Nations' Human Development Report (2005), they are also the healthiest, as indicated by life expectancy, adult literacy, per capita income, educational attainment, gender equality, homicide rate, and infant mortality. . . . Conversely, the fifty nations now ranked lowest in terms of the United Nations' human development index are unwaveringly religious. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
975:For some reason I have become terribly serious since arriving here,” Sōseki wrote, in his “Letter from London,” a year after his arrival in England. “Looking and listening to everything around me, I think incessantly of the problem of ‘Japan’s future.’” Its future, then as now, involves trying to make a peace, or form a synthesis, between the ancient Chinese ideal of sitting still and watching the seasons pass, tending to social harmonies, and the new American way of pushing forward individually , convinced that tomorrow will be better than today. ~ Pico Iyer, #NFDB
976:That’s when I proffered my words of wisdom, that waste is the highest virtue one can achieve in advanced capitalist society. The fact that Japan bought Phantom jets from America and wasted vast quantities of fuel on scrambles put an extra spin in the global economy, and that extra spin lifted capitalism to yet greater heights. If you put an end to all the waste, mass panic would ensue and the global economy would go haywire. Waste is the fuel of contradiction, and contradiction activates the economy, and an active economy creates more waste. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
977:We have the heaviest concentration of lawyers on Earth -- one for every five-hundred Americans; three times as many as are in England, four times as many as are in West Germany, twenty-one times as many as there are in Japan. We have more litigation, but I am not sure that we have more justice. No resources of talent and training in our own society, even including the medical care, is more wastefully or unfairly distributed than legal skills. Ninety percent of our lawyers serve 10 percent of our people. We are over-lawyered and under-represented. ~ Jimmy Carter, #NFDB
978:I attended a big human space flight conference in Beijing and I was going as myself. And really, there weren't any NASA astronauts there, I was the only so-called American Astronaut there. We had astronauts from most of the other countries, certainly from Russia, from France, from Japan, several other countries, but it was a little bit odd because here we are at an international gathering of a lot of astronauts and I'm talking about somewhere upwards of 30 or so astronauts, and I'm the only American. And I wasn't even there in an official capacity. ~ Leroy Chiao, #NFDB
979:Absolutely delightful, at first for its unspoiled picture of late-nineteenth-century Japan as seen through the eyes of three remarkable but very different Americans, [the missionary William Elliot Griffis [1843-1928], the scientist Edward Sylvester Morse [1838-1925], and the writer Lafcadio Hearn], and then for the marvelous reconstruction of how Japan worked on their minds, radically changing their perceptions of the country and the whole relationship between East and West--between the barbarian and the civilized. The book is a tour de force. ~ Edwin O Reischauer, #NFDB
980:But tomorrow I'll be a different person, never again the person I was. Not that anyone will notice after I'm back in Japan. On the outside nothing will be different. But something inside has burned up and vanished. Blood has been shed, and something inside me is gone. Head down, without a word, that something makes its exit. The door opens; the door shuts. The light goes out. This is the last day for the person I am right now. The very last twilight. When dawn comes, the person I am won't be here anymore. Someone else will occupy this body. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
981:The evidence was powerful: the Allied powers—the United States, England, the Soviet Union—had not gone to war out of compassion for the victims of fascism. The United States and its allies did not make war on Japan when Japan was slaughtering the Chinese in Nanking, did not make war on Franco when he was destroying democracy in Spain, did not make war on Hitler when he was sending Jews and dissidents to concentration camps, did not even take steps during the war to save Jews from certain death. They went to war when their national power was threatened. ~ Howard Zinn, #NFDB
982:Within two or three years of World War II's end, starvation had been basically eliminated in Japan, and yet the Japanese had continued slaving away as if their lives depend on it. Why? To create a more abundant life? If so, where was the abundance? Where were the luxurious living spaces? Eyesores dominated the scenery wherever you went, and people still crammed themselves into packed commuter trains each morning, submitting to conditions that would be fatal for any other mammal. Apparently what the Japanese wanted wasn't a better life, but more things. ~ Ry Murakami, #NFDB
983:Well I started out on guitar, so it is still the mainstay of my music. But I have recently been working very hard on my piano, and it is coming along to the point where it is taking more of the spotlight. It has been my plan to be able to make music well into my old age, and sitting down seems like a good idea. Also, I don't have to carry the piano on the road. I haven't been playing the banjo much of late because of the difficulties of travelling with so much gear. But maybe I'll bring it to Japan. It adds a different color to the musical palette. ~ Livingston Taylor, #NFDB
984:It is a disease to be obsessed by the thought of winning. It is also a disease to be obsessed by the thought of employing your swordsmanship. So it is to be obsessed by the thought of using everything you have learned, and to be obsessed by the thought of attacking. It is also a disease to be obsessed and stuck with the thought of ridding yourself of any of these diseases. A disease here is an obsessed mind that dwells on one thing. Because all these diseases are in your mind, you must get rid of them to put your mind in order.
TAKUAN, JAPAN, 1573–1645 ~ Robert Greene,#NFDB
985:This giant fleet of American warships – a modern armada – churns across the ocean day and night for a journey of four thousand miles. It moves with the inevitability of a railroad schedule. It stops for nothing, it deviates for nothing. The United States, having been surprised at Pearl Harbor and then raked in battle after battle by the onrushing forces of imperial Japan, has finally stabilized and gathered its strength. Now the American giant is fully awake and cold-eyed. It is stalking an ocean, rounding the curve of the earth, to crush its tormentor. ~ James D Bradley, #NFDB
986:Around a million protester hermits are living in Japan right now. They’re called hikikomori—“pulling inward”—and the majority are males, aged late teens and up, who have rejected Japan’s competitive, conformist, pressure-cooker culture. They have retreated into their childhood bedrooms and almost never emerge, in many cases for more than a decade. They pass the day reading or surfing the web. Their parents deliver meals to their doors, and psychologists offer them counseling online. The media has called them “the lost generation” and “the missing million. ~ Michael Finkel, #NFDB
987:IT IS HARD to think of many democracies that were not born in some manner out of war, violence, or coercion—beginning with the first example of Cleisthenic Athens in 507 B.C., and including our own revolution in 1776. The best examples are those of the twentieth century, when many of the most successful present-day constitutional governments were epiphenomena of war, imposed by the victors or coalition partners, as we have seen in the cases of Germany, Japan, Italy, South Korea, and more recently Grenada, Liberia, Panama, Serbia—and Afghanistan and Iraq. ~ Victor Davis Hanson, #NFDB
988:Only one further prize remained on the entire North Pacific coast, the peninsula of Korea. Although Japan clearly regarded Korea as essential to her security, a group of Russian adventurers resolved to steal it. Their plan was to establish a private company, the Yalu Timber Company, and begin moving Russian soldiers into Korea disguised as workmen. If they ran into trouble, the Russian government could always disclaim responsibility. If they succeeded, the empire would acquire a new province and they themselves would have vast economic concessions within it. ~ Robert K Massie, #NFDB
989:From the anarchists of tsarist Russia to the IRA of 1916, from the Irgun and the Stern Gang to the EOKA in Cyprus, from the Baader-Meinhof group in Germany, the CCC in Belgium, the Action Directe in France, the Red Brigades in Italy, the Red Army Faction again in Germany, the Rengo Sekigun in Japan, through to the Shining Path in Peru to the modern IRA in Ulster or the ETA in Spain, terrorism came from the minds of the comfortably raised, well-educated, middle-class theorists with a truly staggering personal vanity and a developed taste for self-indulgence. ~ Frederick Forsyth, #NFDB
990:He was a polite, thoughtful boy, who could spend hours in one spot, staring at the purple mountains against the clear blue sky, lost in his own thoughts and emotions. It was said of him that he had a monk’s vocation, and that in Japan he would have been a novice in a Zen monastery. Although the Oomoto faith discouraged proselytizing, Takao surreptitiously preached his religion to Heideko and his children, but Ichimei was the only one who practiced it with fervor, because it fit in with his character and with the concept of life that he had had since childhood. ~ Isabel Allende, #NFDB
991:There was Asuka, birthplace of Yamato Japan, with its long-vacant burial mounds, surfaces carved with supernatural images of beasts and semi-humans, their makers and their meaning lost in the timeless swaying of the rice paddies around them; Koya-san, the holy mountain, reputedly the resting place of Kobo Daishi, Japan’s great saint, who is said to linger near the mountain’s vast necropolis not dead but meditating, his vigil marked by the mantras of monks that drone among the nearby markers of the dead as ancient and eternal as summer insects in primordial groves; ~ Barry Eisler, #NFDB
992:And this is how I come face to face with my selfishness, because I don't know if I can enjoy this goldfish without knowing that he loves me, or if not loves me, then at least depends on me, i.e., swims up to my fingers greedily when I fill them with salty-smelling rainbow-colored flakes, and wiggle them over his head.
And this is disturbing to realize, that I have such difficulty enjoying anything that doesn't know I exist. Especially when I stop and think how big the world is, the world that is not even Japan or India, the world that is the room next door. ~ Amy Fusselman,#NFDB
993:At the time of this writing, our knowledge of East Asian population history is relatively limited compared to that of West Eurasia because less than 5 percent of published ancient DNA data comes from East Asia. The difference reflects the fact that ancient DNA technology was invented in Europe, and it is nearly impossible for researchers to export samples from China and Japan because of government restrictions or a preference that studies be led by local scientists. This has meant that these regions have missed out on the first few years of the ancient DNA revolution. ~ David Reich, #NFDB
994:Listen - God only exists in people's minds. Especially in Japan, God's always been kind of a flexible concept. Look at what happened after the war. Douglas MacArthur ordered the divine emperor to quit being God, and he did, making a speech saying he was just an ordinary person. So after 1946 he wasn't God anymore. That's what Japanese gods are like--they can be tweaked and adjusted. Some American comping on a cheap pipe gives the order and presto change-o--God's no longer God. A very postmodern kind of thing. If you think God's there, He is. If you don't, He isn't. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
995:The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons... The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children. ~ William D Leahy, #NFDB
996:When you give a present, you are giving part of your spirit to the other person. That’s why presents in Japan are so very important, even if they’re small presents of no real value. This belief also has significance when you buy something secondhand. The Japanese are reluctant to purchase things that have belonged to someone else, maybe because the previous owner’s spirit still lingers inside them. One of the advantages of this belief is that thefts in Japan are almost nonexistent: stealing something from someone would be like stealing part of their spirit. ~ Hector Garcia Puigcerver, #NFDB
997:To understand this, we need to make a distinction between what is good for the individual and what is good for the society as a whole, between the psychology of personal autonomy and the ecology of personal autonomy. In a study focused on twenty developed Western nations and Japan, Richard Eckersley notes that the factors that seem best correlated with national differences in youth suicide rates involve cultural attitudes toward personal freedom and control. Those nations whose citizens value personal freedom and control the most tend to have the highest suicide rates. ~ Barry Schwartz, #NFDB
998:Revolutionary war is an antitoxin that not only eliminates the enemy's poison but also purges us of our own filth. Every just, revolutionary war is endowed with tremendous power and can transform many things or clear the way for their transformation. The Sino-Japanese war will transform both China and Japan; provided China perseveres in the War of Resistance and in the united front, the old Japan will surely be transformed into a new Japan and the old China into a new China, and people and everything else in both China and Japan will be transformed during and after the war. ~ Mao Zedong, #NFDB
999:Up until the rise of electronic music, if you were a musician in Portugal or Germany or Italy or Japan, and you didn't sing in English, you really were limited: You could be successful in the country where people understood your language. The world of electronic music is completely international. You have DJs from Finland making huge records for people in New Zealand, DJs in South Korea making huge records for people in France. By the fact that it doesn't cost anything to make, and that it transcends language, nation it accidentally accomplishes a lot of really remarkable things. ~ Moby, #NFDB
1000:We have great cities to visit: New York and Washington, Paris and London; and further east, and older than any of these, the legendary city of Samarkand, whose crumbling palaces and mosques still welcome travelers on the Silk road. Weary of cities? Then we’ll take to the wilds. To the islands of Hawaii and the mountains of Japan, to forests where Civil War dead still lie, and stretches of sea no mariner ever crossed. They all have their poetry: the glittering cities and the ruined, the watery wastes and the dusty; I want to show you them all. I want to show you everything. ~ Clive Barker, #NFDB
1001:African economists have argued that corruption—not Western colonialism, not lack of Western aid—is why Africa hasn’t escaped poverty. These economists have begged Western countries to stop giving monetary aid to corrupt African countries because nearly all the money goes to corrupt government officials and thereby further increases their corrupt power. Meanwhile, in Europe, North America, Japan, Singapore, and a handful of other countries, corruption is far more likely to be prosecuted and therefore far less prevalent. That is a major reason for their continuing prosperity. ~ Dennis Prager, #NFDB
1002:I remember my very first encounter with Japan. At that time, I was Deputy Mayor of St Petersburg. Out of nowhere, Japan's Consul General in St Petersburg came to my office and said Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs wanted to invite me to Japan. I was very surprised because I had nothing to do with Japan except being a judoka. This was an opportunity to visit Tokyo and a couple of other cities. And, you know, a capital is a capital everywhere: there is the official script and certain protocol. It is always easier to talk in the provinces, the conversation is more natural. ~ Vladimir Putin, #NFDB
1003:A key-in-lock noise jarred him. He walked into the living room. Mariko had 11:00 a.m. booze breath. He said, “Hello, Mother.” She spoke slurred Japanese back. He bowed and tried to take her hand. She pulled away and flashed a magazine. A “picture bride” rag. Choose a photograph and send for a young woman. She’ll be shipped from Japan. Include the five-hundred-dollar steamship fare. All brides guaranteed to be fertile and subservient. “I’ve told you, Mother. I’m not going to marry a fifteen-year-old girl out of a brothel.” “You too old to be bachelor. Neighbors get suspicious. ~ James Ellroy, #NFDB
1004:I think in Japan I think there is a lot of style and a lot of subcultures, but it will be interesting to see how much of them... how much of the people wearing those clothes are really expressing something about who they are or who they want to be and it will be very interesting to see, especially once you get there, once you get to a certain city like in Stockholm you really get to know the people a little bit and what they're saying through their clothes. It's more... To me I think it's much more interesting than just the clothes they're wearing or the length of the skirt. ~ Scott Schuman, #NFDB
1005:I know," Diane said, "but not having options doesn't mean you don't have choices." "Um...I don't get it." Diane crouched in front of me, smelling of sweat and punch and appetizers from downstairs. "You can come to Japan filled with hope and confidence that you'll make it work. Or you can be dragged because your life's in tatters and none of us can fix it the way you want. And who knows, maybe this will all sort itself out and you'll have choices you didn't even realize you had. You still have choices because you can decide how you face this. You can choose your next move, Katie. ~ Amanda Sun, #NFDB
1006:You know what he was telling me just the other day?” “What?” “Korea, right, you’d think it was tea, tea, tea. Like China and Japan. But the last emperor of Korea, his name was Sunjong, the nineteen twenties, he loved the West and always had coffee at the palace. He and his father would sit around drinking coffee and talking about world affairs. Word got around and the citizens began to drink coffee. They liked to do what their emperor does. There’re more coffee drinkers in Korea than any other Asian country. They even have coffee shop hookers. Dabang girls, they’re called.” He ~ Jeffery Deaver, #NFDB
1007:In contrast to what many people in Britain and the United States believe, the true figures on growth (as best one can judge from official national accounts data) show that Britain and the United States have not grown any more rapidly since 1980 than Germany, France, Japan, Denmark, or Sweden. In other words, the reduction of top marginal income tax rates and the rise of top incomes do not seem to have stimulated productivity (contrary to the predictions of supply-side theory) or at any rate did not stimulate productivity enough to be statistically detectable at the macro level. ~ Thomas Piketty, #NFDB
1008:It’s ironic that the Tea Party populists, most of whom believe that they are furthering the American ideal of “rugged individualism,” are supporting mega-corporate-friendly policies like Reaganomics and Clintonomics and are making it very difficult for individuals to be anything other than drones in a giant corporate-run economic machine. And, on the flipside, those countries that call themselves “democratic socialist” in their organization—Finland, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden—actually provide a deep and fertile soil into which entrepreneurs may plant new businesses. ~ Thom Hartmann, #NFDB
1009:The Japanese defeat in World War II left 2.4 million Koreans stranded in Japan. They belonged to neither the winning nor the losing side, and they had no place to go. Once freed, they were simply thrown onto the streets. Desperate and impoverished, with no way to make a living, they attacked the trucks containing food intended for members of the imperial Japanese armed forces and sold the booty on the black market. Even those who’d never been violent before had little choice but to turn into outlaws. In a strange sort of way, all this illegality actually set these people free. ~ Masaji Ishikawa, #NFDB
1010:North Korea will never give up its arsenal. It's all that is keeping us alive. Look at Saddam Hussein - and we never forget that North Korea was named as part of the "axis of evil" a year before the United States invaded Iraq. Do you think we would be stupid enough to believe American promises after all this? We are a nuclear power. That is not negotiable. We are willing to talk about limits freezes - but we would need to be given something in return security, in the form of diplomatic recognition by Washington and guarantees of nonaggression from China, Japan and the United States. ~ Kim Jong un, #NFDB
1011:When I lived in New York, there wasn't as much TV or film around. I got asked to do a couple of indie films, just based on me being from The Smashing Pumpkins and A Perfect Circle. I did a couple of indie movies from Japan and one from Canada, and I thought it was an exciting, fun thing to do. I had a great time doing it, it was just that, in New York, there really wasn't as much. My studio in New York closed, so I moved out to L.A. and just started looking into composing as another thing to do, as a musician. I like it a lot. It's fun and it's a different way of thinking about music. ~ James Iha, #NFDB
1012:Furthermore, if we look at the historical record, it does not appear that capital mobility has been the primary factor promoting convergence of rich and poor nations. None of the Asian countries that have moved closer to the developed countries of the West in recent years has benefited from large foreign investments, whether it be Japan, South Korea, or Taiwan and more recently China. In essence, all of these countries themselves financed the necessary investments in physical capital and, even more, in human capital, which the latest research holds to be the key to long-term growth. ~ Thomas Piketty, #NFDB
1013:The musician Bono, who later became a friend of Jobs, often discussed with him why those immersed in the rock-drugs-rebel counterculture of the Bay Area ended up helping to create the personal computer industry. “The people who invented the twenty-first century were pot-smoking, sandal-wearing hippies from the West Coast like Steve, because they saw differently,” he said. “The hierarchical systems of the East Coast, England, Germany, and Japan do not encourage this different thinking. The sixties produced an anarchic mind-set that is great for imagining a world not yet in existence. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
1014:In fact the United States has had no exit strategy since 1945, expect in places where we were kicked out (Vietnam) or asked to leave (the Philippines): American troops still occupy Japan, Korea, and Germany, in the seventh decade after the end of World War II. Policymakers – almost always civilians with little or no military experience (Acheson is the archetype) – get Americans into wars but cannot get them out, and soon the Pentagon takes over, establishes bases, and the entire enterprise becomes a perpetual-motion machine fuelled by a defence budget that dwarfs all others in the world. ~ Bruce Cumings, #NFDB
1015:During the period of the Japanese Empire, thousands upon thousands of Koreans had been brought to Japan against their will to serve as slave laborers and, later, cannon fodder. Now, the government was afraid that these Koreans and their families, discriminated against and poverty-stricken in the postwar years, might become a source of social unrest. Sending them back to Korea was a solution to a problem. Nothing more. From the North Korean government’s point of view, their country desperately needed rebuilding after the Korean War. What could be more convenient than an influx of workers? ~ Masaji Ishikawa, #NFDB
1016:Note, however, the sharp correction in the Italian real estate market in 1994–1995 and the bursting of the Internet bubble in 2000–2001, which caused a particularly sharp drop in the capital/income ratio in the United States and Britain (though not as sharp as the drop in Japan ten years earlier). Note, too, that the subsequent US real estate and stock market boom continued until 2007, followed by a deep drop in the recession of 2008–2009. In two years, US private fortunes shrank from five to four years of national income, a drop of roughly the same size as the Japanese correction of 1991 ~ Thomas Piketty, #NFDB
1017:The news today about 'Atomic bombs' is so horrifying one is stunned. The utter folly of these lunatic physicists to consent to do such work for war-purposes: calmly plotting the destruction of the world! Such explosives in men's hands, while their moral and intellectual status is declining, is about as useful as giving out firearms to all inmates of a gaol and then saying that you hope 'this will ensure peace'. But one good thing may arise out of it, I suppose, if the write-ups are not overheated: Japan ought to cave in. Well we're in God's hands. But He does not look kindly on Babel-builders. ~ J R R Tolkien, #NFDB
1018:Tea has nothing to do with being hungry," said Nimrod. "For Englishmen, it is like a canonical hour. And almost as much of an important ritual as the tea ceremony in Japan. Except for one thing. With tea, in Japan, recognition is given that every human encounter is a singular occasion which can, and will, never recur again exactly. Thus every aspect of tea must be savored for what it gives the participants. But in England, the significance occurs in the fact that teas is always the same, and will always recur again and again, exactly . For how is the endurance of a great civilization to be measured? ~ P B Kerr, #NFDB
1019:The Oxford Classical Dictionary firmly states: “No word in either Greek or Latin corresponds to the English ‘religion’ or ‘religious.’ ”6 The idea of religion as an essentially personal and systematic pursuit was entirely absent from classical Greece, Japan, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran, China, and India.7 Nor does the Hebrew Bible have any abstract concept of religion; and the Talmudic rabbis would have found it impossible to express what they meant by faith in a single word or even in a formula, since the Talmud was expressly designed to bring the whole of human life into the ambit of the sacred.8 ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
1020:Although nobody agrees with me, I am of the opinion that the only sound countries in the world are Germany, Italy, and Japan, simply because they are all working and working hard,” he wrote in a letter to a friend. Koch added, “The laboring people in those countries are proportionately much better off than they are any place else in the world. When you contrast the state of mind of Germany today with what it was in 1925 you begin to think that perhaps this course of idleness, feeding at the public trough, dependence on government, etc., with which we are afflicted is not permanent and can be overcome. ~ Jane Mayer, #NFDB
1021:Hiro's father, who was stationed in Japan for many years, was obsessed with cameras. He kept bringing them back from his stints in the Far East, encased in many protective layers, so that when he took them out to show Hiro, it was like watching an exquisite striptease as they emerged from all that black leather and nylon, zippers and straps. And once the lens was finally exposed, pure geometric equation made real, so powerful and vulnerable at once, Hiro could only think it was like nuzzling through skirts and lingerie and outer labia and inner labia ... It made him feel naked and weak and brave. ~ Neal Stephenson, #NFDB
1022:Listen--God only exists in people's minds. Especially in Japan, God's always been kind of a flexible concept. Look at what happened after the war. Douglas MacArthur ordered the divine emperor to quit being God, and he did, making a speech saying he was just an ordinary person. So after 1946 he wasn't God anymore. That's what Japanese gods are like--they can be tweaked and adjusted. Some American comping on a cheap pipe gives the order and presto change-o--God's no longer God. A very postmodern kind of thing. If you think God's there, He is. If you don't, He isn't. ~ Haruki Murakamipages 286-287 ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
1023:Japan and Hong Kong are steadily whittling away at the last of the elephants, turning their tusks (so much more elegant left on the elephant) into artistic carvings. In much the same way, the beautiful furs from leopard, jaguar, Snow leopard, Clouded leopard and so on, are used to clad the inelegant bodies of thoughtless and, for the most part, ugly women. I wonder how many would buy these furs if they knew that on their bodies they wore the skin of an animal that, when captured, was killed by the medieval and agonizing method of having a red-hot rod inserted up its rectum so as not to mark the skin. ~ Gerald Durrell, #NFDB
1024:In geological terms, Japan is in an appalling situation, on top of not one, but two so-called triple junctions—points at which three of the Earth’s tectonic plates collide and grate against one another. Fire, wind, flood, landslide, earthquake, and tsunami: it is a country of intense, elemental violence. Harsh natural environments often breed qualities that take on the status of national characteristics—the dark fatalism of Russians, the pioneer toughness of frontier Americans. Japanese identify in themselves the virtue of nintai or gaman, variously rendered as endurance, patience, or perseverance ~ Richard Lloyd Parry, #NFDB
1025:You thought it could wait, it was so alive you thought it could wait, that it took no effort because you could laugh, talk, go inside, find pure cream waiting for you. You turned into a dumb motherfucker and switched track, agreed to go work in Japan for six months, backed away as if every day this came your way, every day you could touch, play, connect, make dumb jokes, absurd gestures, feel the fuse between us, what are you calling me now for? I saw it way back, I saw it, I wanted it, waited around for you to see it, what are you calling me now for when i was right in the palm of your hand, damn it? ~ Kathleen Collins, #NFDB
1026:Not only does Japan have an economic need and the technological know-how for robots, but it also has a cultural predisposition. The ancient Shinto religion, practiced by 80 percent of Japanese, includes a belief in animism, which holds that both objects and human beings have spirits. As a result, Japanese culture tends to be more accepting of robot companions as actual companions than is Western culture, which views robots as soulless machines. In a culture where the inanimate can be considered to be just as alive as the animate, robots can be seen as members of society rather than as mere tools or as threats. ~ Alec J Ross, #NFDB
1027:La·ver Rod (1938- ), Australian tennis player; full name Rodney George Laver. In 1962, he won the four major singles championships (British, American, French, and Australian) in one year, called the "Grand Slam,” a feat he repeated in 1969. la·ver 1 (also purple laver) n. an edible seaweed with thin sheetlike fronds of a reddish-purple and green color that becomes black when dry. Laver typically grows on exposed shores, but in Japan it is cultivated in estuaries. Porphyra umbilicaulis, division Rhodophyta. late Old English (as the name of a water plant mentioned by Pliny), from Latin. The current sense dates from ~ Erin McKean, #NFDB
1028:In no country does the average income give the right picture of how people live but in a country with higher inequality it is likely to be particularly misleading. Given that the US has by far the most unequal distribution of income among the rich countries, we can safely guess that the US per capita income overstates the actual living standards of more of its citizens than in other countries....The much higher crime rate than in Europe or Japan -- in per capita terms, the US has eight times more people in prison than Europe and twelve times more than Japan -- shows that there is a far bigger underclass in the US. ~ Ha Joon Chang, #NFDB
1029:The most powerful reason given for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was that they saved the lives of those who would have died in an invasion of Japan. But the official report of the Strategic Bombing Survey, which interrogated seven hundred Japanese officials right after the war, concluded that the Japanese were on the verge of surrender and would “certainly” have ended the war by December of 1945 even if the bombs had not been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and even without an invasion of Japan. Furthermore, the United States, having broken the Japanese code, knew the Japanese were on the verge of surrender. ~ Howard Zinn, #NFDB
1030:The United Nations research states that men with the longest life expectancy are from Japan, followed by Switzerland. I am rather surprised at this result as since time immemorial we have been doing the Karva Chauth fast to make sure our men have long lives, and the results should have definitely shown by now. I scan the list, confident that in this chart of life expectancy, the Indian man must definitely be in the top 5. Nope! There are 146 countries above us where the men have longer lifespans, and the biggest blow is that even with four wives who don’t fast for them, the Arab men outlive our good old Indian dudes. ~ Twinkle Khanna, #NFDB
1031:It wasn't that he was a Confederate. Everyone in Gatlin County was related to the wrong side in the War Between the States. We were used to that by now. It was like being born in Germany after World War II, being from Japan after Pearl Harbor, or America after Hiroshima. History was a bitch sometimes. You couldn't change where you were from. But still, you didn't have to stay there. You didn't have to stay stuck in the past, like the ladies in DAR, or the Gatlin Historical Society, or the Sisters. And you didn't have to accept that things had to be the way they were, like Lena. Ethan Carter Wate hadn't, and I couldn't, either. ~ Kami Garcia, #NFDB
1032:In 1938 the biological warfare establishment Unit 731 had been set up outside Harbin in Manchukuo, under the auspices of the Kwantung Army. This huge complex, presided over by General Ishii Shir, eventually employed a core staff of 3,000 scientists and doctors from universities and medical schools in Japan, and a total of 20,000 personnel in the subsidiary establishments. They prepared weapons to spread black plague, typhoid, anthrax and cholera, and tested them on more than 3,000 Chinese prisoners. They also carried out anthrax, mustard-gas and frostbite experiments on their victims, whom they referred to as maruta or ‘logs’. ~ Antony Beevor, #NFDB
1033:In the last six months,” he went on, “there have been two deaths, apparently by suicide. The victims were both high-level banking executives in soon-to-be merged institutions. Each seems to have leaped to his death from the roof of a building.” I shrugged. “From what I’ve been reading about the condition of the banks’ balance sheets, I’m surprised only two have jumped. I would have expected more like fifty.” “Perhaps twenty years ago, or even ten, that would have been the case. But atonement by suicide now exists in Japan more as an ideal than as a practice.” He took a sip of his tea. “An American-style apology is now preferred. ~ Barry Eisler, #NFDB
1034:Miss Appleby, her library books, and her story-telling sessions were very popular with all the children in Heavenly Valley. To Nancy and Plum they were a magic carpet that whisked them out of the dreariness and drudgery of their lives at Mrs. Monday's and transported them to palaces in India, canals in Holland, pioneer stockades during the Indian wars, cattle ranches in the West, mountains in Switzerland, pagodas in China, igloos in Alaska, jungles in Africa, castles in England, slums in London, gardens in Japan, or most important of all, into happy homes where there were mothers and fathers and no Mrs. Mondays or Marybelles. ~ Betty MacDonald, #NFDB
1035:But the deepest problem was the intervention, the lack of faith in the marketplace. Government management of the late 1920s and 1930s hurt the economy. Both Hoover and Roosevelt misstepped in a number of ways. Hoover ordered wages up when they wanted to go down. He allowed a disastrous tariff, Smoot-Hawley, to become law when he should have had the sense to block it. He raised taxes when neither citizens individually nor the economy as a whole could afford the change. After 1932, New Zealand, Japan, Greece, Romania, Chile, Denmark, Finland, and Sweden began seeing industrial production levels rise again—but not the United States. ~ Amity Shlaes, #NFDB
1036:The Japanese government actively promoted the repatriation, supposedly on humanitarian grounds. But in my opinion, what they were actually pursuing was opportunism of the most vile and cynical kind. Look at the facts. During the period of the Japanese Empire, thousands upon thousands of Koreans had been brought to Japan against their will to serve as slave laborers and, later, cannon fodder. Now, the government was afraid that these Koreans and their families, discriminated against and poverty-stricken in the postwar years, might become a source of social unrest. Sending them back to Korea was a solution to a problem. Nothing more. ~ Masaji Ishikawa, #NFDB
1037:Ideally, Disney hoped to staff the World Showcase pavilions at EPCOT Center using an international version of the College Program. They thought that having guests walk into an elaborate recreation of Japan only to be greeted by a blonde-haired teen with a Southern accent would spoil the entire show. Plus, the program could help promote the rationale behind the cultural exchange of World Showcase—foreign nationals could bring a little bit of their home countries to the U.S., and then return to their homeland with a little bit of the U.S. Planners envisioned the program as the “greatest U.N. ever created,” which would promote world peace. ~ David Koenig, #NFDB
1038:When I was traveling the world on my quest, I asked the health ministry of each country how many citizens had declared bankruptcy in the past year because of medical bills. Generally, the officials responded to this question with a look of astonishment, as if I had asked how many flying saucers from Mars landed in the ministry’s parking lot last week. How many people go bankrupt because of medical bills? In Britain, zero. In France, zero. In Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, Switzerland: zero. In the United States, according to a joint study by Harvard Law School and Harvard Medical School, the annual figure is around 700,000.3 QUALITY ~ T R Reid, #NFDB
1039:BOTSWANA, CHINA, and the U.S. South, just like the Glorious Revolution in England, the French Revolution, and the Meiji Restoration in Japan, are vivid illustrations that history is not destiny. Despite the vicious circle, extractive institutions can be replaced by inclusive ones. But it is neither automatic nor easy. A confluence of factors, in particular a critical juncture coupled with a broad coalition of those pushing for reform or other propitious existing institutions, is often necessary for a nation to make strides toward more inclusive institutions. In addition some luck is key, because history always unfolds in a contingent way. ~ Daron Acemo lu, #NFDB
1040:I, however, had not been too late. It has been my great good fortune to see India when that once fabulously beautiful land was as lovely, and to a great extent as peaceful and unspoiled, as Eden before the Fall. To live for two years in Peking in an old Chinese house, once the property of a Manch Prince, at a time when the citizens of that country still wore their national costumes instead of dressing up - or down! - in dull Russian-style "uniforms. To have visited Japan before war, the Bomb and the American occupation altered it beyond recognition, when the sight of a Japanese woman in European dress was unusual enough to make you turn and stare... ~ M M Kaye, #NFDB
1041:The French delegates now wore a cynical smile as they argued before the commissions; they had their assurance that their armies were going to hold the Rhineland and the Sarre, and that a series of buffer states were to be set up between Germany and Russia, all owing their existence to France, all financed with the savings of the French peasants, and munitioned by Zaharoff, alias Schneider-Creusot. France and Britain were going to divide Persia and Mesopotamia and Syria and make a deal for the oil and the laying of pipelines. Italy was to take the Adriatic, Japan was to take Shantung—all such matters were being settled among sensible men. Lanny ~ Upton Sinclair, #NFDB
1042:Lupe was upset that the Japanese honeymooners were wearing surgical masks over their mouths and noses; she imagined the young Japanese couples were dying of some dread disease—she thought they’d come to Of the Roses to beg Our Lady of Guadalupe to save them. “But aren’t they contagious?” Lupe asked. “How many people have they infected between here and Japan?” How much of Juan Diego’s translation and Edward Bonshaw’s explanation to Lupe was lost in the crowd noise? The proclivity of the Japanese to be “precautionary,” to wear surgical masks to protect themselves from bad air or disease—well, it was unclear if Lupe ever understood what that was about. ~ John Irving, #NFDB
1043:This eternal lila is the eternal truth, and, therefore, its this eternal lila - the playful love-making of Radha and Krishna, which the Vaishnava poets desired to enjoy. If we analyse the Gitagovinda of Jayadeva we shall find not even a single statement which shows the poet's desire to have union with Krishna as Radha had,- he only sings praises the lila of Radha and Krishna and hankers after a chance just to have peep into the divine lila, and this peep into the divine lila is the highest spiritual gain which poets could think of. ~ Gautam Dasgupta (1976:125-26), quoted by Wimal Dissanayake, in Narratives of Agency: Self-making in China, India, and Japan, p. 132, #NFDB
1044:The person who returns from living abroad isn't the same person who left originally... Your outlook changes. You don't take things for granted that you used to. For instance, I noticed in New York that when one cab cut off another, the driver who got cut off would always yell at the other driver... and I realized this was because Americans assume that the other person intended to do what he did, so they want to teach the person a lesson. But you know, in Japan, people almost never get upset in those situations. Japanese look at other people's mistakes more as something arbitrary, like the weather, I think, not so much as something to get angry about. ~ Barry Eisler, #NFDB
1045:I’ve come to believe there are four types of ESL teachers in Asia. The first are young people looking to travel for a year or two and save a bit of money before returning home and starting the careers they would sink into for the rest of their lives. The second are those who end up marrying an Asian and living the rest of their lives as expatriates, maybe flying home every so often for a wedding or a funeral or Christmas with their ageing parents. The third are the more adventurous who are willing to give up the better salaries and standards of living in Japan and South Korea for a more laissez faire lifestyle in a tropical environment in Southeast Asia. ~ Jeremy Bates, #NFDB
1046:Above a certain size and level of prosperity, regional cities in Japan look alike. To discover what makes each one different, one has to sample the food and the sake, and stay long enough to see the patterns of life under the surface. Otherwise it can be hard to tell them apart. Wealth tends to smooth out the differences in the way people live. Life becomes standardized.
Only in nature, in the mountains and valleys beyond the hand of man, are the real differences, the real uniqueness, preserved. There is something about the air in Hokkaido, a kind of richness that will never change. For better or worse, the only thing that really changes is people. ~ Miyuki Miyabe,#NFDB
1047:while Koreans also are relatively group-oriented, they also have a strong individualistic streak like most Westerners. Koreans frequently joke that an individual Korean can beat an individual Japanese, but that a group of Koreans are certain to be beaten by a group of Japanese.”36 The rate of employee turnover, raiding of other companies’ skilled labor, and the like are all higher in Korea than in Japan.37 Anecdotally, there would seem to be a lower level of informal work-oriented socializing in Korea than in Japan, with employees heading home to their families at the end of the day rather than staying on to drink in the evenings with their workmates.38 ~ Francis Fukuyama, #NFDB
1048:It was sometime after this realization that Shankman signed a book contract that gave him only two weeks to finish the entire manuscript. Meeting this deadline would require incredible concentration. To achieve this state, Shankman did something unconventional. He booked a round-trip business-class ticket to Tokyo. He wrote during the whole flight to Japan, drank an espresso in the business class lounge once he arrived in Japan, then turned around and flew back, once again writing the whole way—arriving back in the States only thirty hours after he first left with a completed manuscript now in hand. “The trip cost $4,000 and was worth every penny,” he explained. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
1049:In 2008, there were about 800 million people in the world living on less than $1.00 a day. On average, each of these people is “short” about $0.28 a day; their average daily expenditure is $0.72 instead of the $1.00 it would take to lift them out of poverty.1 We could make up the shortfall with less than a quarter of a billion dollars a day; $0.28 times 800 million is $0.22 billion. If the United States were to try to do this on its own, each American man, woman, and child would have to pay $0.75 each day, or $1.00 a day each if children were exempted. We could cut this to $0.50 a person per day if the adults of Britain, France, Germany, and Japan joined in. Even ~ Angus Deaton, #NFDB
1050:Almost every woman had a primary role in the “female-dominated” family structure; only a small percentage of men had a primary role in the “male-dominated” governmental and religious structures. Many mothers were, in a sense, the chair of the board of a small company—their family. Even in Japan, women are in charge of the family finances—a fact that was revealed to the average American only after the Japanese stock market crashed in 1992 and thousands of women lost billions of dollars that their husbands never knew they had invested.23 Conversely, most men were on their company’s assembly line—either its physical assembly line or its psychological assembly line. ~ Warren Farrell, #NFDB
1051:Mist swirled and the Spartoi closed in on the defenseless Niten. Lightning fast, one lashed out at him, catching him a blow on the thigh, and he fell to the bridge with a grunt of pain. He lay flat on his back, looked up at the lizard-like creatures and realized that he was going to die. The immortal felt just the vaguest pang of regret: He had always wanted to die in his beloved Japan and he had made Aoife promise that if he fell in some foreign country or shadowrealm, she would bring his body back to Reigando in the southwest of his country. But Aoife was gone. He would never be able to fulfill his promise to rescue her. And he would never rest in his home soil. ~ Michael Scott, #NFDB
1052:While many nations have a terrible record in modern times of dealing out great suffering face-to-face with their victims, Americans have made it a point to keep at a distance while inflicting some of the greatest horrors of the age: atomic bombs on the people of Japan; carpet-bombing Korea back to the stone age; engulfing the Vietnamese in napalm and pesticides; providing three decades of Latin Americans with the tools and methods of torture, then turning their eyes away, closing their ears to the screams, and denying everything … and now, dropping 177 million pounds of bombs on the people of Iraq in the most concentrated aerial onslaught in the history of the world. ~ William Blum, #NFDB
1053:In order to progress, modern society should be treating ruined entrepreneurs in the same way we honor dead soldiers, perhaps not with as much honor, but using exactly the same logic (the entrepreneur is still alive, though perhaps morally broken and socially stigmatized, particularly if he lives in Japan). For there is no such thing as a failed soldier, dead or alive (unless he acted in a cowardly manner)—likewise, there is no such thing as a failed entrepreneur or failed scientific researcher, any more than there is a successful babbler, philosophaster, commentator, consultant, lobbyist, or business school professor who does not take personal risks. (Sorry.) ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
1054:Time magazine tried to cover up the Founding Fathers’ crime of non-diversity by making them look less WASPy.7 A photo display of eleven descendants of the Founders included Yukiko Irwin, born and raised in Japan,8 and an African American probation officer, Elmer Roberts, allegedly descended from Thomas Jefferson’s nonexistent sexual relationship with slave Sally Hemings. Time wanted to make absolutely clear that the United States was not the product of a bunch of Protestant, Anglo-Saxon men, if that’s what you were thinking. Except, the problem is, it was. And the country remained overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon and Protestant right up until Teddy Kennedy decided to change it. ~ Ann Coulter, #NFDB
1055:Even so, there are three reasons to think that real change is under way. The first is that market pressure is adding to the political pressure. Institutional investors are increasingly benchmarking firms by their returns on equity; and no investor has more clout than the Government Pension Investment Fund, Japan’s enormous national fund, which made a big move into equities last year. Shareholder-advisory firms are doing their part, by recommending investors to ditch underperforming managers. At the moment firms are bumping up returns by buying back their shares; in time they will have to increase earnings, too. Some of Japan’s most prominent companies are also changing their stripes. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1056:When you’ve finished tidying your books, step back and take a good look at your bookshelves. What kinds of words leap out at you from the titles on their spines? If you have been telling everyone you’d like to get married sometime this year, but you have a lot of titles with words like “XXX for Singles,” or if you want to live a joyful life but own a lot of novels with tragic titles, watch out. The energy of book titles and the words inside them are very powerful. In Japan, we say that “words make our reality.” The words we see and with which we come into contact tend to bring about events of the same nature. In that sense, you will become the person who matches the books you have kept. ~ Marie Kond, #NFDB
1057:In the Judeo-Christian view--and thus, the dominant Western view--to die by suicide is a sinful, selfish act. This perception has been slow to fade, though the science is clear that suicide has root causes in diagnosable mental disorders and substance abuse. ("Sin" does not qualify for the DSM-5.)
The cultural meaning of suicide in Japan is different. It's viewed as a selfless, even honorable act...
Outsiders say that the Japanese romanticize suicide, and that Japan has a "suicide culture." But the reality is more complicated. The Japanese view of self-inflicted death as altruistic is more about wanting not to be a burden, rather than fascination with mortality itself. ~ Caitlin Doughty,#NFDB
1058:WHY WAS THE spread of crops from the Fertile Crescent so rapid? The answer depends partly on that east–west axis of Eurasia with which I opened this chapter. Localities distributed east and west of each other at the same latitude share exactly the same day length and its seasonal variations. To a lesser degree, they also tend to share similar diseases, regimes of temperature and rainfall, and habitats or biomes (types of vegetation). For example, Portugal, northern Iran, and Japan, all located at about the same latitude but lying successively 4,000 miles east or west of each other, are more similar to each other in climate than each is to a location lying even a mere 1,000 miles due south. ~ Jared Diamond, #NFDB
1059:On Seeing The Diabutsu--At Kamakura, Japan
Long have I searched, Cathedral shrine, and hall,
To find a symbol, from the hand of art,
That gave the full expression (not a part)
Of that ecstatic peace which follows all
Life's pain and passion. Strange it should befall
This outer emblem of the inner heart
Was waiting far beyond the great world's martImmortal answer, to the mortal call.
Unknown the artist, vaguely known his creed:
But the bronze wonder of his work sufficed
To lift me to the heights his faith had trod.
For one rich moment, opulent indeed,
I walked with Krishna, Buddha, and the Christ,
And felt the full serenity of God.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,#NFDB
1060:Everywhere I traveled I saw this death space in action, and I felt what it means to be held. At Ruriden columbarium in Japan, I was held by a sphere of Buddhas glowing soft blue and purple. At the cemetery in Mexico, I was held by a single wrought-iron fence in the light of tens of thousands of flickering amber candles. At the open-air pyre in Colorado, I was held within the elegant bamboo walls, which kept mourners safe as the flames shot high. There was magic to each of these places. There was grief, unimaginable grief. But in that grief there was no shame. These were places to meet despair face to face and say, 'I see you waiting there. And I feel you, strongly. But you do not demean me. ~ Caitlin Doughty, #NFDB
1061:It had been good with Naomi, that was the thing. Warm and sweet and emotionally uncomplicated. It wasn’t what I had with Midori, or almost had, but I was never going to have that again and preferred to spend as little time as possible flagellating myself over it. Going to her would be selfish, I knew, because in Tokyo our involvement had almost gotten her killed, and, despite the change of venue and all my new precautions, it was far from impossible something like that could happen again. But I found myself thinking of her all the time, wondering if somehow it could work. Japan was far away. I was Yamada now, wasn’t I? And Naomi was whoever she was in Brazil. We could start over, start afresh. ~ Barry Eisler, #NFDB
1062:let us start by picturing the Japan archipelago lying in the sea by the Chinese mainland. If its proximity allowed it to become part of the Sinosphere and acquire a written culture, its distance benefited the development of indigenous writing. The Dover Strait, separating England and France, is only 34 kilometers (21 miles) wide. A fine swimmer can swim across it. In contrast, the shortest distance between Japan and the Korean Peninsula is five or six times greater, and between Japan and the Chinese mainland, twenty-five times greater. The current, moreover, is deadly. . . . Japan's distance from China gave it political and cultural freedom and made possible the flowering of its own writing. ~ Minae Mizumura, #NFDB
1063:Researchers, for instance, have measured the amount of naturally occurring lithium in tap water in twenty-seven counties in Texas and found a negative association between lithium levels in the water and suicide rates, meaning the higher the level of lithium in the water, the lower the suicide rate. Similar studies have been carried out elsewhere, such as in Japan, where researchers studied the tap water of eighteen municipalities of the Ōita Prefecture and noted that even very low levels of lithium in the water supply may be protective against suicide, and, by extension, against depression as well. Until 1948, the popular soft drink 7Up contained lithium citrate, a little boost contained in a can. ~ Lauren Slater, #NFDB
1064:In Japan’s militaristic society, all citizens, from earliest childhood, were relentlessly indoctrinated with the lesson that to be captured in war was intolerably shameful. The 1941 Japanese Military Field Code made clear what was expected of those facing capture: “Have regard for your family first. Rather than live and bear the shame of imprisonment, the soldier must die and avoid leaving a dishonorable name.” As a result, in many hopeless battles, virtually every Japanese soldier fought to the death. For every Allied soldier killed, four were captured; for every 120 Japanese soldiers killed, one was captured. In some losing battles, Japanese soldiers committed suicide en masse to avoid capture. ~ Laura Hillenbrand, #NFDB
1065:Weber’s thesis is now more than a century old and nearly all of the introductory sociology textbooks (but not mine) take it to be a settled fact that the rise of industrial capitalism took place initially in predominantly Protestant countries and that within nations having both Protestants and Catholics, the Protestants dominated the capitalist economy. Moreover, a number of sociologists have attempted to account for the modernization of various non-Western societies by ‘finding’ an equivalent of the Protestant Ethic in their local religions12 – Robert Bellah claimed that such an ethic existed in Japan’s forms of Buddhism, Confucianism and Shinto during the Tokugawa era.13 Nevertheless, it’s all a myth! ~ Rodney Stark, #NFDB
1066:The emperor has no clothes, and sooner or later everyone is going to see what’s staring them right in the face. When that happens, perhaps, there will be a major shift; a mass exodus away from the complexity and futility of all spiritual teachings. An exodus not outward toward Japan or India or Tibet, but inward, toward the self; toward self-reliance, toward self-determination, toward a common sense approach to figuring out just what the hell’s going on around here. A wiping of the slate. A fresh start. Sincere, intelligent people dispensing with the past and beginning anew. Beginning by asking themselves, “Okay, where are we? What do we know for sure? What do we know that’s true?” A spiritual revolution. ~ Jed McKenna, #NFDB
1067:None of the Asian countries that have moved closer to the developed countries of the West in recent years has benefited from large foreign investments, whether it be Japan, South Korea, or Taiwan and more recently China. In essence, all of these countries themselves financed the necessary investments in physical capital and, even more, in human capital, which the latest research holds to be the key to long-term growth.35 Conversely, countries owned by other countries, whether in the colonial period or in Africa today, have been less successful, most notably because they have tended to specialize in areas without much prospect of future development and because they have been subject to chronic political instability. ~ Thomas Piketty, #NFDB
1068:The Trans-Pacific Partnership is an international agreement being worked out among 12 countries: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam. Part of the treaty falls under the traditional heading of “free trade,’’ including efforts to reduce tariffs and end government subsidies. But there are other parts that would increase government regulation, especially when it comes to intellectual property. The United States, in particular, has been pressing for heightened protection of trademarks, patents, and copyrights. The deal would also establish a kind of court system where companies could sue other countries for violating terms. The arguments for TPP ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1069:Another interview, some more personal philosophy shared with the people of Japan:
“You are in favour with women,” he is told. “Do you have any secret to be sexy?”
“Yeah”, he answers. “Get famous and rich. Yeah, If you’re famous and rich, you become better-looking instantly. In fact, I’m quite an average guy but it’s what people think I’ve got that makes me sexy, it’s not what I actually have.”
<…>
“It’s 50 percent of what you’ve got and 50 percent of what people think you’ve got that makes you sexy… Yeah, I’m rich. That makes me sexy. Sexy’s in the eye of the beholder. I don’t fancy me much. They’ve got the perception that I’m a bit of a wild one, and I think people like to think they can tame you. ~ Chris Heath,#NFDB
1070:It may be said that the Master was plagued in his last match by modern rationalism, to which fussy rules were everything, from which all the grace and elegance of Go as art had disappeared, which quite dispensed with respect for elders and attached no importance to mutual respect as human beings. From the way of Go the beauty of Japan and the Orient had fled. Everything had become science and regulation. The road to advancement in rank, which controlled the life of a player, had become a meticulous point system. One conducted the battle only to win, and there was no margin for remembering the dignity and the fragrance of Go as an art. The modern way was to insist upon doing battle under conditions of abstract justice... ~ Yasunari Kawabata, #NFDB
1071:Countries like Finland, Norway, Italy and Austria-which were relatively backward at the end of the Second World War and saw the need for rapid industrial development-also used strategies similar to those used by France and Japan to promote their industrie. All of them had relatively high tariffs until the 1960s. They all actively used SOEs to upgrade their industries. This was particularly successful in Finland and Norway. In Finland, Norway and Austria, the government was very much involved in directing the flow of bank credit to strategic industries. Finland heavily controlled foreign investment. In many parts of Italy, local government provided support for marketing and R&D to small and medium-sized firms in the locality. ~ Ha Joon Chang, #NFDB
1072:humankind, though “apt to forget it, is a creature of the earth. ‘Dust thou art’ and ‘All flesh is grass’ were not said by scientists, but they are sound biology.” When lower creatures exhaust their resources, Vogt argued, bad things happen. Exactly the same is true for Homo sapiens. The article tallied example after example of overreaching, most drawn from Vogt’s travels in Latin America. But then, provocatively, he switched to the United States’ current enemy, Japan: “Many explanations have been offered for Japanese aggression,” he argued. But, he asked, “can anyone deny that population pressures set off the explosion?” Unless humankind controlled its appetites for procreation and consumption, Vogt said, “there can be no peace. ~ Charles C Mann, #NFDB
1073:Columbus's real achievement was managing to cross the ocean successfully in both directions. Though an accomplished enough mariner, he was not terribly good at a great deal else, especially geography, the skill that would seem most vital in an explorer. It would be hard to name any figure in history who has achieved more lasting fame with less competence. He spent large parts of eight years bouncing around Caribbean islands and coastal South America convinced that he was in the heart of the Orient and that Japan and China were at the edge of every sunset. He never worked out that Cuba is an island and never once set foot on, or even suspected the existence of, the landmass to the north that everyone thinks he discovered: the United States. ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
1074:The popular impression of Korea as a free-trade economy was created by its export success. But export success does not require free trade, as Japan and China have also shown. Korean exports in the earlier period-things like simple garments and cheap electronics-were all means to earn the hard currencies needed to pay for the advanced technologies and expensive machines that were necessary for the new, more difficult industries, which were protected through tariffs and subsidies. At the same time, tariff protection and subsidies were not there to shield industries from international competition forever, but to give them the time to absorb new technologies and establish new organizational capabilities until they could compete in the world market. ~ Ha Joon Chang, #NFDB
1075:mobilization of manpower, he promptly asked Congress for the measure not only on the ground of mobilization but also to assure the fighting men that the nation was making its total effort and to warn the enemy that he could not get a negotiated peace. The President also asked Congress for legislation to use the services of the four million 4-F’s. The President’s budget for fiscal 1946 proposed only a moderate decline from the prodigious spending of 1945—a clear indication of the administration’s expectation of a long, hard war against Japan. The President’s message on the state of the union ran to 9,000 words; it was the longest such message he had ever sent Congress. It was as though he wanted a culminating speech that would cover all that he ~ James MacGregor Burns, #NFDB
1076:Balloons have taught me to reflect more. On earth, my life is fast and hectic, each moment full. It can be too busy. We all need our own space and it’s good to pause and do nothing. It gives us time to think. It recharges our bodies as well as our minds. I often think of the fishermen I watched that Christmas in Japan. It’s in our nature to strive – so I wondered what they looked for in life? They seemed content fishing and feeding their families. They didn’t seem driven to set up fish-canning empires. As far as I knew, they didn’t want to cross the Pacific in a balloon or climb Mount Everest. They took each day as it came. They lived in the moment, and perhaps this is what gave them peace of mind. My grandmother lived life to the full. At the age of ~ Richard Branson, #NFDB
1077:This wasn’t a POW camp. It was a secret interrogation center called Ofuna, where “high-value” captured men were housed in solitary confinement, starved, tormented, and tortured to divulge military secrets. Because Ofuna was kept secret from the outside world, the Japanese operated with an absolutely free hand. The men in Ofuna, said the Japanese, weren’t POWs; they were “unarmed combatants” at war against Japan and, as such, didn’t have the rights that international law accorded POWs. In fact, they had no rights at all. If captives “confessed their crimes against Japan,” they’d be treated “as well as regulations permit.” Over the course of the war, some one thousand Allied captives would be hauled into Ofuna, and many would be held there for years. ~ Laura Hillenbrand, #NFDB
1078:Far away from Oshoro in Nara Prefecture on the island of Honshu, there is a sacred mountain called Miwa-Yama. In a pattern with which I was now becoming familiar, this entire pyramid-shaped mountain is considered by Japan's indigenous Shinto religion to be a shrine, possessed by the spirit of a god who 'stayed his soul' within it in ancient times. His correct name is Omononushino-Kami (although he is also popularly known as Daikokusama) and according to the ancient texts he is 'the guardian deity of human life' who taught mankind how to cure disease, manufacture medicines and grow crops. His symbol, very strikingly, is a serpent -- and to this day serpents are still venerated at Mount Miwa, where pilgrims bring them boiled eggs and cups of sake. ~ Graham Hancock, #NFDB
1079:The halving of crude prices since the summer has brought US and eurozone inflation below zero. Prices in Britain are rising at the slowest rate in decades. Even in Japan, where a programme of quantitative easing had succeeded in pushing up inflation, price pressures have come down sharply compared with last spring. But despite pessimists’ predictions, there is little evidence of a negative spiral of falling prices and weak demand tainting the world economy. Indeed, in January, annual retail sales in the world’s most advanced economies rose at their most rapid pace since 2006 according to Capital Economics, a consultancy. Sliding oil prices have put $250bn in the pockets of consumers in the world’s four largest economies and shoppers seem determined to spend it. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1080:The Philippines campaign was a mistake,” says the present-day Japanese historian Kazutoshi Hando, who lived through the war. “MacArthur did it for his own reasons. Japan had lost the war once the Marianas were gone.” The Filipino people whom MacArthur professed to love paid the price for his egomania in lost lives—perhaps half a million, including those who perished from famine and disease—and wrecked homes. It was as great a misfortune for them as for the Allied war effort that neither President Roosevelt nor the U.S. chiefs of staff could contain MacArthur’s ambitions within a smaller compass of folly. In 1944, America’s advance to victory over Japan was inexorable, but the misjudgements of the Southwest Pacific supreme commander disfigured its achievement. ~ Max Hastings, #NFDB
1081:From the time she opened her doors to the modern world in 1867, Japan has been consistently underrated by westerners, despite her successful defeats of China and then Russia in 1894 and 1905, respectively; despite Pearl Harbor; and despite her sudden emergence as an economic superpower and the toughest competitor in the world market of the 1970s and 1980s. A major reason, perhaps the major one, is the prevailing belief that innovation has to do with things and is based on science or technology. And the Japanese, so the common belief has held (in Japan as well as in the West, by the way), are not innovators but imitators. For the Japanese have not, by and large, produced outstanding technical or scientific innovations. Their success is based on social innovation. ~ Peter F Drucker, #NFDB
1082:You are all misleading one another, and are yourselves deceived. The sun does not go round the
earth, but the earth goes round the sun, revolving as it
goes, and turning towards the sun in the course of each
twenty-four hours, not only Japan, and the Philippines,
and Sumatra where we now are, but Africa, and Europe,
and America, and many lands besides. The sun does not
shine for some one mountain, or for some one island,
or for some one sea, nor even for one earth alone, but
for other planets as well as our earth. If you would
only look up at the heavens, instead of at the ground
beneath your own feet, you might all understand this,
and would then no longer suppose that the sun shines
for you, or for your country alone. ~ Leo Tolstoy,#NFDB
1083:Now add in deaths from old age and disease and expand that to a global scale. Please imagine the sanitary conditions in those underdeveloped regions of the raging tropics and subtropics, and those places where there are neither medical facilities nor doctors. In advanced countries, heart disease resulting from intemperate living and cancer due to air pollution are deadly new epidemics caused by the advance of civilization. Every year, about eight hundred thousand of Japan’s one hundred million people will die—a number rivaling that of the total population of its outlying cities and towns. Fifty million people will die worldwide, out of a global population of three billion—a number about equal to the population of England. That’s what life is like for the human race. ~ Sakyo Komatsu, #NFDB
1084:But: all journeys were return journeys. The farther one traveled, the nakeder one got, until, towards the end, ceasing to be animated by any scene, one was most oneself, a man in a bed surrounded by empty bottles. The man who says, "I've got a wife and kids" is far from home; at home he speaks of Japan. But he does not know - how could he? - that the scenes changing in the train window from Victoria Station to Tokyo Central are nothing compared to the change in himself; and travel writing, which cannot but be droll at the outset, moves from journalism to fiction, arriving promptly as the Kodama Echo at autobiography. From there any further travel makes a beeline to confession, the embarrassed monologue in a deserted bazaar. The anonymous hotel room in a strange city... ~ Paul Theroux, #NFDB
1085:recognize. In the 1980s, with rivals operating far from the productivity frontier, it seemed possible to win on both cost and quality indefinitely. Japanese companies were all able to grow in an expanding domestic economy and by penetrating global markets. They appeared unstoppable. But as the gap in operational effectiveness narrows, Japanese companies are increasingly caught in a trap of their own making. If they are to escape the mutually destructive battles now ravaging their performance, Japanese companies will have to learn strategy. To do so, they may have to overcome strong cultural barriers. Japan is notoriously consensus oriented, and companies have a strong tendency to mediate differences among individuals rather than accentuate them. Strategy, on the other ~ Michael E Porter, #NFDB
1086:A special attendant was detailed to wait upon each flower and to wash its leaves with soft brushes made of rabbit hair. It has been written ["Pingtse", by Yuenchunlang] that the peony should be bathed by a handsome maiden in full costume, that a winter-plum should be watered by a pale, slender monk. In Japan, one of the most popular of the No-dances, the Hachinoki, composed during the Ashikaga period, is based upon the story of an impoverished knight, who, on a freezing night, in lack of fuel for a fire, cuts his cherished plants in order to entertain a wandering friar. The friar is in reality no other than Hojo-Tokiyori, the Haroun-Al-Raschid of our tales, and the sacrifice is not without its reward. This opera never fails to draw tears from a Tokio audience even to-day. ~ Kakuz Okakura, #NFDB
1087:But wait—was that not how the world at large had come to think of the ocean as a whole? Wasn’t the ocean just distance for most people these days? Didn’t we all now take for granted a body of water that, so relatively recently—no more than five hundred years before, at most—was viewed by mariners who had not yet dared attempt to cross it with a mixture of awe, terror, and amazement? Had not a sea that had once seemed an impassable barrier to somewhere—to Japan? the Indies? the Spice Islands? the East?—transmuted itself with dispatch into a mere bridge of convenience to the wealth and miracles of the New World? Had our regard for this ocean not switched from the intimidation of the unknown and the frightening to the indifference with which we now greet the ordinary? And ~ Simon Winchester, #NFDB
1088:I currently offer a course for clients in the home and for company owners in their offices. These are all private, one-on-one lessons, but I have yet to run out of clients. There is currently a three-month waiting list, and I receive enquiries daily from people who have been introduced by a former client or who have heard about the course from someone else. I travel from one end of Japan to the other and sometimes overseas. Tickets for one of my public talks for housewives and mothers sold out overnight. There was a waiting list not only for cancellations, but also just to get on the waiting list. Yet my repeater rate is zero. From a business perspective, this would appear to be a fatal flaw. But what if no repeaters were actually the secret to the popularity of my approach? ~ Marie Kond, #NFDB
1089:From the perspective of an effective altruist, Tzu Chi does some surprising things. After the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in 2011, Tzu Chi raised funds to distribute hot meals to survivors, and in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, which battered New York and New Jersey in 2012, Tzu Chi distributed $10 million dollars worth of Visa debit cards, with $600 on each card, to victims of the storm.7 When I visited the Tzu Chi hospital in Hualien, I asked Rey-Sheng Her, a spokesman for Tzu Chi, why the organization would give aid to the citizens of wealthy countries like Japan and the United States, when the money could do much more good if used to help people in extreme poverty. His answer was that it is important for Tzu Chi to show compassion and love for all, rich and poor. ~ Peter Singer, #NFDB
1090:But in 1947, an American working in Japan turned that thinking on its head. His name was W. Edwards Deming, and he was a statistician who was known for his expertise in quality control. At the request of the U.S. Army, he had traveled to Asia to assist with planning the 1951 Japanese census. Once he arrived, he became deeply involved with the country’s reconstruction effort and ended up teaching hundreds of Japanese engineers, managers, and scholars his theories about improving productivity. Among those who came to hear his ideas was Akio Morita, the co-founder of Sony Corp.—one of many Japanese companies that would apply his ideas and reap their rewards. Around this time, Toyota also instituted radical new ways of thinking about production that jibed with Deming’s philosophies. ~ Ed Catmull, #NFDB
1091:He cleared his throat and held up one hand dramatically.
“Green grass breaks through snow.
Artemis pleads for my help.
I am so cool.”
He grinned at us, waiting for applause.
"That last line was four syllables.” Artemis said.
Apollo frowned. “Was it?”
“Yes. What about I am so bigheaded?”
“No, no, that’s six syllable, hhhm.” He started muttering to himself.
Zoe Nightshade turned to us. “Lord Apollo has been going through this haiku phase ever since he visited Japan. Tis not as bad as the time he visited Limerick. If I’d had to hear one more poem that started with, There once was a godess from Sparta-"
“I’ve got it!” Apollo announced. “I am so awesome. That’s five syllables!” He bowed, looking very pleased with himself. ~ Rick Riordan,#NFDB
1092:They are all negros. And the Fascists won’t be called black because of their racial pride, so they are called White after the White Russians. And the Bolsheviks want to be called Black because of their racial pride. So when you say black you mean red, and when you mean red you say white and when the party who call themselves blacks say traitors they mean what we call blacks, but what we mean when we say traitors I really couldn’t tell you. But from your point of view it will be quite simple. Lord Copper only wants patriot victories and both sides call themselves patriots, and of course both sides will claim all the victories. But, of course, it’s really a war between Russia and Germany and Italy and Japan who are all against one another on the patriotic side. I hope I make myself plain? ~ Evelyn Waugh, #NFDB
1093:The way Karma Ura sees it, a government is like a pilot guiding an airplane. In bad weather, it must rely on its instruments to navigate. But what if the instruments are faulty? The plane will certainly veer off course, even though the pilot is manipulating the controls properly. That, he says, is the state of the world today, with its dependence on gross national product as the only real measure of a nation’s progress. “Take education,” he says. “We are hooked on measuring enrollment, but we don’t look at the content. Or consider a nation like Japan. People live a long time, but what is the quality of their life past age sixty?” He has a point. We measure what is easiest to measure, not what really matters to most people’s lives—a disparity that Gross National Happiness seeks to correct. ~ Eric Weiner, #NFDB
1094:How involved are women in your church? How are women involved? Are they at the table where decisions are made? Or do men make the decision and women do the work? In the words of Carolyn Custis James, who called her book about women Half the Church: “It is no small matter that women comprise half the church. In many countries women make up a significantly higher percentage of believers — 80 percent in China and 90 percent in Japan . . . maybe these high percentages of women should make us wonder what God is doing, for he often forges significant inroads for the gospel by beginning with women. . . . When you stop to think of it, in sheer numbers, the potential we possess for expanding the kingdom is staggering.”6 Is your church unleashing the spiritual power of women? Is their voice heard? ~ Scot McKnight, #NFDB
1095:Fukushima, Japan. The disaster involving the three General Electric–built reactors on the northeastern coast of Honshu followed a now familiar course, this time played out live on television: a loss of coolant led to reactor meltdown, a dangerous buildup of hydrogen gas, and several catastrophic explosions. No one was killed or injured by the immediate release of radiation, but three hundred thousand people were evacuated from the surrounding area, which will remain contaminated for decades to come. During the early stages of the emergency cleanup, it became clear that robots were incapable of operating in the highly radioactive environment inside the containment buildings of the plant. Japanese soldiers were sent in to do the work, in another Pyrrhic victory of bio-robots over technology. ~ Adam Higginbotham, #NFDB
1096:There are a dozen factors that make Japanese food so special- ingredient obsession, technical precision, thousands of years of meticulous refinement- but chief among them is one simple concept: specialization. In the Western world, where miso-braised short ribs share menu space with white truffle ceviche, restaurants cast massive nets to try to catch as many fish as possible, but in Japan, the secret to success is choosing one thing and doing it fucking well. Forever. There are people who dedicate their entire lives to grilling beef intestines, slicing blowfish, kneading buckwheat into tangles of chewy noodles- microdisciplines with infinite room for improvement.
The concept of shokunin, an artisan deeply and singularly dedicated to his or her craft, is at the core of Japanese culture. ~ Matt Goulding,#NFDB
1097:We have almost all had the experience of gazing at the full moon. But those of us who are neither astronomers nor astronauts are unlikely to have scheduled moongazing appointments. For Zen Buddhists in Japan, however, every year, on the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the traditional Japanese lunisolar calendar, followers gather at nightfall around specially constructed cone-shaped viewing platforms, where for several hours prayers are read aloud which use the moon as a springboard for reflections on Zen ideas of impermanence, a ritual known as tsukimi. Candles are lit and white rice dumplings (tsukimi dango) are prepared and shared out among strangers in an atmosphere at once companionable and serene, a feeling thereby supported by a ceremony, by architecture, by good company and by food. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
1098:Joan of Arc came back as a little girl in Japan, and her father told her to stop listening to her imaginary friends.
Elvis was born again in a small village in Sudan, he died hungry, age 9, never knowing what a guitar was.
Michelangelo was drafted into the military at age 18 in Korea, he painted his face black with shoe polish and learned to kill.
Jackson Pollock got told to stop making a mess, somewhere in Russia.
Hemingway, to this day, writes DVD instruction manuals somewhere in China. He’s an old man on a factory line. You wouldn’t recognise him.
Gandhi was born to a wealthy stockbroker in New York. He never forgave the world after his father threw himself from his office window, on the 21st floor.
And everyone, somewhere, is someone, if we only give them a chance. ~ Iain Thomas,#NFDB
1099:old diner on Main Street, six blocks west of the courthouse and three blocks south of the police station. It claimed to serve pecan waffles that were famous around the world, but Theo had often doubted this. Did people in Japan and Greece really know about Gertrude and her waffles? He wasn’t so sure. He had friends at school who’d never heard of Gertrude’s right there in Strattenburg. A few miles west of town, on the main highway, there was an ancient log cabin with a gas pump out front and a large sign advertising Dudley’s World-Famous Mint Fudge. When Theo was younger, he naturally had assumed that everybody in town not only craved the mint fudge but talked about it nonstop. How else could it achieve the status of being world famous? Then one day in class the discussion took an odd turn and found its way to ~ John Grisham, #NFDB
1100:I believe in all human societies there is a desire to love and be loved, to experience the full fierceness of human emotion, and to make a measure of the sacred part of one's life. Wherever I've traveled--Kenya, Chile, Australia, Japan--I've found the most dependable way to preserve these possibilities is to be reminded of them in stories. Stories do not give instruction, they do not explain how to love a companion or how to find God. They offer, instead, patterns of sound and association, of event and image. Suspended as listeners and readers in these patterns,we might reimagine our lives. It is through story that we embrace the great breadth of memory, that we can distinguish what is true, and that we may glimpse, at least occasionally, how to live without despair in the midst of the horror that dogs and unhinges us. ~ Barry Lopez, #NFDB
1101:Over west to Elephant Butte, up off the Rio Grande. Just a greenhorn, sleepin’ out where we was movin’ cattle. July of ’forty-five. They was a high wind that night and rain, and I didn’t get much sleep. Curled up against a big rock out of the wind. I was still in my bedroll at daybreak when come a god-terrible flash. I jumped up figurin’ one of the boys took a flashbulb pitcher of me sleepin’ on the job. Course nobody had a Kodak. Couple minutes later the ground started rumblin’. We heard plenty of TNT goin’ off to Almagordy before, but we never heard nothin’ like that noise. Sound just kept roarin’. ‘Oh, Jesus,’ I says, ‘what’d they go and do now?’ Next month we saw wheres they bombed Heerosaykee, Japan. We never knowed what an A-tomic bomb was, but we knowed that one flash wasn’t no TNT blockbuster.” “The ~ William Least Heat Moon, #NFDB
1102:But nobody lives in a universal thing called culture. They live only in specific cultures, each of which differ from one another. Plays written and produced in Germany are three times as likely to have tragic or unhappy endings than plays written and produced in the United States. Half of all people in India and Pakistan say they would marry without love, but only 2 percent of people in Japan would do so. Nearly a quarter of Americans say they are often afraid of saying the wrong things in social situations, whereas 65 percent of all Japanese say they are often afraid. In their book Drunken Comportment, Craig MacAndrew and Robert B. Edgerton found that in some cultures drunken men get into fights, but in some cultures they almost never do. In some cultures drunken men grow more amorous, but in some cultures they do not. ~ David Brooks, #NFDB
1103:Given the country’s low birth rate, more Germans will have to follow Mr Gerloff’s example if companies are to avoid crippling shortages of skilled labour in the coming years. At 21 per cent, Germany already has a higher share of its population over the age of 65 than any other country, bar Japan. Despite a large increase in immigration last year, there are already skills shortages in some sectors, particularly in machine building and healthcare and at small and medium-sized companies in rural areas. But this is only a harbinger of the difficulties to come when German baby boomers begin retiring over the next 15 to 20 years. Between 2010 and 2030 the stock of economically active people is set to decline by almost 10 per cent to 39.1m, according to a 2012 report by the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1104:To be a ramen writer of Kamimura's stature, you need to live in a ramen town, and there is unquestionably no town in Japan more dedicated to ramen than Fukuoka. This city of 1.5 million along the northern coast of Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's four main islands, is home to two thousand ramen shops, representing Japan's densest concentration of noodle-soup emporiums. While bowls of ramen are like snowflakes in Japan, Fukuoka is known as the cradle of tonkotsu, a pork-bone broth made milky white by the deposits of fat and collagen extracted during days of aggressive boiling. It is not simply a specialty of the city, it is the city, a distillation of all its qualities and calluses.
Indeed, tell any Japanese that you've been to Fukuoka and invariably the first question will be: "How was the tonkotsu? ~ Matt Goulding,#NFDB
1105:Miyata was fluent and intelligent. Nothing was beyond his curiosity. He seemed to be above the confusion of life, as if he had been commissioned to spend his own in undisturbed judgement of the world about him, protected always by a mandate from the gods. They spoke briefly of Korea and then of the past war with the United States. Miyata had been in Japan for its entire duration and must have been deeply affected, but when he talked about it, it was without bitterness. Wars were not of his doing. He considered them almost poetically, as if they were seasons, the cruel winters of man, even though almost all the work he had done in the 1930s and early 1940s had been lost when his house was burned in the great incendiary raid of 1944. He described the night vividly, the endless hours, the bombers thundering low over the storms of fire. ~ James Salter, #NFDB
1106:The north-east has, to a certain extent, been a victim of geography. Unlike the east and south of China, which straddle major international trading lanes, the north-eastern provinces’ two foreign neighbours are North Korea and the sparsely populated far east of Russia and it is not far from the equally desolate expanse of Mongolia. Their dominant commercial relations have been with Japan, but heightened tensions between China and Japan in the past couple of years have got in the way. Japanese investment in Liaoning was 33.5% lower year-on-year in the first three quarters of 2014. South Korean investment, about a third of Japan’s, fell even more sharply. Demography has also started to hurt. China as a whole is struggling to adapt as the working-age population peaks. The birth rate in the north-east, however, is less than one child per woman: ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1107:General George C. Marshall's words, making “sacrifices today in order that we may enjoy security and peace tomorrow” (qtd. in Neumann 1953, 549).9 The claim was either a mistake or a lie, however, because the U.S. government did not need to go to war, not even in the world wars, to preserve its people's essential liberties and their way of life. Neither Kaiser Wilhelm's forces nor Hitler's—and certainly not Japan's—had the capacity to deprive Americans of their liberties, to “take over the country,” to “destroy our way of life,” or to do anything of the sort. This country has always contained persecuted minorities, and it still does, but since 1789 the only government on earth that has had the power to crush the American people's liberties across the board has been the government of the United States. U.S. participation in World War I was ~ Robert Higgs, #NFDB
1108:People keep asking me what they can do to help Japan. And while I am all about donations, spreading the word, organizing charity events and the like, I realize not everyone has money to give—and no one seems to have the power to stop the media from sensationalizing the stories while ignoring the victims. To support Japan, what I would say is this: Simply do what you do every day, but do it better. Go to school or to work but with passion and energy. Engage your neighbors or community but with more sympathy and compassion than you ever have. Let these historic moments move you, inspire you and invigorate you for as long as the feeling lasts because, believe me, that initial adrenaline and humanitarian solidarity will wear off. Ride it as long as you can. Let it make you be a better person, and let it wake you up from the complacency in your life. ~ Jake Adelstein, #NFDB
1109:There are many accounts, uniformly incomplete, of what it is like to die slowly. But there is no information at all about what it is like to die suddenly and violently. We are being gentle when we describe such deaths as instant. 'The passengers died instantly.' Did they? It may be that some people can do it, can die instantly. The very old, because the vital powers are weak; the very young, because there is no great accretion of experience needing to be scattered. Muhammad Atta was 33. As for him (and perhaps this is true even in cases of vaporisation; perhaps this was true even for the wall-shadows of Japan), it took much longer than an instant. By the time the last second arrived, the first second seemed as far away as childhood...Even as his flesh fried and his blood boiled, there was life, kissing its fingertips. Then it echoed out, and ended. ~ Martin Amis, #NFDB
1110:Until the early twentieth century, Australians and Americans would go to Japan and say the Japanese were lazy. Until the mid nineteenth century, the British would go to Germany and say that the Germans were too stupid, too individualistic and too emotional to develop their economies (Germany was not unified then) – the exact opposite of the stereotypical image that they have of the Germans today and exactly the sort of things that people now say about Africans. The Japanese and German cultures were transformed with economic development, as the demands of a highly organized industrial society made people behave in more disciplined, calculating and cooperative ways. In that sense, culture is more of an outcome, rather than a cause, of economic development. It is wrong to blame Africa’s (or any region’s or any country’s) underdevelopment on its culture. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1111:For thousands of years, scarcely anyone left. Korea was the hermit kingdom, with its spiritual basis in Confucianism, Buddhism, and Shamanism, until 1910, when it was annexed by Japan and colonized for thirty-five years thereafter, followed by the Korean War in 1950. Having been born and raised under these brutal colonizers, my paternal grandfather spoke fluent Japanese. Shortly before his death, in the mid-1980s, he came to stay with my family in Queens, where he befriended a young Japanese woman, a missionary from the Unification Church. When my father confronted him about his sudden interest in the cult, my grandfather answered that he didn’t care about the Moonies, he only enjoyed the chance to speak Japanese with his new friend. Like others from his generation, he suffered from a sort of Stockholm syndrome and missed the language of his oppressors. ~ Suki Kim, #NFDB
1112:Gertrude’s was an old diner on Main Street, six blocks west of the courthouse and three blocks south of the police station. It claimed to serve pecan waffles that were famous around the world, but Theo had often doubted this. Did people in Japan and Greece really know about Gertrude and her waffles? He wasn’t so sure. He had friends at school who’d never heard of Gertrude’s right there in Strattenburg. A few miles west of town, on the main highway, there was an ancient log cabin with a gas pump out front and a large sign advertising DUDLEY’S WORLD-FAMOUS MINT FUDGE. When Theo was younger, he naturally had assumed that everybody in town not only craved the mint fudge but talked about it nonstop. How else could it achieve the status of being world famous? Then one day in class the discussion took an odd turn and found its way to the topic of imports and exports. ~ John Grisham, #NFDB
1113:Indeed, someone from the Anabaptist tradition might argue that minority status and persecution are the natural and predictable outcome of attempting to live a Christian life, and it is the communities that coexist comfortably with state power that have departed from the norm. What matters is not the size or numbers claimed by churches, but rather the quality of witness demonstrated by Christians in their particular circumstances. Of course, Christians were persecuted in seventeenth-century Japan, and in many other places before and since. And just as evidently, Christians have often experienced the status of being persecuted minorities, or, commonly, persecuted majorities, sometimes in societies they had once dominated. Why should any historically informed observer expect matters to be different? As the letter to the Hebrews declares, here, we have no abiding city. ~ Philip Jenkins, #NFDB
1114:Putin, the Islamic State, and Iran at first glance have as little in common as did Germany, Italy, and Japan. But like the old Axis, they are all authoritarians that share a desire to attack their neighbors. And they all hate the West. The grandchildren of those who appeased the dictators of the 1930s once again prefer in the short term to turn a blind eye to the current fascists. And the grandchildren of the survivors of the Holocaust once again get blamed. The 1930s should have taught us that aggressive autocrats do not have to like each other to share hatred of the West. The 1930s should have demonstrated to us that old-time American isolationism and the same old European appeasement will not prevent but only guarantee a war. And the 1930s should have reminded us that Jews are usually among the first — but not the last — to be targeted by terrorists, thugs, and autocrats. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1115:Finally there would be total unity within the Federation, the first step toward people’s being at home on any planet instead of only one. The principle from the old United States, basically; it didn’t matter if you were raised in Vermont and lived in California. You were still home, still American. If your name was Baird or Yamamura or Kwame, you weren’t necessarily loyal to Scotland, Japan, or Ghana, but to America. A few decades of space travel, and the statement became “I’m a citizen of Earth,” and no matter the country. This ship was that kind of first step. Whether born on Earth or Epsillon Indii VI, you were a citizen of the Federation. The children on this colony Enterprise would visit the planets of the Federation and feel part of each, welcome upon all. This starship was the greatest, most visionary melting pot of all, this spacegoing colony. Unique. Hopeful. Risky. ~ Diane Carey, #NFDB
1116:From the 1950s onward, popular thinking on the link between Western lifestyles and cancer focused on industrialization and carcinogens in the environment—something Higginson himself argued against in the 1980s, noting that “only a very small part of the total cancer burden” could be laid on industrial chemicals. When cancer epidemiologists did systematic reviews of the data, they continued to conclude, as Higginson had, that some significant percentage of cancers had to be lifestyle- or diet-induced. Breast cancer may be the best example. Though it has never been the scourge among Japanese women living in Japan that it is among women in America, it takes only two generations in the United States before Japanese-Americans experience the same breast-cancer rates as any other ethnic group. This implies that something about the American lifestyle or diet is a cause of breast cancer, ~ Gary Taubes, #NFDB
1117:He wiped his brow. “So. Consider this state of affairs from Yamaoto’s perspective. He understands that, with the immune system suppressed, there must eventually be a catastrophic failure of the host. There have been so many near misses—financial, ecological, nuclear—it is only a matter of time before a true cataclysm occurs. Perhaps a nuclear accident that irradiates an entire city. Or a countrywide run on banks and loss of deposits. Whatever it is, it will finally be of sufficient magnitude to shake Japan’s voters from their apathy. Yamaoto knows that violent disgust with an existing regime historically tends to cause an extremist backlash. This was true in Weimar Germany and Czarist Russia, to list only two examples.” “People would finally vote for change.” “Yes. The question is, a change to what?” “You think Yamaoto is trying to position himself to surf that coming wave of outrage? ~ Barry Eisler, #NFDB
1118:By probing questions such as these, the Swiss watch company Swatch, for example, was able to arrive at a cost structure some 30 percent lower than any other watch company in the world. At the start, Nicolas Hayek, chairman of Swatch, set up a project team to determine the strategic price for the Swatch. At the time, cheap (about $75), high-precision quartz watches from Japan and Hong Kong were capturing the mass market. Swatch set the price at $40, a price at which people could buy multiple Swatches as fashion accessories. The low price left no profit margin for Japanese or Hong Kong–based companies to copy Swatch and undercut its price. Directed to sell the Swatch for that price and not a penny more, the Swatch project team worked backwards to arrive at the target cost, a process that involved determining the margin Swatch needed to support marketing and services and earn a profit. Given ~ W Chan Kim, #NFDB
1119:After a moment I turned back to Twitter and messages were flying past. It was clear now that something huge had just happened. I flipped on the TV and soon learned some of the basics. The quake was centered in the northeast and that we only got a small taste of the full force. People outside of Japan were asking what had happened. News hit of a huge earthquake in Japan, but there were few details. Rummaging through the mess on the floor I found my video camera and a laptop and set up a quick livestream broadcast of the news on TV. For hours I kept the video running as I started to clean up my apartment. I stayed on Twitter throughout the night, as aftershock after aftershock rocked my building, each threatening, then backing down. Soon hundreds of people had logged onto my video as I continued passing information on Twitter to people at work, walking home, or outside of Japan altogether. ~ Jake Adelstein, #NFDB
1120:I have never been to Japan. I have never been to India, or to Morocco, or to Germany, or to most of the places Arthur Less has traveled to over the past few months. I have never climbed an ancient pyramid. I have never kissed a man on a Paris rooftop. I have never ridden a camel. I have taught a high school English class for the best part of a decade, and graded homework every night, and woken up early in the morning to plan my lessons, and read and reread Shakespeare, and sat through enough conferences and meetings for even those in Purgatory to envy me. I have never seen a glowworm. I do not, by any reckoning, have the best life of anyone I know. But what I am trying to tell you (and I only have a moment), what I have been trying to tell you this whole time, is that from where I sit, the story of Arthur Less is not so bad. Because it is also mine. That is how it goes with love stories. ~ Andrew Sean Greer, #NFDB
1121:What is the perfect amount of possessions? I think that most people don’t know. If you have lived in Japan or the United States all your life, you have almost certainly been surrounded by far more than you need. This makes it hard for many people to imagine how much they need to live comfortably. As you reduce your belongings through the process of tidying, you will come to a point where you suddenly know how much is just right for you. You will feel it as clearly as if something has clicked inside your head and said, “Ah! This is just the amount I need to live comfortably. This is all I need to be happy. I don’t need anything more.” The satisfaction that envelops your whole being at that point is palpable. I call this the “just-right click point.” Interestingly, once you have passed this point, you’ll find that the amount you own never increases. And that is precisely why you will never rebound. ~ Marie Kond, #NFDB
1122:P R E S I D E N T Y O S H I D A’S T E N S P A R T A N R UlE S Hideo Yoshida’s quest for management excellence was no doubt driven by his visions for Japanese marketing and media, but also by an overall worry about Japan’s economic prospects after World War II. As a result, he developed a set of business and work principles, or rules, which he called the “Ten Spartan Rules”: difficult work.5. Once you begin a task, complete it. Never give up.6. Lead and set an example for your fellow workers.7. Set goals for yourself to ensure a constant sense of purpose.8. Move with confidence. It gives your work force and substance.9. At all times, challenge yourself to think creatively and find new solutions.10. When confrontation is necessary, don’t shy away from it. Confrontation is often necessary to achieve progress. These traditional work rules still guide Dentsu’s employees, and are carried around in their notebooks ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1123:In his 1995 book Trust, he argues that the ability of a society to form large networks is largely a reflection of that society’s level of trust. Fukuyama makes a strong distinction between what he calls “familial” societies, like those of southern Europe and Latin America, and “high-trust” societies, like those of Germany, the United States, and Japan. Familial societies are societies where people don’t trust strangers but do trust deeply the individuals in their own families (the Italian Mafia being a cartoon example of a familial society). In familial societies family networks are the dominant form of social organization where economic activity is embedded, and are therefore societies where businesses are more likely to be ventures among relatives. By contrast, in high-trust societies people don’t have a strong preference for trusting their kin and are more likely to develop firms that are professionally run. ~ C sar A Hidalgo, #NFDB
1124:Despite being the most protectionist country in the world throughout the 19th century and right up to the 1920s, the US was also the fastest growing economy. The eminent Swiss economic historian, Paul Bairoch, points out that there is no evidence that the only significant reduciton of protectionism in the US economy (between 1846 and 1861) had any noticeable positive impact on the country's rate of economic growth. SOme free trade economists argue that the US grew quickly during this period despite protectionism, because it had so many other favourable conditions for growth, particularly its abundant natural resources, large domestic market and high literacy rate. The force of the counter-argument is diminished by the fact that, as we shall see, many other countries with few of those conditions also grew rapidly behind protective barriers. Germany, Sweden, France, Finland, Austria, Japan, Taiwan, and Korea come to mind. ~ Ha Joon Chang, #NFDB
1125:To be sure, there are hunter-gatherer societies that don’t exhibit the elaborately organized violence denoted by the term “war.” But often what turns out to be lacking is the organization, not the violence. The warless !Kung San were billed in the title of one book as The Harmless People, yet during the 1950s and 1960s, their homicide rate was between 20 and 80 times as high as that found in industrialized nations.114 Eskimos, to judge by popular accounts, are all cuddliness and generosity. Yet early this century, after westerners first made contact with a fifteen-family Eskimo village, they found that every adult male had been involved in a homicide. One reason the !Kung and most Eskimo haven’t waged war is their habitat.115 With population sparse, friction is low. But when densely settled along fertile ground, hunter-gatherers have warred lavishly. The Ainu of Japan built hilltop fortresses and, when raiding a neighboring ~ Robert Wright, #NFDB
1126:Twenty thousand troops drawn from several countries, including Japan, marched to Beijing to relieve the siege and loot the city. Among the British contingent was a north Indian soldier, Gadhadar Singh, who felt sympathetic to the anti-Western cause of the Boxers even though he believed that their bad tactics had ‘blanketed their entire country and polity in dust.’ His first sight of China was the landscape near Beijing, of famished Chinese with skeletal bodies in abandoned or destroyed villages, over whose broken buildings flew the flags of China’s joint despoilers- France, Russia and Japan. River waters had become a ‘cocktail of blood, flesh, bones and fat.’ Singh particularly blamed the Russian and French soldiers for the mass killings, arson and rape inflicted on the Chinese. Some of the soldiers tortured their victims purely for fun. ‘All these sportsmen,’ Singh noted, ‘belonged to what where called “civilized nations”. ~ Pankaj Mishra, #NFDB
1127:One widespread stereotype about people in Japan is that they're exceptionally dedicated and hardworking, even though some Japanese people say they look like they're working harder than they really are. There is no doubt, though, about their ability to be completely absorbed in a task, or about their perseverance when there is a problem to be solved. One of the first words one learns when starting Japanese lessons is ganbaru, which means "to persevere" or "to stay firm by doing one's best." Japanese people often apply themselves to even the most basic tasks with an intensity that borders on obsession. We see this in all kinds of contexts, from the "retirees" taking meticulous care of their rice fields in the mountains on Nagano to the college students working the weekend shift in convenience stores known as kobinis. If you go to Japan, you'll experience this attention to detail firsthand in almost every transaction. ~ Hector Garcia Puigcerver, #NFDB
1128:Unlike European empires, ours was supposed to entail a concert of equal, sovereign democratic American republics, with shared interests and values, led but not dominated by the United States—a conception of empire that remains Washington’s guiding vision. The same direction of influence is evident in any number of examples. The United States’s engagement with the developing world after World War II, for instance, is often viewed as an extension of its postwar policies in Europe and Japan, yet that view has it exactly backwards. Washington’s first attempts, in fact, to restructure another country’s economy took place in the developing world—in Mexico in the years after the American Civil War and in Cuba following the Spanish-American War. “We should do for Europe on a large scale,” remarked the U.S. ambassador to England in 1914, “essentially what we did for Cuba on a small scale and thereby usher in a new era of human history. ~ Greg Grandin, #NFDB
1129:Rice paddies climb the hillsides in wet, verdant staircases, dense woodlands trade space with geometric farmscapes, tiny Shinto shrines sprout like mushrooms in Noto forests. Villages seem to materialize from nowhere- wedged into valleys, perched atop hills, finessed into coastal corners. Pull over, climb out of your car, breathe deep for a taste of the finest air that will ever enter your lungs: green as a high mountain, salty and sweet, with just a whisper of decay in the finish.
Noto gained its reputation as the Kingdom of Fermentation because of this air. For most of its history, Noto was cut off from the rest of Japan, forced into a subsistence model that in many ways endures today. That was possible not only because of the bounty of Noto's fertile environment of trees, grasslands, fresh water, and sea, but because the air is rich with humidity that encourages the growth of healthy bacteria, the building blocks of fermentation. ~ Matt Goulding,#NFDB
1130:the world car market had changed in the fourteen months since that 1962 auto show, when big cars seemed resurgent and Henry Ford II had talked so confidently about Detroit’s position against foreign competition. In 1963, for the first time, even as the Big Three were enjoying their best sales year ever, more than half the cars in the world were made outside the United States, with estimates that the gap would only widen year by year from then on. Volkswagen was rising, and even Japan was beginning to stir, both taking hold of the worldwide small car market. Between 375,000 and 400,000 imports were sold in the United States in 1963, and estimates for 1964 were up to a half million. One reason, experts said, was that the compact cars the U.S. automakers started manufacturing in the late fifties in response to an earlier foreign surge were getting so much bigger every year that by now that might as well be classified as midsize vehicles. ~ David Maraniss, #NFDB
1131:The History Teacher
Trying to protect his students' innocence
he told them the Ice Age was really just
the Chilly Age, a period of a million years
when everyone had to wear sweaters.
And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age,
named after the long driveways of the time.
The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more
than an outbreak of questions such as
"How far is it from here to Madrid?"
"What do you call the matador's hat?"
The War of the Roses took place in a garden,
and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom on Japan.
The children would leave his classroom
for the playground to torment the weak
and the smart,
mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses,
while he gathered up his notes and walked home
past flower beds and white picket fences,
wondering if they would believe that soldiers
in the Boer War told long, rambling stories
designed to make the enemy nod off. ~ Billy Collins,#NFDB
1132:loved music. The music players that were already on the market, he told his colleagues, “truly sucked.” Phil Schiller, Jon Rubinstein, and the rest of the team agreed. As they were building iTunes, they spent time with the Rio and other players while merrily trashing them. “We would sit around and say, ‘These things really stink,’ ” Schiller recalled. “They held about sixteen songs, and you couldn’t figure out how to use them.” Jobs began pushing for a portable music player in the fall of 2000, but Rubinstein responded that the necessary components were not available yet. He asked Jobs to wait. After a few months Rubinstein was able to score a suitable small LCD screen and rechargeable lithium-polymer battery. The tougher challenge was finding a disk drive that was small enough but had ample memory to make a great music player. Then, in February 2001, he took one of his regular trips to Japan to visit Apple’s suppliers. At the end of a routine meeting ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
1133:During one of the rest periods, I felt people pause in their workouts, felt their attention shift. The atmosphere in the room changed. I looked over and saw someone in a poorly fitting double-breasted navy suit. It had wide lapels and overly padded shoulders. The kind of suit that’s supposed to impart a swagger even when you’re standing still. He was flanked by two burly specimens, more casually dressed, with yakuza punch perms. From their size and deportment I assumed they were bodyguards. They must have just come in. The guy in the suit was talking to Washio, who was paying close and somehow uncomfortable attention. I watched, and noticed other people doing the same. The newcomer couldn’t have been more than five-feet-eight, but his neck was massive and I put him at about eighty-five, ninety kilos. His ears were deformed masses of protruding scar tissue that would stand out even in Japan, where such scarification is not uncommon among judoka and kendoka. ~ Barry Eisler, #NFDB
1134:The United States was born through war, reunited by war, and saved from destruction by war. No future generation, however comfortable and affluent, can escape that terrible knowledge. Our freedom is not entirely our own; in some sense it is mortgaged from those who paid the ultimate price for its continuance. My own life of security, freedom, opportunity, and relative affluence certainly has been made possible because a grandfather fought and was gassed in the Argonne; an uncle in the Marines died trying to stop Japanese imperialism on Okinawa; a cousin in the Army lost his life at twenty-two trying to stop Hitler in France; and my father in the Army Air Force flew forty times over Japan hoping to end the idea of the expansive Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere. I have spent some time these past decades trying to learn where, how, and why they and their generations fought as they did—and what our own obligations are to acknowledge their sacrifices. ~ Victor Davis Hanson, #NFDB
1135:It is Professor Fuson's view that Chinese charts of Taiwan and Japan were the source of the 1424 portrayal of Antilia and Satanaze. He makes a very persuasive case that such charts are likely to have originated from the seven spectacular voyages of discovery made by the famous Ming admiral Cheng Ho between 1405 and 1433.
[...] Much suggests, however, that Robert Fuson is correct to deduce that the charts of Taiwan and Japan that somehow found their way into the hands of Zuane Pizzagano in Venice in 1424 must have originated from the voyages of Cheng Ho.
Yet there is a problem. [...] Antilia and Satanaze on the 1424 chart don't show Taiwan and Japan as they looked in the time of Cheng Ho, but rather as they looked approximately 12,500 years ago during the meltdown of the Ice Age.
Is it possible that Cheng Ho, too, like Columbus, was guided in his voyages by ancient maps and charts, come down from another time and populated by the ghosts of a drowned world? ~ Graham Hancock,#NFDB
1136:his way of thinking, the spreading of risk could actually exacerbate the consequences of otherwise isolated problems—a view not shared by his original boss at the Fed, Alan Greenspan. “These changes appear to have made the financial system able to absorb more easily a broader array of shocks, but they have not eliminated risk,” he said in a speech in 2006. “They have not ended the tendency of markets to occasional periods of mania and panic. They have not eliminated the possibility of failure of a major financial intermediary. And they cannot fully insulate the broader financial system from the effects of such a failure.” Geithner understood that the Wall Street boom would eventually falter, and he knew from his experience in Japan that it was not likely to end well. Of course, he had no way of knowing precisely how or when that would happen, and no amount of studying or preparation could have equipped him to deal with the events that began in early March 2008. ~ Andrew Ross Sorkin, #NFDB
1137:Along the way I stopped into a coffee shop. All around me normal, everyday city types were going about their normal, everyday affairs. Lovers were whispering to each other, businessmen were poring over spread sheets, college kids were planning their next ski trip and discussing the new Police album. We could have been in any city in Japan. Transplant this coffee shop scene to Yokohama or Fukuoka and nothing would seem out of place. In spite of which -- or, rather, all the more because -- here I was, sitting in this coffee shop, drinking my coffee, feeling a desperate loneliness. I alone was the outsider. I had no place here.
Of course, by the same token, I couldn't really say I belonged to Tokyo and its coffee shops. But I had never felt this loneliness there. I could drink my coffee, read my book, pass the time of day without any special thought, all because I was part of the regular scenery. Here I had no ties to anyone. Fact is, I'd come to reclaim myself. ~ Haruki Murakami,#NFDB
1138:People in Japan and the Faeroe Islands kill dolphins and pilot whales by running steel rods into their spinal columns while they squeal in pain and terror and thrash in agony. (In Japan, it’s illegal to kill cows and pigs as painfully and inhumanely as they kill dolphins.) The lack of compassion for dolphins and whales indicates that humans’ “theory of mind” is incomplete. We have an empathy shortfall, a compassion deficit. And human-on-human violence, abuse, and ethnic and religious genocide are all too pervasive in our world. No elephant will ever pilot a jetliner. And no elephant will ever pilot a jetliner into the World Trade Center. We have the capacity for wider compassion, but we don’t fully live up to ourselves. Why do human egos seem so threatened by the thought that other animals think and feel? Is it because acknowledging the mind of another makes it harder to abuse them? We seem so unfinished and so defensive. Maybe incompleteness is one of the things that “makes us human. ~ Carl Safina, #NFDB
1139:Now let’s say I gave him my address. The young cop would get on the radio and have someone at the station check the resident register. At that point, it would come out that I’m Zainichi Korean. The young cop would be so informed. Then he would ask, “Do you have your alien registration card?” Japan used to have a law called the Alien Registration Law, which oversaw the foreigners living in Japan. Although “oversaw” had a nice ring to it, the law was basically there to put a collar on so-called “bad” foreigners. Despite being born and raised in Japan, I was still considered a foreign resident, so I was required to be registered as one and have an alien registration card. You were supposed to have this card on your person at all times and not having it could get you a year of penal labor or imprisonment or a fine of 200,000 yen. Anyone who took off his collar would get disciplined. Since I wasn’t some farm animal kept by the state, I refused to wear my collar. And I wasn’t about to start now. ~ Kazuki Kaneshiro, #NFDB
1140:Yasunari Kawabata, the Japanese Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1968, committed suicide in 1971. Two years earlier, in 1969, another great Japanese novelist, Yukio Mishima, ended his life in the same way. Since 1895 ,thirteen Japanese novelists and writers have committed suicide, including the author of the Rashomon, Ryunosuko Akutagawa, in 1927. That "continuous tragedy" of Japanese culture during 70 years coincides with the penetration of Western civilization and materialistic ideas into the traditional culture of Japan. Whatever it be, for the poets and the writers of tragedies, civilization will always have an inhuman face and be a threat to humanity. A year before his death, Kawabata wrote "men are separated from each other by a concrete wall that obstructs any circulation of love. Nature is smothered in the name of progress." In the novel The Snow Country, published in 1937 , Kawabata places man's loneliness and alienation in the modern world at the very focus of his reflections. ~ Alija Izetbegovi, #NFDB
1141:Westerners came in with guns, they made the native governments sign agreements not to raise their import tariff over 5 percent and in one case 8 percent. Japan didn’t get free from that tariff until the 20th century. In China and in the Ottoman Empire they didn’t get rid of it until well in the 20th century. And this 5 percent tariff made it impossible for them to keep European industrial goods out and preserve the handicraft of their own peasantry. Well, now, the transportation and communication revolution requires capital. Where are they going to get it? There is no development ahead of it which would provide it. It requires labor. Where are they going to get that? Their economic system, their agricultural system, is already producing hardly enough. Well, the way they got these skilled technologists, where they got these inventions, where they got the capital was, of course, from Europe, generally by borrowing it and building railroads and so forth. But they were not paying for it themselves. ~ Carroll Quigley, #NFDB
1142:The weather has been strange in Japan this summer. The Rainey season, which usually winds down in the beginning of July, continued until the end of the month. It rained so much I got sick of it. There were torrential rains in parts of the country and a lot of people died. They say it’s all because of Global Warming. Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. Some experts claim it is, some claim it isn’t. There’s some proof that it is, some that it isn’t. But still people say that most of the problems the earth is facing are more or less due to Global Warming. When sales of apparel go down, when tons of drift wood wash up on the shore, when there are floods and droughts, when consumer prices go up—Most of the fault is ascribed to Global Warming. What the world needs is a set villain that people can point at and say, “It’s all your fault.” At any rate, due to this villain that can’t be dealt with, it went on raining and I could hardly practice biking at all during July. It’s not my fault, it’s that villain’s. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
1143:As I'm paying the bill, an older gentleman with an electric-blue tie sparks up a conversation with the chef. "What's good right now? You have anything you're really excited about?" Nakamura reaches down into one of his coolers and pulls out a massive wedge of beef so intensely frosted with fat that only the sparest trace of protein is visible.
"A-five Omi beef." A hush falls over the restaurant; Omi beef, ludicrously fatty and fabulously expensive, may be Japan's finest Wagyu.
The man bites, and Nakamura gets to work on his dish. He sears the beef, simmers wedges of golden carrots, whisks a fragrant sauce made with butter and vanilla. It's the first time the beef has made an appearance all night, but by the time Nakamura flips the steak, three more orders come in. Suddenly, the entire restaurant is happily working its way through these heartbreaking steaks, and I'm left staring at my bill.
"Are you sure you want to leave?" Nakamura asks, and before I can say anything, he cuts another steak. ~ Matt Goulding,#NFDB
1144:And yet, as you all know, joining humanity is never a simple matter. By beginning to live the same temporality as Westerners, the Japanese now had to live two temporalities simultaneously. On the one hand, there was Time with a capital "T," which flows in the West. On the other hand, there was time with a small "t," which flows in Japan. Moreover, from that point on, the latter could exist only in relation to the former. It could no longer exist independently, yet it could not be the same as the other, either. If I, as a Japanese, find this new historical situation a bit tragic, it's not because Japanese people now had a live in two temporalities. It's rather because as a result of having to do so, they had no choice but to enter the asymmetrical relationship that had marked and continues to mark the modern world—the asymmetrical relationship between the West and the non-West, which is tantamount, however abstractly, to the asymmetrical relationship between what is universal and all the rest that is merely particular. ~ Minae Mizumura, #NFDB
1145:I must tell you something about necks in Japan, if you don't know it; namely, that Japanese men, as a rule, feel about a woman's neck and throat the same way that men in the West might feel about a woman's legs. This is why geisha wear the collars of their kimono so low in the back that the first few bumps of the spine are visible; I suppose it's like a woman in Paris wearing a short skirt. Auntie painted onto the back of Hatsumomo's neck a design called sanbon-ashi-"three legs." It makes a very dramatic picture, for you feel as if you're
looking at the bare skin of the neck through little tapering points of a white fence. It was years before I understood the erotic effect it has on men; but in a way, it's like a woman peering out from between her fingers. In fact, a geisha leaves a tiny margin of skin bare all around the hairline, causing her makeup to look even more artificial, something like a mask worn in Noh drama. When a man sits beside her and sees her makeup like a mask, he becomes that much more aware of the bare skin beneath. ~ Arthur Golden,#NFDB
1146:One more, final question came from the audience on my last night in Newtown, and it was the one I most did not want to hear: “Will God protect my child?”
I stayed silent for what seemed like minutes. More than anything I wanted to answer with authority, “Yes! Of course God will protect you. Let me read you some promises from the Bible.” I knew, though, that behind me on the same platform twenty-six candles were flickering in memory of victims, proof that we have no immunity from the effects of a broken planet. My mind raced back to Japan, where I heard from parents who had lost their children to a tsunami in a middle school, and forward to that very morning when I heard from parents who had lost theirs to a shooter in an elementary school.
At last I said, “No, I’m sorry, I can’t promise that.” None of us is exempt. We all die, some old, some tragically young. God provides support and solidarity, yes, but not protection—at least not the kind of protection we desperately long for. On this cursed planet, even God suffered the loss of a Son. ~ Philip Yancey,#NFDB
1147:One more, final question came from the audience on my last night in Newtown, and it was the one I most did not want to hear: “Will God protect my child?”
I stayed silent for what seemed like minutes. More than anything I wanted to answer with authority, “Yes! Of course God will protect you. Let me read you some promises from the Bible.” I knew, though, that behind me on the same platform twenty-six candles were flickering in memory of victims, proof that we have no immunity from the effects of a broken planet. My mind raced back to Japan, where I heard from parents who had lost their children to a tsunami in a middle school, and forward to that very morning when I heard from parents who had lost theirs to a shooter in an elementary school.
At last I said, “No, I’m sorry, I can’t promise that.” None of us is exempt. We all die, some old, some tragically young. God provides support and solidarity, yes, but not protection—at least not the kind of protection we desperately long for. On this cursed planet, even God suffered the loss of a Son. ~ Philip Yancey,#NFDB
1148:For Japanese people before 1868, Europeans were little more than curious beasts, strange and incomprehensible. Then, after the Meiji Restoration, everything changed. Along with European science and technology, European art flooded into Japan, all forms of it representing themselves as the universal—and most advanced—model. The same was true of novels. The Japanese, with characteristic diligence, began to read masterpieces of European literature, first in the original and then in translation. And such is the power of literature that through the act of reading, little by little the Japanese came to live the lives of Europeans as if they were their own. They began to live the ambitions of Julien Sorel, the happiness of Jane Eyre, the sufferings of young Werther, and the despair of Anna Karenina as if they were their own. They thus began living a new temporality—that which flows in the West, dictated by the Gregorian calendar, marked by major historical events in the West. And by so doing, they eventually joined what the Europeans called "humanity. ~ Minae Mizumura, #NFDB
1149:It was only after the Second World War that the US-with its industrial supremacy now unchallenged- liberalized its trade and started championing the cause of free trade. But the US has never practised free trade to the same degree as Britain did during its free trade period (1860 to 1932). It has never had a zero-tariff regime like Britain. It has also been much more aggressive in using non-tariff protectionist measures when necessary. Morever, even when it shifted to freer (if not absolutely free) trade, the US government promoted key industries by another means, namely, public funding of R&D. Between the 1950s and the mid-1990s, US federal government funding accounted for 50-70% of the country's total R&D funding, which is far above the figure of around 20%, found in such 'governemen-led' countries as Japan and Korea. Without federal government funding for R&D, the US would not have been able to maintain its technological lead over the rest of the world in key industries like computers, semiconductors, life sciences, the internet and aerospace. ~ Ha Joon Chang, #NFDB
1150:A common error of western commentators who seek to interpret Islamism sympathetically is to view it as a form of localised resistance to globalisation. In fact, Islamism is also a universalist political project. Along with Neoliberals and Marxists, Islamists are participants in a dispute about how the world as whole is to be governed. None is ready to entertain the possibility that it should always contain a diversity of regimes. On this point, they differ from non-western traditions of thinking in India, China and Japan, which are much more restrained in making universal claims.
In their unshakeable faith that one way of living is best for all humankind, the chief protagonists in the dispute about political Islam belong to a way of thinking that is quintessentially western. As in Cold War times, we are led to believe we are locked in a clash of civilisations: the West against the rest. In truth, the ideologues of political Islam are western voices, no less than Marx or Hayek. The struggle with radical Islam is yet another western family quarrel. ~ John N Gray,#NFDB
1151:Though [Marco] Polo himself states frankly that he has never visited Japan -- and thus that what he has to say about it is second-hand and perhaps inaccurate -- the notion of the mysterious island kingdom of Cipango that he planted in European consciousness at the end of the thirteenth century was later one of several powerful influences that spurred Christopher Columbus forward in his crossings of the Atlantic at the end of the fifteenth century. This was so because Columbus -- underestimating the circumference of the earth and knowing nothing of the existence of the Americas or of the Pacific Ocean -- believed that he could reach Cipango, and thence the Chinese mainland beyond, by sailing directly westwards across the Atlantic from Europe. Columbus is also likely to have calculated that Cipango would be reached after only a relatively short journey towards the west -- for he had read Marco Polo, who describes Cipango, erroneously, as lying 'far out to sea' fully 1500 miles to the east of the Chinese mainland (the true distance is nowhere much more than 500 miles). ~ Graham Hancock, #NFDB
1152:Musk has talked about having more kids, and it’s on this subject that he delivers some controversial philosophizing vis-à-vis the creator of Beavis and Butt-head. “There’s this point that Mike Judge makes in Idiocracy, which is like smart people, you know, should at least sustain their numbers,” Musk said. “Like, if it’s a negative Darwinian vector, then obviously that’s not a good thing. It should be at least neutral. But if each successive generation of smart people has fewer kids, that’s probably bad, too. I mean, Europe, Japan, Russia, China are all headed for demographic implosion. And the fact of the matter is that basically the wealthier—basically wealth, education, and being secular are all indicative of low birth rate. They all correlate with low birth rate. I’m not saying like only smart people should have kids. I’m just saying that smart people should have kids as well. They should at least maintain—at least be a replacement rate. And the fact of the matter is that I notice that a lot of really smart women have zero or one kid. You’re like, ‘Wow, that’s probably not good. ~ Ashlee Vance, #NFDB
1153:And that's exactly the trouble with having celebrities take the "SNAP challenge": Gwyneth would hardly feature a spaghetti-and-hot dogs meal on GOOP.com, unless the spaghetti was artisinal, hand made only by women over the age of 70, in an Italian town that doesn't have the Internet yet and relies on goats to deliver important messages to the next village, wrapped lovingly in antique parchment and flown in on a private jet, while packed in ice hammered out of the Alps and carefully reformed into crystal clear "ice globes," served only with hot dogs fashioned from macrobiotic tofu, made of hand-selected soybeans in rural Japan, aged to perfection in the bosom of a 16th century Samurai warrior's armor, and then hand cut with a 24-karat gold wire. The very thought of setting foot in a discount grocery store where she has to pack her own generic, store-brand dried fruit and expired milk in a cardboard box after counting out her pennies probably breaks her out in such nasty hives, she has to have an allergy-banishing skin cream custom mixed for her in Paris by trained monkeys in bellhop uniforms. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1154:The scale of the cruelty and suffering and loss was beyond my comprehension. The most famous number, of course, was six million: the number of Jews killed by the Nazis as they implemented the madness of Hitler’s “Final Solution.” But tens of millions more had died, too—another forty million civilians, by some reckonings, and twenty-five million soldiers. Although some four hundred thousand U.S. soldiers were killed in three and a half years of fighting—a dreadful toll, to be sure—American losses represented only a tiny fraction of the war’s total. In China, the war dead totaled nearly four million soldiers and sixteen million civilians as Japan’s armies cut a deadly swath through China. The Soviet Union lost twenty million people as well, almost equally divided between soldiers and civilians, as the German army ground itself down in a prolonged and bloody eastern campaign. Seventy-two million deaths, by bombings, firestorms, massacres, diseases, starvation. How was it possible, I wondered, for so many people to die in such a short time without the very fabric of civilization collapsing? And ~ Jefferson Bass, #NFDB
1155:I told her stories. They were only a sentence long, each one of them. That’s all I knew how to find. So I told her broken stories. The little pieces of broken stories I could find. I told her what I could.
I told her that the Global Alliance had issued more warnings about the possibility of total war if their demands were not met. I told her that the Emperor Nero, from Rome, had a giant sea built where he could keep sea monsters and have naval battles staged for him. I told her that there had been rioting in malls all over America, and that no one knew why. I told her that the red-suited Santa Claus we know — the regular one? — was popularized by the Coca-Cola Company in the 1930s. I told her that the White House had not confirmed or denied reports that extensive bombing had started in major cities in South America.
I told her, “There’s an ancient saying in Japan, that life is like walking from one side of infinite darkness to another, on a bridge of dreams. They say that we’re all crossing the bridge of dreams together. That there’s nothing more than that. Just us, on the bridge of dreams. ~ M T Anderson,#NFDB
1156:In the same way both Lincoln and the Japanese regard people. These are also a kind of currency. A man is worth what he does. Lincoln upon hearing a new name asks, “What does he do?” Almost never, “What has he done?” Much more often, “What does he want to do?” He invests in people—as do the Japanese, and just as freely, just as openly. People are currency. They pay dividends. Both Lincoln and the Japanese pay high dividends too. The resulting relationship is one of nature’s happiest—symbiosis.
Flesh may dazzle, wit may seduce, but not for long. Infatuation over in a matter of minutes, Lincoln wants to know, “Now, what is it that you can do best?” He wants to know because then, to protect his investment, he will put you on the proper road, help you achieve your potential. Often in his own country Lincoln is misunderstood. They do not comprehend that there are rewards for accomplishment but that there is no sympathy for failure.
Japan understands well. This most pragmatic of people do not count hopes or intentions as accomplishments. A man is what he does. After his death, he is what he has done. ~ Donald Richie,#NFDB
1157:7. SUSHI IS ABOUT THE FISH, IDIOTS
Sushi is raw fish, Fresh, oily, fatty, delicate, slightly cool, thinly sliced or expertly cubed sections of the delicious nectar of the sea. That’s the whole point of sushi.
When you eat rolls slathered with cream cheese, fried onions, flavored mayonnaise, syrup, tempura shrimp poppers, mango chutney, and deep-fried marshmallows, you are missing the entire point of sushi and should just go eat at Applebee’s. (Especially on “Wings ‘n’ Waffles Wednesdays.”)
When you roll your piece of sushi in a pool of salty soy sauce, stack a pile of ginger on top of your fish, or wipe the entire surface of the sushi with ewasabi, you are committing a crime against a fish, the ocean, and even the great Poseidon himself.
Eat a delicious raw piece of fish, wrapped in a tiny belt of seaweed on a small bed of fluffy rice. Stir a little bit of wasabi into the soy sauce and let a small amount graze the fish itself (without using your rice as a soy sauce sponge). Enjoy the piece in one single bite, and savor the glorious explosion of seafood goodness. You’re welcome, America. And Japan. ~ Rainn Wilson,#NFDB
1158:Now there is an attempt to reverse the history, to go back to the happy days when the principles of economic rationalism briefly reigned, gravely demonstrating that people have no rights beyond what they can gain in the labor market. And since now the injunction to "go somewhere else" won't work, the choices are narrowed to the workhouse prison or starvation, as a matter of natural law, which reveals that any attempt to help the poor only harms them—the poor, that is; the rich are miraculously helped thereby, as when state power intervenes to bail our investors after the collapse of the highly-toured Mexican "economic miracle," or to save failing banks and industries, or to bar Japan from American markets to allow domestic corporations to reconstruct the steel, automotive, and electronics industry in the 1980s (amidst impressive rhetoric about free markets by the most protectionist administration in the postwar era and its acolytes). And far more; this is the merest icing on the cake. But the rest are subject to the iron principles of economic rationalism, now sometimes called "tough love" by those who allocate the benefits. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
1159:We are told: "We should not protect those who are unable to defend themselves with their own human resources." But against the overwhelming forces of totalitarianism, when all of this power is thrown against a country—no country can defend itself with its own resources. For instance, Japan doesn't have a standing army.
We are told: "We should not protect those who do not have a full democracy." This is the most remarkable argument of all. This is the leitmotif I hear in your newspapers and in the speeches of some of your political leaders. Who in the world, when on the front line of defense against totalitarianism, has ever been able to sustain a full democracy? You, the united democracies of the world, were not able to sustain it. America, England, France, Canada, Australia together did not sustain it. At the first threat of Hitlerism, you stretched out your hands to Stalin. You call that sustaining democracy? Hardly. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,#NFDB
1160:We also talk about our evolving relationships with the various control centers—Houston, Moscow, Europe, Japan—and how much the mutual adoration society, as I call it, has gotten out of control. It seems that no one can do anything, either in space or on the ground, without receiving a short speech of appreciation: “Thank you for all your hard work and your time on this, awesome job, we appreciate it.” Then the speech has to be repeated back: “No, thank you, you guys have been just awesome, we appreciate all your hard work,” ad nauseam. It all comes from a well-meaning place, but I think it’s a waste of time. I’ve often had the experience of finishing up some task and then moving on to the next thing, when a “thank you” speech comes back at me. This requires that I stop what I’m doing to float back to the mic, acknowledge those thanks, and return them in roughly equal proportions—multiple times a day. If you consider the cost of constructing and maintaining the space station, the mutual adoration society probably costs taxpayers millions of dollars a year. I’m already thinking about putting a stop to it when Terry, Samantha, and Anton leave. ~ Scott Kelly, #NFDB
1161:Hope Is A Tattered Flag
Hope is a tattered flag and a dream of time.
Hope is a heartspun word, the rainbow, the shadblow in white
The evening star inviolable over the coal mines,
The shimmer of northern lights across a bitter winter night,
The blue hills beyond the smoke of the steel works,
The birds who go on singing to their mates in peace, war, peace,
The ten-cent crocus bulb blooming in a used-car salesroom,
The horseshoe over the door, the luckpiece in the pocket,
The kiss and the comforting laugh and resolve—
Hope is an echo, hope ties itself yonder, yonder.
The spring grass showing itself where least expected,
The rolling fluff of white clouds on a changeable sky,
The broadcast of strings from Japan, bells from Moscow,
Of the voice of the prime minister of Sweden carried
Across the sea in behalf of a world family of nations
And children singing chorals of the Christ child
And Bach being broadcast from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
And tall skyscrapers practically empty of tenants
And the hands of strong men groping for handholds
And the Salvation Army singing God loves us….
~ Carl Sandburg,#NFDB
1162:An even more extreme example of a onetime grand gesture yielding results is a story involving Peter Shankman, an entrepreneur and social media pioneer. As a popular speaker, Shankman spends much of his time flying. He eventually realized that thirty thousand feet was an ideal environment for him to focus. As he explained in a blog post, “Locked in a seat with nothing in front of me, nothing to distract me, nothing to set off my ‘Ooh! Shiny!’ DNA, I have nothing to do but be at one with my thoughts.” It was sometime after this realization that Shankman signed a book contract that gave him only two weeks to finish the entire manuscript. Meeting this deadline would require incredible concentration. To achieve this state, Shankman did something unconventional. He booked a round-trip business-class ticket to Tokyo. He wrote during the whole flight to Japan, drank an espresso in the business class lounge once he arrived in Japan, then turned around and flew back, once again writing the whole way—arriving back in the States only thirty hours after he first left with a completed manuscript now in hand. “The trip cost $4,000 and was worth every penny,” he explained. In ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
1163:Japan held some 132,000 POWs from America, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, Holland, and Australia. Of those, nearly 36,000 died, more than one in every four.*1 Americans fared particularly badly; of the 34,648 Americans held by Japan, 12,935—more than 37 percent—died.*2 By comparison, only 1 percent of Americans held by the Nazis and Italians died. Japan murdered thousands of POWs on death marches, and worked thousands of others to death in slavery, including some 16,000 POWs who died alongside as many as 100,000 Asian laborers forced to build the Burma-Siam Railway. Thousands of other POWs were beaten, burned, stabbed, or clubbed to death, shot, beheaded, killed during medical experiments, or eaten alive in ritual acts of cannibalism. And as a result of being fed grossly inadequate and befouled food and water, thousands more died of starvation and easily preventable diseases. Of the 2,500 POWs at Borneo’s Sandakan camp, only 6, all escapees, made it to September 1945 alive. Left out of the numbing statistics are untold numbers of men who were captured and killed on the spot or dragged to places like Kwajalein, to be murdered without the world ever learning their fate. ~ Laura Hillenbrand, #NFDB
1164:For Elon Musk, this spectacle has turned into a familiar experience. SpaceX has metamorphosed from the joke of the aeronautics industry into one of its most consistent operators. SpaceX sends a rocket up about once a month, carrying satellites for companies and nations and supplies to the International Space Station. Where the Falcon 1 blasting off from Kwajalein was the work of a start-up, the Falcon 9 taking off from Vandenberg is the work of an aerospace superpower. SpaceX can undercut its U.S. competitors—Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Orbital Sciences—on price by a ridiculous margin. It also offers U.S. customers a peace of mind that its rivals can’t. Where these competitors rely on Russian and other foreign suppliers, SpaceX makes all of its machines from scratch in the United States. Because of its low costs, SpaceX has once again made the United States a player in the worldwide commercial launch market. Its $60 million per launch cost is much less than what Europe and Japan charge and trumps even the relative bargains offered by the Russians and Chinese, who have the added benefit of decades of sunk government investment into their space programs as well as cheap labor. The ~ Ashlee Vance, #NFDB
1165:We have not noticed how fast the rest has risen. Most of the industrialized world--and a good part of the nonindustrialized world as well--has better cell phone service than the United States. Broadband is faster and cheaper across the industrial world, from Canada to France to Japan, and the United States now stands sixteenth in the world in broadband penetration per capita. Americans are constantly told by their politicians that the only thing we have to learn from other countries' health care systems is to be thankful for ours. Most Americans ignore the fact that a third of the country's public schools are totally dysfunctional (because their children go to the other two-thirds). The American litigation system is now routinely referred to as a huge cost to doing business, but no one dares propose any reform of it. Our mortgage deduction for housing costs a staggering $80 billion a year, and we are told it is crucial to support home ownership, except that Margaret Thatcher eliminated it in Britain, and yet that country has the same rate of home ownership as the United States. We rarely look around and notice other options and alternatives, convinced that "we're number one. ~ Fareed Zakaria, #NFDB
1166:The man’s arm finally snapped at the elbow and the dagger dropped, and now Solomon Saunders held the dagger, and it was the worst way in the world to kill or be killed, and he felt his stomach erupting and scalding lava spilling over and eating up his insides as he raised his arm and hesitated, and the other soldier grabbed at him, and then Solly came down with a vengeance, and he felt the steel tear ruthlessly into human flesh like it was a chicken, and back and down, and he didn’t hate this man beneath him. “I don’t hate you, goddamn your hari-kari soul!” And down and back, down and back, and hot tears flooding Solly’s cheeks and nausea in his nasty throat and down and back, the man’s chest was a dark bloody geyser gushing blood, his pleading eyes his desperate eyes. “I don’t hate you, Tojo, damn you. I don’t hate you! I don’t even know you—damn you!” The boyish soldier gave up the ghost just as Solly’s steam gave out and he fell forward on top of this very very dead young stranger from the islands of Japan, and all was peace and all was quiet, and brotherhood and all that crap, even as the battle raged around the lucky living bastards who were dying on the strip for freedom. ~ John Oliver Killens, #NFDB
1167:As Sharar pointed out, a large part of Europe's power consisted of its capacity to kill, which was enhanced by continuous and vicious wars among the region's small nations in the seventeenth century, a time when Asian countries knew relative peace.
'The only trouble with us,' Fukuzawa Yukichi, author, educator and prolific commentator on Japan's modernization, lamented in the 1870s, 'is that we have had too long a period of peace and no intercourse with outside. In the meantime, other countries, stimulated by occasional wars, have invented many new things such as steam trains, steam ships, big guns and small hand guns etc.' Required to fight at sea as well as on land, and to protect their slave plantations in the Caribbean, the British, for instance, developed the world's most sophisticated naval technologies. Mirza Abu Talib, an Indian Muslim traveller to Europe in 1800, was among the first Asians to articulate the degree to which the Royal Navy was the key to British prosperity. For much of the nineteenth century, British ships and commercial companies would retain their early edge in international trade over their European rivals, as well as over Asian producers and traders. ~ Pankaj Mishra,#NFDB
1168:Total available Calories divided by Population equals Artistic-Technological Style. When the ratio Calories-to-Population is large—say, five thousand or more, five thousand daily calories for every living person—then the Artistic-Technological Style is big. People carve Mount Rushmore; they build great foundries; they manufacture enormous automobiles to carry one housewife half a mile for the purchase of one lipstick. Life is coarse and rich where C:P is large. At the other extreme, where C:P is too small, life does not exist at all. It has starved out. Experimentally, add little increments to C:P and it will be some time before the right-hand side of the equation becomes significant. But at last, in the 1,000 to 1,500 calorie range, Artistic-Technological Style firmly appears in self-perpetuating form. C:P in that range produces the small arts, the appreciations, the peaceful arrangements of necessities into subtle relationships of traditionally agreed-upon virtue. Think of Japan, locked into its Shogunate prison, with a hungry population scrabbling food out of mountainsides and beauty out of arrangements of lichens. The small, inexpensive sub-sub-arts are characteristic of the 1,000 to 1,500 calorie range. ~ Frederik Pohl, #NFDB
1169:Wherever forest can develop in a species-appropriate manner, they offer particularly beneficial functions that are legally placed above lumber production in many forest laws. I am talking about respite and recovery. Current discussions between environmental groups and forest users, together with the first encouraging results-such as the forest in Konigsdorf-give hope that in the future forests will continue to live out their hidden lives, and our descendants will still have the opportunity to walk through the trees in wonder. This what this ecosystem achieves: the fullness of life with tens of thousands of species interwoven and interdependent.
And just how important this interconnected global network of forests is to other areas of Nature is made clear by this little story from Japan. Katsuhiko Matsunaga, a marine chemist at the Hokkaido University, discovered that leaves falling into streams and rivers leach acids into the ocean that stimulate growth of plankton, the first and most important building block in the food chain. More fish because of the forest? The researcher encouraged the planting of more trees in coastal areas, which did, in fact, lead to higher yields for fisheries and oyster growers. ~ Peter Wohlleben,#NFDB
1170:In the course of the meeting the two leaders discussed what terms of surrender they would eventually insist upon; the word “unconditional” was discussed but not included in the official joint statement to be read at the final press conference. Then, on January 24, to Churchill’s surprise, Roosevelt inserted the word ad lib: “Peace can come to the world,” the President read out to the assembled journalists and newsreel cameras, “only by the total elimination of German and Japanese war power. . . . The elimination of German, Japanese and Italian war power means the unconditional surrender of Germany, Italy, and Japan.”1976 Roosevelt later told Harry Hopkins that the surprising and fateful insertion was a consequence of the confusion attending his effort to convince French General Henri Girard to sit down with Free French leader Charles de Gaulle: We had so much trouble getting those two French generals together that I thought to myself that this was as difficult as arranging the meeting of Grant and Lee—and then suddenly the Press Conference was on, and Winston and I had had no time to prepare for it, and the thought popped into my mind that they had called Grant “Old Unconditional Surrender,” and the next thing I knew I had said it.1977 ~ Richard Rhodes, #NFDB
1171:He had in his head a scrapbook of the tastes that had impacted him the most during his travels: goat cheese and olive oil in California, the tropical fruits and chilies of South America, everything that had touched his lips in Japan. When Angelo and Paolo talk about their travels, they turn to the memories- the parties, the people, the crazy times had, always with the metronome of mozzarella beating in the background. But what followed Vito were the flavors- the dishes, the ingredients, and techniques unknown to most of Italy.
"When I came back from Japan, there were six kilos of matcha, two kilos of coconut powder, and twelve bottles of Nikka whiskey in my bag. In Rome they stopped me and opened the bag. They thought they had caught me with cocaine. I told the guy to open up the bag and taste."
Vito didn't drink Nikka (he and his brothers rarely drink alcohol); instead, he emptied all twelve bottles into a wooden bucket, where he now soaks blue cheese made from sheep's milk to make what he calls formaggio clandestino. He stirs up a spoon of high-grade matcha powder into Dicecca's fresh goat yogurt and sells it in clear plastic tubs, anxious for anyone- a loyal client, a stranger, a disheveled writer- to taste something new. ~ Matt Goulding,#NFDB
1172:When we finally achieve the full right of participation in American life, what we make of it will depend upon our sense of cultural values, and our creative use of freedom, not upon our racial identification. I see no reason why the heritage of world culture—which represents a continuum—should be confused with the notion of race. Japan erected a highly efficient modern technology upon a religious culture which viewed the Emperor as a god. The Germany which produced Beethoven and Hegel and Mann turned its science and technology to the monstrous task of genocide; one hopes that when what are known as the “Negro” societies are in full possession of the world’s knowledge and in control of their destinies, they will bring to an end all those savageries which for centuries have been committed in the name of race. From what we are now witnessing in certain parts of the world today, however, there is no guarantee that simply being non-white offers any guarantee of this. The demands of state policy are apt to be more influential than morality. I would like to see a qualified Negro as President of the United States. But I suspect that even if this were today possible, the necessities of the office would shape his actions far more than his racial identity. ~ Ralph Ellison, #NFDB
1173:I do not believe that God has given us this trial to not purpose. I know that the day will come when we will clearly understand why this persecution with all it's sufferings has been bestowed upon us -- for everything that Our Lord does is for our good. And yet, even as I write these words I feel the oppressive weight in my heart of those last stammering words of Kichijiro in the morning of his departure: "Why has Deus Sama imposed this suffering on us?" and then the resentment in those eyes that he turned upon me. "Father", he had said "what evil have we done?"
I suppose I should simply cast from my mind these meaningless words of the coward; yet why does his plaintive voice pierce my breast with tall the pain of a sharp needle? Why has Our Lord imposed this torture and this persecution on poor Japanese peasants? No, Kichijiro was trying to express something different, something even more sickening. The silence of God. Already twenty years have passed since the persecution broke out; the black soil of Japan has been filled with the lament of so many Christians; the red blood of priests has flowed profusely; the walls of churches have fallen down; and in the face of this terrible and merciless sacrifice offered up to Him, God has remained silent. ~ Sh saku End,#NFDB
1174:What if many listeners hold a profoundly different understanding of the concepts of God, truth, right and wrong, freedom, virtue, and sin? What if their approaches to reality, human nature and destiny, and human community are wholly different from our own? For decades, this has been the situation facing Christian churches in many areas around the world — places such as India, Iran, and Japan. Evangelism in these environments involves a lengthy process in which nonbelievers have to be invited into a Christian community that bridges the gap between Christian truth and the culture around it. Every part of a church’s life — its worship, community, public discourse, preaching, and education — has to assume the presence of nonbelievers from the surrounding culture. The aesthetics of its worship have to reflect the sensibilities of the culture and yet show how Christian belief shapes and is expressed through them. Its preaching and teaching have to show how the hopes of this culture’s people can find fulfillment only in Christ. Most of all, such a congregation’s believers have to reflect the demographic makeup of the surrounding community, thereby giving non-Christian neighbors attractive and challenging glimpses of what they would look like as Christians. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
1175:WHEN on the Magpies' Bridge I see The Hoar-frost King has cast His sparkling mantle, well I know The night is nearly past, Daylight approaches fast. The author of this verse was Governor of the Province of Koshu, and Viceroy of the more or less uncivilized northern and eastern parts of Japan; he died A.D. 785. There was a bridge or passageway in the Imperial Palace at Kyoto called the Magpies' Bridge, but there is also an allusion here to the old legend about the Weaver and Herdsman. It is said, that the Weaver (the star Vega) was a maiden, who dwelt on one side of the River of the Milky Way, and who was employed in making clothes for the Gods. But one day the Sun took pity upon her, and gave her in marriage to the Herdboy (the star Aquila), who lived on the other side of the river. But as the result of this was that the supply of clothes fell short, she was only permitted to visit her husband once a year, viz. on the seventh night of the seventh month; and on this night, it is said, the magpies in a dense flock form a bridge for her across the river. The hoar frost forms just before day breaks. The illustration shows the Herdboy crossing on the Bridge of Magpies to his bride. A Hundred Verses from Old Japan (The Hyakunin-isshu), tr. by William N. Porter, [1909], ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1176:There are a number of good books that draw upon fox legends -- foremost among them, Kij Johnson's exquisite novel The Fox Woman. I also recommend Neil Gaiman's The Dream Hunters (with the Japanese artist Yoshitaka Amano); Larissa Lai's unusual novel, When Fox Is a Thousand; Helen Oyeyemi's recent novel, Mr. Fox; and Ellen Steiber's gorgeous urban fantasy novel, A Rumor of Gems, as well as her heart-breaking novella "The Fox Wife" (published in Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears). For younger readers, try the "Legend of Little Fur" series by Isobelle Carmody. You can also support a fine mythic writer by subscribing to Sylvia Linsteadt's The Gray Fox Epistles: Wild Tales By Mail.
For the fox in myth, legend, and lore, try: Fox by Martin Wallen; Reynard the Fox, edited by Kenneth Varty; Kitsune: Japan's Fox of Mystery, Romance, and Humour by Kiyoshi Nozaki;Alien Kind: Foxes and Late Imperial Chinese Narrative by Raina Huntington; The Discourse on Foxes and Ghosts: Ji Yun and Eighteenth-Century Literati Storytelling by Leo Tak-hung Chan; and The Fox and the Jewel: Shared and Private Meanings in Contemporary Japanese Inari Worship, by Karen Smythers. ~ Terri Windling,#NFDB
1177:U.S. Textbook Skews History, Prime Minister of Japan Says By MARTIN FACKLER TOKYO — Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan on Thursday criticized an American textbook that he said inaccurately depicted Japan’s actions during World War II, opening a new front in a battle to sway American views of the country’s wartime history. Speaking in Parliament, Mr. Abe pledged to increase efforts to fight what he called mistaken views abroad concerning Japan’s wartime actions, when the Japanese military conquered much of Asia. He singled out a high school history textbook published by McGraw-Hill Education that he said contained the sort of negative portrayals that Japan must do more to combat. In particular, he objected to a description of women forced to work in Japanese military brothels during the war, a highly fraught issue in Japan and elsewhere in Asia. The textbook is used in some public schools in California. “I just looked at a document, McGraw-Hill’s textbook, and I was shocked,” The Japan Times quoted Mr. Abe as saying during a meeting of a parliamentary budget committee. “This kind of textbook is being used in the United States, as we did not protest the things we should have, or we failed to correct the things we should have.” McGraw-Hill has defended its textbook, saying ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1178:I remembered once, in Japan, having been to see the Gold Pavilion Temple in Kyoto and being mildly surprised at quite how well it had weathered the passage of time since it was first built in the fourteenth century. I was told it hadn’t weathered well at all, and had in fact been burnt to the ground twice in this century. “So it isn’t the original building?” I had asked my Japanese guide.
“But yes, of course it is,” he insisted, rather surprised at my question.
“But it’s burnt down?”
“Yes.”
“Twice.”
“Many times.”
“And rebuilt.”
“Of course. It is an important and historic building.”
“With completely new materials.”
“But of course. It was burnt down.”
“So how can it be the same building?”
“It is always the same building.”
I had to admit to myself that this was in fact a perfectly rational point of view, it merely started from an unexpected premise. The idea of the building, the intention of it, its design, are all immutable and are the essence of the building. The intention of the original builders is what survives. The wood of which the design is constructed decays and is replaced when necessary. To be overly concerned with the original materials, which are merely sentimental souvenirs of the past, is to fail to see the living building itself. ~ Douglas Adams,#NFDB
1179:Nations fail economically because of extractive institutions. These institutions keep poor countries poor and prevent them from embarking on a path to economic growth. This is true today in Africa, in places such as Zimbabwe and Sierra Leone; in South America, in countries such as Colombia and Argentina; in Asia, in countries such as North Korea and Uzbekistan; and in the Middle East, in nations such as Egypt. There are notable differences among these countries. Some are tropical, some are in temperate latitudes. Some were colonies of Britain; others, of Japan, Spain, and Russia. They have very different histories, languages, and cultures. What they all share is extractive institutions. In all these cases the basis of these institutions is an elite who design economic institutions in order to enrich themselves and perpetuate their power at the expense of the vast majority of people in society. The different histories and social structures of the countries lead to the differences in the nature of the elites and in the details of the extractive institutions. But the reason why these extractive institutions persist is always related to the vicious circle, and the implications of these institutions in terms of impoverishing their citizens are similar—even if their intensity differs. ~ Daron Acemo lu, #NFDB
1180:Perhaps the most remarkable elder-care innovation developed in Japan so far is the Hybrid Assistive Limb (HAL)—a powered exoskeleton suit straight out of science fiction. Developed by Professor Yoshiyuki Sankai of the University of Tsukuba, the HAL suit is the result of twenty years of research and development. Sensors in the suit are able to detect and interpret signals from the brain. When the person wearing the battery-powered suit thinks about standing up or walking, powerful motors instantly spring into action, providing mechanical assistance. A version is also available for the upper body and could assist caretakers in lifting the elderly. Wheelchair-bound seniors have been able to stand up and walk with the help of HAL. Sankai’s company, Cyberdyne, has also designed a more robust version of the exoskeleton for use by workers cleaning up the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in the wake of the 2011 disaster. The company says the suit will almost completely offset the burden of over 130 pounds of tungsten radiation shielding worn by workers.* HAL is the first elder-care robotic device to be certified by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry. The suits lease for just under $2,000 per year and are already in use at over three hundred Japanese hospitals and nursing homes.21 ~ Martin Ford, #NFDB
1181:Japan
Today I pass the time reading
a favorite haiku,
saying the few words over and over.
It feels like eating
the same small, perfect grape
again and again.
I walk through the house reciting it
and leave its letters falling
through the air of every room.
I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it.
I say it in front of a painting of the sea.
I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.
I listen to myself saying it,
then I say it without listening,
then I hear it without saying it.
And when the dog looks up at me,
I kneel down on the floor
and whisper it into each of his long white ears.
It's the one about the one-ton temple bell
with the moth sleeping on its surface,
and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating
pressure of the moth
on the surface of the iron bell.
When I say it at the window,
the bell is the world
and I am the moth resting there.
When I say it at the mirror,
I am the heavy bell
and the moth is life with its papery wings.
27
And later, when I say it to you in the dark,
you are the bell,
and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,
and the moth has flown
from its line
and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.
~ Billy Collins,#NFDB
1182:What happened? Many things. But the overriding problem was this: The auto industry got too comfortable. As Intel cofounder Andy Grove once famously proclaimed, “Only the paranoid survive.” Success, he meant, is fragile—and perfection, fleeting. The moment you begin to take success for granted is the moment a competitor lunges for your jugular. Auto industry executives, to say the least, were not paranoid. Instead of listening to a customer base that wanted smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, the auto executives built bigger and bigger. Instead of taking seriously new competition from Japan, they staunchly insisted (both to themselves and to their customers) that MADE IN THE USA automatically meant “best in the world.” Instead of trying to learn from their competitors’ new methods of “lean manufacturing,” they clung stubbornly to their decades-old practices. Instead of rewarding the best people in the organization and firing the worst, they promoted on the basis of longevity and nepotism. Instead of moving quickly to keep up with the changing market, executives willingly embraced “death by committee.” Ross Perot once quipped that if a man saw a snake on the factory floor at GM, they’d form a committee to analyze whether they should kill it. Easy success had transformed the American auto ~ Reid Hoffman, #NFDB
1183:Promontory
Golden dawn and shivering evening find our brig lying by opposite
this villa and its dependencies which form a promontory
as extensive as Epirus and the Peloponnesus,
or as the large island of Japan, or as Arabia!
Fanes lighted up by the return of the _theories_;
prodigious views of a modern coast's defenses;
dunes illustrated with flaming flowers and bacchanalia;
grand canals of Carthage and Embankments of a dubious Venice;
Etnas languidly erupting, and crevasses of flowers and of glacier waters;
washhouses surrounded by German poplars;
strange parks with slopes bowing down the heads of the Tree of Japan;
and circular facades of the 'Grands' and the 'Royals' of Scarborough and of
Brooklyn;
and their railways flank, cut through, and overhang this hotel whose plan
was selected in the history of the most elegant and the most colossal edifices
of Italy, America, and Asia, and whose windows and terraces,
at the moment full of expensive illumination, drinks and breezes,
are open to the fancy of the travelers and the nobles who,-during the day allow all the tarantellas of the coast,-and even the ritornellos of the illustrious valleys of art,
to decorate most wonderfully the facades of Promontory Palace.
~ Arthur Rimbaud,#NFDB
1184:Manga represents and extremely unfiltered view of the inner workings of their creator's minds. This is because manga are free of the massive editing and "committee"-style production used in other media like film, magazines and television. Even in American mainstream comics, the norm is to have a stable of artists, letterers, inkers, and scenario writers all under the control of the publisher. In Japan, a single artist might employ many assistants and act as a sort of "director," but he or she is usually at the core of the production process and retains control over the rights to the material created. That artists are not necessarily highly educated and deal frequently in plain subject matter only heightens the sense that manga offer the reader an extremely raw and personal view of the world.
Thus, of the more than 2 billion manga produced each year, the vast majority have a dreamlike quality. They speak to people's hope, and fears. They are where stressed-out modern urbanites daily work out their neuroses and their frustrations. Viewed in their totality, the phenomenal number of stories produced is like the constant chatter of the collective unconscious -- and articulation of the dream world. Reading manga is like peering into the unvarnished, unretouched reality of the Japanese mind. ~ Frederik L Schodt,#NFDB
1185:No American will think it wrong of me if I proclaim that to have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy. I could not foretell the course of events. I do not pretend to have measured accurately the martial might of Japan, but now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! Yes, after Dunkirk; after the fall of France; after the horrible episode of Oran; after the threat of invasion, when, apart from the Air and the Navy, we were an almost unarmed people; after the deadly struggle of the U-boat war -- the first Battle of the Atlantic, gained by a hand's breadth; after seventeen months of lonely fighting and nineteen months of my responsibility in dire stress, we had won the war. England would live; Britain would live; the Commonwealth of Nations and the Empire would live. How long the war would last or in what fashion it would end, no man could tell, nor did I at this moment care. Once again in our long Island history we should emerge, however mauled or mutiliated, safe and victorious. We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end. We might not even have to die as individuals. Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder. ~ Winston S Churchill, #NFDB
1186:The art department proper I thought much inferior to that of the Tokyo Exhibition of 1890. Fine things there were, but few. Evidence, perhaps, of the eagerness with which the nation is turning all its energies and talents in directions where money is to be made; for in those larger departments where art is combined with industry,—such as ceramics, enamels, inlaid work, embroideries,—no finer and costlier work could ever have been shown. Indeed, the high value of certain articles on display suggested a reply to a Japanese friend who observed, thoughtfully, "If China adopts Western industrial methods, she will be able to underbid us in all the markets of the world." "Perhaps in cheap production," I made answer. "But there is no reason why Japan should depend wholly upon cheapness of production. I think she may rely more securely upon her superiority in art and good taste. The art-genius of a people may have a special value against which all competition by cheap labor is vain. Among Western nations, France offers an example. Her wealth is not due to her ability to underbid her neighbors. Her goods are the dearest in the world: she deals in things of luxury and beauty. But they sell in all civilized countries because they are the best of their kind. Why should not Japan become the France of the Further East? ~ Lafcadio Hearn, #NFDB
1187:Western rational thought is not an innate human characteristic; it is learned and is the great achievement of Western civilization. In the villages of India, they never learned it. They learned something else, which is in some ways just as valuable but in other ways is not. That’s the power of intuition and experiential wisdom. Coming back after seven months in Indian villages, I saw the craziness of the Western world as well as its capacity for rational thought. If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things—that’s when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before. It’s a discipline; you have to practice it. Zen has been a deep influence in my life ever since. At one point I was thinking about going to Japan and trying to get into the Eihei-ji monastery, but my spiritual advisor urged me to stay here. He said there is nothing over there that isn’t here, and he was correct. I learned the truth of the Zen saying that if you are willing to travel around the world to meet a teacher, one will appear next door. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
1188:This was no longer the Sarah who was unable to stop herself from making phone calls and then not saying a word, who was hurt so much by her memories that she ended up crying. This was the levelheaded Sarah I knew.
“Well, take care. I've got to go back to the room,” Sarah said.
“Okay. . . . Good-bye then,” I replied.
I was now totally awake. The patch of sky visible through the window was a strange wash of subtle gradations of cloud and blue, and the interior of the room was very bright. Some-how that brightness felt terribly sad.
What strange weather, I thought.
“Sarah, I hope you'll be happy—I really hope you'll be happy!”
“Thanks, Shi-ba-mi,” Sarah said.
And then the line went dead.
I settled into a strange mood—it felt as if I'd seen something through to its conclusion, but at the same time I felt overwhelmingly sad. It occurred to me once again how incredible Mari was. To think she'd figured out that Sarah was back in Japan just from listening to a silent phone call! There hadn't been the slightest hint of uncertainty in her eyes when she told me it was Sarah. She had known. Yes . . . perhaps Mari, wandering in the interval between dream and reality as she was, perhaps she could sense that much, figure out who was calling almost before she knew it, feel it as clearly as something she held cupped in her hand. ~ Banana Yoshimoto,#NFDB
1189:Norway, Iceland, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark, and the United Kingdom are among the least religious societies on [E]arth. According to the United Nations' Human Development Report (2005) they are also the healthiest, as indicated by life expectancy, adult literacy, per capita income, educational attainment, gender equality, homicide rate, and infant mortality. Insofar as there is a crime problem in Western Europe, it is largely the product of immigration. Seventy percent of the inmates of France's jails, for instance, are Muslim. The Muslims of Western Europe are generally not atheists. Conversely, the fifty nations now ranked lowest in terms of the United Nations' [H]uman [D]evelopment [I]ndex are unwaveringly religious.
Other analyses paint the same picture: the United States is unique among wealthy democracies in its level of religious adherence; it is also uniquely beleaguered by high rates of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease, and infant mortality. The same comparison holds true within the United States itself: Southern and Midwestern states, characterized by the highest levels of religious literalism, are especially plagued by the above indicators of societal dysfunction, while the comparatively secular states of the Northeast conform to European norms. ~ Sam Harris,#NFDB
1190:In the twentieth century, astrophysicists in the United States discovered galaxies, the expanding of the universe, the nature of supernovas, quasars, black holes, gamma-ray bursts, the origin of the elements, the cosmic microwave background, and most of the known planets in orbit around solar systems other than our own. Although the Russians reached one or two places before us, we sent space probes to Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. American probes have also landed on Mars and on the asteroid Eros. And American astronauts have walked on the Moon. Nowadays most Americans take all this for granted, which is practically a working definition of culture: something everyone does or knows about, but no longer actively notices.
While shopping at the supermarket, most Americans aren’t surprised to find an entire aisle filled with sugar-loaded, ready-to-eat breakfast cereals. But foreigners notice this kind of thing immediately, just as traveling Americans notice that supermarkets in Italy display vast selections of pasta and that markets in China and Japan offer an astonishing variety of rice. The flip side of not noticing your own culture is one of the great pleasures of foreign travel: realizing what you hadn’t noticed about your own country, and noticing what the people of other countries no longer realize about themselves. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson,#NFDB
1191:Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. "When you pick up that box of portable yogurt tubes, or eat something with 15 ingredients you can't pronounce, ask yourself, "What are those things doing there?" Pollan says.
Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients, or ingredients you can't pronounce.
Stay out of the middle of the supermarket; shop on the perimeter of the store. Real food tends to be on the outer edge of the store near the loading docks, where it can be replaced with fresh foods when it goes bad.
Don't eat anything that won't eventually rot. "There are exceptions -- honey -- but as a rule, things like Twinkies that never go bad aren't food," Pollan says.
It is not just what you eat but how you eat. "Always leave the table a little hungry," Pollan says. "Many cultures have rules that you stop eating before you are full. In Japan, they say eat until you are four-fifths full. Islamic culture has a similar rule, and in German culture they say, 'Tie off the sack before it's full.'"
Families traditionally ate together, around a table and not a TV, at regular meal times. It's a good tradition. Enjoy meals with the people you love. "Remember when eating between meals felt wrong?" Pollan asks.
Don't buy food where you buy your gasoline. In the U.S., 20% of food is eaten in the car. ~ Michael Pollan,#NFDB
1192:Teddy put down his bag, and they all hugged.” “Where’s Kathleen?” asked Annie, looking around. “We thought she would be with you.” “Well, that is why I called for you,” said Teddy. “But first, how much do you know about World War Two?” Jack gasped. “Did we come to the time of World War Two?” “I am afraid you have. The war has been going on for almost five years,” said Teddy. “Oh, man,” said Jack. “So you know about World War Two?” said Teddy. “Some,” said Jack. “I know that America fought Germany and Italy and Japan. And a man named Adolf Hitler was the leader of Germany. And his political party was called the Nazis.” “And we also know that three of our great-grandfathers fought in World War Two,” said Annie. “The people of England are grateful for all the help the Americans are giving them fighting this war,” said Teddy. “At this point, Nazis have taken over most of Europe. They have killed countless innocent civilians, including millions of Jewish people.” “That’s terrible,” said Annie. “Really terrible,” said Jack. “But what does this war have to do with you and Kathleen?” “When Merlin looked into the future, he saw this frightful time,” said Teddy. “He saw how important it was to bring hope to British leaders. So he sent Kathleen and me to London.” “The leaders actually met with you?” asked Jack. Teddy smiled. “Indeed they did,” he said. “Kathleen used a bit of ~ Mary Pope Osborne, #NFDB
1193:I will show that this spectacular increase in inequality largely reflects an unprecedented explosion of very elevated incomes from labor, a veritable separation of the top managers of large firms from the rest of the population. One possible explanation of this is that the skills and productivity of these top managers rose suddenly in relation to those of other workers. Another explanation, which to me seems more plausible and turns out to be much more consistent with the evidence, is that these top managers by and large have the power to set their own remuneration, in some cases without limit and in many cases without any clear relation to their individual productivity, which in any case is very difficult to estimate in a large organization. This phenomenon is seen mainly in the United States and to a lesser degree in Britain, and it may be possible to explain it in terms of the history of social and fiscal norms in those two countries over the past century. The tendency is less marked in other wealthy countries (such as Japan, Germany, France, and other continental European states), but the trend is in the same direction. To expect that the phenomenon will attain the same proportions elsewhere as it has done in the United States would be risky until we have subjected it to a full analysis—which unfortunately is not that simple, given the limits of the available data. ~ Thomas Piketty, #NFDB
1194:To understand Bashō’s place in Japanese poetry, it’s useful to have some sense of the literary culture he entered. The practice of the fine arts had been central to Japanese life from at least the seventh century, and virtually all educated people painted, played musical instruments, and wrote poems. In 17th century Japan, linked-verse writing was as widespread and popular as card games or Scrabble in mid-20th-century America. A certain amount of rice wine was often involved, and so another useful comparison might be made to playing pool or darts at a local bar. The closest analogy, though, can be found in certain areas of online life today. As with Dungeons and Dragons a few years ago, or Worlds of War and Second Life today, linked verse brought its practitioners into an interactive community that was continually and rapidly evolving. Hovering somewhere between art-form and competition, renga writing provided both a party and a playing field in which intelligence, knowledge, and ingenuity might be put to the test. Add to this mix some of street rap’s boundary-pushing language, and, finally, the video images of You-Tube. Now imagine the possibility that a “high art” form of very brief films might emerge from You-Tube, primarily out of one extraordinarily talented young film-maker’s creations and influence. In the realm of 17th-century Japanese haiku, that person was Basho. ~ Jane Hirshfield, #NFDB
1195:Of course, there’s no clear line between who creates wealth and who shifts it. Lots of jobs do both. There’s no denying that the financial sector can contribute to our wealth and grease the wheels of other sectors in the process. Banks can help to spread risks and back people with bright ideas. And yet, these days, banks have become so big that much of what they do is merely shuffle wealth around, or even destroy it. Instead of growing the pie, the explosive expansion of the banking sector has increased the share it serves itself.4 Or take the legal profession. It goes without saying that the rule of law is necessary for a country to prosper. But now that the U.S. has seventeen times the number of lawyers per capita as Japan, does that make American rule of law seventeen times as effective?5 Or Americans seventeen times as protected? Far from it. Some law firms even make a practice of buying up patents for products they have no intention of producing, purely to enable them to sue people for patent infringement. Bizarrely, it’s precisely the jobs that shift money around – creating next to nothing of tangible value – that net the best salaries. It’s a fascinating, paradoxical state of affairs. How is it possible that all those agents of prosperity – the teachers, the police officers, the nurses – are paid so poorly, while the unimportant, superfluous, and even destructive shifters do so well? ~ Rutger Bregman, #NFDB
1196:KF: Why is type 2 diabetes suddenly so prevalent? NB: Diets are changing, not just in the U.S., but worldwide. Diabetes seems to follow the spread of meaty, high-fat, high-calorie diets. In Japan, for example, the traditional rice-based diet kept the population generally healthy and thin for many centuries. Up until 1980, only 1 to 5 percent of Japanese adults over age forty had diabetes. Starting around that time, however, the rapid westernization of the diet meant that meat, milk, cheese, and sodas became fashionable. Waistlines expanded, and, by 1990, diabetes prevalence in Japan had climbed to 11 to 12 percent. The same sort of trend has occurred in the U.S. Over the last century, per capita meat consumption increased from about 125 pounds per year (which was already very high compared with other countries) in the early 1900s to over 200 pounds today. In other words, the average American now eats 75 pounds more meat every year than the average American of a century ago. In the same interval, cheese intake soared from less than 4 pounds per person per year to about 33 pounds today. Sugar intake has gone up, too, by about 30 pounds per person per year. Where are we putting all that extra meat, cheese, and sugar? It contributes to body fat, of course, and diabetes follows. Today, about 13 percent of the U.S. adult population has type 2 diabetes, although many of them are not yet aware they have it. ~ Kathy Freston, #NFDB
1197:Tonight the President will bury himself, perhaps, in two volumes Mrs. Lodge has just sent him for review: Gissing’s Charles Dickens, A Critical Study, and The Greek View of Life, by Lowes Dickinson. He will be struck, as he peruses the latter, by interesting parallels between the Periclean attitude toward women and that of present-day Japan, and will make a mental note to write to Mrs. Lodge about it.122 He may also read, with alternate approval and disapproval, two articles on Mormonism in the latest issue of Outlook. A five-thousand-word essay on “The Ancient Irish Sagas” in this month’s Century magazine will not detain him long, since he is himself the author.123 His method of reading periodicals is somewhat unusual: each page, as he comes to the end of it, is torn out and thrown onto the floor.124 When both magazines have been thus reduced to a pile of crumpled paper, Roosevelt will leap from his rocking-chair and march down the corridor. Slowing his pace at the door of the presidential suite, he will tiptoe in, brush the famous teeth with only a moderate amount of noise, and pull on his blue-striped pajamas. Beside his pillow he will deposit a large, precautionary revolver.125 His last act, after turning down the lamp and climbing into bed, will be to unclip his pince-nez and rub the reddened bridge of his nose. Then, there being nothing further to do, Theodore Roosevelt will energetically fall asleep. ~ Edmund Morris, #NFDB
1198:The clearest signs of Hakodate's current greatness, though, can be found clustered around its central train station, in the morning market, where blocks and blocks of pristine seafood explode onto the sidewalks like an edible aquarium, showcasing the might of the Japanese fishing industry.
Hokkaido is ground zero for the world's high-end sushi culture. The cold waters off the island have long been home to Japan's A-list of seafood: hairy crab, salmon, scallops, squid, and, of course, uni. The word "Hokkaido" attached to any of these creatures commands a premium at market, one that the finest sushi chefs around the world are all too happy to pay.
Most of the Hokkaido haul is shipped off to the Tsukiji market in Tokyo, where it's auctioned and scattered piece by piece around Japan and the big cities of the world. But the island keeps a small portion of the good stuff for itself, most of which seems to be concentrated in a two-hundred-meter stretch in Hakodate.
Everything here glistens with that sparkly sea essence, and nearly everything is meant to be consumed in the moment. Live sea urchins, piled high in hillocks of purple spikes, are split with scissors and scraped out raw with chopsticks. Scallops are blowtorched in their shells until their edges char and their sweet liquor concentrates. Somewhere, surely, a young fishmonger will spoon salmon roe directly into your mouth for the right price. ~ Matt Goulding,#NFDB
1199:What he had been too cautious to hope for was pulled from his dreams and made real on the television screen. At that momentous hour on December 26, 1991, as he watched the red flag of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—the empire extending eleven times zones, from the Sea of Japan to the Baltic coast, encompassing more than a hundred ethnicities and two hundred languages; the collective whose security demanded the sacrifice of millions, whose Slavic stupidity had demanded the deportation of Khassan’s entire homeland; that utopian mirage cooked up by cruel young men who gave their mustaches more care than their morality; that whole horrid system that told him what he could be and do and think and say and believe and love and desire and hate, the system captained by Lenin and Zinoviev and Stalin and Malenkov and Beria and Molotov and Khrushchev and Kosygin and Mikoyan and Podgorny and Brezhnev and Andropov and Chernenko and Gorbachev, all of whom but Gorbachev he hated with a scorn no author should have for his subject, a scorn genetically encoded in his blood, inherited from his ancestors with their black hair and dark skin—as he watched that flag slink down the Kremlin flagpole for the final time, left limp by the windless sky, as if even the weather wanted to impart on communism this final disgrace, he looped his arms around his wife and son and he held them as the state that had denied him his life quietly died. ~ Anthony Marra, #NFDB
1200:When Adolf Hitler heard of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he slapped his hands together in glee and exclaimed, “Now it is impossible to lose the war. We now have an ally, Japan, who has never been vanquished in three thousand years.” Germany and Japan were threatening the world with massive land armies. But Hitler and Hirohito had never taken the measure of the man in the White House. A former assistant secretary of the navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt had his own ideas about the shape and size of the military juggernaut he would wield. FDR’s military experts told him that only huge American ground forces could meet the threat. But Roosevelt turned aside their requests to conscript tens of millions of Americans to fight a traditional war. The Dutchman would have no part in the mass WWI-type carnage of American boys on European or Asian killing fields. Billy Mitchell was gone, but Roosevelt remembered his words. Now, as Japan and Germany invested in yesterday, FDR invested in tomorrow. He slashed his military planners’ dreams of a vast 35-million-man force by more than half. He shrunk the dollars available for battle in the first and second dimensions and put his money on the third. When the commander in chief called for the production of four thousand airplanes per month, his advisers wondered if he meant per year. After all, the U.S. had produced only eight hundred airplanes just two years earlier. FDR was quick to correct them. The ~ James D Bradley, #NFDB
1201:Janie ran to my side, where she tugged at the book eagerly as though she'd seen it before. "Flower book," she said, pointing to the cover.
"Where did you find Mummy's book?" Katherine asked, hovering near me.
Cautiously, I revealed the book as I sat on the sofa. "Would you like to look at it with me?" I said, avoiding the question.
Katherine nodded and the boys gathered round as I cracked the spine and thumbed through page after page of beautiful camellias, pressed and glued onto each page, with handwritten notes next to each. On the page that featured the 'Camellia reticulata,' a large, salmon-colored flower, she had written: 'Edward had this one brought in from China. It's fragile. I've given it the garden's best shade.' On the next page, near the 'Camellia sasanqua,' she wrote: 'A christmas gift from Edward and the children. This one will need extra love. It hardly survived the passage from Japan. I will spend the spring nursing it back to health.'
On each page, there were meticulous notes about the care and feeding of the camellias- when she planted them, how often they were watered, fertilized, and pruned. In the right-hand corner of some pages, I noticed an unusual series of numbers.
"What does that mean?" I asked the children.
Nicholas shrugged. "This one was Mummy's favorite," he said, flipping to the last page in the book. I marveled at the pink-tipped white blossoms as my heart began to beat faster. The Middlebury Pink. ~ Sarah Jio,#NFDB
1202:Nazi persecution didn’t limit itself to race. Religion, national origin, alternative lifestyles, persons with disabilities—all were targets. How would you characterize the Slavs? Gypsies? Moors? All the lines get blurred. Even within Judaism, there are many races. There are Negro Jews in Ethiopia and Middle Eastern Jews in Iraq. There have been Jews in Japan since the 1860s. Poland was fractionally Jewish, but there were still three and a half million Jews living there in the 1930s.” “But still, today it all seems so incomprehensible.” Ben raised his eyebrows. “Incomprehensible because we’re Americans? Land of the free and home of the brave? Let’s not kid ourselves. We’ve authored our own chapters in the history of shame, periods where the world looked at us and shook its head. Early America built an economy based on slavery and it was firmly supported by law. Read the Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott. We trampled entire cultures of Native Americans. ‘No Irish Need Apply’ was written on factory gates in nineteenth-century New York.” Ben shook his head. “We’d like to think we’re beyond such hatred, but the fact is, we can never let our guard down. That’s why this case is so important. To you and to me. It’s another reminder of what can happen when evil is allowed to incubate. Find a reason to turn your nose up at a culture, to denigrate a people because they’re different, and it’s not such a giant leap from ethnic subjugation to ethnic slaughter.” Catherine ~ Ronald H Balson, #NFDB
1203:At that time, a number of myths were created by the young people of the smoking carriages and forests of hallucinogenic mushrooms, the hungry for the thirst of lysergic acid, who were too tired of the suffering they grew up in and needed to take refuge in dreams. In these children's universe there were unbelievable stories about places in the mountains that women sought to retreat to, places where people were united by music and love for a mutual spiritual growth. For Aunt Jeanine, who had grown up with the image of her father, an amputee due to the war, feeding on such stories was like a haven, one she would later try to turn into her home. And one of those stories, one particular one, stood in her memory until the last stage of her life, when she passed away at eighty-one, burned with fire. (...) At that time, kid, they said that if we searched enough, we would find a place where the world wouldn't end. Men would never know what hell of a place that was, totally unconquerable! A place where the dirty hands of men would never arrive. A place men would never know about . Don't you think I could find it? To have my body disappearing in the woods, as I saw happening to kids in Japan, in that forest that swallows them to its core. Flesh turned to powder, my essence disappearing in the middle of life. They said that, when you die at a place, you'll stay at that place forever. That was why everyone was afraid to go to war. They weren't afraid of dying, kid, they were afraid of dying there. ~ Pat R, #NFDB
1204:Would the behavior of the United States during the war—in military action abroad, in treatment of minorities at home—be in keeping with a “people’s war”? Would the country’s wartime policies respect the rights of ordinary people everywhere to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? And would postwar America, in its policies at home and overseas, exemplify the values for which the war was supposed to have been fought? These questions deserve thought. At the time of World War II, the atmosphere was too dense with war fervor to permit them to be aired. For the United States to step forward as a defender of helpless countries matched its image in American high school history textbooks, but not its record in world affairs. It had opposed the Hatian revolution for independence from France at the start of the nineteenth century. It had instigated a war with Mexico and taken half of that country. It had pretended to help Cuba win freedom from Spain, and then planted itself in Cuba with a military base, investments, and rights of intervention. It had seized Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, and fought a brutal war to subjugate the Filipinos. It had “opened” Japan to its trade with gunboats and threats. It had declared an Open Door Policy in China as a means of assuring that the United States would have opportunities equal to other imperial powers in exploiting China. It had sent troops to Peking with other nations, to assert Western supremacy in China, and kept them there for over thirty years. ~ Howard Zinn, #NFDB
1205:committed a small oversight, and yet one that almost destroyed their venture. They had assumed that they would deliver the kerosene in bulk to various localities, and that the eager customers would line up with their own receptacles to be filled. The customers were expected to use old Standard Oil tin cans. But they did not. Throughout the Far East, Standard’s blue oil tins had become a prized mainstay of the local economies, used to construct everything from roofing to birdcages to opium cups, hibachis, tea strainers, and egg beaters. They were not about to give up such a valuable product. The whole scheme was now threatened—not by the machinations of 26 Broadway or by the politics of the Suez Canal, but by the habits and predilections of the peoples of Asia. A local crisis was created in each port, as the kerosene went unsold, and despairing telegrams began to flow into Houndsditch. In the quickness and ingenuity of his response to the crisis, Marcus proved his entrepreneurial genius. He sent out a chartered ship, filled with tinplate, to the Far East, and simply instructed his partners in Asia to begin manufacturing tin receptacles for the kerosene. No matter that no one knew how to do so; no matter that no one had the facilities. Marcus persuaded them they could do it. “How do you stick on the wire handles?” the agent in Singapore wrote to Samuel’s representative in Japan. Instructions were sent. “What color do you suggest?” cabled the agent in Shanghai. Mark gave the answer—“Red! ~ Daniel Yergin, #NFDB
1206:Everything did change, faster than his fingers could type. What he had been too cautious to hope for was pulled from his dreams and made real on the television screen. At that momentous hour on December 26, 1991, as he watched the red flag of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—the empire “empire extending eleven times zones, from the Sea of Japan to the Baltic coast, encompassing more than a hundred ethnicities and two hundred languages; the collective whose security demanded the sacrifice of millions, whose Slavic stupidity had demanded the deportation of Khassan’s entire homeland; that utopian mirage cooked up by cruel young men who gave their mustaches more care than their morality; that whole horrid system that told him what he could be and do and think and say and believe and love and desire and hate, the system captained by Lenin and Zinoviev and Stalin and Malenkov and Beria and Molotov and Khrushchev and Kosygin and Mikoyan and Podgorny and Brezhnev and Andropov and Chernenko and Gorbachev, all of whom but Gorbachev he hated with a scorn no author should have for his subject, a scorn genetically encoded in his blood, inherited from his ancestors with their black hair and dark skin—as he watched that flag slink down the Kremlin flagpole for the final time, left limp by the windless sky, as if even the weather wanted to impart on communism this final disgrace, he looped his arms around his wife and son and he held them as the state that had denied him his life quietly died. ~ Anthony Marra, #NFDB
1207:In 2009 the staid British journal New Scientist published an article with the provocative title “Space Storm Alert: 90 Seconds from Catastrophe,” which opens with the following lines: It is midnight on 22 September 2012 and the skies above Manhattan are filled with a flickering curtain of colourful light. Few New Yorkers have seen the aurora this far south but their fascination is short-lived. Within a few seconds, electric bulbs dim and flicker, then become unusually bright for a fleeting moment. Then all the lights in the state go out. Within 90 seconds, the entire eastern half of the US is without power. A year later and millions of Americans are dead and the nation’s infrastructure lies in tatters. The World Bank declares America a developing nation. Europe, Scandinavia, China and Japan are also struggling to recover from the same fateful event—a violent storm, 150 million kilometres away on the surface of the Sun. It sounds ridiculous. Surely the Sun couldn’t create so profound a disaster on Earth. Yet an extraordinary report funded by NASA and issued by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) . . . claims it could do just that. (Brooks 2009; see also National Research Council 2008 for the NAS report that New Scientist is referring to) In fact, this scenario is not so ridiculous at all, as the New Scientist article goes on to relate (see also International Business Times 2011b; Lovett 2011; National Research Council 2008). Indeed, if things do not change, it may be inevitable. ~ Robert M Schoch, #NFDB
1208:Not being able to see this, culture-based explanations for economic development have usually been little more than ex post facto justifications based on a 20/20 hindsight vision. So, in the early days of capitalism, when most economically successful countries happened to be Protestant Christian, many people argued that Protestantism was uniquely suited to economic development. When Catholic France, Italy, Austria and southern Germany developed rapidly, particularly after the Second World War, Christianity, rather than Protestantism, became the magic culture. Until Japan became rich, many people thought East Asia had not developed because of Confucianism. But when Japan succeeded, this thesis was revised to say that Japan was developing so fast because its unique form of Confucianism emphasized co-operation over individual edification, which the Chinese and Korean versions allegedly valued more highly. And then Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and Korea also started doing well, so this judgement about the different varieties of Confucianism was forgotten. Indeed, Confucianism as a whole suddenly became the best culture for development because it emphasized hard work, saving, education and submission to authority. Today, when we see Muslim Malaysia and Indonesia, Buddhist Thailand and even Hindu India doing well economically, we can soon expect to encounter new theories that will trumpet how uniquely all these cultures are suited for economic development (and how their authors have known about it all along). ~ Ha Joon Chang, #NFDB
1209:stars, the Gang of Four and China (and Japan in earlier decades) are all in East Asia. The idea of a regional growth effect has been especially unwelcome to development experts and aid officials who want to give advice on growth. They can advise the national policy makers, but they cannot give advice to the nonexistent regional policy makers. Another sign that regional growth is an important part of the action is that regions move together from one decade to the next. For example, Latin American nations in the 1980s collectively had a famous “lost decade.” A regional credit bubble had burst: global banks had given the region a supply of easy credit at low interest rates in the 1970s, then interest rates went up and credit was cut off in the 1980s. A sensible principle for attribution for national growth performance is that a nation does not get special recognition if its performance is just at the average. It would be foolish for a nation to claim credit for growth that is the same as the average for its region. If a nation is above (or below) these averages, then we can talk about special recognition for the nation’s growth performance. This principle further reduces the share of growth variation explained by permanent national differences. Some of the variation in decade growth rates explained by national differences was really explained by regional differences. Recalculating, we now get only a little more than a tenth of the variation in decade growth rates explained by national differences. Regional growth ~ William Easterly, #NFDB
1210:I was on one of my world 'walkabouts.' It had taken me once more through Hong Kong, to Japan, Australia, and then Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific [one of the places I grew up]. There I found the picture of 'the Father.' It was a real, gigantic Saltwater Crocodile (whose picture is now featured on page 1 of TEETH).
From that moment, 'the Father' began to swim through the murky recesses of my mind. Imagine! I thought, men confronting the world’s largest reptile on its own turf! And what if they were stripped of their firearms, so they must face this force of nature with nothing but hand weapons and wits?
We know that neither whales nor sharks hunt individual humans for weeks on end. But, Dear Reader, crocodiles do! They are intelligent predators that choose their victims and plot their attacks. So, lost on its river, how would our heroes escape a great hunter of the Father’s magnitude? And what if these modern men must also confront the headhunters and cannibals who truly roam New Guinea?
What of tribal wars, the coming of Christianity and materialism (the phenomenon known as the 'Cargo Cult'), and the people’s introduction to 'civilization' in the form of world war? What of first contact between pristine tribal culture and the outside world? What about tribal clashes on a global scale—the hatred and enmity between America and Japan, from Pearl Harbor, to the only use in history of atomic weapons? And if the world could find peace at last, how about Johnny and Katsu? ~ Timothy James Dean,#NFDB
1211:This sentence is made of lead (and a sentence of lead gives a reader an entirely different sensation from one made of magnesium). This sentence is made of yak wool. This sentence is made of sunlight and plums. This sentence is made of ice. This sentence is made from the blood of the poet. This sentence was made in Japan. This sentence glows in the dark. This sentence was born with a caul. This sentence has a crush on Norman Mailer. This sentence is a wino and doesn't care who knows it. Like many italic sentences, this one has Mafia connections. This sentence is a double Cancer with a Pisces rising. This sentence lost its mind searching for the perfect paragraph. This sentence refuses to be diagrammed. This sentence ran off with an adverb clause. This sentence is 100 percent organic: it will not retain a facsimile of freshness like those sentences of Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe et al., which are loaded with preservatives. This sentence leaks. This sentence doesn't look Jewish... This sentence has accepted Jesus Christ as its personal savior. This sentence once spit in a book reviewer's eye. This sentence can do the funky chicken. This sentence has seen too much and forgotten too little. This sentence is called "Speedoo" but its real name is Mr. Earl. This sentence may be pregnant. This sentence suffered a split infinitive - and survived. If this sentence has been a snake you'd have bitten it. This sentence went to jail with Clifford Irving. This sentence went to Woodstock. And this little sentence went wee wee wee all the way home. ~ Tom Robbins, #NFDB
1212:But, he isn’t wearing anything at all!” Such plainspoken truth is urgently needed to dispel a myth that hobbles European strategic thinking: that Europe is too dependent on Russian natural gas to risk a serious row with Russia over its escalating war against Ukraine. As Moscow prepares to instigate a crisis over this winter’s natural gas supplies, Europe can secure its interests by remembering that Russia is dependent on Europe as its primary gas export market – and by preparing to weather the winter without buying Russian gas. This spring, while Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine were gearing up for action, President Vladimir Putin tried to intimidate European leaders by suggesting that the Kremlin might redirect natural gas from Europe to China in retaliation for any EU sanctions. On May 21, Mr Putin suddenly reversed a decade of resistance and caved in to Chinese demands for a lower gas price, accepting $350 per thousand cubic metres. That is 42 per cent less than the price Lithuania pays – so low that it risks depressing natural gas prices throughout the Far East, including for future Russian sales to Japan. Moreover, Moscow will have to borrow $50bn to pay for new pipelines and other infrastructure, costs that must be repaid out of the paltry revenues. Mr Putin was willing to accept such poor economics because his main goal was political: to intimidate Europe. But behind the grandstanding, the Russian president knows that Europe is the only viable market for Russian natural gas, and that it will continue to be so for decades. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1213:There is an even starker contrast between the two groups of countries when one compares their contributions to growth in global debt versus growth in global GDP. Emerging markets contribute far more to growth in global GDP than to the growth in global public debt. These economies accounted for 14 percent of the increase in global debt levels from 2007 to 2012. In contrast, their contribution to the increase in global GDP over this period was 70 percent. The numbers are equally stark when one examines forecasts for the subsequent five years. From 2012 to 2017, emerging markets are expected to account for about three-fifths of global GDP growth but less than one-fifth of global public debt accumulation. In other words, emerging markets are adding substantially to global GDP, whereas advanced economies are mainly adding to global public debt (see Figure A-3 in the Appendix for details). The U.S. and Japan are certainly heavy hitters when it comes to debt accumulation. These two economies are making a far greater contribution to the rise in global debt than to the rise in global GDP. The U.S. contributed 38 percent of the increase in global debt from 2007 to 2012 and is expected to account for nearly half of the anticipated increase from 2012 to 2017. Its contributions to the increases in global GDP over those two periods are 12 percent and 23 percent, respectively. Japan accounted for 25 percent of the increase in debt from 2007 to 2012 and is expected to add 9 percent from 2012 to 2017, whereas its contributions to the increase in global GDP are far more modest. One ~ Eswar Prasad, #NFDB
1214:Back in America, Donald Trump had, as a candidate, preached the virtues of withdrawal. “We should leave Afghanistan immediately,” he had said. The war was “wasting our money,” “a total and complete disaster.” But, once in office, Donald Trump, and a national security team dominated by generals, pressed for escalation. Richard Holbrooke had spent his final days alarmed at the dominance of generals in Obama’s Afghanistan review, but Trump expanded this phenomenon almost to the point of parody. General Mattis as secretary of defense, General H. R. McMaster as national security advisor, and retired general John F. Kelly formed the backbone of the Trump administration’s Afghanistan review. In front of a room full of servicemen and women at Fort Myer Army Base, in Arlington, Virginia, backed by the flags of the branches of the US military, Trump announced that America would double down in Afghanistan. A month later, General Mattis ordered the first of thousands of new American troops into the country. It was a foregone conclusion: the year before Trump entered office, the military had already begun quietly testing public messaging, informing the public that America would be in Afghanistan for decades, not years. After the announcement, the same language cropped up again, this time from Trump surrogates who compared the commitment not to other counterterrorism operations, but to America’s troop commitments in Korea, Germany, and Japan. “We are with you in this fight,” the top general in Afghanistan, John Nicholson, Jr., told an audience of Afghans. “We will stay with you. ~ Ronan Farrow, #NFDB
1215:It was simple: we are the storytellers. Imagination in Ireland was beyond the beyond. It was out there. It was Far Out before far out was invented in California, because sitting around in a few centuries of rain breeds these outlands of imagination. As evidence, think of Abraham Stoker, confined to bed until he was eight years old, lying there breathing damp Dublin air with no TV or radio but the heaving wheeze of his chest acting as pretty constant reminder that soon he was heading Elsewhere. Even after he was married to Florence Balcombe of Marino Crescent (she who had an unrivalled talent for choosing the wrong man, who had already given up Oscar Wilde as a lost cause in the Love Department when she met this Bram Stoker and thought: he seems sweet), even after Bram moved to London he couldn’t escape his big dark imaginings in Dublin and one day further down the river he spawned Dracula (Book 123, Norton, New York). Jonathan Swift was only settling into a Chesterfield couch in Dublin when his brain began sailing to Lilliput and Blefuscu (Book 778, Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift, Penguin, London). Another couple of deluges and he went further, he went to Brobdingnag, Laputa, Bainbarbi, Glubbdubdrib, Luggnagg and . . . Japan, before he went furthest of all, to Houyhnhnms. Read Gulliver’s Travels when you’re sick in bed and you’ll be away. I’m telling you. You’ll be transported, and even as you’re being carried along in the current you’ll think no writer ever went this Far. Something like this could only be dreamt up in Ireland. Charles Dickens recognised that. He ~ Niall Williams, #NFDB
1216:Tomes
There is a section in my library for death
and another for Irish history,
a few shelves for the poetry of China and Japan,
and in the center a row of imperturbable reference books,
the ones you can turn to anytime,
when the night is going wrong
or when the day is full of empty promise.
I have nothing against
the thin monograph, the odd query,
a note on the identity of Chekhov's dentist,
but what I prefer on days like these
is to get up from the couch,
pull down The History of the World,
and hold in my hands a book
containing nearly everything
and weighing no more than a sack of potatoes,
eleven pounds, I discovered one day when I placed it
on the black, iron scale
my mother used to keep in her kitchen,
the device on which she would place
a certain amount of flour,
a certain amount of fish.
Open flat on my lap
under a halo of lamplight,
a book like this always has a way
of soothing the nerves,
quieting the riotous surf of information
that foams around my waist
even though it never mentions
the silent labors of the poor,
the daydreams of grocers and tailors,
or the faces of men and women alone in single roomseven though it never mentions my mother,
now that I think of her again,
who only last year rolled off the edge of the earth
in her electric bed,
78
in her smooth pink nightgown
the bones of her fingers interlocked,
her sunken eyes staring upward
beyond all knowledge,
beyond the tiny figures of history,
some in uniform, some not,
marching onto the pages of this incredibly heavy book.
~ Billy Collins,#NFDB
1217:Don’t I need to practice firing?” “Well, it’s not as if you’re going to shoot somebody with this. You’re just going to shoot yourself, right?” Aomame nodded. “In that case, you don’t have to practice firing. You just have to learn to load it, release the safety, and get the feel of the trigger. And anyway, where were you planning to practice firing it?” Aomame shook her head. She had no idea. “Also, how were you planning to shoot yourself? Here, give it a try.” Tamaru inserted the loaded magazine, checked to make sure the safety was on, and handed the gun to Aomame. “The safety is on,” he said. Aomame pressed the muzzle against her temple. She felt the chill of the steel. Looking at her, Tamaru slowly shook his head several times. “Trust me, you don’t want to aim at your temple. It’s a lot harder than you think to shoot yourself in the brain that way. People’s hands usually shake, and it throws their aim off. You end up grazing your skull, but not killing yourself. You certainly don’t want that to happen.” Aomame silently shook her head. “Look what happened to General Tojo after the war. When the American military came to arrest him, he tried to shoot himself in the heart by pressing the muzzle against his chest and pulling the trigger, but the bullet missed and hit his stomach without killing him. Here you had the top professional soldier in Japan, and to think he didn’t know how to kill himself with a gun! They took him straight to the hospital, he got the best care the American medical team could give him, recovered, then was tried and hanged. It’s a terrible way to die. A person’s last moments are an important thing. You can’t choose how you’re born, but you can choose how you die. ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
1218:Fukuoka, more than any other city in Japan, is responsible for ramen's rocket-ship trajectory, and the ensuing shift in Japan's cultural identity abroad. Between Hide-Chan, Ichiran, and Ippudo- three of the biggest ramen chains in the world- they've brought the soup to corners of the globe that still thought ramen meant a bag of dried noodles and a dehydrated spice packet. But while Ichiran and Ippudo are purveyors of classic tonkotsu, undoubtedly the defining ramen of the modern era, Hideto has a decidedly different belief about ramen and its mutability.
"There are no boundaries for ramen, no rules," he says. "It's all freestyle."
As we talk at his original Hide-Chan location in the Kego area of Fukuoka, a new bowl arrives on the table, a prototype for his borderless ramen philosophy. A coffee filter is filled with katsuobushi, smoked skipjack tuna flakes, and balanced over a bowl with a pair of chopsticks. Hideto pours chicken stock through the filter, which soaks up the katsuobushi and emerges into the bowl as clear as a consommé. He adds rice noodles and sawtooth coriander then slides it over to me.
Compared with other Hide-Chan creations, though, this one shows remarkable restraint. While I sip the soup, Hideto pulls out his cell phone and plays a video of him layering hot pork cheeks and cold noodles into a hollowed-out porcelain skull, then dumping a cocktail shaker filled with chili oil, shrimp oil, truffle oil, and dashi over the top. Other creations include spicy arrabbiata ramen with pancetta and roasted tomatoes, foie gras ramen with orange jam and blueberry miso, and black ramen made with bamboo ash dipped into a mix of miso and onions caramelized for forty-five days. ~ Matt Goulding,#NFDB
1219:Pudge/Colonel:
"I am sorry that I have not talked to you before. I am not staying for graduation. I leave for Japan tomorrow morning. For a long time, I was mad at you. The way you cut me out of everything hurt me, and so I kept what I knew to myself.
But then even after I wasn't mad anymore, I still didn't say anything, and I don't even really know why. Pudge had that kiss,
I guess. And I had this secret.
You've mostly figured this out, but the truth is that I saw her that night, I'd stayed up late with Lara and some people, and then I was falling asleep and I heard her crying outside my back window. It was like 3:15 that morning, maybe, amd I walked out there and saw her walking through the soccer field. I tried to talk to her, but she was in a hurry. She told me that her mother was dead eight years that day, and that she always put flowers on her mother's grave on the anniversary but she forgot that year. She was out there looking for flowers, but it was too early-too wintry. That's how
I knew about January 10. I still have no idea whether it was suicide.
She was so sad, and I didn't know what to say or do. I think she counted on me to be the one person who would always say and do the right things to help her, but I couldn"t. I just thought she was looking for flowers. I didn't know she was going to go. She was drunk just trashed drunk, and I really didn't think she would drive or anything. I thought she would just cry herself to sleep and then drive to visit her mom the next day or something. She walked away, and then I heard a car start. I don't know what I was thinking.
So I let her go too. And I'm sorry. I know you loved her. It was hard not to."
Takumi ~ John Green,#NFDB
1220:Coming back to America was, for me, much more of a cultural shock than going to India. The people in the Indian countryside don’t use their intellect like we do, they use their intuition instead, and their intuition is far more developed than in the rest of the world. Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion. That’s had a big impact on my work. Western rational thought is not an innate human characteristic; it is learned and is the great achievement of Western civilization. In the villages of India, they never learned it. They learned something else, which is in some ways just as valuable but in other ways is not. That’s the power of intuition and experiential wisdom. Coming back after seven months in Indian villages, I saw the craziness of the Western world as well as its capacity for rational thought. If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things—that’s when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before. It’s a discipline; you have to practice it. Zen has been a deep influence in my life ever since. At one point I was thinking about going to Japan and trying to get into the Eihei-ji monastery, but my spiritual advisor urged me to stay here. He said there is nothing over there that isn’t here, and he was correct. I learned the truth of the Zen saying that if you are willing to travel around the world to meet a teacher, one will appear next door. ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
1221:Coming back to America was, for me, much more of a cultural shock than going to India. The people in the Indian countryside don’t use their intellect like we do, they use their intuition instead, and their intuition is far more developed than in the rest of the world. Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion. That’s had a big impact on my work. Western rational thought is not an innate human characteristic; it is learned and is the great achievement of Western civilization. In the villages of India, they never learned it. They learned something else, which is in some ways just as valuable but in other ways is not. That’s the power of intuition and experiential wisdom. Coming back after seven months in Indian villages, I saw the craziness of the Western world as well as its capacity for rational thought. If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things—that’s when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before. It’s a discipline; you have to practice it. Zen has been a deep influence in my life ever since. At one point I was thinking about going to Japan and trying to get into the Eihei-ji monastery, but my spiritual advisor urged me to stay here. He said there is nothing over there that isn’t here, and he was correct. I learned the truth of the Zen saying that if you are willing to travel around the world to meet a teacher, one will appear next door. Jobs ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
1222:Forget bringing the troops home from Iraq. We need to get the troops home from World War II. Can anybody tell me why, in 2009, we still have more than sixty thousand troops in Germany and thirty thousand in Japan? At some point, these people are going to have to learn to rape themselves. Our soldiers have been in Germany so long they now wear shorts with black socks. You know that crazy soldier hiding in the cave on Iwo Jima who doesn’t know the war is over? That’s us.
Bush and Cheney used to love to keep Americans all sphinctered-up on the notion that terrorists might follow us home. But actually, we’re the people who go to your home and then never leave. Here’s the facts: The Republic of America has more than five hundred thousand military personnel deployed on more than seven hundred bases, with troops in one hundred fifty countries—we’re like McDonald’s with tanks—including thirty-seven European countries—because you never know when Portugal might invade Euro Disney. And this doesn’t even count our secret torture prisons, which are all over the place, but you never really see them until someone brings you there—kinda like IHOP.
Of course, Americans would never stand for this in reverse—we can barely stand letting Mexicans in to do the landscaping. Can you imagine if there were twenty thousand armed Guatemalans on a base in San Ber-nardino right now? Lou Dobbs would become a suicide bomber.
And why? How did this country get stuck with an empire? I’m not saying we’re Rome. Rome had good infrastructure. But we are an empire, and the reason is because once America lands in a country, there is no exit strategy. We’re like cellulite, herpes, and Irish relatives: We are not going anywhere. We love you long time! ~ Bill Maher,#NFDB
1223:To have followed the speculative vision of Behaim in his famous globe, or of others like him, would have been disastrous, even though their work represents the cream of fifteenth-century mapmaking and was known to Columbus. Indeed, as one commentator has observed, if his chart had been based on the Behaim scenario, 'Columbus could not even have known of the whereabouts of the New World, much less discover it.'
Yet not only does he seem to have known where he was going but, on some accounts, when he was going to get there:
'Now and then Pinzón and Columbus consult and deliberate -- mutually discuss their route. The map or chart passes not infrequently from the one captain to the other; the observations and calculations as to their position are daily recorded, their conduct and course for the night duly agreed upon.
On the eve of their due arrival Columbus issues the order to stay the course of the armada, to shorten sail, because he knew that he was close to the New World and was afraid of going ashore during the obscurity of the night ...
How does he know the place and the hour?
'His Genius' says the Columbus legend in explanation. But the Map? The critics will ask, what did it contain? Whose was it? What did that map contain that was so frequently passed from Columbus to Pinzón during the voyage?'
I've presented my case that what the map may have contained was an accurate but ancient, and indeed antediluvian, representation of the coast and islands of Central America, notably the north-south-oriented Great Bahama Bank island, which Columbus -- no less ignorant than any of his contemporaries about the existence of the Americas -- took to be an accurate map of part of the coast of China and the islands of Japan. ~ Graham Hancock,#NFDB
1224:I Sleep A Lot
I sleep a lot and read St. Thomas Aquinas
Or The Death of God (that's a Protestant book).
To the right the bay as if molten tin,
Beyond the bay, city, beyond the city, ocean,
Beyond the ocean, ocean, till Japan.
To the left dry hills with white grass,
Beyond the hills an irrigated valley where rice is grown,
Beyond the valley, mountains and Ponderosa pines,
Beyond the mountains, desert and sheep.
When I couldn't do without alcohol, I drove myself on alcohol,
When I couldn't do without cigarettes and coffee, I drove myself
On cigarettes and coffee.
I was courageous. Industrious. Nearly a model of virtue.
But that is good for nothing.
I feel a pain.
not here. Even I don't know.
many islands and continents,
words, bazaars, wooden flutes,
Or too much drinking to the mirror, without beauty,
Though one was to be a kind of archangel
Or a Saint George, over there, on St. George Street.
Please, Doctor,
Not here. No,
Maybe it's too
Unpronounced
Please, Medicine Man, I feel a pain.
I always believed in spells and incantations.
Sure, women have only one, Catholic, soul,
But we have two. When you start to dance
You visit remote pueblos in your sleep
And even lands you have never seen.
Put on, I beg you, charms made of feathers,
Now it's time to help one of your own.
I have read many books but I don't believe them.
When it hurts we return to the banks of certain rivers.
57
I remember those crosses with chiseled suns and moons
And wizards, how they worked during an outbreak of typhus.
Send your second soul beyond the mountains, beyond time.
Tell me what you saw, I will wait.
~ Czeslaw Milosz,#NFDB
1225:Young children learn very early what race they are, and even three-month-old infants prefer faces of their own race. In a joint British-Israeli study, babies sitting on their mothers’ laps were shown side-by-side photographs of white and black faces matched for attractiveness. How long a baby looks at something is considered an indication of preference, and white babies reared in a white environment looked at white faces an average of 63 percent longer than they looked at black faces. Black babies reared in Africa looked at black faces 23 percent longer.
For adults, it is easer to tell people of their own race apart than to distinguish among people of other races. This difference is so well known that psychologists have named it “the other-race effect.” In a 2006 confirmation of the effect, researchers at the University of Texas at El Paso showed subjects an equal number of photos of faces from their own race and from a different race. Some time later, they showed the subjects twice as many photos of people of both races—including the faces they had already seen—and asked which ones they had seen before. All subjects, whatever their race, made about 50 percent more mistakes with the faces of the race that was not their own.
Prof. Edward Seidensticker, who taught Japanese at Columbia University, once overheard a conversation that hinted at the other-race effect. He was touring one of the southern islands of Japan, where about 1,000 monkeys live in the wild but are tame enough to be observed by tourists. A guide mentioned that he could tell every one of the monkeys apart by sight. A skeptic in the crowd wanted to know how anyone could tell 1,000 monkeys apart. “Oh, it’s very easy,” said the guide. “It’s like telling white people apart. ~ Jared Taylor,#NFDB
1226:In its rampage over the east, Japan had brought atrocity and death on a scale that staggers the imagination. In the midst of it were the prisoners of war. Japan held some 132,000 POWs from America, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, Holland, and Australia. Of those, nearly 36,000 died, more than one in every four.* Americans fared particularly badly; of the 34,648 Americans held by Japan, 12,935—more than 37 percent—died.* By comparison, only 1 percent of Americans held by the Nazis and Italians died. Japan murdered thousands of POWs on death marches, and worked thousands of others to death in slavery, including some 16,000 POWs who died alongside as many as 100,000 Asian laborers forced to build the Burma-Siam Railway. Thousands of other POWs were beaten, burned, stabbed, or clubbed to death, shot, beheaded, killed during medical experiments, or eaten alive in ritual acts of cannibalism. And as a result of being fed grossly inadequate and befouled food and water, thousands more died of starvation and easily preventable diseases. Of the 2,500 POWs at Borneo’s Sandakan camp, only 6, all escapees, made it to September 1945 alive. Left out of the numbing statistics are untold numbers of men who were captured and killed on the spot or dragged to places like Kwajalein, to be murdered without the world ever learning their fate. In accordance with the kill-all order, the Japanese massacred all 5,000 Korean captives on Tinian, all of the POWs on Ballale, Wake, and Tarawa, and all but 11 POWs at Palawan. They were evidently about to murder all the other POWs and civilian internees in their custody when the atomic bomb brought their empire crashing down. On the morning of September 2, 1945, Japan signed its formal surrender. The Second World War was over. ~ Laura Hillenbrand, #NFDB
1227:As with France, an important consequence of the British Industrial Revolution for China and Japan was military vulnerability. China was humbled by British sea power during the First Opium War, between 1839 and 1842, and the same threat became all too real for the Japanese as U.S. warships, led by Commodore Matthew Perry, pulled into Edo Bay in 1853. The reality that economic backwardness created military backwardness was part of the impetus behind Shimazu Nariakira’s plan to overthrow the shogunate and put in motion the changes that eventually led to the Meiji Restoration. The leaders of the Satsuma domain realized that economic growth—perhaps even Japanese survival—could be achieved only by institutional reforms, but the shogun opposed this because his power was tied to the existing set of institutions. To exact reforms, the shogun had to be overthrown, and he was. The situation was similar in China, but the different initial political institutions made it much harder to overthrow the emperor, something that happened only in 1911. Instead of reforming institutions, the Chinese tried to match the British militarily by importing modern weapons. The Japanese built their own armaments industry. As a consequence of these initial differences, each country responded differently to the challenges of the nineteenth century, and Japan and China diverged dramatically in the face of the critical juncture created by the Industrial Revolution. While Japanese institutions were being transformed and the economy was embarking on a path of rapid growth, in China forces pushing for institutional change were not strong enough, and extractive institutions persisted largely unabated until they would take a turn for the worse with Mao’s communist revolution in 1949. R ~ Daron Acemo lu, #NFDB
1228:A critical but often ignored impact of FDI is that on the (current and future) domestic competitors. An entry by a TNC through FDI can destroy existing national firms that could have 'grown up' into successful operations without this premature exposure to competition, or it can pre-empt the emergence of domestic competitors. In such cases, short-run productive capabilities are enhanced, as the TNC subsidiary replacing the (current and future) national firms is usually more productive than the latter. But the level of productive capability that the country can attain in the long run becomes lower as a result.
This is because TNCs do not, as a rule, transfer the most valuable activities outside their home country, as I will discuss in greater detail later. As a result, there will be a definite ceiling on the level of sophistication that a TNC subsidiary can reach in the long run. To go back to the Toyota example in chapter 1, had Japan liberalized FDI in its automobile industry in the 1960s, Toyota definitely wouldn't be producing the Lexus today-it would have wiped out or, more likely, have become a valued subsidiary of an American carmaker.
Given this, a developing country may reasonably decide to forego short-term benefits from FDI in order to increase the chance for its domestic firms to engage in higher-level activities in the long run, by banning FDI in certain sectors or regulating it. This is exactly the same logic as that of infant industry protection that I discussed in the earlier chapters-a country gives up the short-run benefits of free trade in order to create higher productive capabilities in the long run. And it is why, historically, most economic success stories have resorted to regulation of FDI, often in a Draconian manner, as I shall now show. ~ Ha Joon Chang,#NFDB
1229:The Bombay Chronicle asked Mohandas Gandhi what he thought of the fact that the United States was now in the war. It was December 20, 1941.
'I cannot welcome this entry of America,' Gandhi said. 'By her territorial vastness, amazing energy, unrivalled financial status and owing to the composite character of her people she is the one country which could have saved the world from the unthinkable butchery that is going on.' Now, he said, there was no powerful nation left to mediate and bring about the peace that all peoples wanted. 'It is a strange phenomenon,' he said, 'that the human wish is paralysed by the creeping effect of the war fever.'
Churchill wrote a memo to the chiefs of staff on the future conduct of the war. 'The burning of Japanese cities by incendiary bombs will bring home in a most effective way to the people of Japan the dangers of the course to which they have committed themselves,' he wrote. It was December 20, 1941.
Life Magazine published an article on how to tell a Japanese person from a Chinese person. It was December 22, 1941.
Chinese people have finely bridged noses and parchment-yellow skin, and they are relatively tall and slenderly built, the article said. Japanese people, on the other hand, have pug noses and squat builds, betraying their aboriginal ancestry. 'The modern Jap is the descendant of Mongoloids who invaded the Japanese archipelago back in the mists of prehistory, and of the native aborigines who possessed the islands before them, Life explained. The picture next to the article was of the Japanese premier, Hideki Tojo.
In the Lodz ghetto, trucks began taking the Gypsies away. They went to Chelmno, the new death camp, where they were killed with exhaust gases and buried. It was just before Christmas 1941. ~ Nicholson Baker,#NFDB
1230:As the producer states gradually forced the major oil companies to share with them more of the profits from oil, increasing quantities of sterling and dollars flowed to the Middle East. To maintain the balance of payments and the viability of the international financial system, Britain and the United States needed a mechanism for these currency flows to be returned. [...]
The purchase of most goods, whether consumable materials like food and clothing or more durable items such as cars or industrial machinery, sooner or later reaches a limit where, in practical terms, no more of the commodity can be used and further acquisition is impossible to justify. Given the enormous size of oil revenues, and the relatively small populations and widespread poverty of many of the countries beginning to accumulate them, ordinary goods could not be purchased at a rate that would go far to balance the flow of dollars (and many could be bought from third countries, like Germany and Japan – purchases that would not improve the dollar problem). Weapons, on the other hand, could be purchased to be stored up rather than used, and came with their own forms of justification. Under the appropriate doctrines of security, ever-larger acquisitions could be rationalised on the grounds that they would make the need to use them less likely. Certain weapons, such as US fighter aircraft, were becoming so technically complex by the 1960s that a single item might cost over $10 million, offering a particularly compact vehicle for recycling dollars. Arms, therefore, could be purchased in quantities unlimited by any practical need or capacity to consume. As petrodollars flowed increasingly to the Middle East, the sale of expensive weaponry provided a unique apparatus for recycling those dollars – one that could expand without any normal commercial constraint. ~ Timothy Mitchell,#NFDB
1231:As with Japanese keiretsu, the member firms in a Korean chaebol own shares in each other and tend to collaborate with each other on what is often a nonprice basis. The Korean chaebol differs from the Japanese prewar zaibatsu or postwar keiretsu, however, in a number of significant ways. First and perhaps most important, Korean network organizations were not centered around a private bank or other financial institution in the way the Japanese keiretsu are.8 This is because Korean commercial banks were all state owned until their privatization in the early 1970s, while Korean industrial firms were prohibited by law from acquiring more than an eight percent equity stake in any bank. The large Japanese city banks that were at the core of the postwar keiretsu worked closely with the Finance Ministry, of course, through the process of overloaning (i.e., providing subsidized credit), but the Korean chaebol were controlled by the government in a much more direct way through the latter’s ownership of the banking system. Thus, the networks that emerged more or less spontaneously in Japan were created much more deliberately as the result of government policy in Korea. A second difference is that the Korean chaebol resemble the Japanese intermarket keiretsu more than the vertical ones (see p. 197). That is, each of the large chaebol groups has holdings in very different sectors, from heavy manufacturing and electronics to textiles, insurance, and retail. As Korean manufacturers grew and branched out into related businesses, they started to pull suppliers and subcontractors into their networks. But these relationships resembled simple vertical integration more than the relational contracting that links Japanese suppliers with assemblers. The elaborate multitiered supplier networks of a Japanese parent firm like Toyota do not have ready counterparts in Korea.9 ~ Francis Fukuyama, #NFDB
1232:Opportunities for enhanced recycling remain great even in the case of paper and aluminum cans, the two materials whose recycling rates are the highest in all affluent countries (Japan's paper recycling may be the exception as it is already about as complete as is practical). Perhaps most notably, until 2008 paper was still the largest discarded material going into US landfills (almost 21% of the total mass, compared to nearly 17% for plastics), and although by 2010 it had fallen to just below plastic's share (16.2 vs 17.3%) the total mass of buried paper was still nearly 27 Mt/year (USEPA, 2011a): that is more than the annual production of all paper and paperboard in the same year in Germany (FAO, 2013). And while the mass of paper landfilled in the USA in 2010 was half of the total in 1990 (26.7 vs 52.5 Mt), during the same two decades the mass of discarded plastics rose by 70% and the total of buried polymers, 28.5 Mt, was greater than the combined annual production in Germany and France (Plastics Europe, 2012). Or another comparison: a destitute waste collector may spend a day collecting a mass of 1 kg of plastic shopping bags when rummaging the open garbage tips of Asia's megacities, while the USA buries nearly 80 000 t of plastic in its landfills every day. While in the USA only about 8% of discarded plastics were recovered in 2010 (with the rate ranging from 23% for PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles to less than1% for PP (polypropylene) waste), the EU's goal for 2020 is full diversion of plastic waste from landfills (EPRO, 2011). This would require a 50% increase of the 2010 recovery rate of 66%, roughly split between recycling and incineration for energy recovery. And, of course, waste recovery is not synonymous with recycling as significant shares of collected materials are not reused but landfilled (after volume reduction by shredding or compression). ~ Vaclav Smil, #NFDB
1233:Mattis and Gary Cohn had several quiet conversations about The Big Problem: The president did not understand the importance of allies overseas, the value of diplomacy or the relationship between the military, the economy and intelligence partnerships with foreign governments. They met for lunch at the Pentagon to develop an action plan. One cause of the problem was the president’s fervent belief that annual trade deficits of about $500 billion harmed the American economy. He was on a crusade to impose tariffs and quotas despite Cohn’s best efforts to educate him about the benefits of free trade. How could they convince and, in their frank view, educate the president? Cohn and Mattis realized they were nowhere close to persuading him. The Groundhog Day–like meetings on trade continued and the acrimony only grew. “Let’s get him over here to the Tank,” Mattis proposed. The Tank is the Pentagon’s secure meeting room for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It might focus him. “Great idea,” Cohn said. “Let’s get him out of the White House.” No press; no TVs; no Madeleine Westerhout, Trump’s personal secretary, who worked within shouting distance of the Oval Office. There wouldn’t even be any looking out the window, because there were no windows in the Tank. Getting Trump out of his natural environment could do the trick. The idea was straight from the corporate playbook—a retreat or off-site meeting. They would get Trump to the Tank with his key national security and economic team to discuss worldwide strategic relations. Mattis and Cohn agreed. Together they would fight Trump on this. Trade wars or disruptions in the global markets could savage and undermine the precarious stability in the world. The threat could spill over to the military and intelligence community. Mattis couldn’t understand why the U.S. would want to pick a fight with allies, whether it was NATO, or friends in the Middle East, or Japan—or particularly with South Korea. ~ Bob Woodward, #NFDB
1234:I walked the short distance to Nogizaka, then strolled up and down Gaienhigashi-dori. It took awhile, but I finally spotted it. There was no sign, only a small red rose on a black awning. The entrance was flanked by two black men, each of sufficient bulk to have been at home in the sumo pit. Their suits were well tailored and, given the size of the men wearing them, must have been custom-made. Nigerians, I assumed, whose size, managerial acumen, and relative facility with the language had made them a rare foreign success story, in this case as both middle management and muscle for many of the area’s entertainment establishments. The mizu shobai, or “water trade” of entertainment and pleasure, is one of the few areas in which Japan can legitimately claim a degree of internationalization. They bowed and opened the club’s double glass doors for me, each issuing a baritone irasshaimase as they did so. Welcome. One of them murmured something into a microphone set discreetly into his lapel. I walked down a short flight of stairs. A ruddy-faced, prosperous-looking Japanese man whom I put at about forty greeted me in a small foyer. Interchangeable J-Pop techno music was playing from the room beyond. “Nanmeisama desho ka?” Mr. Ruddy asked. How many? “Just one,” I said in English, holding up a finger. “Of course.” He motioned that I should follow him. The room was rectangular, flanked by dance stages on either end. The stages were simple, distinguished only by mirrored walls behind them and identical brass poles at their centers. One stage was occupied by a tall, long-haired blonde wearing high heels and a green g-string and nothing more. She was dancing somewhat desultorily, I thought, but seemed to have the attention of the majority of the club’s clientele regardless. Russian, I guessed. Large-boned and large-breasted. A delicacy in Japan. Harry hadn’t mentioned floorshows. Probably he was embarrassed. My sense that something was amiss deepened. ~ Barry Eisler, #NFDB
1235:Another scene from universal myth unfolds -- here powerfully reminiscent of the Underworld quests of Orpheus for Eurydice and of Demeter for Persephone. The ancient Japanese recension of this mysteriously global story is given in the Kojiki and the Nihongi, where we read that Izanagi, mourning for his dead wife, followed after her to the Land of Yomi in an attempt to bring her back to the world of the living:
'Izanagi-no-Mikoto went after Izanami-no-Mikoto and entered the Land of Yomi ... So when from the palace she raised the door and came out to meet him, Izanagi spoke saying; 'My lovely younger sister! The lands that I and thou made are not yet finished making; so come back!'
Izanami is honoured by Izanagi's attention and minded to return. But there is one problem. She has already eaten food prepared in the Land of Yomi and this binds her to the place, just as the consumption of a single pomegranate seed binds Persephone to hell in the Greek myth.
Is it an accident that ancient Indian myth also contains the same idea? In the Katha Upanishad a human, Nachiketas, succeeds in visiting the underworld realm of Yama, the Hindu god of Death (and, yes, scholars have noted and commented upon the weird resonance between the names and functions of Yama and Yomi). It is precisely to avoid detention in the realm of Yama that Nachiketas is warned:
'Three nights within Yama's mansion stay / But taste not, though a guest, his food.'
So there's a common idea here -- in Japan, in Greece, in India -- about not eating food in the Underworld if you want to leave. Such similarities can result from common invention of the same motif -- in other words, coincidence. They can result from the influence of one of the ancient cultures upon the other two, i.e. cultural diffusion. Or they can result from an influence that has somehow percolated down to all three, and perhaps to other cultures, stemming from an as yet unidentified common source. ~ Graham Hancock,#NFDB
1236:Thoughts for the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review If you had been a security policy-maker in the world’s greatest power in 1900, you would have been a Brit, looking warily at your age-old enemy, France. By 1910, you would be allied with France and your enemy would be Germany. By 1920, World War I would have been fought and won, and you’d be engaged in a naval arms race with your erstwhile allies, the U.S. and Japan. By 1930, naval arms limitation treaties were in effect, the Great Depression was underway, and the defense planning standard said ‘no war for ten years.’ Nine years later World War II had begun. By 1950, Britain no longer was the world’s greatest power, the Atomic Age had dawned, and a ‘police action’ was underway in Korea. Ten years later the political focus was on the ‘missile gap,’ the strategic paradigm was shifting from massive retaliation to flexible response, and few people had heard of Vietnam. By 1970, the peak of our involvement in Vietnam had come and gone, we were beginning détente with the Soviets, and we were anointing the Shah as our protégé in the Gulf region. By 1980, the Soviets were in Afghanistan, Iran was in the throes of revolution, there was talk of our ‘hollow forces’ and a ‘window of vulnerability,’ and the U.S. was the greatest creditor nation the world had ever seen. By 1990, the Soviet Union was within a year of dissolution, American forces in the Desert were on the verge of showing they were anything but hollow, the U.S. had become the greatest debtor nation the world had ever known, and almost no one had heard of the internet. Ten years later, Warsaw was the capital of a NATO nation, asymmetric threats transcended geography, and the parallel revolutions of information, biotechnology, robotics, nanotechnology, and high density energy sources foreshadowed changes almost beyond forecasting. All of which is to say that I’m not sure what 2010 will look like, but I’m sure that it will be very little like we expect, so we should plan accordingly. Lin Wells ~ Philip E Tetlock, #NFDB
1237:I can tell right away by looking at you what you want to eat," he says. "I can tell how many brothers and sisters you have."
After divining my favorite color (blue) and my astrological sign (Aquarius), Nakamura pulls out an ivory stalk of takenoko, fresh young bamboo ubiquitous in Japan during the spring. "This came in this morning from Kagumi. It's so sweet that you can eat it raw." He peels off the outer layer, cuts a thin slice, and passes it across the counter.
First, he scores an inch-thick bamboo steak with a ferocious santoku blade. Then he sears it in a dry sauté pan until the flesh softens and the natural sugars form a dark crust on the surface. While the bamboo cooks, he places two sacks of shirako, cod milt, under the broiler. ("Milt," by the way, is a euphemism for sperm. Cod sperm is everywhere in Japan in the winter and early spring, and despite the challenges its name might create for some, it's one of the most delicious things you can eat.)
Nakamura brings it all together on a Meiji-era ceramic plate: caramelized bamboo brushed with soy, broiled cod milt topped with miso made from foraged mountain vegetables, and, for good measure, two lightly boiled fava beans. An edible postcard of spring. I take a bite, drop my chopsticks, and look up to find Nakamura staring right at me.
"See, I told you I know what you want to eat."
The rest of the dinner unfolds in a similar fashion: a little counter banter, a little product display, then back to transform my tastes and his ingredients into a cohesive unit. The hits keep coming: a staggering plate of sashimi filled with charbroiled tuna, surgically scored squid, thick circles of scallop, and tiny white shrimp blanketed in sea urchin: a lesson in the power of perfect product. A sparkling crab dashi topped with yuzu flowers: a meditation on the power of restraint. Warm mochi infused with cherry blossoms and topped with a crispy plank of broiled eel: a seasonal invention so delicious it defies explanation. ~ Matt Goulding,#NFDB
1238:You will tell me that there always exists a chasm between the world depicted in novels and films and the world that people actually live in. It is the chasm between the world mediated by art and the world unmediated by art, formless and drab. You are absolutely right. The gap that my mother felt was not necessarily any deeper than the gap felt by a European girl who loved books and films. Yet there is one critical difference. For in my mother's case, the chasm between the world of art and real life also symbolized something more: the asymmetrical relationship I mentioned earlier—the asymmetrical relationship between those who live only in a universal temporality and those who live in both a universal and a particular one.
To make this discussion a little more concrete, let me introduce a character named Francoise. Francoise is a young Parisienne living before World War II. Like my mother, she loves reading books and watching films. Also like my mother, she lives in a small apartment with her mother, who is old, shabby looking, and illiterate. One day Francoise, full of artistic aspirations, writes an autobiographical novel. It is the tale of her life torn between the world of art and the world of reality. (Not an original tale, I must say.) The novel is well received in France. Several hundred Japanese living in Japan read this novel in French, and one of them decides to translate it into Japanese. My mother reads the novel. She identifies with the heroine and says to herself, "This girl is just like me!" Moved, my mother, also full of artistic aspirations, writes her own autobiography. That novel is well received in Japan but is not translated into French—or any other European language, for that matter. The number of Europeans who read Japanese is just too small. Therefore, only Japanese readers can share the plight of my mother's life. For other readers in the world, it's as if her novel never existed. It's as if she herself never existed. Even if my mother had written her novel first, Francoise would never have read it and been moved by it. ~ Minae Mizumura,#NFDB
1239:Henry wouldn’t look at me.
“Henry? Whose ass do I need to kick?”
“You can’t.”
“I can’t what? Kick a giant’s ass?” I said softly, remembering his cryptic talk of giants.
“Not a giant. A girl,” Henry whispered.
“A girl?” I wouldn’t have been more surprised if he told me Millie had punched him in the face.
“My friend.”
I shook my head. “No. Not a friend. Friends don’t smack you around.”
Henry looked at me and raised his eyebrows doubtfully. Touché.
“Well, they don’t smack you around unless you ask them to,” I amended, thinking of all my friends at the gym who regularly slapped me around.
“What did you do?” I asked, trying to understand. “Did you say something that upset her? Or is she just a bully?”
“I told her she was like a sumo wrestler,” Henry said softly.
“You said that to her?” I yelped. “Ah, Henry. Don’t tell me you said that to her.” It was all I could do not to laugh. I covered my mouth so Henry wouldn’t see my lips twitching.
Henry looked crushed. “Sumo wrestlers are heroes in Japan,” he insisted.
“Henry,” I groaned. “Do you like this girl?”
Henry nodded.
“Cool. Why?”
“Sumo wrestlers are powerful,” Henry said.
“Henry, come on, man. You don’t like her because she’s powerful,” I insisted.
Henry looked confused.
“Wait. You do?” Now I was confused.
“The average sumo wrestler weighs over 400 pounds. They are huge.”
“But she’s not huge, is she?”
“No. Not huge.”
“Does she look like a sumo wrestler?” I asked.
Henry shook his head.
“No. But she’s big . . . maybe bigger than other girls?”
Henry nodded. Okay now we were getting somewhere.
“So she punched you when you told her she reminded you of a sumo wrestler.”
Another nod.
“She blacked your cheekbone and split your lip.”
Henry nodded again and smiled slightly, as if he was almost proud of her.
“Why did you say that, Henry? She obviously didn’t like it.” I couldn’t think of a girl who would.
Henry gritted his jaw and fisted his hands in his hair, obviously frustrated.
“Sumo wrestlers are awesome!” he cried. ~ Amy Harmon,#NFDB
1240:To the ancients, bears symbolized resurrection. The creature goes to sleep for a long time, its heartbeat decreases to almost nothing. The male often impregnates the female right before hibernation, but miraculously, egg and sperm do not unite right away. They float separately in her uterine broth until much later. Near the end of hibernation, the egg and sperm unite and cell division begins, so that the cubs will be born in the spring when the mother is awakening, just in time to care for and teach her new offspring. Not only by reason of awakening from hibernation as though from death, but much more so because the she-bear awakens with new young, this creature is a profound metaphor for our lives, for return and increase coming from something that seemed deadened.
The bear is associated with many huntress Goddesses: Artemis and Diana in Greece and Rome, and Muerte and Hecoteptl, mud women deities in the Latina cultures. These Goddesses bestowed upon women the power of tracking, knowing, 'digging out' the psychic aspects of all things. To the Japanese the bear is the symbol of loyalty, wisdom, and strength. In northern Japan where the Ainu tribe lives, the bear is one who can talk to God directly and bring messages back for humans. The cresent moon bear is considered a sacred being, one who was given the white mark on his throat by the Buddhist Goddess Kwan-Yin, whose emblem is the crescent moon. Kwan-Yin is the Goddess of Deep Compassion and the bear is her emissary.
"In the psyche, the bear can be understood as the ability to regulate one's life, especially one's feeling life. Bearish power is the ability to move in cycles, be fully alert, or quiet down into a hibernative sleep that renews one's energy for the next cycle. The bear image teaches that it is possible to maintain a kind of pressure gauge for one's emotional life, and most especially that one can be fierce and generous at the same time. One can be reticent and valuable. One can protect one's territory, make one's boundaries clear, shake the sky if need be, yet be available, accessible, engendering all the same. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Est s,#NFDB
1241:The low-trust, family-oriented societies with weak intermediate organizations we have observed have all been characterized by a similar saddle-shaped distribution of enterprises. Taiwan, Hong Kong, Italy, and France have a host of smaller private firms that constitute the entrepreneurial core of their economies and a small number of very large, state-owned firms at the other end of the scale. In such societies, the state plays an important role in promoting large-scale enterprises that might not be spontaneously created by the private sector, albeit at some cost in efficiency. We might postulate then that as a general rule, any society with weak intermediate institutions and low trust outside the family will tend to have a similar distribution of firms in its economy. The Republic of Korea, however, presents an apparent anomaly that needs to be explained in order to preserve the validity of the larger argument. Korea is similar to Japan, Germany, and the United States insofar as it has very large corporations and a highly concentrated industrial structure. On the other hand, Korea is much closer to China than to Japan in terms of family structure. Families occupy a similarly important place in Korea as in China, and there are no Japanese-style mechanisms in Korean culture for bringing outsiders into family groups. Following the Chinese pattern, this should lead to small family businesses and difficulties in institutionalizing the corporate form of organization. The answer to this apparent paradox is the role of the Korean state, which deliberately promoted gigantic conglomerates as a development strategy in the 1960s and 1970s and overcame what would otherwise have been a cultural proclivity for the small- and medium-size enterprises typical of Taiwan. While the Koreans succeeded in creating large companies and zaibatsu in the manner of Japan, they have nonetheless encountered many Chinese-style difficulties in the nature of corporate governance, from management succession to relations on the shop floor. The Korean case shows, however, how a resolute and competent state can shape industrial structure and ~ Francis Fukuyama, #NFDB
1242:Unnecessary Creation gives you the freedom to explore new possibilities and follow impractical curiosities. Some of the most frustrated creative pros I’ve encountered are those who expect their day job to allow them to fully express their creativity and satisfy their curiosity. They push against the boundaries set by their manager or client and fret continuously that their best work never finds its way into the end product because of restrictions and compromises. A 2012 survey sponsored by Adobe revealed that nearly 75 percent of workers in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Japan felt they weren’t living up to their creative potential. (In the United States, the number was closer to 82 percent!) Obviously, there’s a gap between what many creatives actually do each day and what they feel they are capable of doing given more resources or less bureaucracy. But those limitations aren’t likely to change in the context of an organization, where there is little tolerance for risk and resources are scarcer than ever. If day-to-day project work is the only work that you are engaging in, it follows that you’re going to get frustrated. To break the cycle, keep a running list of projects you’d like to attempt in your spare time, and set aside a specific time each week (or each day) to make progress on that list. Sometimes this feels very inefficient in the moment, especially when there are so many other urgent priorities screaming for your attention, but it can be a key part of keeping your creative energy flowing for your day-to-day work. You’ll also want to get a notebook to record questions that you’d like to pursue, ideas that you have, or experiments that you’d like to try. Then you can use your pre-defined Unnecessary Creation time to play with these ideas. As Steven Johnson explains in his book Where Good Ideas Come From, “A good idea is a network. A specific constellation of neurons—thousands of them—fire in sync with each other for the first time in your brain, and an idea pops into your consciousness. A new idea is a network of cells exploring the adjacent possible of connections that they can make in your mind.”18 ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB
1243:It was on the morning of the first day at my school after the long summer break this year that I noticed something stunning as I was about to enter my school through the rock garden gate. As usual, I was so much eager to have a first glimpse of my favourite red brick house from a distance, but instead something even redder captured my eyes. It was an elegant tree full bloomed with red coloured flowers in the morning sun waiting to welcome me back to school after the break, which immediately lifted little remaining home sickness. The guard uncle told that the majestic tree is called Krishnachura. Again I was awed by the beauty of the name. I have seen this tree a plenty in my locality at Salt Lake, but they never ever drew my attention the way this tree did at the school gate at the backdrop of the red building that summer morning. After returning home, I immediately searched for more details of the Krishnachura and found that the tree originally belongs to the islands of the Madagascar. In other parts of India, this tree is known as the Gulmohar. They are also fondly called “Flames of forest”, which somebody rightly resembled them to the flames of the bushfires in hot dry summer. I also found that in many countries, e.g. in Japan, every school must plant at least few flowering cherry trees in their premises. These cherry blossoms have influenced the Japanese society and its art and culture tremendously. Similarly, the Krishnachura has also influenced many poets and appears in the Indian literature and music. However, in our country, they are not mandatorily planted in our school. I am so fortunate to have these trees in my school. I again realized the visions of the founders and subsequent nurturers of my school. I have been seeing this tree since my nursery days, but probably, I was too little to be conscious about its beauty. I told about this to my father, but he further astonished me when he told me that even he looks forward every year for the blossom. Probably, me too will be waiting every year henceforth for the Krishnachura to bloom, but the trail of the sight of the tree of my school that very morning of June with remain with me forever. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1244:Japan, a country that had done its best to have no contact with strangers and to seal out the rest of the world. Its economy and politics were dominated by feudal agriculture and a Confucian hierarchical social structure, and they were steadily declining. Merchants were the lowest social class, and trading with foreigners was actually forbidden except for limited contact with China and the Dutch. But then Japan had an unexpected encounter with a stranger—Commodore Matthew Perry—who burst in on July 8, 1853, demanding that Japan’s ports be open to America for trade and insisting on better treatment for shipwrecked sailors. His demands were rebuffed, but Perry came back a year later with a bigger fleet and more firepower. He explained to the Japanese the virtues of trading with other countries, and eventually they signed the Treaty of Kanagawa on March 31, 1854, opening the Japanese market to foreign trade and ending two hundred years of near isolation. The encounter shocked the Japanese political elites, forcing them to realize just how far behind the United States and other Western nations Japan had fallen in military technology. This realization set in motion an internal revolution that toppled the Tokugawa Shogunate, which had ruled Tokyo in the name of the emperor since 1603, and brought Emperor Meiji, and a coalition of reformers, in his place. They chose adaptation by learning from those who had defeated them. They launched a political, economic, and social transformation of Japan, based on the notion that if they wanted to be as strong as the West they had to break from their current cultural norms and make a wholesale adoption of Western science, technology, engineering, education, art, literature, and even clothing and architecture. It turned out to be more difficult than they thought, but the net result was that by the late nineteenth century Japan had built itself into a major industrial power with the heft to not only reverse the unequal economic treaties imposed on it by Western powers but actually defeat one of those powers—Russia—in a war in 1905. The Meiji Restoration made Japan not only more resilient but also more powerful. ~ Thomas L Friedman, #NFDB
1245:Haunted In Old Japan
Music of the star-shine shimmering o’er the sea
Mirror me no longer in the dusk of memory:
Dim and white the rose-leaves drift along the shore
Wind among the roses, blow no more!
II
All along the purple creek, lit with silver foam,
Silent, silent voices, cry no more of home;
Soft beyond the cherry-trees, o’er the dim lagoon,
Dawns the crimson lantern of the large low moon.
III
We that loved in April, we that turned away
Laughing, ere the wood-dove crooned across the May,
Watch the withered rose-leaves drift along the shore.
Wind among the roses, blow no more!
IV
We that saw the winter waste the weeping bower,
We that saw the young love perish like a flower,
We that saw the dark eyes deepening with tears,
Hear the vanished voices in the land beyond the years.
We that hurt the thing we loved; we that went astray,
We that in the darkness idly dreamed of day . . .
. . . Ah! The dreary rose-leaves drift along the shore.
Wind among the roses, blow no more!
VI
Lonely starry faces, wonderful and white,
Yearning with a cry across the dim sweet night,
All our dreams are blown a-drift as flowers before a fan,
All our hearts are haunted in the heart of old Japan.
VII
Haunted, haunted, haunted; we that mocked and sinned
Hear the vanished voices wailing down the wind,
46
Watch the ruined rose-leaves drift along the shore;
Wind among the roses, blow no more!
VIII
We, the sons of reason, we that chose to bride
Knowledge and rejected the Dream that we denied,
We that mocked the Holy Ghost and chose the Son of Man, [1]
Now must wander haunted in the heart of old Japan
IX
Haunted, haunted, haunted, by the sound of falling tears,
Haunted, haunted, haunted, by the yearning of the years;
Ah! the phantom rose-leaves drift along the shore;
Wind among the roses, blow no more!
All along the purple creek, lit with silver foam,
Sobbing, sobbing voices, cry no more of home:
Soft beyond the cherry trees, o’er the dim lagoon,
Dawns the crimson lantern of the large, low moon.
~ Alfred Noyes,#NFDB
1246:Why are you so into Pinot?” 2 Maya asks. In the next 60 seconds of the movie, the character of Miles Raymond tells a story which would set off a boom in sales of Pinot Noir. It’s a hard grape to grow. It’s thin-skinned, temperamental, ripens early. It’s not a survivor like Cabernet, which can just grow anywhere and thrive even when it’s neglected. No, Pinot needs constant care and attention. In fact it can only grow in these really specific, tucked away corners of the world. And only the most patient and nurturing of growers can do it, really. Only somebody who really takes the time to understand Pinot’s potential can coax it into its fullest expression. Its flavors are the most haunting and brilliant and thrilling and subtle and ancient on the planet. Miles is describing himself in the dialogue and using Pinot as a metaphor for his personality. In this one scene moviegoers projected themselves on the character, feeling his longing and his quest to be understood. Sideways was a hit and won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. It also launched a movement, turning the misunderstood Pinot Noir into the must-have wine of the year. In less than one year after the movie’s 2004 fall release date, sales of Pinot Noir had risen 18 percent. Winemakers began to grow more of the grape to meet demand. In California alone 70,000 tons of Pinot Noir grapes were harvested and crushed in 2004. Within two years the volume had topped 100,000 tons. Today California wine growers crush more than 250,000 tons of Pinot Noir each year. Interestingly, the Japanese version of the movie did not have the same “Sideways Effect” on wine sales. One reason is that the featured grape is Cabernet, a varietal already popular in Japan. But even more critical and relevant to the discussion on storytelling is that Japanese audiences didn’t see the “porch scene” because there wasn’t one. The scene was not included in the movie. No story, no emotional attachment to a particular varietal. You see, the movie Sideways didn’t launch a movement in Pinot Noir; the story that Miles told triggered the boom. In 60 seconds Maya fell in love with Miles and millions of Americans fell in love with an expensive wine they knew little about. ~ Carmine Gallo, #NFDB
1247:Why The Jackass Laughs
The Boastful Crow and the Laughing Jack
Were telling tales of the outer back:
"I've just been travelling far and wide,
At the back of Bourke and the Queensland side;
There isn't a bird in the bush can go
As far as me," said the old black crow.
"There isn't a bird in the bush can fly
A course as straight or a course as high.
Higher than human eyesight goes.
There's sometimes clouds -- but there's always crows,
Drifting along for a scent of blood
Or a smell of smoke or a sign of flood.
For never a bird or a beast has been
With a sight as strong or a scent as keen.
At fires and floods I'm the first about,
For then the lizards and mice run out:
And I make my swoop -- and that's all they know -I'm a whale on mice," said the Boastful Crow.
The Bee-birds over the homestead flew
And told each other the long day through
"The cold has come, we must take the track."
"Now, I'll make you a bet," said the Laughing Jack,
"Of a hundred mice, that you dare not go
With the little Bee-birds, by Boastful Crow."
Said the Boastful Crow, "I could take my ease
And fly with little green birds like these.
If they went flat out and they did their best
I could have a smoke and could take a rest."
And he asked of the Bee-birds circling round:
"Now, where do you spike-tails think you're bound?"
"We leave tonight, and out present plan
is to go straight on till we reach Japan.
"Every year, on the self-same day,
We call our children and start away,
Twittering, travelling day and night,
530
Over the ocean we take our flight;
And we rest a day on some lonely isles
Or we beg a ride for a hundred miles
On a steamer's deck,* and away we go:
We hope you'll come with us, Mister Crow."
But the old black crow was extremely sad.
Said he: "I reckon you're raving mad
To talk of travelling night and day,
And how in the world do you find your way?"
And the Bee-birds answered him, "If you please,
That's one of our own great mysteries".
Now these things chanced in the long ago
And explain the fact, which no doubt you know,
That every jackass high and low
Will always laugh when he sees a crow.
~ Banjo Paterson,#NFDB
1248:After World War II, the United States, triumphant abroad and undamaged at home, saw a door wide open for world supremacy. Only the thing called ‘communism’ stood in the way, politically, militarily, economically, and ideologically. Thus it was that the entire US foreign policy establishment was mobilized to confront this ‘enemy’, and the Marshall Plan was an integral part of this campaign. How could it be otherwise? Anti-communism had been the principal pillar of US foreign policy from the Russian Revolution up to World War II, pausing for the war until the closing months of the Pacific campaign when Washington put challenging communism ahead of fighting the Japanese. Even the dropping of the atom bomb on Japan – when the Japanese had already been defeated – can be seen as more a warning to the Soviets than a military action against the Japanese.19 After the war, anti-communism continued as the leitmotif of American foreign policy as naturally as if World War II and the alliance with the Soviet Union had not happened. Along with the CIA, the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, the Council on Foreign Relations, certain corporations, and a few other private institutions, the Marshall Plan was one more arrow in the quiver of those striving to remake Europe to suit Washington’s desires: 1. Spreading the capitalist gospel – to counter strong postwar tendencies toward socialism. 2. Opening markets to provide new customers for US corporations – a major reason for helping to rebuild the European economies; e.g. a billion dollars (at twenty-first-century prices) of tobacco, spurred by US tobacco interests. 3. Pushing for the creation of the Common Market (the future European Union) and NATO as integral parts of the West European bulwark against the alleged Soviet threat. 4. Suppressing the left all over Western Europe, most notably sabotaging the Communist parties in France and Italy in their bids for legal, non-violent, electoral victory. Marshall Plan funds were secretly siphoned off to finance this endeavor, and the promise of aid to a country, or the threat of its cutoff, was used as a bullying club; indeed, France and Italy would certainly have been exempted from receiving aid if they had not gone along with the plots to exclude the Communists from any kind of influential role. ~ William Blum, #NFDB
1249:In theory, toppings can include almost anything, but 95 percent of the ramen you consume in Japan will be topped with chashu, Chinese-style roasted pork. In a perfect world, that means luscious slices of marinated belly or shoulder, carefully basted over a low temperature until the fat has rendered and the meat collapses with a hard stare. Beyond the pork, the only other sure bet in a bowl of ramen is negi, thinly sliced green onion, little islands of allium sting in a sea of richness. Pickled bamboo shoots (menma), sheets of nori, bean sprouts, fish cake, raw garlic, and soy-soaked eggs are common constituents, but of course there is a whole world of outlier ingredients that make it into more esoteric bowls, which we'll get into later.
While shape and size will vary depending on region and style, ramen noodles all share one thing in common: alkaline salts. Called kansui in Japanese, alkaline salts are what give the noodles a yellow tint and allow them to stand up to the blistering heat of the soup without degrading into a gummy mass. In fact, in the sprawling ecosystem of noodle soups, it may be the alkaline noodle alone that unites the ramen universe: "If it doesn't have kansui, it's not ramen," Kamimura says.
Noodles and toppings are paramount in the ramen formula, but the broth is undoubtedly the soul of the bowl, there to unite the disparate tastes and textures at work in the dish. This is where a ramen chef makes his name. Broth can be made from an encyclopedia of flora and fauna: chicken, pork, fish, mushrooms, root vegetables, herbs, spices. Ramen broth isn't about nuance; it's about impact, which is why making most soup involves high heat, long cooking times, and giant heaps of chicken bones, pork bones, or both.
Tare is the flavor base that anchors each bowl, that special potion- usually just an ounce or two of concentrated liquid- that bends ramen into one camp or another. In Sapporo, tare is made with miso. In Tokyo, soy sauce takes the lead. At enterprising ramen joints, you'll find tare made with up to two dozen ingredients, an apothecary's stash of dried fish and fungus and esoteric add-ons. The objective of tare is essentially the core objective of Japanese food itself: to pack as much umami as possible into every bite. ~ Matt Goulding,#NFDB
1250:Clip This Article on Location 1397 | Added on Monday, September 1, 2014 4:10:39 PM REVIEW & OUTLOOK An $8.3 Billion Rebuke to the FDA Roche buys a drug approved in Europe but not in America. 359 words Amid this summer's M&A fever, Roche's agreement Monday to buy the San Francisco biotech InterMune deserves special notice. The tie-up is an $8.3 billion guided missile into the fortified bunker that is the Food and Drug Administration. InterMune has never turned a profit in 16 years of existence and other than its clinical expertise the company holds a single asset: an idea for treating a lethal lung disorder called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis with no known cause, cure or approved therapy—at least in the U.S. An InterMune drug called pirfenidone that slows the progression of irreversible lung scarring is on the market in Europe, Japan, Canada and even China. Bloomberg News But the FDA refused to approve pirfenidone in 2010, despite the 40,000 Americans who are killed annually by lung fibrosis and a positive recommendation from its outside scientific advisory committee. The agency brass claimed the evidence was statistically unsatisfactory, when one clinical trial was inconclusive but another showed strong benefits such as improved lung function. The results of the third trial the FDA ordered were reported earlier this year and confirmed that pirfenidone is even more of a treatment advance than it seemed in 2010, and may prolong life. The agency is expected, finally, to approve the medicine in November. Roche is paying a 38% premium over Friday's closing share price, and 63% over trading before the news of InterMune's corporate suitors broke a few weeks ago. The deal is a big vote of confidence in pirfenidone, not least because a rival lung fibrosis drug is awaiting U.S. approval. Then again, maybe that drug's maker, the German pharmaceutical consortium Boehringer Ingelheim, will have the same FDA experience as InterMune. The Roche deal is a tacit reprimand to the FDA's unscientific and uncompassionate—and wrong—2010 defenestration. Amid medical ambiguity about effectiveness, the humane option is to allow a drug to come to patients and follow on with more research, in particular for a drug with few side effects. Pulmonary fibrosis is a protracted death sentence of three to five years. The FDA denied tens of thousands of dying people better and possibly longer lives in the time they had left. ========== ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1251:Chinese family businesses instinctively thought of ways of hiding income from the tax collector. The situation is quite different in Japan, where the family is weaker and individuals are pulled in different directions by the various vertical authority structures standing above them. The entire Japanese nation, with the emperor at the top, is, in a sense, the ie of all ies, and calls forth a degree of moral obligation and emotional attachment that the Chinese emperor never enjoyed. Unlike the Japanese, the Chinese have had less of a we-against-them attitude toward outsiders and are much more likely to identify with family, lineage, or region as with nation. The dark side to the Japanese sense of nationalism and proclivity to trust one another is their lack of trust for people who are not Japanese. The problems faced by non-Japanese living in Japan, such as the sizable Korean community, have been widely noted. Distrust of non-Japanese is also evident in the practices of many Japanese multinationals operating in other countries. While aspects of the Japanese lean manufacturing system have been imported with great success into the United States, Japanese transplants have been much less successful integrating into local American supplier networks. Japanese auto companies building assembly plants in the United States, for example, have tended to bring over with them the suppliers in their network organizations from Japan. According to one study, some ninety percent of the parts for Japanese cars assembled in America come from Japan or from subsidiaries of Japanese companies in America.43 This is perhaps predictable given the cultural differences between the Japanese assembler and the American subcontractor but has understandably led to hard feelings between the two. To take another example, while Japanese multinationals have hired a great number of native executives to run their overseas businesses, these people are seldom treated like executives at the same level in Japan. An American working for a subdivision of a Japanese company in the United States might aspire to rise within that organization but is very unlikely to be asked to move to Tokyo or even to a higher post outside the United States.44 There are exceptions. Sony America, for example, with its largely American staff, is highly autonomous and often influences its parent in Japan. But by and large, the Japanese radius of trust can be fully extended only to other Japanese. ~ Francis Fukuyama, #NFDB
1252:Another thing you need to understand is what we now call the “core competencies” of your organization. What are we really good at? What do our customers pay us for? Why do they buy from us? In a competitive, nonmonopolistic market—and that is what the world has become—there is absolutely no reason why a customer should buy from you rather from your competitor. None. He pays you because you give him something that is of value to him. What is it that we get paid for? You may think this is a simple question. It is not. I have been working with some of the world’s biggest manufacturers, producers, and distributors of packaged consumer goods. All of you use their products, even in Slovenia. They have two kinds of customers. One, of course, is the retailer. The other is the housewife. What do they pay for? I have been asking this question for a year now. I do not know how many companies in the world make soap, but there are a great many. And I can’t tell the difference between one kind of soap or the other. And why does the buyer have a preference—and a strong one, by the way? What does it do for her? Why is she willing to buy from one manufacturer when on the same shelves in the United States or in Japan or in Germany they are soaps from other companies? She usually does not even look at them. She reaches out for that one soap. Why? What does she see? What does she want? Try to work on this. Incidentally, the best way to find out is to ask customers not by questionnaire but by sitting down with them and finding out. The most successful retailer I know in the world is not one of the big retail chains. It is somebody in Ireland, a small country about the size of Slovenia. This particular company is next door to Great Britain with its very powerful supermarkets, and all of them are also in Ireland. And yet this little company has maybe 60 percent of the sandwich market. What do they do? Well, the answer is that the boss spends two days each week in one of his stores serving customers, from the meat counter to the checkout counter, and is the one who puts stuff into bags and carries it out to the shoppers’ automobiles. He knows what the customers pay for. But let me go back to the beginning: The place to start managing is not in the plant, and it is not in the office. You start with managing yourself by finding out your own strengths, by placing yourself where your strengths can produce results and making sure that you set the right example (which is basically what ethics is all about), and by placing your people where their strengths can produce results. ~ Peter F Drucker, #NFDB
1253:Prosperous non-white nations such as Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea would be very desirable destinations for Third-World immigrants, and if those countries opened their borders, they would quickly be filled with foreigners. They keep their borders closed because they know they cannot have the same Japan or Taiwan with different people. Israel, likewise, is determined to remain a Jewish state because Israelis know they cannot have the same Israel with different people. In 2010, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved tough measures to deport illegal immigrants, calling them a “threat to the character of the country.”
Linguistically, culturally, and racially, Japan is homogeneous. This means Japanese never even think about a host of problems that torment Americans. Since Japan has only one race, no one worries about racism. There was no civil rights movement, no integration struggle, and no court-ordered busing. There is no bilingual education, and no affirmative action. There is no tyranny of “political correctness,” and no one is clamoring for a “multi-cultural curriculum.” When a company needs to hire someone, it doesn’t give a thought to “ethnic balance;” it just hires the best person. No Japanese are sent to reeducation seminars because of “insensitivity.”
Japan has no Civil Rights Commission or Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. It has no Equal Housing Act or Voting Rights Act. No one worries about drawing up voting districts to make sure minorities are elected. There are no noisy ethnic groups trying to influence foreign policy. Japanese do not know what a “hate crime” would be. And they know that an American-style immigration policy would change everything. They want Japan to remain Japanese. This is a universal view among non-whites. Those countries that send the largest numbers of emigrants to the United States—Mexico, India, China—permit essentially no immigration at all. For them, their nations are exclusive homelands for their own people.
Most people refuse to share their homelands. Robert Pape, a leading expert on suicide bombing, explains that its motive is almost always nationalism, not religious fanaticism. Whether in Sri Lanka, Lebanon, Chechnya, Kashmir, the West Bank, Iraq, or Afghanistan, its main objective is to drive out occupying aliens.
It is only Western nations—and only within the last few decades—that have ever voluntarily accepted large-scale immigration that could reduce the inhabitants to a racial minority. What the United States and other European-derived nations are doing is without historical precedent. ~ Jared Taylor,#NFDB
1254:As Japan recovered from the post-war depression, okonomiyaki became the cornerstone of Hiroshima's nascent restaurant culture. And with new variables- noodles, protein, fishy powders- added to the equation, it became an increasingly fungible concept. Half a century later it still defies easy description. Okonomi means "whatever you like," yaki means "grill," but smashed together they do little to paint a clear picture. Invariably, writers, cooks, and oko officials revert to analogies: some call it a cabbage crepe; others a savory pancake or an omelet. Guidebooks, unhelpfully, refer to it as Japanese pizza, though okonomiyaki looks and tastes nothing like pizza. Otafuku, for its part, does little to clarify the situation, comparing okonomiyaki in turn to Turkish pide, Indian chapati, and Mexican tacos.
There are two overarching categories of okonomiyaki Hiroshima style, with a layer of noodles and a heavy cabbage presence, and Osaka or Kansai style, made with a base of eggs, flour, dashi, and grated nagaimo, sticky mountain yam. More than the ingredients themselves, the difference lies in the structure: whereas okonomiyaki in Hiroshima is carefully layered, a savory circle with five or six distinct layers, the ingredients in Osaka-style okonomiyaki are mixed together before cooking. The latter is so simple to cook that many restaurants let you do it yourself on table side teppans. Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki, on the other hand, is complicated enough that even the cooks who dedicate their lives to its construction still don't get it right most of the time. (Some people consider monjayaki, a runny mass of meat and vegetables popularized in Tokyo's Tsukishima district, to be part of the okonomiyaki family, but if so, it's no more than a distant cousin.)
Otafuku entered the picture in 1938 as a rice vinegar manufacturer. Their original factory near Yokogawa Station burned down in the nuclear attack, but in 1946 they started making vinegar again. In 1950 Otafuku began production of Worcestershire sauce, but local cooks complained that it was too spicy and too thin, that it didn't cling to okonomiyaki, which was becoming the nutritional staple of Hiroshima life. So Otafuku used fruit- originally orange and peach, later Middle Eastern dates- to thicken and sweeten the sauce, and added the now-iconic Otafuku label with the six virtues that the chubby-cheeked lady of Otafuku, a traditional character from Japanese folklore, is supposed to represent, including a little nose for modesty, big ears for good listening, and a large forehead for wisdom. ~ Matt Goulding,#NFDB
1255:It happened to me. And I'll never forget it. Back when I was in the sixth grade, my whole family went out to go watch a baseball game at the stadium. I didn't really care about baseball, but I was surprised by what I saw when we got there. Everywhere I looked, I saw people. On the other side of the stadium, the people looked so small, like little moving grains of rice. It was so crowded. I thought that everyone in Japan had to be packed in there. So I turned to my dad and asked him, "Do you know how many people are here right now"? He said since the stadium was full, probably fifty thousand. After the game, the street was filled with people and I was really shocked to see that, too. To me, it seemed like there was a ton of people there. But then, I realized it could only be a tiny fraction of all the people in Japan. When I got home, I pulled out my calculator. In social studies, I'd learned that the population of Japan was a hundred some odd million. So I divided that by fifty thousand. The answer was one two-thousandth. That shocked me even more. I was only one little person in that big crowded stadium filled with people, and believe me, there were so many people there, but it was just a handful of the entire population. Up till then, I always thought that I was, I don't know, kind of a special person. It was fun to be with my family. I had fun with my classmates. And the school that I was going to, it had just about the most interesting people anywhere. But that night, I realized it wasn't true. All the stuff we did during class that I thought was so fun and cool, was probably happening just like that in classes in other schools all over Japan. There was nothing special about my school at all. When I realized that, it suddenly felt like the whole world around me started to fade into a dull gray void. Brushing my teeth and going to sleep at night, waking up and eating breakfast in the morning, that stuff happened all over the place. They were everyday things that everybody was doing. When I thought about it like that, everything became boring. If there's really that many people in the world, then there had to be someone who wasn't ordinary. There had to be someone who was living an interesting life. There just had to be. But why wasn't I that person? So, that's how I felt till I finished elementary school. And then I had another realization. I realized fun things wouldn't come my way just by waiting for them. I thought when I got into junior high, it was time for me to make a change. I'd let the world know I wasn't a girl who was happy sitting around waiting. And I've done my best to become that person. But in the end, nothing happened. More time went by and before I knew it, I was in high school. I thought that something would change. ~ Nagaru Tanigawa, #NFDB
1256:In a private room down the hall, a tired but delighted Cecily was watching her husband with his brand-new son. Cecily had thought that the expression on Tate’s face at their wedding would never be duplicated. But when they placed the tiny little boy in his father’s gowned arms in the delivery room, and he saw his child for the first time, the look on his face was indescribable. Tears welled in his eyes. He’d taken the tiny little fist in his big, dark hand and smoothed over the perfect little fingers and then the tiny little face, seeking resemblances.
“Generations of our families,” he said softly, “all there, in that face.” He’d looked down at his wife with unashamedly wet eyes. “In our son’s face.”
She wiped her own tears away with a corner of the sheet and coaxed Tate’s head down so that she could do the same for him where they were, temporarily, by themselves.
Now she was cleaned up, like their baby, and drowsy as she lay on clean white sheets and watched her husband get acquainted with his firstborn. “Isn’t he beautiful?” he murmured, still awed by the child. “Next time, we have to have a little girl,” he said with a tender smile, “so that she can look like you.”
Her heart felt near to bursting as she stared up at that beloved face, above the equally beloved face of their firstborn.
“My heart is happy when I see you,” she whispered in Lakota.
He chuckled, having momentarily forgotten that he’d taught her how to say it. “Mine is equally happy when I see you,” he replied in English.
She reached out and clasped his big hand with her small one. On the table beside her was a bouquet of roses, red and crisp with a delightful soft perfume. Her eyes traced them, and she remembered the first rose he’d ever given her, when she was seventeen: a beautiful red paper rose that he’d brought her from Japan. Now the roses were real, not imitation. Just as her love for him, and his for her, had become real enough to touch.
He frowned slightly at her expression. “What is it?” he asked softly.
“I was remembering the paper rose you brought me from Japan, just after I went to live with Leta.” She shrugged and smiled self-consciously.
He smiled back. “And now you’re covered in real ones,” he discerned.
She nodded, delighted to see that he understood exactly what she was talking about. But, then, they always had seemed to read each others’ thoughts-never more than now, with the baby who was a living, breathing manifestation of their love. “Yes,” she said contentedly. “The roses are real, now.”
Outside the window, rain was coming down in torrents, silver droplets shattering on the bright green leaves of the bushes. In the room, no one noticed. The baby was sleeping and his parents were watching him, their eyes full of warm, soft dreams. ~ Diana Palmer,#NFDB
1257:Can you say why America is the greatest country in the world?
It’s not the greatest country in the world. That’s my answer… [turns to a panelist] Sharon, the NEA is a loser. Yeah, it accounts for a penny out of our paycheck, but he gets to hit you with it anytime he wants. It doesn’t cost money, it costs votes. It costs airtime and column inches. You know why people don’t like liberals? Because they lose. If liberals are so fucking smart, how come they lose so goddamn always? [turns to another panelist] And with a straight face, you’re gonna tell students that America is so star-spangled awesome that we’re the only ones in the world who have freedom? Canada has freedom. Japan has freedom. The UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia, Belgium has freedom! So, 207 sovereign states in the world, like 180 of them have freedom. [turns to the student who asked the question] And yeah, you… sorority girl. Just in case you accidentally wander into a voting booth one day, there’s some things you should know. One of them is: there’s absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we’re the greatest country in the world. We’re 7th in literacy, 27th in math, 22nd in science, 49th in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, 3rd in median household income, number 4 in labor force and number 4 in exports. We lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real and defense spending, where we spend more than the next 26 countries combined, 25 of whom are allies. Now, none of this is the fault of a 20-year-old college student, but you, nonetheless, are, without a doubt, a member of the worst period generation period ever period, so when you ask what makes us the greatest country in the world, I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about! Yosemite?!
[Silence]
It sure used to be… We stood up for what was right. We fought for moral reason. We passed laws, struck down laws, for moral reason. We waged wars on poverty, not on poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were and we never beat our chest. We built great, big things, made ungodly technological advances, explored the universe, cured diseases and we cultivated the world’s greatest artists AND the world’s greatest economy. We reached for the stars, acted like men. We aspired to intelligence, we didn’t belittle it. It didn’t make us feel inferior. We didn’t identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election and we didn’t scare so easy. We were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed… by great men, men who were revered. First step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one. America is not the greatest country in the world anymore. ~ Aaron Sorkin,#NFDB
1258:The first thing to note about Korean industrial structure is the sheer concentration of Korean industry. Like other Asian economies, there are two levels of organization: individual firms and larger network organizations that unite disparate corporate entities. The Korean network organization is known as the chaebol, represented by the same two Chinese characters as the Japanese zaibatsu and patterned deliberately on the Japanese model. The size of individual Korean companies is not large by international standards. As of the mid-1980s, the Hyundai Motor Company, Korea’s largest automobile manufacturer, was only a thirtieth the size of General Motors, and the Samsung Electric Company was only a tenth the size of Japan’s Hitachi.1 However, these statistics understate their true economic clout because these businesses are linked to one another in very large network organizations. Virtually the whole of the large-business sector in Korea is part of a chaebol network: in 1988, forty-three chaebol (defined as conglomerates with assets in excess of 400 billion won, or US$500 million) brought together some 672 companies.2 If we measure industrial concentration by chaebol rather than individual firm, the figures are staggering: in 1984, the three largest chaebol alone (Samsung, Hyundai, and Lucky-Goldstar) produced 36 percent of Korea’s gross domestic product.3 Korean industry is more concentrated than that of Japan, particularly in the manufacturing sector; the three-firm concentration ratio for Korea in 1980 was 62.0 percent of all manufactured goods, compared to 56.3 percent for Japan.4 The degree of concentration of Korean industry grew throughout the postwar period, moreover, as the rate of chaebol growth substantially exceeded the rate of growth for the economy as a whole. For example, the twenty largest chaebol produced 21.8 percent of Korean gross domestic product in 1973, 28.9 percent in 1975, and 33.2 percent in 1978.5 The Japanese influence on Korean business organization has been enormous. Korea was an almost wholly agricultural society at the beginning of Japan’s colonial occupation in 1910, and the latter was responsible for creating much of the country’s early industrial infrastructure.6 Nearly 700,000 Japanese lived in Korea in 1940, and a similarly large number of Koreans lived in Japan as forced laborers. Some of the early Korean businesses got their start as colonial enterprises in the period of Japanese occupation.7 A good part of the two countries’ émigré populations were repatriated after the war, leading to a considerable exchange of knowledge and experience of business practices. The highly state-centered development strategies of President Park Chung Hee and others like him were formed as a result of his observation of Japanese industrial policy in Korea in the prewar period. ~ Francis Fukuyama, #NFDB
1259:Even if there is no connection between diversity and international influence, some people would argue that immigration brings cultural enrichment. This may seem to be an attractive argument, but the culture of Americans remains almost completely untouched by millions of Hispanic and Asian immigrants. They may have heard of Cinco de Mayo or Chinese New Year, but unless they have lived abroad or have studied foreign affairs, the white inhabitants of Los Angeles are likely to have only the most superficial knowledge of Mexico or China despite the presence of many foreigners.
Nor is it immigrants who introduce us to Cervantes, Puccini, Alexander Dumas, or Octavio Paz. Real high culture crosses borders by itself, not in the back pockets of tomato pickers, refugees, or even the most accomplished immigrants. What has Yo-Yo Ma taught Americans about China? What have we learned from Seiji Ozawa or Ichiro about Japan? Immigration and the transmission of culture are hardly the same thing. Nearly every good-sized American city has an opera company, but that does not require Italian immigrants.
Miami is now nearly 70 percent Hispanic, but what, in the way of authentic culture enrichment, has this brought the city? Are the art galleries, concerts, museums, and literature of Los Angeles improved by diversity? Has the culture of Detroit benefited from a majority-black population? If immigration and diversity bring cultural enrichment, why do whites move out of those very parts of the country that are being “enriched”?
It is true that Latin American immigration has inspired more American school children to study Spanish, but fewer now study French, German, or Latin. If anything, Hispanic immigration reduces what little linguistic diversity is to be found among native-born Americans. [...] [M]any people study Spanish, not because they love Hispanic culture or Spanish literature but for fear they may not be able to work in America unless they speak the language of Mexico.
Another argument in favor of diversity is that it is good for people—especially young people —to come into contact with people unlike themselves because they will come to understand and appreciate each other. Stereotyped and uncomplimentary views about other races or cultures are supposed to crumble upon contact. This, of course, is just another version of the “contact theory” that was supposed to justify school integration. Do ex-cons and the graduates—and numerous dropouts—of Los Angeles high schools come away with a deep appreciation of people of other races? More than half a century ago, George Orwell noted that:
'During the war of 1914-18 the English working class were in contact with foreigners to an extent that is rarely possible. The sole result was that they brought back a hatred of all Europeans, except the Germans, whose courage they admired. ~ Jared Taylor,#NFDB
1260:EARNINGS McDonald's Plans Marketing Push as Profit Slides By Julie Jargon | 436 words Associated Press The burger giant has been struggling to maintain relevance among younger consumers and fill orders quickly in kitchens that have grown overwhelmed with menu items. McDonald's Corp. plans a marketing push to emphasize its fresh-cooked breakfasts as it battles growing competition for the morning meal. Competition at breakfast has heated up recently as Yum Brands Inc.'s Taco Bell entered the business with its new Waffle Taco last month and other rivals have added or discounted breakfast items. McDonald's Chief Executive Don Thompson said it hasn't yet noticed an impact from Taco Bell's breakfast debut, but that the overall increased competition "forces us to focus even more on being aggressive in breakfast." Mr. Thompson's comments came after McDonald's on Tuesday reported that its profit for the first three months of 2014 dropped 5.2% from a year earlier, weaker than analysts' expectations. Comparable sales at U.S. restaurants open more than a year declined 1.7% for the quarter and 0.6% for March, the fifth straight month of declines in the company's biggest market. Global same-store sales rose 0.5% for both the quarter and month. Mr. Thompson acknowledged again that the company has lost relevance with some customers and needs to strengthen its menu offerings. He emphasized Tuesday that McDonald's is focused on stabilizing key markets, including the U.S., Germany, Australia and Japan. The CEO said McDonald's has dominated the fast-food breakfast business for 35 years, and "we don't plan on giving that up." The company plans in upcoming ads to inform customers that it cooks its breakfast, unlike some rivals. "We crack fresh eggs, grill sausage and bacon," Mr. Thompson said. "This is not a microwave deal." Beyond breakfast, McDonald's also plans to boost marketing of core menu items such as Big Macs and french fries, since those core products make up 40% of total sales. To serve customers more quickly, the chain is working to optimize staffing, and is adding new prep tables that let workers more efficiently add new toppings when guests want to customize orders. McDonald's also said it aims to sell more company-owned restaurants outside the U.S. to franchisees. Currently, 81% of its restaurants around the world are franchised. Collecting royalties from franchisees provides a stable source of income for a restaurant company and removes the cost of operating them. McDonald's reported a first-quarter profit of $1.2 billion, or $1.21 a share, down from $1.27 billion, or $1.26 a share, a year earlier. The company partly attributed the decline to the effect of income-tax benefits in the prior year. Total revenue for the quarter edged up 1.4% to $6.7 billion, though costs rose faster, at 2.3%. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters forecast earnings of $1.24 a share on revenue of $6.72 billion. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1261:Man's Injustice Towards Providence
A Thriving Merchant, who no Loss sustained,
In little time a mighty Fortune gain'd.
No Pyrate seiz'd his still returning Freight;
Nor foundring Vessel sunk with its own Weight:
No Ruin enter'd through dissever'd Planks;
No Wreck at Sea, nor in the Publick Banks.
Aloft he sails, above the Reach of Chance,
And do's in Pride, as fast as Wealth, advance.
His Wife too, had her Town and Country-Seat,
And rich in Purse, concludes her Person Great.
A Dutchess wears not so much Gold and Lace;
Then 'tis with Her an undisputed Case,
The finest Petticoat must take the Place.
Her Rooms, anew at ev'ry Christ'ning drest,
Put down the Court, and vex the City-Guest.
Grinning Malottos in true Ermin stare;
The best Japan, and clearest China Ware
Are but as common Delft and English Laquar there.
No Luxury's by either unenjoy'd,
Or cost withheld, tho' awkardly employ'd.
How comes this Wealth? A Country Friend demands,
Who scarce cou'd live on Product of his Lands.
How is it that, when Trading is so bad
That some are Broke, and some with Fears run Mad,
You can in better State yourself maintain,
And your Effects still unimpair'd remain!
My Industry, he cries, is all the Cause;
Sometimes I interlope, and slight the Laws;
I wiser Measures, than my Neighbors, take,
And better speed, who better Bargains make.
I knew, the Smyrna–Fleet wou'd fall a Prey,
And therefore sent no Vessel out that way:
My busy Factors prudently I chuse,
And in streight Bonds their Friends and Kindred noose:
At Home, I to the Publick Sums advance,
Whilst, under-hand in Fee with hostile France,
I care not for your Tourvills, or Du-Barts,
No more than for the Rocks, and Shelves in Charts:
92
My own sufficiency creates my Gain,
Rais'd, and secur'd by this unfailing Brain.
This idle Vaunt had scarcely past his Lips,
When Tydings came, his ill-provided Ships
Some thro' the want of Skill, and some of Care,
Were lost, or back return'd without their Fare.
From bad to worse, each Day his State declin'd,
'Till leaving Town, and Wife, and Debts behind,
To his Acquaintance at the Rural Seat
He Sculks, and humbly sues for a Retreat.
Whence comes this Change, has Wisdom left that Head,
(His Friend demands) where such right Schemes were bred?
What Phrenzy, what Delirium mars the Scull,
Which fill'd the Chests, and was it self so full?
Here interrupting, sadly he Reply'd,
In Me's no Change, but Fate must all Things guide;
To Providence I attribute my Loss.
Vain-glorious Man do's thus the Praise engross,
When Prosp'rous Days around him spread their Beams:
But, if revolv'd to opposite Extreams,
Still his own Sence he fondly will prefer,
And Providence, not He, in his Affairs must Err!
~ Anne Kingsmill Finch,#NFDB
1262:Just about the only serious argument anyone tries to make in favor of diversity echoes Jonathan Alger, a lawyer who has argued before the Supreme Court in favor of racial preferences: “Corporations have to compete internationally,” he says, and “cross-cultural competency is a key skill in the work force.”
This argument assumes that people get along best with people like themselves, that Koreans, for example, can do business most effectively with other Koreans. Presumably, if the United States has a large population of Koreans they will be a bridge between Korea and the United States. For that to work, however, Korean-Americans should not fully assimilate because if they do, they will lose the qualities that make them an asset. America should give up the ideal of Americanization that, in a few generations, made Englishmen, Dutchmen, Germans, Swedes, the Irish, and all other Europeans essentially indistinguishable. Do we really want to give up the idea of assimilation? Or should only racial minorities give up on assimilation?
More to the point, is a diverse population really an advantage in trade or international affairs? Japan is one of the most racially homogeneous nations. It would be hard to find a country that so clearly practices the opposite of American-style diversity, but it is one of the most successful trading nations on earth. If diversity were a key advantage, Brazil, Indonesia, Sudan, Malaysia, and Lebanon would be world leaders in trade.
Other great trading nations—Taiwan, Korea and China—are, if anything, even more closed and exclusionist than Japan. Germany is likewise a successful trading nation, but its trade surpluses cannot be attributed to cultural or racial diversity. Only since the 1960s has it had a large non-German minority of Turks who came as guest workers, and there is no evidence that Turks have helped Germany become more of a world presence or even a better trade partner with Turkey.
The world’s consumers care about price and quality, not the race or nationality of the factory worker. American corporations boast about workforces that “look like America,” but they are often beaten in their own market by companies whose workforces look like Yokohama or Shanghai.
If we really took seriously the idea that “cross-cultural competence” was crucially important, we would adjust the mix of immigrants accordingly. We might question the wisdom of Haitian immigration, for example, since Haiti is a small, poor country that is never likely to be an important trade partner. And do 32 million Mexican-Americans help our trade relations with the world—or even with Mexico? Canada is our number-one trading partner. Should we therefore encourage immigration from Canada? No one ever talks about immigration in these terms because at some level everyone understands that diversity has nothing to do with trade or influence in the world. The “cross-cultural competence” argument is artificial. ~ Jared Taylor,#NFDB
1263:The top surface of the computer is smooth except for a fisheye lens, a polished
glass dome with a purplish optical coating. Whenever Hiro is using the machine,
this lens emerges and clicks into place, its base flush with the surface of the
computer. The neighborhood loglo is curved and foreshortened on its surface.
Hiro finds it erotic. This is partly because he hasn't been properly laid in
several weeks. But there's more to it. Hiro's father, who was stationed in
Japan for many years, was obsessed with cameras. He kept bringing them back
from his stints in the Far East, encased in many protective layers, so that when
he took them out to show Hiro, it was like watching an exquisite striptease as
they emerged from all that black leather and nylon, zippers and straps. And
once the lens was finally exposed, pure geometric equation made real, so
powerful and vulnerable at once, Hiro could only think it was like nuzzling
through skirts and lingerie and outer labia and inner labia. . . . It made
him feel naked and weak and brave.
The lens can see half of the universe -- the half that is above the computer,
which includes most of Hiro. In this way, it can generally keep track of where
Hiro is and what direction he's looking in.
Down inside the computer are three lasers -- a red one, a green one, and a blue
one. They are powerful enough to make a bright light but not powerful enough to
burn through the back of your eyeball and broil your brain, fry your frontals,
lase your lobes. As everyone learned in elementary school, these three colors
of light can be combined, with different intensities, to produce any color that
Hiro's eye is capable of seeing.
In this way, a narrow beam of any color can be shot out of the innards of the
computer, up through that fisheye lens, in any direction. Through the use of
electronic mirrors inside the computer, this beam is made to sweep back and
forth across the lenses of Hiro's goggles, in much the same way as the electron
beam in a television paints the inner surface of the eponymous Tube. The
resulting image hangs in space in front of Hiro's view of Reality.
By drawing a slightly different image in front of each eye, the image can be
made three-dimensional. By changing the image seventy-two times a second, it
can be made to move. By drawing the moving three-dimensional image at a
resolution of 2K pixels on a side, it can be as sharp as the eye can perceive,
and by pumping stereo digital sound through the little earphones, the moving 3-D
pictures can have a perfectly realistic soundtrack.
So Hiro's not actually here at all. He's in a computer-generated universe that
his computer is drawing onto his goggles and pumping into his earphones. In the
lingo, this imaginary place is known as the Metaverse. Hiro spends a lot of
time in the Metaverse. It beats the shit out of the U-Stor-It. ~ Neal Stephenson,#NFDB
1264:Old Japan
In old Japan, by creek and bay,
The blue plum-blossoms blow,
Where birds with sea-blue plumage gay
Through sea-blue branches go:
Dragons are coiling down below
Like dragons on a fan;
And pig-tailed sailors lurching slow
Through streets of old Japan.
There, in the dim blue death of day
Where white tea roses grow,
Petals and scents are strewn astray
Till night be sweet enow;
Then lovers wander whispering low
As lovers only can,
Where rosy paper lanterns glow
Through streets of old Japan.
From Wonderland to Yea-or-Nay
The junks with painted prow
Dream on the purple water-way
Nor ever meet a foe;
Though still, with stiff mustachio
And crooked ataghan,
Their pirates guard with pomp and show
The ships of old Japan.
How far beyond the dawning day
The glories ebb and flow,
Where still the wonder-children play,
The witches mop and mow;
How far, how far, no chart may show,
The heart of mortal man,
The light, the splendour, and the glow
That once were old Japan!
That land is very far away
We lost it long ago!
In old Japan the grass is grey,
64
The trees are white with snow;
The sea-blue bird became a crow,
The lizards leapt and ran,
No dragon mourned that overthrow,
The dream of old Japan.
In old Japan, at windows grey,
Where scents of opium flow,
Strange smiling faces, white as clay,
Nod idly to and fro;
There life and death may come and go,
With blessing or with ban,
And still no better gift bestow
Than this, in old Japan.
And now the wistful years delay
To wonder why and how
The blue fantastic twisted day,
When Emperor Hwang or Chow
Dreamed in the colour and the glow
That light the heart of man,
Could e’er such hours of flowers bestrow
Through streets of old Japan.
In old Japan they used to play
A game forgotten now;
They filled a nacre-coloured tray
With perfumes in a row,
Breathing of all the flowers that blow
Where dark-blue rivers ran,
Like those upon the plates, you know,
Through fields of old Japan;
Then with silver spatula
The mandarins would go
To test the scented dust and say,
With many a hum and ho,
What flower of all the flowers that grow
For joy of maid or man,
Conceived the scents that puzzled so
The brains of old Japan.
65
In old Japan, where poets pray
With white uplifted brow,
What mystic floating scents delay
Below the purple bough,
O’er plains no scythe of death may mow,
Nor power of reason scan?
What mandarin musicians know
The flower of old Japan?
There, in the dim blue death of day
Where white tea-roses grow,
Petals and scents are strewn astray
Till night be sweet enow,
Then lovers wander, whispering low
As lovers only can,
Where rosy paper lanterns glow
Through streets of old Japan.
~ Alfred Noyes,#NFDB
1265:Religion, with its metaphysical error of absolute guilt, dominated the broadest, the cosmic realm. From there, it infiltrated the subordinate realms of biological, social and moral existence with its errors of the absolute and inherited guilt. Humanity, split up into millions of factions, groups, nations and states, lacerated itself with mutual accusations. "The Greeks are to blame," the Romans said, and "The Romans are to blame," the Greeks said. So they warred against one another. "The ancient Jewish priests are to blame," the early Christians shouted. "The Christians have preached the wrong Messiah," the Jews shouted and crucified the harmless Jesus. "The Muslims and Turks and Huns are guilty," the crusaders screamed. "The witches and heretics are to blame," the later Christians howled for centuries, murdering, hanging, torturing and burning heretics. It remains to investigate the sources from which the Jesus legend derives its grandeur, emotional power and perseverance.
Let us continue to stay outside this St. Vitus dance. The longer we look around, the crazier it seems. Hundreds of minor patriarchs, self-proclaimed kings and princes, accused one another of this or that sin and made war, scorched the land, brought famine and epidemics to the populations. Later, this became known as "history." And the historians did not doubt the rationality of this history.
Gradually the common people appeared on the scene. "The Queen is to blame," the people's representatives shouted, and beheaded the Queen. Howling, the populace danced around the guillotine. From the ranks of the people arose Napoleon. "The Austrians, the Prussians, the Russians are to blame," it was now said. "Napoleon is to blame," came the reply. "The machines are to blame!" the weavers screamed, and "The lumpenproletariat is to blame," sounded back. "The Monarchy is to blame, long live the Constitution!" the burgers shouted. "The middle classes and the Constitution are to blame; wipe them out; long live the Dictatorship of the Proletariat," the proletarian dictators shout, and "The Russians are to blame," is hurled back. "Germany is to blame," the Japanese and the Italians shouted in 1915. "England is to blame," the fathers of the proletarians shouted in 1939. And "Germany is to blame," the self-same fathers shouted in 1942. "Italy, Germany and Japan are to blame," it was said in 1940.
It is only by keeping strictly outside this inferno that one can be amazed that the human animal continues to shriek "Guilty!" without doubting its own sanity, without even once asking about the origin of this guilt. Such mass psychoses have an origin and a function. Only human beings who are forced to hide something catastrophic are capable of erring so consistently and punishing so relentlessly any attempt at clarifying such errors. ~ Wilhelm Reich,#NFDB
1266:What are the implications of ethnic identity for multi-racial and multi-ethnic societies? Tatu Vanhanen of the University of Tampere, Finland, has probably researched the effects of ethnic diversity more systematically than anyone else. In a massive, book-length study, he measured ethnic diversity and levels of conflict in 148 countries, and found correlations in the 0.5 to 0.9 range for the two variables, depending on how the variables were defined and measured. Homogeneous countries like Japan and Iceland show very low levels of conflict, while highly diverse countries like Lebanon and Sudan are wracked with strife.
Prof. Vanhanen found tension in all multi-ethnic societies: “Interest conflicts between ethnic groups are inevitable because ethnic groups are genetic kinship groups and because the struggle for existence concerns the survival of our own genes through our own and our relatives’ descendants.” Prof. Vanhanen also found that economic and political institutions make no difference; wealthy, democratic countries suffer from sectarian strife as much as poor, authoritarian ones: “Ethnic nepotism belongs to human nature and . . . it is independent from the level of socioeconomic development (modernization) and also from the degree of democratization.”
Others have argued that democracy is particularly vulnerable to ethnic tensions while authoritarian regimes like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or Tito’s Yugoslavia can give the impression of holding it in check. One expert writing in Foreign Affairs explained that for democracy to work “the party or group that loses has to trust the new majority and believe that its basic interests will still be protected and that there is nothing to fear from a change in power.” He wrote that this was much less likely when opposing parties represent different races or ethnicities.
The United Nations found that from 1989 to 1992 there were 82 conflicts that had resulted in at least 1,000 deaths each. Of these, no fewer than 79, or 96 percent, were ethnic or religious conflicts that took place within the borders of recognized states. Only three were cross-border conflicts.
Wars between nations are usually ethnic conflicts as well. Internal ethnic conflict has very serious consequences. As J. Philippe Rushton has argued, “The politics of ethnic identity are increasingly replacing the politics of class as the major threat to the stability of nations.”
One must question the wisdom of then-president Bill Clinton’s explanation for the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia: “[T]he principle we and our allies have been fighting for in the Balkans is the principle of multi-ethnic, tolerant, inclusive democracy. We have been fighting against the idea that statehood must be based entirely on ethnicity.”
That same year, the American supreme commander of NATO, Wesley Clark, was even more direct: “There is no place in modern Europe for ethnically pure states. That’s a 19th century idea and we are trying to transition into the 21st century, and we are going to do it with multi-ethnic states. ~ Jared Taylor,#NFDB
1267:Why, all our art treasures of to-day are only the dug-up commonplaces of three or four hundred years ago. I wonder if there is real intrinsic beauty in the old soup-plates, beer-mugs, and candle-snuffers that we prize so now, or if it is only the halo of age glowing around them that gives them their charms in our eyes. The “old blue” that we hang about our walls as ornaments were the common every-day household utensils of a few centuries ago; and the pink shepherds and the yellow shepherdesses that we hand round now for all our friends to gush over, and pretend they understand, were the unvalued mantel-ornaments that the mother of the eighteenth century would have given the baby to suck when he cried. Will it be the same in the future? Will the prized treasures of to-day always be the cheap trifles of the day before? Will rows of our willow-pattern dinner-plates be ranged above the chimneypieces of the great in the years 2000 and odd? Will the white cups with the gold rim and the beautiful gold flower inside (species unknown), that our Sarah Janes now break in sheer light-heartedness of spirit, be carefully mended, and stood upon a bracket, and dusted only by the lady of the house? That china dog that ornaments the bedroom of my furnished lodgings. It is a white dog. Its eyes blue. Its nose is a delicate red, with spots. Its head is painfully erect, its expression is amiability carried to verge of imbecility. I do not admire it myself. Considered as a work of art, I may say it irritates me. Thoughtless friends jeer at it, and even my landlady herself has no admiration for it, and excuses its presence by the circumstance that her aunt gave it to her. But in 200 years’ time it is more than probable that that dog will be dug up from somewhere or other, minus its legs, and with its tail broken, and will be sold for old china, and put in a glass cabinet. And people will pass it round, and admire it. They will be struck by the wonderful depth of the colour on the nose, and speculate as to how beautiful the bit of the tail that is lost no doubt was. We, in this age, do not see the beauty of that dog. We are too familiar with it. It is like the sunset and the stars: we are not awed by their loveliness because they are common to our eyes. So it is with that china dog. In 2288 people will gush over it. The making of such dogs will have become a lost art. Our descendants will wonder how we did it, and say how clever we were. We shall be referred to lovingly as “those grand old artists that flourished in the nineteenth century, and produced those china dogs.” The “sampler” that the eldest daughter did at school will be spoken of as “tapestry of the Victorian era,” and be almost priceless. The blue-and-white mugs of the present-day roadside inn will be hunted up, all cracked and chipped, and sold for their weight in gold, and rich people will use them for claret cups; and travellers from Japan will buy up all the “Presents from Ramsgate,” and “Souvenirs of Margate,” that may have escaped destruction, and take them back to Jedo as ancient English curios. ~ Jerome K Jerome, #NFDB
1268:There are other problems more closely related to the question of culture. The poor fit between large scale and Korea’s familistic tendencies has probably been a net drag on efficiency. The culture has slowed the introduction of professional managers in situations where, in contrast to small-scale Chinese businesses, they are desperately needed. Further, the relatively low-trust character of Korean culture does not allow Korean chaebol to exploit the same economies of scale and scope in their network organization as do the Japanese keiretsu. That is, the chaebol resembles a traditional American conglomerate more than a keiretsu network: it is burdened with a headquarters staff and a centralized decision-making apparatus for the chaebol as a whole. In the early days of Korean industrialization, there may have been some economic rationale to horizontal expansion of the chaebol into unfamiliar lines of business, since this was a means of bringing modern management techniques to a traditional economy. But as the economy matured, the logic behind linking companies in unrelated businesses with no obvious synergies became increasingly questionable. The chaebol’s scale may have given them certain advantages in raising capital and in cross-subsidizing businesses, but one would have to ask whether this represented a net advantage to the Korean economy once the agency and other costs of a centralized organization were deducted from the balance. (In any event, the bulk of chaebol financing has come from the government at administered interest rates.) Chaebol linkages may actually serve to hold back the more competitive member companies by embroiling them in the affairs of slow-growing partners. For example, of all the varied members of the Samsung conglomerate, only Samsung Electronics is a truly powerful global player. Yet that company has been caught up for several years in the group-wide management reorganization that began with the passing of the conglomerate’s leadership from Samsung’s founder to his son in the late 1980s.72 A different class of problems lies in the political and social realms. Wealth is considerably more concentrated in Korea than in Taiwan, and the tensions caused by disparities in wealth are evident in the uneasy history of Korean labor relations. While aggregate growth in the two countries has been similar over the past four decades, the average Taiwanese worker has a higher standard of living than his Korean counterpart. Government officials were not oblivious to the Taiwanese example, and beginning in about 1981 they began to reverse somewhat their previous emphasis on large-scale companies by reducing their subsidies and redirecting them to small- and medium-sized businesses. By this time, however, large corporations had become so entrenched in their market sectors that they became very difficult to dislodge. The culture itself, which might have preferred small family businesses if left to its own devices, had begun to change in subtle ways; as in Japan, a glamour now attached to working in the large business sector, guaranteed it a continuing inflow of Korea’s best and brightest young people.73 ~ Francis Fukuyama, #NFDB
1269:Or, in your case, as wide. Wait. Did you just say Gandalf?”
“He is the founder of our order, and the first of the Five Warlocks. He comes from afar across the Western Ocean, from Easter Island, or perhaps from Japan.”
“No, I think he comes from the mind of a story writer. An old-fashioned Roman Catholic from the days just before First Space Age. Unless I am confusing him with the guy who wrote about Talking Animal Land? With the Cowardly Lion who gets killed by a Wicked White Witch? I never read the text, I watched the comic.”
“Oh, you err so! The Witches, we have preserved this lore since the time of the Fall of the Giants, whom we overthrew and destroyed. The tale is this: C. S. Lewis and Arthur C. Clarke were led by the Indian Maiden Sacagawea to the Pacific Ocean and back, stealing the land from the Red Man and selling them blankets impregnated with smallpox. It was called the Lewis and Clarke Expedition. When they reached the Pacific, they set out in the Dawn Treader to find the sea route to India, where the sacred river Alph runs through caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea. They came to the Last Island, called Ramandu or Selidor, where the World Serpent guards the gateway to the Land of the Dead, and there they found Gandalf, returned alive from the underworld, and stripped of all his powers. He came again to mortal lands in North America to teach the Simon Families. The Chronicle is a symbolic retelling of their journey. It is one of our Holy Books.”
“Your Holy Books were written for children by Englishmen.”
“The gods wear many masks! If the Continuum chooses the lips of a White Man to be the lips through which the Continuum speaks, who are we to question? Tolkien was not Roman. He was of a race called the hobbits, Homo floresiensis, discovered on an isle in Indonesia, and he would have lived in happiness, had not the White Man killed him with DDT. So there were no Roman Catholics involved. May the Earth curse their memory forever! May they be forgotten forever!”
“Hm. Earth is big. Maybe it can do both. You know about Rome? It perished in the Ecpyrosis, somewhat before your time.”
“How could we not? The Pope in Rome created the Giants, whom the Witches rose up against and overthrew. Theirs was the masculine religion, aggressive, intolerant, and forbidding abortion. Ours is the feminine religion, peaceful and life-affirming and all-loving, and we offer the firstborn child to perish on our sacred fires. The First Coven was organized to destroy them like rats! When Rome was burned, we danced, and their one god was cast down and fled weeping on his pierced feet, and our many gods rose up. My ancestors hunted the Christians like stoats, and when we caught them, we burned them slowly, as they once did of us in Salem. What ill you do is returned to you tenfold!”
“Hm. Are you willing to work with a Giant? I saw one in the pit, and saw the jumbo-sized coffin they pried him out from. What if he is a baptized Christian? Most of them were, since they were created by my pet pope and raised by nuns.”
“All Christians must perish! Such is our code.”
“Your code is miscoded.”
“What of the Unforgettable Hate?”
“Forget about it. ~ John C Wright,#NFDB
1270:The contemporary Christian Church, precisely, has understood them in this' 'wrong way, to the letter, 'like the Jews,' exoterically, not esoterically. Nevertheless to say 'like the Jews' is an error. One would have to say 'as the Jews want.' Because they also possess an exotericism, for their masses, represented by the Torah and Talmud, and an esotericism, in the Cabala (which means: 'Received Tradition'), in the Zohar ('brightness'), the Merkaba or Chariot being the most secret part of the Cabala which only initiated rabbis know and use as the powerful tool of their magic. We have already said that the Cabala reached them from elsewhere, like everything else, in the Middle Ages, even though they tell us otherwise, using and transforming it in concordance with their Archetype. The Hasidim, from Poland, represent an exclusively esoteric sect of Judaism.
Islam also has its esoteric magic, represented by Sufism and the sect of the Assassins, Hassanists, oflran. They interpret the Koran symbolically. And it was because of contact with this sect of the 'Old Man of the Mountain' that the Templars felt compelled to secede more and more from the direction of Rome, centering themselves in their Esoteric Kristianity and Mystery of the Gral. This was also why Rome destroyed them, like the esoteric Cathars (katharos = pure in Greek), the Bogomils, the Manichees and the gnostics.
In the Church of Rome, called Catholic, there only remains a soulless ritual of the Mass, as a liturgical shell that no longer reaches the Symbol, which no longer touches it, no longer puts it into action. The Nordic contribution has been lost, destroyed by prejudice and the ethnological persecution of Nordicism, Germanism and the complete surrender to Judaism.
Zen Buddhism preserves the esotericism of Buddha. In Japan Shinto and Zen are practiced by a racially superior warrior caste, the Samurai. The most esoteric side of Hinduism is found in Tantrism, especially in the Kaula or Kula Order.
So understood, esotericism is what goes beyond the exterior form and the masses, the physical, and puts an elite in contact with invisible superior forces. In my case, the condition that paralysed me in the midst of dreaming and left me without means to influence the phenomena. The visible is symbol of invisible forces (Archetypes, Gods). By means of an esoteric knowledge, of an initiation in this knowledge, a hierarchic minority can make contact with these invisible forces, being able to act on the Symbol, dynamizing and controlling the physical phenomena that incarnate them. In my case: to come to control the involuntary process which, without knowing how, was controlling me, to be able to guide it, to check or avoid it. Jung referred to this when he said 'if someone wisely faces the Archetype, in whatever place in the world, he acquires universal validity because the Archetype is one and indivisible'.
And the means to reach this spiritual world, 'on the other side of the mirror,' is Magic, Rite, Ritual, Ceremony. All religions have possessed them, even the Christian, as we have said. And the Rite is not something invented by humans but inspired by 'those from beyond,' Jung would say by the Collective Unconscious. ~ Miguel Serrano,#NFDB
1271:Apotheosis ::: One of the most powerful and beloved of the Bodhisattvas of the Mahayana Buddhism of Tibet, China, and Japan is the Lotus Bearer, Avalokiteshvara, "The Lord Looking Down in Pity," so called because he regards with compassion all sentient creatures suffering the evils of existence. To him goes the millionfold repeated prayer of the prayer wheels and temple gongs of Tibet: Om mani padme hum, "The jewel is in the lotus." To him go perhaps more prayers per minute than to any single divinity known to man; for when, during his final life on earth as a human being, he shattered for himself the bounds of the last threshold (which moment opened to him the timelessness of the void beyond the frustrating mirage-enigmas of the named and bounded cosmos), he paused: he made a vow that before entering the void he would bring all creatures without exception to enlightenment; and since then he has permeated the whole texture of existence with the divine grace of his assisting presence, so that the least prayer addressed to him, throughout the vast spiritual empire of the Buddha, is graciously heard. Under differing forms he traverses the ten thousand worlds, and appears in the hour of need and prayer. He reveals himself in human form with two arms, in superhuman forms with four arms, or with six, or twelve, or a thousand, and he holds in one of his left hands the lotus of the world.
Like the Buddha himself, this godlike being is a pattern of the divine state to which the human hero attains who has gone beyond the last terrors of ignorance. "When the envelopment of consciousness has been annihilated, then he becomes free of all fear, beyond the reach of change." This is the release potential within us all, and which anyone can attain-through herohood; for, as we read: "All things are Buddha-things"; or again (and this is the other way of making the same statement) : "All beings are without self."
The world is filled and illumined by, but does not hold, the Bodhisattva ("he whose being is enlightenment"); rather, it is he who holds the world, the lotus. Pain and pleasure do not enclose him, he encloses them-and with profound repose. And since he is what all of us may be, his presence, his image, the mere naming of him, helps. "He wears a garland of eight thousand rays, in which is seen fully reflected a state of perfect beauty.
The color of his body is purple gold. His palms have the mixed color of five hundred lotuses, while each finger tip has eighty-four thousand signet-marks, and each mark eighty-four thousand colors; each color has eighty-four thousand rays which are soft and mild and shine over all things that exist. With these jewel hands he draws and embraces all beings. The halo surrounding his head is studded with five hundred Buddhas, miraculously transformed, each attended by five hundred Bodhisattvas, who are attended, in turn, by numberless gods. And when he puts his feet down to the ground, the flowers of diamonds and jewels that are scattered cover everything in all directions. The color of his face is gold. While in his towering crown of gems stands a Buddha, two hundred and fifty miles high." - Amitayur-Dhyana Sutra, 19; ibid., pp. 182-183. ~ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Apotheosis,#NFDB
1272:Liberal democracy and capitalism remain the essential, indeed the only, framework for the political and economic organization of modern societies. Rapid economic modernization is closing the gap between many former Third World countries and the industrialized North. With European integration and North American free trade, the web of economic ties within each region will thicken, and sharp cultural boundaries will become increasingly fuzzy. Implementation of the free trade regime of the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) will further erode interregional boundaries. Increased global competition has forced companies across cultural boundaries to try to adopt “best-practice” techniques like lean manufacturing from whatever source they come from. The worldwide recession of the 1990s has put great pressure on Japanese and German companies to scale back their culturally distinctive and paternalistic labor policies in favor of a more purely liberal model. The modern communications revolution abets this convergence by facilitating economic globalization and by propagating the spread of ideas at enormous speed. But in our age, there can be substantial pressures for cultural differentiation even as the world homogenizes in other respects. Modern liberal political and economic institutions not only coexist with religion and other traditional elements of culture but many actually work better in conjunction with them. If many of the most important remaining social problems are essentially cultural in nature and if the chief differences among societies are not political, ideological, or even institutional but rather cultural, it stands to reason that societies will hang on to these areas of cultural distinctiveness and that the latter will become all the more salient and important in the years to come. Awareness of cultural difference will be abetted, paradoxically, by the same communications technology that has made the global village possible. There is a strong liberal faith that people around the world are basically similar under the surface and that greater communications will bring deeper understanding and cooperation. In many instances, unfortunately, that familiarity breeds contempt rather than sympathy. Something like this process has been going on between the United States and Asia in the past decade. Americans have come to realize that Japan is not simply a fellow capitalist democracy but has rather different ways of practicing both capitalism and democracy. One result, among others, is sthe emergence of the revisionist school among specialists on Japan, who are less sympathetic to Tokyo and argue for tougher trade policies. And Asians are made vividly aware through the media of crime, drugs, family breakdown, and other American social problems, and many have decided that the United States is not such an attractive model after all. Lee Kwan Yew, former prime minister of Singapore, has emerged as a spokesman for a kind of Asian revisionism on the United States, which argues that liberal democracy is not an appropriate political model for the Confucian societies.10 The very convergence of major institutions makes peoples all the more intent on preserving those elements of distinctiveness they continue to possess. ~ Francis Fukuyama, #NFDB
1273:In short, it was entirely natural that the newts stopped being a sensation, even though there were now as many as a hundred million of them; the public interest they had excited had been the interest of a novelty. They still appeared now and then in films (Sally and Andy, the Two Good Salamanders) and on the cabaret stage where singers endowed with an especially bad voice came on in the role of newts with rasping voices and atrocious grammar, but as soon as the newts had become a familiar and large-scale phenomenon the problems they presented, so to speak, were of a different character. (13) Although the great newt sensation quickly evaporated it was replaced with something that was somewhat more solid - the Newt Question. Not for the first time in the history of mankind, the most vigorous activist in the Newt Question was of course a woman. This was Mme. Louise Zimmermann, the manager of a guest house for girls in Lausanne, who, with exceptional and boundless energy, propagated this noble maxim around the world: Give the newts a proper education! She would tirelessly draw attention both to the newts' natural abilities and to the danger that might arise for human civilisation if the salamanders weren't carefully taught to reason and to understand morals, but it was long before she met with anything but incomprehension from the public. (14) "Just as the Roman culture disappeared under the onslaught of the barbarians our own educated civilisation will disappear if it is allowed to become no more than an island in a sea of beings that are spiritually enslaved, our noble ideals cannot be allowed to become dependent on them," she prophesied at six thousand three hundred and fifty seven lectures that she delivered at women's institutes all over Europe, America, Japan, China, Turkey and elsewhere. "If our culture is to survive there must be education for all. We cannot have any peace to enjoy the gifts of our civilisation nor the fruits of our culture while all around us there are millions and millions of wretched and inferior beings artificially held down in the state of animals. Just as the slogan of the nineteenth century was 'Freedom for Women', so the slogan of our own age must be 'GIVE THE NEWTS A PROPER EDUCATION!'" And on she went. Thanks to her eloquence and her incredible persistence, Mme. Louise Zimmermann mobilised women all round the world and gathered sufficient funds to enable her to found the First Newt Lyceum at Beaulieu (near Nice), where the tadpoles of salamanders working in Marseilles and Toulon were instructed in French language and literature, rhetoric, public behaviour, mathematics and cultural history. (15) The Girls' School for Newts in Menton was slightly less successful, as the staple courses in music, diet and cookery and fine handwork (which Mme. Zimmermann insisted on for primarily pedagogical reasons) met with a remarkable lack of enthusiasm, if not with a stubborn hostility among its young students. In contrast with this, though, the first public examinations for young newts was such an instant and startling success that they were quickly followed by the establishment of the Marine Polytechnic for Newts at Cannes and the Newts' University at Marseilles with the support of the society for the care and protection of animals; it was at this university that the first newt was awarded a doctorate of law. ~ Karel apek, #NFDB
1274:War
By the Nile, the sacred river,
I can see the captive hordes,
Strain beneath the lash and quiver
At the long papyrus cords,
While in granite rapt and solemn,
Rising over roof and column,
Amen-hotep dreams, or Ramses,
Lord of Lords.
I can hear the trumpets waken
For a victory old and far–
Carchemish or Kadesh taken–
I can see the conqueror's car
Bearing down some Hittite valley,
Where the bowmen break and sally,
Sargina or Esarhaddon,
Grim with war!
From the mountain streams that sweeten
Indus, to the Spanish foam,
I can feel the broad earth beaten
By the serried tramp of Rome;
Through whatever foes environ
Onward with the might of iron–
Veni, vidi; veni vici–
Crashing home!
I can see the kings grow pallid
With astonished fear and hate,
As the hosts of Amr or Khaled
On their cities fall like fate;
Like the heat-wind from its prison
In the desert burst and risen–
La ilaha illah 'llahu–
God is great!
I can hear the iron rattle,
I can see the arrows sting
In some far-off northern battle,
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Where the long swords sweep and swing;
I can hear the scalds declaiming,
I can see their eyeballs flaming,
Gathered in a frenzied circle
Round the king.
I can hear the horn of Uri
Roaring in the hills enorm;
Kindled at its brazen fury,
I can see the clansmen form;
In the dawn in misty masses,
Pouring from the silent passes
Over Granson or Morgarten
Like the storm.
On the lurid anvil ringing
To some slow fantastic plan,
I can hear the sword-smith singing
In the heart of old Japan–
Till the cunning blade grows tragic
With his malice and his magic–
Tenka tairan! Tenka tairan!
War to man!
Where a northern river charges
From the murky forest marges,
Round a broken palisade,
I can see the red men leaping,
See the sword of Daulac sweeping,
And the ghostly forms of heroes
Fall and fade.
I can feel the modern thunder
Of the cannon beat and blaze,
When the lines of men go under
On your proudest battle-days;
Through the roar I hear the lifting
Of the bloody chorus drifting
Round the burning mill at Valmy–
Marseillaise!
I can see the ocean rippled
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With the driving shot like rain,
While the hulls are crushed and crippled,
And the guns are piled with slain;
O'er the blackened broad sea-meadow
Drifts a tall and titan shadow,
And the cannon of Trafalgar
Startle Spain.
Still the tides of fight are booming,
And the barren blood is spilt;
Still the banners are up-looming,
And the hands are on the hilt;
But the old world waxes wiser,
From behind the bolted visor
It descries at last the horror
And the guilt.
Yet the eyes are dim, nor wholly
Open to the golden gleam,
And the brute surrenders slowly
To the godhead and the dream.
From his cage of bar and girder,
Still at moments mad with murder,
Leaps the tiger, and his demon
Rules supreme.
One more war with fire and famine
Gathers–I can hear its cries–
And the years of might and Mammon
Perish in a world's demise;
When the strength of man is shattered,
And the powers of earth are scattered,
From beneath the ghastly ruin
Peace shall rise!
~ Archibald Lampman,#NFDB
1275:Dr. Chanter, in his brilliant History of Human Thought in the Twentieth Century, has made the suggestion that only a very small proportion of people are capable of acquiring new ideas of political or social behaviour after they are twenty-five years old. On the other hand, few people become directive in these matters until they are between forty and fifty. Then they prevail for twenty years or more. The conduct of public affairs therefore is necessarily twenty years or more behind the living thought of the times. This is what Dr. Chanter calls the "delayed
realisation of ideas".
In the less hurried past this had not been of any great importance, but in the violent crises of the Revolutionary Period it became a primary fact. It is evident now that whatever the emergency, however obvious the new problem before our species in the nineteen-twenties, it was necessary for the whole generation that had learned nothing and could learn nothing from the Great War and its sequelae, to die out before any rational handling of world affairs could even begin. The cream of the youth of the war years had been killed; a stratum of men already middle-aged remained in control, whose ideas had already set before the Great War. It was, says Chanter, an inescapable phase. The world of the Frightened Thirties and the Brigand Forties was under the dominion of a generation of unteachable, obstinately obstructive men, blinded men, miseducating, misleading the baffled younger people for completely superseded ends. If they could have had their way, they would have blinded the whole world for ever. But the blinding was inadequate, and by the Fifties all this generation and its teachings and traditions were passing away, like a smoke-screen blown aside.
Before a few years had passed it was already incredible that in the twenties and thirties of the twentieth century the whole political life of the world was still running upon the idea of competitive sovereign empires and states. Men of quite outstanding intelligence were still planning and scheming for the "hegemony" of Britain or France or Germany or Japan; they were still moving their armies and navies and air forces and making their combinations and alliances upon the dissolving chess-board of terrestrial reality. Nothing happened as they had planned it; nothing worked out as they desired; but still with a stupefying inertia they persisted. They launched armies, they starved and massacred populations. They were like a veterinary surgeon who suddenly finds he is operating upon a human being, and with a sort of blind helplessness cuts and slashes more and more desperately, according to the best equestrian rules. The history of European diplomacy between 1914 and 1944 seems now so consistent a record of incredible insincerity that it stuns the modern mind. At the time it seemed rational behaviour. It did not seem insincere. The biographical material of the period -- and these governing-class people kept themselves in countenance very largely by writing and reading each other's biographies -- the collected letters, the collected speeches, the sapient observations of the leading figures make tedious reading, but they enable the intelligent student to realise the persistence of small-society values in that swiftly expanding scene.
Those values had to die out. There was no other way of escaping from them, and so, slowly and horribly, that phase of the moribund sovereign states concluded. ~ H G Wells,#NFDB
1276:Geopolitics is ultimately the study of the balance between options and limitations. A country's geography determines in large part what vulnerabilities it faces and what tools it holds.
"Countries with flat tracks of land -- think Poland or Russia -- find building infrastructure easier and so become rich faster, but also find themselves on the receiving end of invasions. This necessitates substantial standing armies, but the very act of attempting to gain a bit of security automatically triggers angst and paranoia in the neighbors.
"Countries with navigable rivers -- France and Argentina being premier examples -- start the game with some 'infrastructure' already baked in. Such ease of internal transport not only makes these countries socially unified, wealthy, and cosmopolitan, but also more than a touch self-important. They show a distressing habit of becoming overimpressed with themselves -- and so tend to overreach.
"Island nations enjoy security -- think the United Kingdom and Japan -- in part because of the physical separation from rivals, but also because they have no choice but to develop navies that help them keep others away from their shores. Armed with such tools, they find themselves actively meddling in the affairs of countries not just within arm's reach, but half a world away.
"In contrast, mountain countries -- Kyrgyzstan and Bolivia, to pick a pair -- are so capital-poor they find even securing the basics difficult, making them largely subject to the whims of their less-mountainous neighbors.
"It's the balance of these restrictions and empowerments that determine both possibilities and constraints, which from my point of view makes it straightforward to predict what most countries will do:
· The Philippines' archipelagic nature gives it the physical stand-off of islands without the navy, so in the face of a threat from a superior country it will prostrate itself before any naval power that might come to its aid.
· Chile's population center is in a single valley surrounded by mountains. Breaching those mountains is so difficult that the Chileans often find it easier to turn their back on the South American continent and interact economically with nations much further afield.
· The Netherlands benefits from a huge portion of European trade because it controls the mouth of the Rhine, so it will seek to unite the Continent economically to maximize its economic gain while bringing in an external security guarantor to minimize threats to its independence.
· Uzbekistan sits in the middle of a flat, arid pancake and so will try to expand like syrup until it reaches a barrier it cannot pass. The lack of local competition combined with regional water shortages adds a sharp, brutal aspect to its foreign policy.
· New Zealand is a temperate zone country with a huge maritime frontage beyond the edge of the world, making it both wealthy and secure -- how could the Kiwis not be in a good mood every day?
"But then there is the United States. It has the fiat lands of Australia with the climate and land quality of France, the riverine characteristics of Germany with the strategic exposure of New Zealand, and the island features of Japan but with oceanic moats -- and all on a scale that is quite literally continental. Such landscapes not only make it rich and secure beyond peer, but also enable its navy to be so powerful that America dominates the global oceans. ~ Peter Zeihan,#NFDB
1277:There have been ample opportunities since 1945 to show that material superiority in war is not enough if the will to fight is lacking. In Algeria, Vietnam and Afghanistan the balance of economic and military strength lay overwhelmingly on the side of France, the United States, and the Soviet Union, but the will to win was slowly eroded. Troops became demoralised and brutalised. Even a political solution was abandoned. In all three cases the greater power withdrew. The Second World War was an altogether different conflict, but the will to win was every bit as important - indeed it was more so. The contest was popularly perceived to be about issues of life and death of whole communities rather than for their fighting forces alone. They were issues, wrote one American observer in 1939, 'worth dying for'. If, he continued, 'the will-to-destruction triumphs, our resolution to preserve civilisation must become more implacable...our courage must mount'.
Words like 'will' and 'courage' are difficult for historians to use as instruments of cold analysis. They cannot be quantified; they are elusive of definition; they are products of a moral language that is regarded sceptically today, even tainted by its association with fascist rhetoric. German and Japanese leaders believed that the spiritual strength of their soldiers and workers in some indefinable way compensate for their technical inferiority. When asked after the war why Japan lost, one senior naval officer replied that the Japanese 'were short on spirit, the military spirit was weak...' and put this explanation ahead of any material cause. Within Germany, belief that spiritual strength or willpower was worth more than generous supplies of weapons was not confined to Hitler by any means, though it was certainly a central element in the way he looked at the world.
The irony was that Hitler's ambition to impose his will on others did perhaps more than anything to ensure that his enemies' will to win burned brighter still. The Allies were united by nothing so much as a fundamental desire to smash Hitlerism and Japanese militarism and to use any weapon to achieve it. The primal drive for victory at all costs nourished Allied fighting power and assuaged the thirst for vengeance. They fought not only because the sum of their resources added up to victory, but because they wanted to win and were certain that their cause was just.
The Allies won the Second World War because they turned their economic strength into effective fighting power, and turned the moral energies of their people into an effective will to win. The mobilisation of national resources in this broad sense never worked perfectly, but worked well enough to prevail. Materially rich, but divided, demoralised, and poorly led, the Allied coalition would have lost the war, however exaggerated Axis ambitions, however flawed their moral outlook. The war made exceptional demands on the Allied peoples. Half a century later the level of cruelty, destruction and sacrifice that it engendered is hard to comprehend, let alone recapture. Fifty years of security and prosperity have opened up a gulf between our own age and the age of crisis and violence that propelled the world into war. Though from today's perspective Allied victory might seem somehow inevitable, the conflict was poised on a knife-edge in the middle years of the war. This period must surely rank as the most significant turning point in the history of the modern age. ~ Richard Overy,#NFDB
1278:When I close my eyes to see, to hear, to smell, to touch a country I have known, I feel my body shake and fill with joy as if a beloved person had come near me.
A rabbi was once asked the following question: ‘When you say that the Jews should return to Palestine, you mean, surely, the heavenly, the immaterial, the spiritual Palestine, our true homeland?’ The rabbi jabbed his staff into the ground in wrath and shouted, ‘No! I want the Palestine down here, the one you can touch with your hands, with its stones, its thorns and its mud!’
Neither am I nourished by fleshless, abstract memories. If I expected my mind to distill from a turbid host of bodily joys and bitternesses an immaterial, crystal-clear thought, I would die of hunger. When I close my eyes in order to enjoy a country again, my five senses, the five mouth-filled tentacles of my body, pounce upon it and bring it to me. Colors, fruits, women. The smells of orchards, of filthy narrow alleys, of armpits. Endless snows with blue, glittering reflections. Scorching, wavy deserts of sand shimmering under the hot sun. Tears, cries, songs, distant bells of mules, camels or troikas. The acrid, nauseating stench of some Mongolian cities will never leave my nostrils. And I will eternally hold in my hands – eternally, that is, until my hands rot – the melons of Bukhara, the watermelons of the Volga, the cool, dainty hand of a Japanese girl…
For a time, in my early youth, I struggled to nourish my famished soul by feeding it with abstract concepts. I said that my body was a slave and that its duty was to gather raw material and bring it to the orchard of the mind to flower and bear fruit and become ideas. The more fleshless, odorless, soundless the world was that filtered into me, the more I felt I was ascending the highest peak of human endeavor. And I rejoiced. And Buddha came to be my greatest god, whom I loved and revered as an example. Deny your five senses. Empty your guts. Love nothing, hate nothing, desire nothing, hope for nothing. Breathe out and the world will be extinguished.
But one night I had a dream. A hunger, a thirst, the influence of a barbarous race that had not yet become tired of the world had been secretly working within me. My mind pretended to be tired. You felt it had known everything, had become satiated, and was now smiling ironically at the cries of my peasant heart. But my guts – praised be God! – were full of blood and mud and craving. And one night I had a dream. I saw two lips without a face – large, scimitar-shaped woman’s lips. They moved. I heard a voice ask, ‘Who if your God?’ Unhesitatingly I answered, ‘Buddha!’ But the lips moved again and said: ‘No, Epaphus.’
I sprang up out of my sleep. Suddenly a great sense of joy and certainty flooded my heart. What I had been unable to find in the noisy, temptation-filled, confused world of wakefulness I had found now in the primeval, motherly embrace of the night. Since that night I have not strayed. I follow my own path and try to make up for the years of my youth that were lost in the worship of fleshless gods, alien to me and my race. Now I transubstantiate the abstract concepts into flesh and am nourished. I have learned that Epaphus, the god of touch, is my god.
All the countries I have known since then I have known with my sense of touch. I feel my memories tingling, not in my head but in my fingertips and my whole skin. And as I bring back Japan to my mind, my hands tremble as if they were touching the breast of a beloved woman. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis,#NFDB
1279:HISTORICAL NOTE There are no nuclear power stations in Belarus. Of the functioning stations in the territory of the former USSR, the ones closest to Belarus are of the old Soviet-designed RBMK type. To the north, the Ignalinsk station, to the east, the Smolensk station, and to the south, Chernobyl. On April 26, 1986, at 1:23:58, a series of explosions destroyed the reactor in the building that housed Energy Block #4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station. The catastrophe at Chernobyl became the largest technological disaster of the twentieth century. For tiny Belarus (population: 10 million), it was a national disaster. During the Second World War, the Nazis destroyed 619 Belarussian villages along with their inhabitants. As a result of Chernobyl, the country lost 485 villages and settlements. Of these, 70 have been forever buried underground. During the war, one out of every four Belarussians was killed; today, one out of every five Belarussians lives on contaminated land. This amounts to 2.1 million people, of whom 700,000 are children. Among the demographic factors responsible for the depopulation of Belarus, radiation is number one. In the Gomel and Mogilev regions, which suffered the most from Chernobyl, mortality rates exceed birth rates by 20%. As a result of the accident, 50 million Ci of radionuclides were released into the atmosphere. Seventy percent of these descended on Belarus; fully 23% of its territory is contaminated by cesium-137 radionuclides with a density of over 1 Ci/km2. Ukraine on the other hand has 4.8% of its territory contaminated, and Russia, 0.5%. The area of arable land with a density of more than 1 Ci/km2 is over 18 million hectares; 2.4 thousand hectares have been taken out of the agricultural economy. Belarus is a land of forests. But 26% of all forests and a large part of all marshes near the rivers Pripyat, Dniepr, and Sozh are considered part of the radioactive zone. As a result of the perpetual presence of small doses of radiation, the number of people with cancer, mental retardation, neurological disorders, and genetic mutations increases with each year. —“Chernobyl.” Belaruskaya entsiklopedia On April 29, 1986, instruments recorded high levels of radiation in Poland, Germany, Austria, and Romania. On April 30, in Switzerland and northern Italy. On May 1 and 2, in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and northern Greece. On May 3, in Israel, Kuwait, and Turkey. . . . Gaseous airborne particles traveled around the globe: on May 2 they were registered in Japan, on May 5 in India, on May 5 and 6 in the U.S. and Canada. It took less than a week for Chernobyl to become a problem for the entire world. —“The Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident in Belarus.” Minsk, Sakharov International College on Radioecology The fourth reactor, now known as the Cover, still holds about twenty tons of nuclear fuel in its lead-and-metal core. No one knows what is happening with it. The sarcophagus was well made, uniquely constructed, and the design engineers from St. Petersburg should probably be proud. But it was constructed in absentia, the plates were put together with the aid of robots and helicopters, and as a result there are fissures. According to some figures, there are now over 200 square meters of spaces and cracks, and radioactive particles continue to escape through them . . . Might the sarcophagus collapse? No one can answer that question, since it’s still impossible to reach many of the connections and constructions in order to see if they’re sturdy. But everyone knows that if the Cover were to collapse, the consequences would be even more dire than they were in 1986. —Ogonyok magazine, No. 17, April 1996 ~ Svetlana Alexievich, #NFDB
1280:The sensational event of the ancient world was the mobilisation of the underworld against the established order. This enterprise of Christianity had no more to do with religion than Marxist socialism has to do with the solution of the social problem. The notions represented by Jewish Christianity were strictly unthinkable to Roman brains. The ancient world had a liking for clarity. Scientific research was encouraged there. The gods, for the Romans, were familiar images. It is some what difficult to know whether they had any exact idea of the Beyond. For them, eternal life was personified in living beings, and it consisted in a perpetual renewal. Those were conceptions fairly close to those which were current amongst the Japanese and Chinese at the time when the Swastika made its appearance amongst them.
It was necessary for the Jew to appear on the scene and introduce that mad conception of a life that continues into an alleged Beyond! It enables one to regard life as a thing that is negligible here below—since it will flourish later, when it no longer exists. Under cover of a religion, the Jew has introduced intolerance in a sphere in which tolerance formerly prevailed. Amongst the Romans, the cult of the sovereign intelligence was associated with the modesty of a humanity that knew its limits, to the point of consecrating altars to the unknown god.
The Jew who fraudulently introduced Christianity into the ancient world—in order to ruin it—re-opened the same breach in modern times, this time taking as his pretext the social question. It's the same sleight-of-hand as before. Just as Saul was changed into St. Paul, Mardochai became Karl Marx.
Peace can result only from a natural order. The condition of this order is that there is a hierarchy amongst nations. The most capable nations must necessarily take the lead. In this order, the subordinate nations get the greater profit, being protected by the more capable nations.
It is Jewry that always destroys this order. It constantly provokes the revolt of the weak against the strong, of bestiality against intelligence, of quantity against quality. It took fourteen centuries for Christianity to reach the peak of savagery and stupidity. We would therefore be wrong to sin by excess of confidence and proclaim our definite victory over Bolshevism. The more we render the Jew incapable of harming us, the more we shall protect ourselves from this danger. The Jew plays in nature the rôle of a catalysing element. A people that is rid of its Jews returns spontaneously to the natural order.
In 1925 I wrote in Mein Kampf (and also in an unpublished work) that world Jewry saw in Japan an opponent beyond its reach. The racial instinct is so developed amongst the Japanese therefore compelled to act from outside. It would be to the considered interests of England and the United States to come to an understanding with Japan, but the Jew will strive to prevent such an understanding. I gave this warning in vain. A question arises. Does the Jew act consciously and by calculation, or is he driven on by his instinct? I cannot answer that question.
The intellectual élite of Europe (whether professors of faculties, high officials, or whatever else) never understood anything of this problem. The élite has been stuffed with false ideas, and on these it lives. It propagates a science that causes the greatest possible damage. Stunted men have the philosophy of stunted men. They love neither strength nor health, and they regard weakness and sickness as supreme values.
Since it's the function that creates the organ, entrust the world for a few centuries to a German professor—and you'll soon have a mankind of cretins, made up of men with big heads set upon meagre bodies. ~ Adolf Hitler,#NFDB
1281:Why two (or whole groups) of people can come up with the same story or idea at the same time, even when across the world from each-other:
"A field is a region of influence, where a force will influence objects at a distance with nothing in between. We and our universe live in a Quantum sea of light. Scientists have found that the real currency of the universe is an exchange of energy. Life radiates light, even when grown in the dark. Creation takes place amidst a background sea of energy, which metaphysics might call the Force, and scientists call the "Field." (Officially the Zero Point Field) There is no empty space, even the darkest empty space is actually a cauldron of energies. Matter is simply concentrations of this energy (particles are just little knots of energy.) All life is energy (light) interacting. The universe is self-regenreating and eternal, constantly refreshing itself and in touch with every other part of itself instantaneously. Everything in it is giving, exchanging and interacting with energy, coming in and out of existence at every level. The self has a field of influence on the world and visa versa based on this energy.
Biology has more and more been determined a quantum process, and consciousness as well, functions at the quantum level (connected to a universe of energy that underlies and connects everything). Scientist Walter Schempp's showed that long and short term memory is stored not in our brain but in this "Field" of energy or light that pervades and creates the universe and world we live in.
A number of scientists since him would go on to argue that the brain is simply the retrieval and read-out mechanism of the ultimate storage medium - the Field. Associates from Japan would hypothesize that what we think of as memory is simply a coherent emission of signals from the "Field," and that longer memories are a structured grouping of this wave information. If this were true, it would explain why one tiny association often triggers a riot of sights, sounds and smells. It would also explain why, with long-term memory in particular, recall is instantaneous and doesn't require any scanning mechanism to sift through years and years of memory.
If they are correct, our brain is not a storage medium but a receiving mechanism in every sense, and memory is simply a distant cousin of perception.
Some scientists went as far as to suggest that all of our higher cognitive processes result from an interaction with the Field. This kind of constant interaction might account for intuition or creativity - and how ideas come to us in bursts of insight, sometimes in fragments but often as a miraculous whole. An intuitive leap might simply be a sudden coalescence of coherence in the Field.
The fact that the human body was exchanging information with a mutable field of quantum fluctuation suggested something profound about the world. It hinted at human capabilities for knowledge and communication far deeper and more extended than we presently understand. It also blurred the boundary lines of our individuality - our very sense of separateness. If living things boil down to charged particles interacting with a Field and sending out and receiving quantum information, where did we end and the rest of the world began? Where was consciousness-encased inside our bodies or out there in the Field?
Indeed, there was no more 'out there' if we and the rest of the world were so intrinsically interconnected. In ignoring the effect of the "Field" modern physicists set mankind back, by eliminating the possibility of interconnectedness and obscuring a scientific explanation for many kinds of miracles. In re-normalizing their equations (to leave this part out) what they'd been doing was a little like subtracting God. ~ Lynne McTaggart,#NFDB
1282:The Pearl Diver
Kanzo Makame, the diver, sturdy and small Japanee,
Seeker of pearls and of pearl-shell down in the depths of the sea,
Trudged o'er the bed of the ocean, searching industriously.
Over the pearl-grounds the lugger drifted -- a little white speck:
Joe Nagasaki, the "tender", holding the life-line on deck,
Talked through the rope to the diver, knew when to drift or to check.
Kanzo was king of his lugger, master and diver in one,
Diving wherever it pleased him, taking instructions from none;
Hither and thither he wandered, steering by stars and by sun.
Fearless he was beyond credence, looking at death eye to eye:
This was his formula always, "All man go dead by and by -S'posing time come no can help it -- s'pose time no come, then no die."
Dived in the depths of the Darnleys, down twenty fathom and five;
Down where by law, and by reason, men are forbidden to dive;
Down in a pressure so awful that only the strongest survive:
Sweated four men at the air pumps, fast as the handles could go,
Forcing the air down that reached him heated and tainted, and slow -Kanzo Makame the diver stayed seven minutes below;
Came up on deck like a dead man, paralysed body and brain;
Suffered, while blood was returning, infinite tortures of pain:
Sailed once again to the Darnleys -- laughed and descended again!
Scarce grew the shell in the shallows, rarely a patch could they touch;
Always the take was so little, always the labour so much;
Always they thought of the Islands held by the lumbering Dutch -Islands where shell was in plenty lying in passage and bay,
Islands where divers could gather hundreds of shell in a day.
But the lumbering Dutch in their gunboats they hunted the divers away.
Joe Nagasaki, the "tender", finding the profits grow small,
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Said, "Let us go to the Islands, try for a number one haul!
If we get caught, go to prison -- let them take lugger and all!"
Kanzo Makame, the diver -- knowing full well what it meant -Fatalist, gambler, and stoic, smiled a broad smile of content,
Flattened in mainsail and foresail, and off to the Islands they went.
Close to the headlands they drifted, picking up shell by the ton,
Piled up on deck were the oysters, opening wide in the sun,
When, from the lee of the headland, boomed the report of a gun.
Then if the diver was sighted, pearl-shell and lugger must go -Joe Nagasaki decided (quick was the word and the blow),
Cut both the pipe and the life-line, leaving the diver below!
Kanzo Makame, the diver, failing to quite understand,
Pulled the "haul up" on the life-line, found it was slack in his hand;
Then, like a little brown stoic, lay down and died on the sand.
Joe Nagasaki, the "tender", smiling a sanctified smile,
Headed her straight for the gunboat--throwing out shells all the while -Then went aboard and reported, "No makee dive in three mile!
"Dress no have got and no helmet -- diver go shore on the spree;
Plenty wind come and break rudder -- lugger get blown out to sea:
Take me to Japanee Consul, he help a poor Japanee!"
So the Dutch let him go; but they watched him, as off from the Islands he ran,
Doubting him much -- but what would you? You have to be sure of your man
Ere you wake up that nest-ful of hornets -- the little brown men of Japan.
Down in the ooze and the coral, down where earth's wonders are spread,
Helmeted, ghastly, and swollen, Kanzo Makame lies dead.
Joe Nagasaki, his "tender", is owner and diver instead.
Wearer of pearls in your necklace, comfort yourself if you can.
These are the risks of the pearling -- these are the ways of Japan;
"Plenty more Japanee diver plenty more little brown man!"
~ Banjo Paterson,#NFDB
1283:In North America, there is no nostalgia for the postwar period, quite simply because the Trente Glorieuses never existed there: per capita output grew at roughly the same rate of 1.5–2 percent per year throughout the period 1820–2012. To be sure, growth slowed a bit between 1930 and 1950 to just over 1.5 percent, then increased again to just over 2 percent between 1950 and 1970, and then slowed to less than 1.5 percent between 1990 and 2012. In Western Europe, which suffered much more from the two world wars, the variations are considerably greater: per capita output stagnated between 1913 and 1950 (with a growth rate of just over 0.5 percent) and then leapt ahead to more than 4 percent from 1950 to 1970, before falling sharply to just slightly above US levels (a little more than 2 percent) in the period 1970–1990 and to barely 1.5 percent between 1990 and 2012.
Western Europe experienced a golden age of growth between 1950 and 1970, only to see its growth rate diminish to one-half or even one-third of its peak level during the decades that followed.
[...]
If we looked only at continental Europe, we would find an average per capita output growth rate of 5 percent between 1950 and 1970—a level well beyond that achieved in other advanced countries over the past two centuries.
These very different collective experiences of growth in the twentieth century largely explain why public opinion in different countries varies so widely in regard to commercial and financial globalization and indeed to capitalism in general. In continental Europe and especially France, people quite naturally continue to look on the first three postwar decades—a period of strong state intervention in the economy—as a period blessed with rapid growth, and many regard the liberalization of the economy that began around 1980 as the cause of a slowdown.
In Great Britain and the United States, postwar history is interpreted quite differently. Between 1950 and 1980, the gap between the English-speaking countries and the countries that had lost the war closed rapidly. By the late 1970s, US magazine covers often denounced the decline of the United States and the success of German and Japanese industry. In Britain, GDP per capita fell below the level of Germany, France, Japan, and even Italy. It may even be the case that this sense of being rivaled (or even overtaken in the case of Britain) played an important part in the “conservative revolution.” Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in the United States promised to “roll back the welfare state” that had allegedly sapped the animal spirits of Anglo-Saxon entrepreneurs and thus to return to pure nineteenth-century capitalism, which would allow the United States and Britain to regain the upper hand. Even today, many people in both countries believe that the conservative revolution was remarkably successful, because their growth rates once again matched continental European and Japanese levels.
In fact, neither the economic liberalization that began around 1980 nor the state interventionism that began in 1945 deserves such praise or blame. France, Germany, and Japan would very likely have caught up with Britain and the United States following their collapse of 1914–1945 regardless of what policies they had adopted (I say this with only slight exaggeration). The most one can say is that state intervention did no harm. Similarly, once these countries had attained the global technological frontier, it is hardly surprising that they ceased to grow more rapidly than Britain and the United States or that growth rates in all of these wealthy countries more or less equalized [...] Broadly speaking, the US and British policies of economic liberalization appear to have had little effect on this simple reality, since they neither increased growth nor decreased it. ~ Thomas Piketty,#NFDB
1284:Take a look at the following list of numbers: 4, 8, 5, 3, 9, 7, 6. Read them out loud. Now look away and spend twenty seconds memorizing that sequence before saying them out loud again. If you speak English, you have about a 50 percent chance of remembering that sequence perfectly. If you're Chinese, though, you're almost certain to get it right every time. Why is that? Because as human beings we store digits in a memory loop that runs for about two seconds. We most easily memorize whatever we can say or read within that two-second span. And Chinese speakers get that list of numbers—4, 8, 5, 3, 9, 7, 6—right almost every time because, unlike English, their language allows them to fit all those seven numbers into two seconds. That example comes from Stanislas Dehaene's book The Number Sense. As Dehaene explains: Chinese number words are remarkably brief. Most of them can be uttered in less than one-quarter of a second (for instance, 4 is "si" and 7 "qi"). Their English equivalents—"four," "seven"—are longer: pronouncing them takes about one-third of a second. The memory gap between English and Chinese apparently is entirely due to this difference in length. In languages as diverse as Welsh, Arabic, Chinese, English and Hebrew, there is a reproducible correlation between the time required to pronounce numbers in a given language and the memory span of its speakers. In this domain, the prize for efficacy goes to the Cantonese dialect of Chinese, whose brevity grants residents of Hong Kong a rocketing memory span of about 10 digits. It turns out that there is also a big difference in how number-naming systems in Western and Asian languages are constructed. In English, we say fourteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen, so one might expect that we would also say oneteen, twoteen, threeteen, and five- teen. But we don't. We use a different form: eleven, twelve, thirteen, and fifteen. Similarly, we have forty and sixty, which sound like the words they are related to (four and six). But we also say fifty and thirty and twenty, which sort of sound like five and three and two, but not really. And, for that matter, for numbers above twenty, we put the "decade" first and the unit number second (twentyone, twenty-two), whereas for the teens, we do it the other way around (fourteen, seventeen, eighteen). The number system in English is highly irregular. Not so in China, Japan, and Korea. They have a logical counting system. Eleven is ten-one. Twelve is ten-two. Twenty-four is two- tens-four and so on. That difference means that Asian children learn to count much faster than American children. Four-year-old Chinese children can count, on average, to forty. American children at that age can count only to fifteen, and most don't reach forty until they're five. By the age of five, in other words, American children are already a year behind their Asian counterparts in the most fundamental of math skills. The regularity of their number system also means that Asian children can perform basic functions, such as addition, far more easily. Ask an English-speaking seven-yearold to add thirty-seven plus twenty-two in her head, and she has to convert the words to numbers (37+22). Only then can she do the math: 2 plus 7 is 9 and 30 and 20 is 50, which makes 59. Ask an Asian child to add three-tensseven and two-tens-two, and then the necessary equation is right there, embedded in the sentence. No number translation is necessary: It's five-tens-nine. "The Asian system is transparent," says Karen Fuson, a Northwestern University psychologist who has closely studied Asian-Western differences. "I think that it makes the whole attitude toward math different. Instead of being a rote learning thing, there's a pattern I can figure out. There is an expectation that I can do this. There is an expectation that it's sensible. For fractions, we say three-fifths. The Chinese is literally 'out of five parts, take three.' That's telling you conceptually ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1285:Jennifer Johnson: Can you say why America is the greatest country in the world?
Sharon: Diversity and opportunity.
Moderator: Lewis?
Lewis: Freedom and freedom... so let's keep it that way.
Moderator: Will?
Will McAvoy: The New York Jets.
Moderator: No, I'm going to hold you to an answer on that. What makes America the greatest country in the world?
Will McAvoy: Well, Lewis and Sharon said it. Diversity and opportunity and freedom and freedom.
Moderator: I'm not letting you go back to the airport without answering the question.
Will McAvoy: Well, our Constitution is a masterpiece. James Madison was a genius. The Declaration of Independence is, for me, the single greatest piece of American writing...
[Professor keeps staring]
Will McAvoy: You don't look satisfied.
Moderator: One's a set of laws and the other's a declaration of war. I want a human moment from you... what about the people? Why is America...
Will McAvoy: It's not the greatest country in the world, professor. That's my answer.
Moderator: You're saying...
Will McAvoy: Yes.
Moderator: Let's talk about...
Will McAvoy: Fine.
[Turns to Sharon]
Will McAvoy: Sharon, the NEA is a loser. Yeah, it accounts for a penny out of our paycheck, but he
[gestures to Lewis]
Will McAvoy: gets to hit you with it anytime he wants. It doesn't cost money, it costs votes. It costs airtime and column inches. You know why people don't like liberals? Cause they lose. If liberals are so fucking smart, how come they lose so god damn always?
Sharon: Hey!
Will McAvoy: [Turns to Louis] And with a straight face, you're gonna tell students that America is so star-spangled awesome that we're the only ones in the world who have freedom? Canada has freedom. Japan has freedom. The UK. France. Italy. Germany. Spain. Australia... Belgium! has freedom... 207 sovereign states in the world, like 180 of 'em have freedom.
Moderator: Alright...
Will McAvoy: [Looks at Jenny] And, yeah, you... sorority girl. Just in case you accidentally wander into a voting booth one day, there are some things you should know. One of them is: There is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we're the greatest country in the world. We're 7th in literacy, 27th in math, 22nd in science, 49th in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, 3rd in median household income, number 4 in labor force and number 4 in exports. We lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real and defense spending - where we spend more than the next 26 countries combined, 25 of whom are allies. Now, none of this is the fault of a 20-year-old college student, but you, nonetheless, are without a doubt a member of the worst period generation period ever period, so when you ask what makes us the greatest country in the world, I don't know what the FUCK you're talking about!... Yosemite?
[Stunned silence]
Will McAvoy: ... It sure used to be. We stood up for what was right. We fought for moral reasons. We passed laws, struck down laws - for moral reasons. We waged wars on poverty, not on poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were and we never beat our chest. We built great, big things, made ungodly technological advanced, explored the universe, cured diseases and we cultivated the world's greatest artists AND the world's greatest economy. We reached for the stars, acted like men. We aspired to intelligence, we didn't belittle it. It didn't make us feel inferior. We didn't identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election and we didn't scare so easy. We were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed... by great men, men who were revered. First step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one. America is not the greatest country in the world anymore. ~ Aaron Sorkin,#NFDB
1286:Elegy: Walking the Line
Every month or so, Sundays, we walked the line,
The limit and the boundary. Past the sweet gum
Superb above the cabin, along the wall—
Stones gathered from the level field nearby
When first we cleared it. (Angry bumblebees
Stung the two mules. They kicked. Thirteen, I ran.)
And then the field: thread-leaf maple, deciduous
Magnolia, hybrid broom, and, further down,
In light shade, one Franklinia Alatamaha
In solstice bloom, all white, most graciously.
On the sunnier slope, the wild plums that my mother
Later would make preserves of, to give to friends
Or sell, in autumn, with the foxgrape, quince,
Elderberry, and muscadine. Around
The granite overhang, moist den of foxes;
Gradually up a long hill, high in pine,
Park-like, years of dry needles on the ground,
And dogwood, slopes the settlers terraced; pine
We cut at Christmas, berries, hollies, anise,
And cones for sale in Mister Haymore's yard
In town, below the Courthouse Square. James Haymore,
One of the two good teachers at Boys' High,
Ironic and demanding, chemistry;
Mary Lou Culver taught us English: essays,
Plot summaries, outlines, meters, kinds of clauses
(Noun, adjective, and adverb, five at a time),
Written each day and then revised, and she
Up half the night to read them once again
Through her pince-nez, under a single lamp.
Across the road, on a steeper hill, the settlers
Set a house, unpainted, the porch fallen in,
The road a red clay strip without a bridge,
A shallow stream that liked to overflow.
Oliver Brand's mules pulled our station wagon
Out of the gluey mire, earth's rust. Then, here
And there, back from the road, the specimen
Shrubs and small trees my father planted, some
Taller than we were, some in bloom, some berried,
And some we still brought water to. We always
14
Paused at the weed-filled hole beside the beech
That, one year, brought forth beech nuts by the thousands,
A hole still reminiscent of the man
Chewing tobacco in among his whiskers
My father happened on, who, discovered, told
Of dreaming he should dig there for the gold
And promised to give half of what he found.
During the wars with Germany and Japan,
Descendents of the settlers, of Oliver Brand
And of that man built Flying Fortresses
For Lockheed, in Atlanta; now they build
Brick mansions in the woods they left, with lawns
To paved and lighted streets, azaleas, camellias
Blooming among the pines and tulip trees—
Mercedes Benz and Cadillac Republicans.
There was another stream further along
Divided through a marsh, lined by the fence
We stretched to posts with Mister Garner's help
The time he needed cash for his son's bail
And offered all his place. A noble spring
Under the oak root cooled his milk and butter.
He called me "honey," working with us there
(My father bought three acres as a gift),
His wife pale, hair a country orange, voice
Uncanny, like a ghost's, through the open door
Behind her, chickens scratching on the floor.
Barred Rocks, our chickens; one, a rooster, splendid
Sliver and grey, red comb and long sharp spurs,
Once chased Aunt Jennie as far as the daphne bed
The two big king snakes were familiars of.
My father's dog would challenge him sometimes
To laughter and applause. Once, in Stone Mountain,
Travelers, stopped for gas, drove off with Smokey;
Angrily, grievingly, leaving his work, my father
Traced the car and found them way far south,
Had them arrested and, bringing Smokey home,
Was proud as Sherlock Holmes, and happier.
Above the spring, my sister's cats, black Amy,
Grey Junior, down to meet us. The rose trees,
Domestic, Asiatic, my father's favorites.
The bridge, marauding dragonflies, the bullfrog,
15
Camellias cracked and blackened by the freeze,
Bay tree, mimosa, mountain laurel, apple,
Monkey pine twenty feet high, banana shrub,
The owls' tall pine curved like a flattened S.
The pump house Mort and I built block by block,
Smooth concrete floor, roof pale aluminum
Half-covered by a clematis, the pump
Thirty feet down the mountain's granite foot.
Mort was the hired man sent to us by Fortune,
Childlike enough to lead us. He brought home,
Although he could not even drive a tractor,
Cheated, a worthless car, which we returned.
When, at the trial to garnishee his wages,
Frank Guess, the judge, Grandmother's longtime neighbor,
Whose children my mother taught in Cradle Roll,
Heard Mort's examination, he broke in
As if in disbelief on the bank's attorneys:
"Gentlemen, must we continue this charade?"
Finally, past the compost heap, the garden,
Tomatoes and sweet corn for succotash,
Okra for frying, Kentucky Wonders, limas,
Cucumbers, squashes, leeks heaped round with soil,
Lavender, dill, parsley, and rosemary,
Tithonia and zinnias between the rows;
The greenhouse by the rock wall, used for cuttings
In late spring, frames to grow them strong for planting
Through winter into summer. Early one morning
Mort called out, lying helpless by the bridge.
His ashes we let drift where the magnolia
We planted as a stem divides the path
The others lie, too young, at Silver Hill,
Except my mother. Ninety-five, she lives
Three thousand miles away, beside the bare
Pacific, in rooms that overlook the Mission,
The Riviera, and the silver range
La Cumbre east. Magnolia grandiflora
And one druidic live oak guard the view.
Proudly around the walls, she shows her paintings
Of twenty years ago: the great oak's arm
Extended, Zeuslike, straight and strong, wisteria
Tangled among the branches, amaryllis
16
Around the base; her cat, UC, at ease
In marigolds; the weeping cherry, pink
And white arms like a blessing to the blue
Bird feeder Mort made; cabin, scarlet sweet gum
Superb when tribes migrated north and south.
Alert, still quick of speech, a little blind,
Active, ready for laughter, open to fear,
Pity, and wonder that such things may be,
Some Sundays, I think, she must walk the line,
Aunt Jennie, too, if she were still alive,
And Eleanor, whose story is untold,
Their presences like muses, prompting me
In my small study, all listening to the sea,
All of one mind, the true posterity.
~ Edgar Bowers,#NFDB
1287:wrote a series of memorials in remonstrance.
As Governor of Hangzhou
Again, ~ Bai Juyi
was sent away from the court and the capital, but this time to the
important position of the thriving town of Hangzhou, which was at the southern
terminus of the Grand Canal and located in the scenic neighborhood of West
Lake. Fortunately for their friendship, Yuan Zhen at the time was serving an
assignment in nearby Ningbo, also in what is today Zhejiang, so the two could
occasionally get together, at least until ~ Bai Juyi
's term as Governor expired.
As governor of Hangzhou ~ Bai Juyi
realised that the farmland nearby depended on
the water of West Lake, but due to the negligence of previous governors, the old
dike had collapsed, and the lake so dried out that the local farmers were
suffering from severe drought. He ordered the construction of a stronger and
taller dike, with a dam to control the flow of water, thus providing water for
irrigation and so relieving the drought and improving the livelihood of the local
people over the following years. ~ Bai Juyi
used his leisure time to enjoy the
beauty of West Lake, visiting the lake almost every day. He ordered the
construction of a causeway connecting Broken Bridge with Solitary Hill to allow
walking on foot, instead of requiring the services of a boat. He then planted trees
along the dike, making it a beautiful landmark. Afterwards, this causeway was
named Bai Causeway, in ~ Bai Juyi
's honour.
Life Near Luoyang
In 824, ~ Bai Juyi
's commission as governor expired, and he received the nominal
rank of Imperial Tutor, which provided more in the way of official salary than
official duties, and he relocated his household to a suburb of the "eastern
capital", Luoyang. At this time, Luoyang was the known as the 'Eastern Capital'
of the empire and was a major metropolis with a population of around one
million, and a reputation as the "cultural capital", as opposed to the more
politically-oriented capital of Chang'an.
Governor of Suzhou
In 825, and fifty-three years old, ~ Bai Juyi
was given the position of Governor (or
Prefect) of Suzhou, on the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and on the shores
of Taihu Lake. For the first two years he enjoyed himself with feasts and picnic
outings, but after a couple of years he became ill, and he was forced into a
period of retirement.
Later Career
After his time as Prefect of Hangzhou (822-824) and then Suzhou (825-827), Bai
Juyi returned to the capital. He then served in various official posts in the capital,
and then again as prefect/governor, this time of Henan province, which was the
province in which Luoyang was part of. It was in Henan that his first son was
born, though only to die prematurely the next year; and, in 831 Yuan Zhen died.
For the next thirteen years, ~ Bai Juyi
continued to hold various nominal posts, but
actually lived in retirement.
Retirement
In 832, ~ Bai Juyi
repaired an unused part of the Xiangshan Monastery, at
Longmen, about 7.5 miles south of Luoyang. ~ Bai Juyi
moved to this location, and
began to refer to himself as the "Hermit of Xianshang".This area, now a UNESCO
World Heritage Site, is famous for its tens of thousands of statues of Buddha and
his disciples carved out of the rock. In 839, he experienced a paralytic attack,
losing the use of his left leg, and became a bedridden invalid for several months.
After his partial recovery, he spent his final years arranging his Collected Works,
which he presented to the main monasteries of those localities in which he had
spent time.
Death
In 846, ~ Bai Juyi
died, leaving instructions for a simple burial in a grave at the
monastery, with a plain style funeral, and not to have a posthumous title
conferred upon him. He has a tomb monument, in Longmen, situated on
Xiangshan, across the Yi River from the Longmen cave temples in the vicinity of
Luoyang, Henan. It is a circular mound of earth 4 meters high, 52 meters in
circumference, and with a 2.80 meter high Monument inscribed "~ Bai Juyi
".
Works
~ Bai Juyi
has been known for his plain, direct, and easily comprehensible style of
verse, as well as for his social and political criticism. Besides his surviving poems,
several letters and essays are also extent.
History
One of the most prolific of the Tang poets, ~ Bai Juyi
wrote over 2,800 poems,
which he had copied and distributed to ensure their survival. They are notable for
their relative accessibility: it is said that he would rewrite any part of a poem if
one of his servants was unable to understand it. The accessibility of ~ Bai Juyi
's
poems made them extremely popular in his lifetime, in both China and Japan,
and they continue to be read in these countries today.
Famous Poems
Two of his most famous works are the long narrative poems The Song of
Everlasting Sorrow, which tells the story of Yang Guifei, and The Song of the Pipa
Player. Like Du Fu, he had a strong sense of social responsibility and is well
known for his satirical poems, such as The Elderly Charcoal Seller.
~ Bai Juyi
also wrote intensely romantic poems to fellow officials with whom he
studied and traveled. These speak of sharing wine, sleeping together, and
viewing the moon and mountains. One friend, Yu Shunzhi, sent Bai a bolt of cloth
as a gift from a far-off posting, and ~ Bai Juyi
debated on how best to use the
precious material:
About to cut it to make a mattress,
pitying the breaking of the leaves;
about to cut it to make a bag,
pitying the dividing of the flowers.
It is better to sew it,
making a coverlet of joined delight;
I think of you as if I'm with you,
day or night.
Technical Virtuosity
~ Bai Juyi
was known for his interest in the old yuefu form of poetry, which was a
typical form of Han poetry, namely folk ballad verses, collected or written by the
Music Bureau. These were often a form of social protest. And, in fact, writing
poetry to promote social progress was explicitly one of his objectives. He is also
known for his well-written poems in the regulated verse style.
A Foresaken Garden
I enter the court
Through the middle gate—
And my sleeve is wet with tears.
The flowers still grow
In the courtyard,
Though two springs have fled
Since last their master came.
The windows, porch, and bamboo screen
Are just as they always were,
But at the entrance to the house
Someone is missing—
You!
~ Bai Juyi,#NFDB
1288:was also renowned in Japan. Burton Watson says of ~ Bai Juyi
: "he worked to
develop a style that was simple and easy to understand, and posterity has
requited his efforts by making him one of the most well-loved and widely read of
all Chinese poets, both in his native land and in the other countries of the East
that participate in the appreciation of Chinese culture. He also, thanks to the
translations and biographical studies by Arthur Waley, one of the most accessible
to English readers". Today the fame of ~ Bai Juyi
is worldwide.
Name variants
Names
Pinyin: Bó Juyì or Bái Juyì
Wade-Giles: Po Chü-i or Pai Chü-i
Zì : Lètian
Hào : Xiangshan Jushì
Zuìyín Xiansheng
Shì Wén (hence referred
to as Bái Wéngong )
~ Bai Juyi
often referred to himself in life as Letian, the older English transcription
version being Lo-t'ien, meaning something like "happy-go-lucky". Later in life, he
referred to himself as the Hermit of Xiangshan.
Life
~ Bai Juyi
lived during the Middle Tang period. This was a period of rebuilding and
recovery for the Tang Empire, following the An Shi Rebellion, and following the
poetically flourishing era famous for Li Bo (701-762), Wang Wei (701-761), and
Du Fu (712-770). ~ Bai Juyi
lived through the reign of eight or nine emperors,
being born in the Dali regnal era (766-779) of Emperor Daizong of Tang. He had
a long and successful career both as a government official and a poet, although
these two facets of his career seemed to have come in conflict with each other at
certain points. ~ Bai Juyi
was also a devoted Chan Buddist.
Birth and childhood
~ Bai Juyi
was born in 772, in Taiyuan, Shanxi, which was then a few miles from
location of the modern city. Although he was in Zhengyang, Henan for most of
his childhood. His family was poor but scholarly, his father being an Assistant
Department Magistrate of the second-class. At the age of ten he was sent away
from his family to avoid a war that broke out in the north of China, and went to
live with relatives in the area known as Jiangnan, more specifically Xuzhou.
Early career
~ Bai Juyi
's official career was initially successful. He passed the jinshi
examinations in 800. ~ Bai Juyi
may have taken up residence in the western capital
city of Chang'an, in 801. Not long after this, ~ Bai Juyi
and formed a long
friendship with a scholar Yuan Zhen. ~ Bai Juyi
's father died in 804, and the young
Bai spent the traditional period of retirement mourning the death of his parent,
which he did along the Wei River, near to the capital. 806 was the first full year
of the reign of Emperor Xianzong of Tang. Also, 806 was the ~ Bai Juyi
was
appointed to a minor post as a government official, at Zhouzhi, which was not far
from the Chang'an (and also in Shaanxi province). He was made a member
(scholar) of the Hanlin Academy, in 807, and Reminder of the Left from 807 until
815, except in 811 when his mother died. He spent the traditional three year
mourning period again along the Wei River, and returned to court in the winter of
814, where he held the title of Assistant Secretary to the Prince's Tutor. It was
not a high ranking position, but nevertheless one which he was soon to lose.
Exile
While serving as a minor palace official, 814, Bei Juyi managed to get himself in
official trouble. He made a few enemies at court and with certain individuals in
other positions. It was partly his written works which lead him into trouble. He
wrote two long memorials, translated by Arthur Waley as "On Stopping the War",
regarding what he considered to be an overly lengthy campaign against a minor
group of Tatars; and he wrote a series of poems, in which he satirized the actions
of greedy officials and highlighting the sufferings of the common folk.
At this time, one of the post-An Lushan warlords (jiedushi), Wu Yuanji in Henan,
had seized control of Zhangyi Circuit (centered in Zhumadian), an act for which
he sought reconciliation with the imperial government, trying to get an imperial
pardon as a necessary prerequisite. Despite the intercession of influential friends,
Wu was denied, thus officially putting him in the position of rebellion. Still
seeking a pardon, Wu turned to assassination, blaming the Prime Minister
(another Wu, Wu Yuanheng) and other officials: the imperial court generally
began by dawn, requiring the ministers to rise early in order to attend in a timely
manner; and, on July 13, 815, before dawn, the Tang Prime Minister Wu
Yuanheng was set to go to the palace for a meeting with Emperor Xianzong. As
he left his house, arrows were fired at his retinue. His servants all fled, and the
assassins seized Wu Yuanheng and his horse, and then decapitated him, taking
his head with them. The assassins also attacked another official who favored the
campaign against the rebellious warlords, Pei Du, but was unable to kill him. The
people at the capital were shocked and there was turmoil, with officials refusing
to leave their personal residences until after dawn.
In this context, ~ Bai Juyi
overstepped his minor position by memorializing the
emperor. As Assistant Secretary to the Prince's Tutor, Bai's memorial was a
breach of protocol — he should have waited for those of censorial authority to
take the lead before offering his own criticism. This was not the only charge
which his opponents used against him. His mother had died, apparently caused
by falling into a well while looking at some flowers, and two poems written by Bai
Juyi — the titles of which Waley translates as "In Praise of Flowers" and "The
New Well" — were used against him as a sign of lack of Filial Piety, one of the
Confucian ideals. The result was exile: ~ Bai Juyi
was demoted to the rank of SubPrefect and banished from the court and the capital city to Jiujiang, then known
as Xun Yang on the southern shores of the Yangtze River in northwest Jiangxi
Province, China. After three years he was sent as Governor of a remote place in
Sichuan. At the time, the main travel route there was up the Yangzi River. This
trip allowed ~ Bai Juyi
a few days to visit his friend Yuan Zhen, who was also in
exile and with whom he explored the rock caves located at Yichang. ~ Bai Juyi
was
delighted by the flowers and trees for which his new location was noted. In 819,
he was recalled back to the capital, ending his exile.
Return to the capital and a new emperor
In 819, ~ Bai Juyi
was recalled to the capital and given the position of second-class
Assistant Secretary. In 821, China got a new emperor, Muzong. After succeeding
to the throne, Muzong spent his time feasting and heavily drinking, and
neglecting his duties as emperor. Meanwhile, the temporarily subdued regional
military governors (jiedushi) began to challenge the central Tang government,
leading to the new de facto independence of three circuits north of the Yellow
River, which had been previously subdued by Emperor Xianzong. Furthermore,
Muzong's administration was characterized by massive corruption. Again, ~ Bai Juyi,#NFDB
1289:The Rape Of The Lock: Canto 3
Close by those meads, for ever crown'd with flow'rs,
Where Thames with pride surveys his rising tow'rs,
There stands a structure of majestic frame,
Which from the neighb'ring Hampton takes its name.
Here Britain's statesmen oft the fall foredoom
Of foreign tyrants and of nymphs at home;
Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take--and sometimes tea.
Hither the heroes and the nymphs resort,
To taste awhile the pleasures of a court;
In various talk th' instructive hours they pass'd,
Who gave the ball, or paid the visit last;
One speaks the glory of the British queen,
And one describes a charming Indian screen;
A third interprets motions, looks, and eyes;
At ev'ry word a reputation dies.
Snuff, or the fan, supply each pause of chat,
With singing, laughing, ogling, and all that.
Meanwhile, declining from the noon of day,
The sun obliquely shoots his burning ray;
The hungry judges soon the sentence sign,
And wretches hang that jury-men may dine;
The merchant from th' Exchange returns in peace,
And the long labours of the toilet cease.
Belinda now, whom thirst of fame invites,
Burns to encounter two adventrous knights,
At ombre singly to decide their doom;
And swells her breast with conquests yet to come.
Straight the three bands prepare in arms to join,
Each band the number of the sacred nine.
Soon as she spreads her hand, th' aerial guard
Descend, and sit on each important card:
First Ariel perch'd upon a Matadore,
Then each, according to the rank they bore;
For Sylphs, yet mindful of their ancient race,
Are, as when women, wondrous fond of place.
Behold, four Kings in majesty rever'd,
229
With hoary whiskers and a forky beard;
And four fair Queens whose hands sustain a flow'r,
Th' expressive emblem of their softer pow'r;
Four Knaves in garbs succinct, a trusty band,
Caps on their heads, and halberds in their hand;
And parti-colour'd troops, a shining train,
Draw forth to combat on the velvet plain.
The skilful nymph reviews her force with care:
"Let Spades be trumps!" she said, and trumps they were.
Now move to war her sable Matadores,
In show like leaders of the swarthy Moors.
Spadillio first, unconquerable lord!
Led off two captive trumps, and swept the board.
As many more Manillio forc'd to yield,
And march'd a victor from the verdant field.
Him Basto follow'd, but his fate more hard
Gain'd but one trump and one plebeian card.
With his broad sabre next, a chief in years,
The hoary Majesty of Spades appears;
Puts forth one manly leg, to sight reveal'd;
The rest, his many-colour'd robe conceal'd.
The rebel Knave, who dares his prince engage,
Proves the just victim of his royal rage.
Ev'n mighty Pam, that kings and queens o'erthrew
And mow'd down armies in the fights of loo,
Sad chance of war! now destitute of aid,
Falls undistinguish'd by the victor Spade!
Thus far both armies to Belinda yield;
Now to the baron fate inclines the field.
His warlike Amazon her host invades,
Th' imperial consort of the crown of Spades.
The Club's black tyrant first her victim died,
Spite of his haughty mien, and barb'rous pride:
What boots the regal circle on his head,
His giant limbs, in state unwieldy spread;
That long behind he trails his pompous robe,
And of all monarchs, only grasps the globe?
The baron now his diamonds pours apace;
230
Th' embroider'd King who shows but half his face,
And his refulgent Queen, with pow'rs combin'd
Of broken troops an easy conquest find.
Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, in wild disorder seen,
With throngs promiscuous strow the level green.
Thus when dispers'd a routed army runs,
Of Asia's troops, and Afric's sable sons,
With like confusion diff'rent nations fly,
Of various habit, and of various dye,
The pierc'd battalions disunited fall.
In heaps on heaps; one fate o'erwhelms them all.
The Knave of Diamonds tries his wily arts,
And wins (oh shameful chance!) the Queen of Hearts.
At this, the blood the virgin's cheek forsook,
A livid paleness spreads o'er all her look;
She sees, and trembles at th' approaching ill,
Just in the jaws of ruin, and codille.
And now (as oft in some distemper'd state)
On one nice trick depends the gen'ral fate.
An Ace of Hearts steps forth: The King unseen
Lurk'd in her hand, and mourn'd his captive Queen:
He springs to vengeance with an eager pace,
And falls like thunder on the prostrate Ace.
The nymph exulting fills with shouts the sky;
The walls, the woods, and long canals reply.
Oh thoughtless mortals! ever blind to fate,
Too soon dejected, and too soon elate!
Sudden, these honours shall be snatch'd away,
And curs'd for ever this victorious day.
For lo! the board with cups and spoons is crown'd,
The berries crackle, and the mill turns round.
On shining altars of Japan they raise
The silver lamp; the fiery spirits blaze.
From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide,
While China's earth receives the smoking tide.
At once they gratify their scent and taste,
And frequent cups prolong the rich repast.
231
Straight hover round the fair her airy band;
Some, as she sipp'd, the fuming liquor fann'd,
Some o'er her lap their careful plumes display'd,
Trembling, and conscious of the rich brocade.
Coffee, (which makes the politician wise,
And see through all things with his half-shut eyes)
Sent up in vapours to the baron's brain
New stratagems, the radiant lock to gain.
Ah cease, rash youth! desist ere 'tis too late,
Fear the just gods, and think of Scylla's fate!
Chang'd to a bird, and sent to flit in air,
She dearly pays for Nisus' injur'd hair!
But when to mischief mortals bend their will,
How soon they find fit instruments of ill!
Just then, Clarissa drew with tempting grace
A two-edg'd weapon from her shining case;
So ladies in romance assist their knight
Present the spear, and arm him for the fight.
He takes the gift with rev'rence, and extends
The little engine on his fingers' ends;
This just behind Belinda's neck he spread,
As o'er the fragrant steams she bends her head.
Swift to the lock a thousand sprites repair,
A thousand wings, by turns, blow back the hair,
And thrice they twitch'd the diamond in her ear,
Thrice she look'd back, and thrice the foe drew near.
Just in that instant, anxious Ariel sought
The close recesses of the virgin's thought;
As on the nosegay in her breast reclin'd,
He watch'd th' ideas rising in her mind,
Sudden he view'd, in spite of all her art,
An earthly lover lurking at her heart.
Amaz'd, confus'd, he found his pow'r expir'd,
Resign'd to fate, and with a sigh retir'd.
The peer now spreads the glitt'ring forfex wide,
T' inclose the lock; now joins it, to divide.
Ev'n then, before the fatal engine clos'd,
A wretched Sylph too fondly interpos'd;
232
Fate urg'd the shears, and cut the Sylph in twain,
(But airy substance soon unites again).
The meeting points the sacred hair dissever
From the fair head, for ever, and for ever!
Then flash'd the living lightning from her eyes,
And screams of horror rend th' affrighted skies.
Not louder shrieks to pitying Heav'n are cast,
When husbands or when lap-dogs breathe their last,
Or when rich China vessels, fall'n from high,
In glitt'ring dust and painted fragments lie!
"Let wreaths of triumph now my temples twine,"
The victor cried, "the glorious prize is mine!
While fish in streams, or birds delight in air,
Or in a coach and six the British fair,
As long at Atalantis shall be read,
Or the small pillow grace a lady's bed,
While visits shall be paid on solemn days,
When num'rous wax-lights in bright order blaze,
While nymphs take treats, or assignations give,
So long my honour, name, and praise shall live!
What time would spare, from steel receives its date,
And monuments, like men, submit to fate!
Steel could the labour of the gods destroy,
And strike to dust th' imperial tow'rs of Troy;
Steel could the works of mortal pride confound,
And hew triumphal arches to the ground.
What wonder then, fair nymph! thy hairs should feel
The conqu'ring force of unresisted steel?"
~ Alexander Pope,#NFDB
1290:financially and employed him as his unofficial secretary.
In March 768, he began his journey again and got as far as Hunan province,
where he died in Tanzhou (now Changsha) in November or December 770, in his
58th year. He was survived by his wife and two sons, who remained in the area
for some years at least. His last known descendant is a grandson who requested
a grave inscription for the poet from Yuan Zhen in 813.
Hung summarises his life by concluding that, "He appeared to be a filial son, an
affectionate father, a generous brother, a faithful husband, a loyal friend, a
dutiful official, and a patriotic subject."
Works
Criticism of ~ Du Fu
's works has focused on his strong sense of history, his moral
engagement, and his technical excellence.
History
Since the Song dynasty, critics have called ~ Du Fu
the "poet historian". The most
directly historical of his poems are those commenting on military tactics or the
successes and failures of the government, or the poems of advice which he wrote
to the emperor. Indirectly, he wrote about the effect of the times in which he
lived on himself, and on the ordinary people of China. As Watson notes, this is
information "of a kind seldom found in the officially compiled histories of the
era".
~ Du Fu
's political comments are based on emotion rather than calculation: his
prescriptions have been paraphrased as, "Let us all be less selfish, let us all do
what we are supposed to do". Since his views were impossible to disagree with,
his forcefully expressed truisms enabled his installation as the central figure of
Chinese poetic history.
Moral engagement
A second favourite epithet of Chinese critics is that of "poet sage" (?? shi shèng),
a counterpart to the philosophical sage, Confucius. One of the earliest surviving
works, The Song of the Wagons (from around 750), gives voice to the sufferings
of a conscript soldier in the imperial army, even before the beginning of the
rebellion; this poem brings out the tension between the need of acceptance and
fulfilment of one's duties, and a clear-sighted consciousness of the suffering
which this can involve. These themes are continuously articulated in the poems
on the lives of both soldiers and civilians which ~ Du Fu
produced throughout his
life.
Although ~ Du Fu
's frequent references to his own difficulties can give the
impression of an all-consuming solipsism, Hawkes argues that his "famous
compassion in fact includes himself, viewed quite objectively and almost as an
afterthought". He therefore "lends grandeur" to the wider picture by comparing it
to "his own slightly comical triviality".
~ Du Fu
's compassion, for himself and for others, was part of his general
broadening of the scope of poetry: he devoted many works to topics which had
previously been considered unsuitable for poetic treatment. Zhang Jie wrote that
for ~ Du Fu
, "everything in this world is poetry", and he wrote extensively on
subjects such as domestic life, calligraphy, paintings, animals, and other poems.
Technical excellence
~ Du Fu
's work is notable above all for its range. Chinese critics traditionally used
the term txt (jídàchéng- "complete symphony"), a reference to Mencius'
description of Confucius. Yuan Zhen was the first to note the breadth of ~ Du Fu
's
achievement, writing in 813 that his predecessor, "united in his work traits which
previous men had displayed only singly". He mastered all the forms of Chinese
poetry: Chou says that in every form he "either made outstanding advances or
contributed outstanding examples". Furthermore, his poems use a wide range of
registers, from the direct and colloquial to the allusive and self-consciously
literary. This variety is manifested even within individual works: Owen identifies
the, "rapid stylistic and thematic shifts" in poems which enable the poet to
represent different facets of a situation, while Chou uses the term "juxtaposition"
as the major analytical tool in her work. ~ Du Fu
is noted for having written more
on poetics and painting than any other writer of his time. He wrote eighteen
poems on painting alone, more than any other Tang poet. ~ Du Fu
's seemingly
negative commentary on the prized horse paintings of Han Gan ignited a
controversy that has persisted to the present day.
The tenor of his work changed as he developed his style and adapted to his
surroundings ("chameleon-like" according to Watson): his earliest works are in a
relatively derivative, courtly style, but he came into his own in the years of the
rebellion. Owen comments on the "grim simplicity" of the Qinzhou poems, which
mirrors the desert landscape; the works from his Chengdu period are "light, often
finely observed"; while the poems from the late Kuizhou period have a "density
and power of vision".
Influence
According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, ~ Du Fu
's writings are considered by
many literary critics to be among the greatest of all time, and it states "his
dense, compressed language makes use of all the connotative overtones of a
phrase and of all the intonational potentials of the individual word, qualities that
no translation can ever reveal."
In his lifetime and immediately following his death, ~ Du Fu
was not greatly
appreciated. In part this can be attributed to his stylistic and formal innovations,
some of which are still "considered extremely daring and bizarre by Chinese
critics." There are few contemporary references to him—only eleven poems from
six writers—and these describe him in terms of affection, but not as a paragon of
poetic or moral ideals. ~ Du Fu
is also poorly represented in contemporary
anthologies of poetry.
However, as Hung notes, he "is the only Chinese poet whose influence grew with
time", and his works began to increase in popularity in the ninth century. Early
positive comments came from Bai Juyi, who praised the moral sentiments of
some of ~ Du Fu
's works (although he found these in only a small fraction of the
poems), and from Han Yu, who wrote a piece defending ~ Du Fu
and Li Bai on
aesthetic grounds from attacks made against them. Both these writers showed
the influence of ~ Du Fu
in their own poetic work. By the beginning of the 10th
century, Wei Zhuang constructed the first replica of his thatched cottage in
Sichuan.
It was in the 11th century, during the Northern Song era that ~ Du Fu
's reputation
reached its peak. In this period a comprehensive re-evaluation of earlier poets
took place, in which Wang Wei, Li Bai and ~ Du Fu
came to be regarded as
representing respectively the Buddhist, Daoist and Confucian strands of Chinese
culture. At the same time, the development of Neo-Confucianism ensured that
~ Du Fu
, as its poetic exemplar, occupied the paramount position. Su Shi famously
expressed this reasoning when he wrote that ~ Du Fu
was "preeminent...
because... through all his vicissitudes, he never for the space of a meal forgot his
sovereign". His influence was helped by his ability to reconcile apparent
opposites: political conservatives were attracted by his loyalty to the established
order, while political radicals embraced his concern for the poor. Literary
conservatives could look to his technical mastery, while literary radicals were
inspired by his innovations. Since the establishment of the People's Republic of
China, ~ Du Fu
's loyalty to the state and concern for the poor have been
interpreted as embryonic nationalism and socialism, and he has been praised for
his use of simple, "people's language".
~ Du Fu
's popularity grew to such an extent that it is as hard to measure his
influence as that of Shakespeare in England: it was hard for any Chinese poet not
to be influenced by him. While there was never another ~ Du Fu
, individual poets
followed in the traditions of specific aspects of his work: Bai Juyi's concern for the
poor, Lu You's patriotism, and Mei Yaochen's reflections on the quotidian are a
few examples. More broadly, ~ Du Fu
's work in transforming the lushi from mere
word play into "a vehicle for serious poetic utterance" set the stage for every
subsequent writer in the genre.
~ Du Fu
has also been influential beyond China, although in common with the other
High Tang poets, his reception into the Japanese literary culture was relatively
late. It was not until the 17th century that he was accorded the same level of
fame in Japan as in China, but he then had a profound influence on poets such as
Matsuo Basho. In the 20th century, he was the favourite poet of Kenneth
Rexroth, who has described him as "the greatest non-epic, non-dramatic poet
who has survived in any language", and commented that, "he has made me a
better man, as a moral agent and as a perceiving organism".
A Homeless Man's Departure
After the Rebellion of 755, all was silent wasteland,
gardens and cottages turned to grass and thorns.
My village had over a hundred households,
but the chaotic world scattered them east and west.
No information about the survivors;
the dead are dust and mud.
I, a humble soldier, was defeated in battle.
I ran back home to look for old roads
and walked a long time through the empty lanes.
The sun was thin, the air tragic and dismal.
I met only foxes and raccoons,
their hair on end as they snarled in rage.
Who remains in my neighborhood?
One or two old widows.
A returning bird loves its old branches,
how could I give up this poor nest?
In spring I carry my hoe all alone,
yet still water the land at sunset.
The county governor's clerk heard I'd returned
and summoned me to practice the war-drum.
This military service won't take me from my state.
I look around and have no one to worry about.
It's just me alone and the journey is short,
but I will end up lost if I travel too far.
Since my village has been washed away,
near or far makes no difference.
I will forever feel pain for my long-sick mother.
I abandoned her in this valley five years ago.
She gave birth to me, yet I could not help her.
We cry sour sobs till our lives end.
In my life I have no family to say farewell to,
so how can I be called a human being?
~ Du Fu,#NFDB
1291:Sword Blades And Poppy Seed
A drifting, April, twilight sky,
A wind which blew the puddles dry,
And slapped the river into waves
That ran and hid among the staves
Of an old wharf. A watery light
Touched bleak the granite bridge, and white
Without the slightest tinge of gold,
The city shivered in the cold.
All day my thoughts had lain as dead,
Unborn and bursting in my head.
From time to time I wrote a word
Which lines and circles overscored.
My table seemed a graveyard, full
Of coffins waiting burial.
I seized these vile abortions, tore
Them into jagged bits, and swore
To be the dupe of hope no more.
Into the evening straight I went,
Starved of a day's accomplishment.
Unnoticing, I wandered where
The city gave a space for air,
And on the bridge's parapet
I leant, while pallidly there set
A dim, discouraged, worn-out sun.
Behind me, where the tramways run,
Blossomed bright lights, I turned to leave,
When someone plucked me by the sleeve.
'Your pardon, Sir, but I should be
Most grateful could you lend to me
A carfare, I have lost my purse.'
The voice was clear, concise, and terse.
I turned and met the quiet gaze
Of strange eyes flashing through the haze.
The man was old and slightly bent,
Under his cloak some instrument
Disarranged its stately line,
He rested on his cane a fine
And nervous hand, an almandine
225
Smouldered with dull-red flames, sanguine
It burned in twisted gold, upon
His finger. Like some Spanish don,
Conferring favours even when
Asking an alms, he bowed again
And waited. But my pockets proved
Empty, in vain I poked and shoved,
No hidden penny lurking there
Greeted my search. 'Sir, I declare
I have no money, pray forgive,
But let me take you where you live.'
And so we plodded through the mire
Where street lamps cast a wavering fire.
I took no note of where we went,
His talk became the element
Wherein my being swam, content.
It flashed like rapiers in the night
Lit by uncertain candle-light,
When on some moon-forsaken sward
A quarrel dies upon a sword.
It hacked and carved like a cutlass blade,
And the noise in the air the broad words made
Was the cry of the wind at a window-pane
On an Autumn night of sobbing rain.
Then it would run like a steady stream
Under pinnacled bridges where minarets gleam,
Or lap the air like the lapping tide
Where a marble staircase lifts its wide
Green-spotted steps to a garden gate,
And a waning moon is sinking straight
Down to a black and ominous sea,
While a nightingale sings in a lemon tree.
I walked as though some opiate
Had stung and dulled my brain, a state
Acute and slumbrous. It grew late.
We stopped, a house stood silent, dark.
The old man scratched a match, the spark
Lit up the keyhole of a door,
We entered straight upon a floor
White with finest powdered sand
Carefully sifted, one might stand
226
Muddy and dripping, and yet no trace
Would stain the boards of this kitchen-place.
From the chimney, red eyes sparked the gloom,
And a cricket's chirp filled all the room.
My host threw pine-cones on the fire
And crimson and scarlet glowed the pyre
Wrapped in the golden flame's desire.
The chamber opened like an eye,
As a half-melted cloud in a Summer sky
The soul of the house stood guessed, and shy
It peered at the stranger warily.
A little shop with its various ware
Spread on shelves with nicest care.
Pitchers, and jars, and jugs, and pots,
Pipkins, and mugs, and many lots
Of lacquered canisters, black and gold,
Like those in which Chinese tea is sold.
Chests, and puncheons, kegs, and flasks,
Goblets, chalices, firkins, and casks.
In a corner three ancient amphorae leaned
Against the wall, like ships careened.
There was dusky blue of Wedgewood ware,
The carved, white figures fluttering there
Like leaves adrift upon the air.
Classic in touch, but emasculate,
The Greek soul grown effeminate.
The factory of Sevres had lent
Elegant boxes with ornament
Culled from gardens where fountains splashed
And golden carp in the shadows flashed,
Nuzzling for crumbs under lily-pads,
Which ladies threw as the last of fads.
Eggshell trays where gay beaux knelt,
Hand on heart, and daintily spelt
Their love in flowers, brittle and bright,
Artificial and fragile, which told aright
The vows of an eighteenth-century knight.
The cruder tones of old Dutch jugs
Glared from one shelf, where Toby mugs
Endlessly drank the foaming ale,
Its froth grown dusty, awaiting sale.
The glancing light of the burning wood
227
Played over a group of jars which stood
On a distant shelf, it seemed the sky
Had lent the half-tones of his blazonry
To paint these porcelains with unknown hues
Of reds dyed purple and greens turned blues,
Of lustres with so evanescent a sheen
Their colours are felt, but never seen.
Strange winged dragons writhe about
These vases, poisoned venoms spout,
Impregnate with old Chinese charms;
Sealed urns containing mortal harms,
They fill the mind with thoughts impure,
Pestilent drippings from the ure
Of vicious thinkings. 'Ah, I see,'
Said I, 'you deal in pottery.'
The old man turned and looked at me.
Shook his head gently. 'No,' said he.
Then from under his cloak he took the thing
Which I had wondered to see him bring
Guarded so carefully from sight.
As he laid it down it flashed in the light,
A Toledo blade, with basket hilt,
Damascened with arabesques of gilt,
Or rather gold, and tempered so
It could cut a floating thread at a blow.
The old man smiled, 'It has no sheath,
'Twas a little careless to have it beneath
My cloak, for a jostle to my arm
Would have resulted in serious harm.
But it was so fine, I could not wait,
So I brought it with me despite its state.'
'An amateur of arms,' I thought,
'Bringing home a prize which he has bought.'
'You care for this sort of thing, Dear Sir?'
'Not in the way which you infer.
I need them in business, that is all.'
And he pointed his finger at the wall.
Then I saw what I had not noticed before.
The walls were hung with at least five score
Of swords and daggers of every size
Which nations of militant men could devise.
228
Poisoned spears from tropic seas,
That natives, under banana trees,
Smear with the juice of some deadly snake.
Blood-dipped arrows, which savages make
And tip with feathers, orange and green,
A quivering death, in harlequin sheen.
High up, a fan of glancing steel
Was formed of claymores in a wheel.
Jewelled swords worn at kings' levees
Were suspended next midshipmen's dirks, and these
Elbowed stilettos come from Spain,
Chased with some splendid Hidalgo's name.
There were Samurai swords from old Japan,
And scimitars from Hindoostan,
While the blade of a Turkish yataghan
Made a waving streak of vitreous white
Upon the wall, in the firelight.
Foils with buttons broken or lost
Lay heaped on a chair, among them tossed
The boarding-pike of a privateer.
Against the chimney leaned a queer
Two-handed weapon, with edges dull
As though from hacking on a skull.
The rusted blood corroded it still.
My host took up a paper spill
From a heap which lay in an earthen bowl,
And lighted it at a burning coal.
At either end of the table, tall
Wax candles were placed, each in a small,
And slim, and burnished candlestick
Of pewter. The old man lit each wick,
And the room leapt more obviously
Upon my mind, and I could see
What the flickering fire had hid from me.
Above the chimney's yawning throat,
Shoulder high, like the dark wainscote,
Was a mantelshelf of polished oak
Blackened with the pungent smoke
Of firelit nights; a Cromwell clock
Of tarnished brass stood like a rock
In the midst of a heaving, turbulent sea
Of every sort of cutlery.
229
There lay knives sharpened to any use,
The keenest lancet, and the obtuse
And blunted pruning bill-hook; blades
Of razors, scalpels, shears; cascades
Of penknives, with handles of mother-of-pearl,
And scythes, and sickles, and scissors; a whirl
Of points and edges, and underneath
Shot the gleam of a saw with bristling teeth.
My head grew dizzy, I seemed to hear
A battle-cry from somewhere near,
The clash of arms, and the squeal of balls,
And the echoless thud when a dead man falls.
A smoky cloud had veiled the room,
Shot through with lurid glares; the gloom
Pounded with shouts and dying groans,
With the drip of blood on cold, hard stones.
Sabres and lances in streaks of light
Gleamed through the smoke, and at my right
A creese, like a licking serpent's tongue,
Glittered an instant, while it stung.
Streams, and points, and lines of fire!
The livid steel, which man's desire
Had forged and welded, burned white and cold.
Every blade which man could mould,
Which could cut, or slash, or cleave, or rip,
Or pierce, or thrust, or carve, or strip,
Or gash, or chop, or puncture, or tear,
Or slice, or hack, they all were there.
Nerveless and shaking, round and round,
I stared at the walls and at the ground,
Till the room spun like a whipping top,
And a stern voice in my ear said, 'Stop!
I sell no tools for murderers here.
Of what are you thinking! Please clear
Your mind of such imaginings.
Sit down. I will tell you of these things.'
He pushed me into a great chair
Of russet leather, poked a flare
Of tumbling flame, with the old long sword,
Up the chimney; but said no word.
Slowly he walked to a distant shelf,
230
And brought back a crock of finest delf.
He rested a moment a blue-veined hand
Upon the cover, then cut a band
Of paper, pasted neatly round,
Opened and poured. A sliding sound
Came from beneath his old white hands,
And I saw a little heap of sands,
Black and smooth. What could they be:
'Pepper,' I thought. He looked at me.
'What you see is poppy seed.
Lethean dreams for those in need.'
He took up the grains with a gentle hand
And sifted them slowly like hour-glass sand.
On his old white finger the almandine
Shot out its rays, incarnadine.
'Visions for those too tired to sleep.
These seeds cast a film over eyes which weep.
No single soul in the world could dwell,
Without these poppy-seeds I sell.'
For a moment he played with the shining stuff,
Passing it through his fingers. Enough
At last, he poured it back into
The china jar of Holland blue,
Which he carefully carried to its place.
Then, with a smile on his aged face,
He drew up a chair to the open space
'Twixt table and chimney. 'Without preface,
Young man, I will say that what you see
Is not the puzzle you take it to be.'
'But surely, Sir, there is something strange
In a shop with goods at so wide a range
Each from the other, as swords and seeds.
Your neighbours must have greatly differing needs.'
'My neighbours,' he said, and he stroked his chin,
'Live everywhere from here to Pekin.
But you are wrong, my sort of goods
Is but one thing in all its moods.'
He took a shagreen letter case
From his pocket, and with charming grace
Offered me a printed card.
I read the legend, 'Ephraim Bard.
Dealer in Words.' And that was all.
231
I stared at the letters, whimsical
Indeed, or was it merely a jest.
He answered my unasked request:
'All books are either dreams or swords,
You can cut, or you can drug, with words.
My firm is a very ancient house,
The entries on my books would rouse
Your wonder, perhaps incredulity.
I inherited from an ancestry
Stretching remotely back and far,
This business, and my clients are
As were those of my grandfather's days,
Writers of books, and poems, and plays.
My swords are tempered for every speech,
For fencing wit, or to carve a breach
Through old abuses the world condones.
In another room are my grindstones and hones,
For whetting razors and putting a point
On daggers, sometimes I even anoint
The blades with a subtle poison, so
A twofold result may follow the blow.
These are purchased by men who feel
The need of stabbing society's heel,
Which egotism has brought them to think
Is set on their necks. I have foils to pink
An adversary to quaint reply,
And I have customers who buy
Scalpels with which to dissect the brains
And hearts of men. Ultramundanes
Even demand some finer kinds
To open their own souls and minds.
But the other half of my business deals
With visions and fancies. Under seals,
Sorted, and placed in vessels here,
I keep the seeds of an atmosphere.
Each jar contains a different kind
Of poppy seed. From farthest Ind
Come the purple flowers, opium filled,
From which the weirdest myths are distilled;
My orient porcelains contain them all.
Those Lowestoft pitchers against the wall
Hold a lighter kind of bright conceit;
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And those old Saxe vases, out of the heat
On that lowest shelf beside the door,
Have a sort of Ideal, 'couleur d'or'.
Every castle of the air
Sleeps in the fine black grains, and there
Are seeds for every romance, or light
Whiff of a dream for a summer night.
I supply to every want and taste.'
'Twas slowly said, in no great haste
He seemed to push his wares, but I
Dumfounded listened. By and by
A log on the fire broke in two.
He looked up quickly, 'Sir, and you?'
I groped for something I should say;
Amazement held me numb. 'To-day
You sweated at a fruitless task.'
He spoke for me, 'What do you ask?
How can I serve you?' 'My kind host,
My penniless state was not a boast;
I have no money with me.' He smiled.
'Not for that money I beguiled
You here; you paid me in advance.'
Again I felt as though a trance
Had dimmed my faculties. Again
He spoke, and this time to explain.
'The money I demand is Life,
Your nervous force, your joy, your strife!'
What infamous proposal now
Was made me with so calm a brow?
Bursting through my lethargy,
Indignantly I hurled the cry:
'Is this a nightmare, or am I
Drunk with some infernal wine?
I am no Faust, and what is mine
Is what I call my soul! Old Man!
Devil or Ghost! Your hellish plan
Revolts me. Let me go.' 'My child,'
And the old tones were very mild,
'I have no wish to barter souls;
My traffic does not ask such tolls.
I am no devil; is there one?
Surely the age of fear is gone.
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We live within a daylight world
Lit by the sun, where winds unfurled
Sweep clouds to scatter pattering rain,
And then blow back the sun again.
I sell my fancies, or my swords,
To those who care far more for words,
Ideas, of which they are the sign,
Than any other life-design.
Who buy of me must simply pay
Their whole existence quite away:
Their strength, their manhood, and their prime,
Their hours from morning till the time
When evening comes on tiptoe feet,
And losing life, think it complete;
Must miss what other men count being,
To gain the gift of deeper seeing;
Must spurn all ease, all hindering love,
All which could hold or bind; must prove
The farthest boundaries of thought,
And shun no end which these have brought;
Then die in satisfaction, knowing
That what was sown was worth the sowing.
I claim for all the goods I sell
That they will serve their purpose well,
And though you perish, they will live.
Full measure for your pay I give.
To-day you worked, you thought, in vain.
What since has happened is the train
Your toiling brought. I spoke to you
For my share of the bargain, due.'
'My life! And is that all you crave
In pay? What even childhood gave!
I have been dedicate from youth.
Before my God I speak the truth!'
Fatigue, excitement of the past
Few hours broke me down at last.
All day I had forgot to eat,
My nerves betrayed me, lacking meat.
I bowed my head and felt the storm
Plough shattering through my prostrate form.
The tearless sobs tore at my heart.
My host withdrew himself apart;
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Busied among his crockery,
He paid no farther heed to me.
Exhausted, spent, I huddled there,
Within the arms of the old carved chair.
A long half-hour dragged away,
And then I heard a kind voice say,
'The day will soon be dawning, when
You must begin to work again.
Here are the things which you require.'
By the fading light of the dying fire,
And by the guttering candle's flare,
I saw the old man standing there.
He handed me a packet, tied
With crimson tape, and sealed. 'Inside
Are seeds of many differing flowers,
To occupy your utmost powers
Of storied vision, and these swords
Are the finest which my shop affords.
Go home and use them; do not spare
Yourself; let that be all your care.
Whatever you have means to buy
Be very sure I can supply.'
He slowly walked to the window, flung
It open, and in the grey air rung
The sound of distant matin bells.
I took my parcels. Then, as tells
An ancient mumbling monk his beads,
I tried to thank for his courteous deeds
My strange old friend. 'Nay, do not talk,'
He urged me, 'you have a long walk
Before you. Good-by and Good-day!'
And gently sped upon my way
I stumbled out in the morning hush,
As down the empty street a flush
Ran level from the rising sun.
Another day was just begun.
~ Amy Lowell,#NFDB
1292:The Farewell
_P_. Farewell to Europe, and at once farewell
To all the follies which in Europe dwell;
To Eastern India now, a richer clime,
Richer, alas! in everything but rhyme,
The Muses steer their course; and, fond of change,
At large, in other worlds, desire to range;
Resolved, at least, since they the fool must play,
To do it in a different place, and way.
_F_. What whim is this, what error of the brain,
What madness worse than in the dog-star's reign?
Why into foreign countries would you roam,
Are there not knaves and fools enough at home?
If satire be thy object--and thy lays
As yet have shown no talents fit for praise-If satire be thy object, search all round,
Nor to thy purpose can one spot be found
Like England, where, to rampant vigour grown,
Vice chokes up every virtue; where, self-sown,
The seeds of folly shoot forth rank and bold,
And every seed brings forth a hundredfold.
_P_. No more of this--though Truth, (the more our shame,
The more our guilt) though Truth perhaps may claim,
And justify her part in this, yet here,
For the first time, e'en Truth offends my ear;
Declaim from morn to night, from night to morn,
Take up the theme anew, when day's new-born,
I hear, and hate--be England what she will,
With all her faults, she is my country still.
_F_. Thy country! and what then? Is that mere word
Against the voice of Reason to be heard?
Are prejudices, deep imbibed in youth,
To counteract, and make thee hate the truth?
'Tis sure the symptom of a narrow soul
To draw its grand attachment from the whole,
And take up with a part; men, not confined
Within such paltry limits, men design'd
Their nature to exalt, where'er they go,
Wherever waves can roll, and winds can blow,
Where'er the blessed sun, placed in the sky
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To watch this subject world, can dart his eye,
Are still the same, and, prejudice outgrown,
Consider every country as their own;
At one grand view they take in Nature's plan,
Not more at home in England than Japan.
_P_. My good, grave Sir of Theory, whose wit,
Grasping at shadows, ne'er caught substance yet,
'Tis mighty easy o'er a glass of wine
On vain refinements vainly to refine,
To laugh at poverty in plenty's reign,
To boast of apathy when out of pain,
And in each sentence, worthy of the schools,
Varnish'd with sophistry, to deal out rules
Most fit for practice, but for one poor fault
That into practice they can ne'er be brought.
At home, and sitting in your elbow-chair,
You praise Japan, though you was never there:
But was the ship this moment under sail,
Would not your mind be changed, your spirits fail?
Would you not cast one longing eye to shore,
And vow to deal in such wild schemes no more?
Howe'er our pride may tempt us to conceal
Those passions which we cannot choose but feel,
There's a strange something, which, without a brain,
Fools feel, and which e'en wise men can't explain,
Planted in man to bind him to that earth,
In dearest ties, from whence he drew his birth.
If Honour calls, where'er she points the way
The sons of Honour follow, and obey;
If need compels, wherever we are sent
'Tis want of courage not to be content;
But, if we have the liberty of choice,
And all depends on our own single voice,
To deem of every country as the same
Is rank rebellion 'gainst the lawful claim
Of Nature, and such dull indifference
May be philosophy, but can't be sense.
_F_. Weak and unjust distinction, strange design,
Most peevish, most perverse, to undermine
Philosophy, and throw her empire down
By means of Sense, from whom she holds her crown,
Divine Philosophy! to thee we owe
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All that is worth possessing here below;
Virtue and wisdom consecrate thy reign,
Doubled each joy, and pain no longer pain.
When, like a garden, where, for want of toil
And wholesome discipline, the rich, rank soil
Teems with incumbrances; where all around,
Herbs, noxious in their nature, make the ground,
Like the good mother of a thankless son,
Curse her own womb, by fruitfulness undone;
Like such a garden, when the human soul,
Uncultured, wild, impatient of control,
Brings forth those passions of luxuriant race,
Which spread, and stifle every herb of grace;
Whilst Virtue, check'd by the cold hand of Scorn,
Seems withering on the bed where she was born,
Philosophy steps in; with steady hand,
She brings her aid, she clears the encumber'd land;
Too virtuous to spare Vice one stroke, too wise
One moment to attend to Pity's cries-See with what godlike, what relentless power
She roots up every weed!
_P_. And every flower.
Philosophy, a name of meek degree,
Embraced, in token of humility,
By the proud sage, who, whilst he strove to hide,
In that vain artifice reveal'd his pride;
Philosophy, whom Nature had design'd
To purge all errors from the human mind,
Herself misled by the philosopher,
At once her priest and master, made us err:
Pride, pride, like leaven in a mass of flour,
Tainted her laws, and made e'en Virtue sour.
Had she, content within her proper sphere,
Taught lessons suited to the human ear,
Which might fair Virtue's genuine fruits produce,
Made not for ornament, but real use,
The heart of man, unrivall'd, she had sway'd,
Praised by the good, and by the bad obey'd;
But when she, overturning Reason's throne,
Strove proudly in its place to plant her own;
When she with apathy the breast would steel,
And teach us, deeply feeling, not to feel;
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When she would wildly all her force employ,
Not to correct our passions, but destroy;
When, not content our nature to restore,
As made by God, she made it all new o'er;
When, with a strange and criminal excess,
To make us more than men, she made us less;
The good her dwindled power with pity saw,
The bad with joy, and none but fools with awe.
Truth, with a simple and unvarnish'd tale,
E'en from the mouth of Norton might prevail,
Could she get there; but Falsehood's sugar'd strain
Should pour her fatal blandishments in vain,
Nor make one convert, though the Siren hung,
Where she too often hangs, on Mansfield's tongue.
Should all the Sophs, whom in his course the sun
Hath seen, or past, or present, rise in one;
Should he, whilst pleasure in each sentence flows,
Like Plato, give us poetry in prose;
Should he, full orator, at once impart
The Athenian's genius with the Roman's art;
Genius and Art should in this instance fail,
Nor Rome, though join'd with Athens, here prevail.
'Tis not in man, 'tis not in more than man,
To make me find one fault in Nature's plan.
Placed low ourselves, we censure those above,
And, wanting judgment, think that she wants love;
Blame, where we ought in reason to commend,
And think her most a foe when most a friend.
Such be philosophers--their specious art,
Though Friendship pleads, shall never warp my heart,
Ne'er make me from this breast one passion tear,
Which Nature, my best friend, hath planted there.
_F_. Forgiving as a friend, what, whilst I live,
As a philosopher I can't forgive,
In this one point at last I join with you,
To Nature pay all that is Nature's due;
But let not clouded Reason sink so low,
To fancy debts she does not, cannot owe:
Bear, to full manhood grown, those shackles bear,
Which Nature meant us for a time to wear,
As we wear leading-strings, which, useless grown,
Are laid aside, when we can walk alone;
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But on thyself, by peevish humour sway'd,
Wilt thou lay burdens Nature never laid?
Wilt thou make faults, whilst Judgment weakly errs,
And then defend, mistaking them for hers?
Darest thou to say, in our enlighten'd age,
That this grand master passion, this brave rage,
Which flames out for thy country, was impress'd
And fix'd by Nature in the human breast?
If you prefer the place where you were born,
And hold all others in contempt and scorn,
On fair comparison; if on that land
With liberal, and a more than equal hand,
Her gifts, as in profusion, Plenty sends;
If Virtue meets with more and better friends;
If Science finds a patron 'mongst the great;
If Honesty is minister of state;
If Power, the guardian of our rights design'd,
Is to that great, that only end, confined;
If riches are employ'd to bless the poor;
If Law is sacred, Liberty secure;
Let but these facts depend on proofs of weight,
Reason declares thy love can't be too great,
And, in this light could he our country view,
A very Hottentot must love it too.
But if, by Fate's decrees, you owe your birth
To some most barren and penurious earth,
Where, every comfort of this life denied,
Her real wants are scantily supplied;
Where Power is Reason, Liberty a joke,
Laws never made, or made but to be broke;
To fix thy love on such a wretched spot,
Because in Lust's wild fever there begot;
Because, thy weight no longer fit to bear,
By chance, not choice, thy mother dropp'd thee there,
Is folly, which admits not of defence;
It can't be Nature, for it is not sense.
By the same argument which here you hold,
(When Falsehood's insolent, let Truth be told)
If Propagation can in torments dwell,
A devil must, if born there, love his Hell.
_P_. Had Fate, to whose decrees I lowly bend,
And e'en in punishment confess a friend,
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Ordain'd my birth in some place yet untried,
On purpose made to mortify my pride,
Where the sun never gave one glimpse of day,
Where Science never yet could dart one ray,
Had I been born on some bleak, blasted plain
Of barren Scotland, in a Stuart's reign,
Or in some kingdom, where men, weak, or worse,
Turn'd Nature's every blessing to a curse;
Where crowns of freedom, by the fathers won,
Dropp'd leaf by leaf from each degenerate son;
In spite of all the wisdom you display,
All you have said, and yet may have to say,
My weakness here, if weakness I confess,
I, as my country, had not loved her less.
Whether strict Reason bears me out in this,
Let those who, always seeking, always miss
The ways of Reason, doubt with precious zeal;
Theirs be the praise to argue, mine to feel.
Wish we to trace this passion to the root,
We, like a tree, may know it by its fruit;
From its rich stem ten thousand virtues spring,
Ten thousand blessings on its branches cling;
Yet in the circle of revolving years
Not one misfortune, not one vice, appears.
Hence, then, and what you Reason call, adore;
This, if not Reason, must be something more.
But (for I wish not others to confine;
Be their opinions unrestrain'd as mine)
Whether this love's of good or evil growth,
A vice, a virtue, or a spice of both,
Let men of nicer argument decide;
If it is virtuous, soothe an honest pride
With liberal praise; if vicious, be content,
It is a vice I never can repent;
A vice which, weigh'd in Heaven, shall more avail
Than ten cold virtues in the other scale.
_F_. This wild, untemper'd zeal (which, after all,
We, candour unimpeach'd, might madness call)
Is it a virtue? That you scarce pretend;
Or can it be a vice, like Virtue's friend,
Which draws us off from and dissolves the force
Of private ties, nay, stops us in our course
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To that grand object of the human soul,
That nobler love which comprehends the whole?
Coop'd in the limits of this petty isle,
This nook, which scarce deserves a frown or smile,
Weigh'd with Creation, you, by whim undone,
Give all your thoughts to what is scarce worth one.
The generous soul, by Nature taught to soar,
Her strength confirm'd in philosophic lore,
At one grand view takes in a world with ease,
And, seeing all mankind, loves all she sees.
_P_. Was it most sure, which yet a doubt endures,
Not found in Reason's creed, though found in yours,
That these two services, like what we're told,
And know, of God's and Mammon's, cannot hold
And draw together; that, however both,
We neither serve, attempting to serve both,
I could not doubt a moment which to choose,
And which in common reason to refuse.
Invented oft for purposes of art,
Born of the head, though father'd on the heart,
This grand love of the world must be confess'd
A barren speculation at the best.
Not one man in a thousand, should he live
Beyond the usual term of life, could give,
So rare occasion comes, and to so few,
Proof whether his regards are feign'd, or true.
The love we bear our country is a root
Which never fails to bring forth golden fruit;
'Tis in the mind an everlasting spring
Of glorious actions, which become a king,
Nor less become a subject; 'tis a debt
Which bad men, though they pay not, can't forget;
A duty, which the good delight to pay,
And every man can practise every day.
Nor, for my life (so very dim my eye,
Or dull your argument) can I descry
What you with faith assert, how that dear love,
Which binds me to my country, can remove,
And make me of necessity forego,
That general love which to the world I owe.
Those ties of private nature, small extent,
In which the mind of narrow cast is pent,
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Are only steps on which the generous soul
Mounts by degrees till she includes the whole.
That spring of love, which, in the human mind,
Founded on self, flows narrow and confined,
Enlarges as it rolls, and comprehends
The social charities of blood and friends,
Till, smaller streams included, not o'erpast,
It rises to our country's love at last;
And he, with liberal and enlarged mind,
Who loves his country, cannot hate mankind.
_F_. Friend, as you would appear, to Common Sense,
Tell me, or think no more of a defence,
Is it a proof of love by choice to run
A vagrant from your country?
_P_. Can the son
(Shame, shame on all such sons!) with ruthless eye,
And heart more patient than the flint, stand by,
And by some ruffian, from all shame divorced,
All virtue, see his honour'd mother forced?
Then--no, by Him that made me! not e'en then,
Could I with patience, by the worst of men,
Behold my country plunder'd, beggar'd, lost
Beyond redemption, all her glories cross'd,
E'en when occasion made them ripe, her fame
Fled like a dream, while she awakes to shame.
_F_. Is it not more the office of a friend,
The office of a patron, to defend
Her sinking state, than basely to decline
So great a cause, and in despair resign?
_P_. Beyond my reach, alas! the grievance lies,
And, whilst more able patriots doubt, she dies.
From a foul source, more deep than we suppose,
Fatally deep and dark, this grievance flows.
'Tis not that peace our glorious hopes defeats:
'Tis not the voice of Faction in the streets;
'Tis not a gross attack on Freedom made;
Tis not the arm of Privilege display'd,
Against the subject, whilst she wears no sting
To disappoint the purpose of a king;
These are no ills, or trifles, if compared
With those which are contrived, though not declared.
Tell me, Philosopher, is it a crime
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To pry into the secret womb of Time;
Or, born in ignorance, must we despair
To reach events, and read the future there?
Why, be it so--still 'tis the right of man,
Imparted by his Maker, where he can,
To former times and men his eye to cast,
And judge of what's to come, by what is past.
Should there be found, in some not distant year,
(Oh, how I wish to be no prophet here!)
Amongst our British Lords should there be found
Some great in power, in principles unsound,
Who look on Freedom with an evil eye,
In whom the springs of Loyalty are dry;
Who wish to soar on wild Ambition's wings,
Who hate the Commons, and who love not Kings;
Who would divide the people and the throne,
To set up separate interests of their own;
Who hate whatever aids their wholesome growth,
And only join with, to destroy them both;
Should there be found such men in after-times,
May Heaven, in mercy to our grievous crimes,
Allot some milder vengeance, nor to them,
And to their rage, this wretched land condemn,
Thou God above, on whom all states depend,
Who knowest from the first their rise, and end,
If there's a day mark'd in the book of Fate,
When ruin must involve our equal state;
When law, alas! must be no more, and we,
To freedom born, must be no longer free;
Let not a mob of tyrants seize the helm,
Nor titled upstarts league to rob the realm;
Let not, whatever other ills assail,
A damned aristocracy prevail.
If, all too short, our course of freedom run,
'Tis thy good pleasure we should be undone,
Let us, some comfort in our griefs to bring,
Be slaves to one, and be that one a king.
_F_. Poets, accustom'd by their trade to feign,
Oft substitute creations of the brain
For real substance, and, themselves deceived,
Would have the fiction by mankind believed.
Such is your case--but grant, to soothe your pride,
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That you know more than all the world beside,
Why deal in hints, why make a moment's doubt?
Resolved, and like a man, at once speak out;
Show us our danger, tell us where it lies,
And, to ensure our safety, make us wise.
_P_. Rather than bear the pain of thought, fools stray;
The proud will rather lose than ask their way:
To men of sense what needs it to unfold,
And tell a tale which they must know untold?
In the bad, interest warps the canker'd heart,
The good are hoodwink'd by the tricks of art;
And, whilst arch, subtle hypocrites contrive
To keep the flames of discontent alive;
Whilst they, with arts to honest men unknown,
Breed doubts between the people and the throne,
Making us fear, where Reason never yet
Allow'd one fear, or could one doubt admit,
Themselves pass unsuspected in disguise,
And 'gainst our real danger seal our eyes.
_F_. Mark them, and let their names recorded stand
On Shame's black roll, and stink through all the land.
_P_. That might some courage, but no prudence be;
No hurt to them, and jeopardy to me.
_F_. Leave out their names.
_P_. For that kind caution, thanks;
But may not judges sometimes fill up blanks?
_F_. Your country's laws in doubt then you reject?
_P_. The laws I love, the lawyers I suspect.
Amongst twelve judges may not one be found
(On bare, bare possibility I ground
This wholesome doubt) who may enlarge, retrench,
Create, and uncreate, and from the bench,
With winks, smiles, nods, and such like paltry arts,
May work and worm into a jury's hearts?
Or, baffled there, may, turbulent of soul,
Cramp their high office, and their rights control;
Who may, though judge, turn advocate at large,
And deal replies out by the way of charge,
Making Interpretation all the way,
In spite of facts, his wicked will obey,
And, leaving Law without the least defence,
May damn his conscience to approve his sense?
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_F_. Whilst, the true guardians of this charter'd land,
In full and perfect vigour, juries stand,
A judge in vain shall awe, cajole, perplex.
_P_. Suppose I should be tried in Middlesex?
_F_. To pack a jury they will never dare.
_P_. There's no occasion to pack juries there.
_F_. 'Gainst prejudice all arguments are weak;
Reason herself without effect must speak.
Fly then thy country, like a coward fly,
Renounce her interest, and her laws defy.
But why, bewitch'd, to India turn thine eyes?
Cannot our Europe thy vast wrath suffice?
Cannot thy misbegotten Muse lay bare
Her brawny arm, and play the butcher there?
_P_. Thy counsel taken, what should Satire do?
Where could she find an object that is new?
Those travell'd youths, whom tender mothers wean,
And send abroad to see, and to be seen;
With whom, lest they should fornicate, or worse,
A tutor's sent by way of a dry nurse;
Each of whom just enough of spirit bears
To show our follies, and to bring home theirs,
Have made all Europe's vices so well known,
They seem almost as natural as our own.
_F_. Will India for thy purpose better do?
_P_. In one respect, at least--there's something new.
_F_. A harmless people, in whom Nature speaks
Free and untainted,'mongst whom Satire seeks,
But vainly seeks, so simply plain their hearts,
One bosom where to lodge her poison'd darts.
_P_. From knowledge speak you this? or, doubt on doubt
Weigh'd and resolved, hath Reason found it out?
Neither from knowledge, nor by Reason taught,
You have faith every where, but where you ought.
India or Europe--what's there in a name?
Propensity to vice in both the same,
Nature alike in both works for man's good,
Alike in both by man himself withstood.
Nabobs, as well as those who hunt them down,
Deserve a cord much better than a crown,
And a Mogul can thrones as much debase
As any polish'd prince of Christian race.
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_F_. Could you,--a task more hard than you suppose,-Could you, in ridicule whilst Satire glows,
Make all their follies to the life appear,
'Tis ten to one you gain no credit here;
Howe'er well drawn, the picture, after all,
Because we know not the original,
Would not find favour in the public eye.
_P_. That, having your good leave, I mean to try:
And if your observations sterling hold,
If the piece should be heavy, tame, and cold,
To make it to the side of Nature lean,
And meaning nothing, something seem to mean:
To make the whole in lively colours glow,
To bring before us something that we know,
And from all honest men applause to win,
I'll group the Company, and put them in.
_F_. Be that ungenerous thought by shame suppress'd,
Add not distress to those too much distress'd;
Have they not, by blind zeal misled, laid bare
Those sores which never might endure the air?
Have they not brought their mysteries so low,
That what the wise suspected not, fools know?
From their first rise e'en to the present hour,
Have they not proved their own abuse of power,
Made it impossible, if fairly view'd,
Ever to have that dangerous power renew'd,
Whilst, unseduced by ministers, the throne
Regards our interests, and knows its own?
_P_. Should every other subject chance to fail,
Those who have sail'd, and those who wish'd to sail
In the last fleet, afford an ample field,
Which must beyond my hopes a harvest yield.
_F_. On such vile food Satire can never thrive.
_P_. She cannot starve, if there was only Clive.
~ Charles Churchill,#NFDB
1293:The Old Manor House
AN old house, crumbling half away, all barnacled and lichen-grown,
Of saddest, mellowest, softest grey,—with a grand history of its own—
Grand with the work and strife and tears of more than half a thousand years.
Such delicate, tender, russet tones of colour on its gables slept,
With streaks of gold betwixt the stones, where wind-sown flowers and mosses
crept:
Wild grasses waved in sun and shade o'er terrace slab and balustrade.
Around the clustered chimneys clung the ivy's wreathed and braided threads,
And dappled lights and shadows flung across the sombre browns and reds;
Where'er the graver's hand had been, it spread its tendrils bright and green.
Far-stretching branches shadowed deep the blazoned windows and broad eaves,
And rocked the faithful rooks asleep, and strewed the terraces with leaves.
A broken dial marked the hours amid damp lawns and garden bowers.
An old house, silent, sad, forlorn, yet proud and stately to the last;
Of all its power and splendour shorn, but rich with memories of the past;
And pitying, from its own decay, the gilded piles of yesterday.
Pitying the new race that passed by, with slighting note of its grey walls,—
And entertaining tenderly the shades of dead knights in its halls,
Whose blood, that soaked these hallowed sods, came down from Scandinavian
gods.
I saw it first in summer-time. The warm air hummed and buzzed with bees,
Where now the pale green hop-vines climb about the sere trunks of the trees,
And waves of roses on the ground scented the tangled glades around.
Some long fern-plumes drooped there—below; the heaven above was still and
blue;
Just here—between the gloom and glow—a cedar and an aged yew
Parted their dusky arms, to let the glory fall on Margaret.
She leaned on that old balustrade, her white dress tinged with golden air,
Her small hands loosely clasped, and laid amongst the moss and maidenhair:
I watched her, hearing, as I stood, a turtle cooing in the wood—
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Hearing a mavis far away, piping his dreamy interludes,
While gusts of soft wind, sweet with hay, swept through those garden
solitudes,—
And thinking she was lovelier e'en than my young ideal love had been.
Tall, with that subtle, sensitive grace, which made so plainly manifest
That she was born of noble race,—a cool, hushed presence, bringing rest,
Of one who felt and understood the dignity of womanhood.
Tall, with a slow, proud step and air; with skin half marble and half milk;
With twisted coils of raven hair, blue-tinged, and fine and soft as silk;
With haughty, clear-cut chin and cheek, and broad brows exquisitely Greek;
With still, calm mouth, whose dreamy smile possessed me like a haunting pain,
So rare, so sweet, so free from guile, with that slight accent of disdain;
With level, liquid tones that fell like chimings of a vesper bell;
With large, grave stag-eyes, soft, yet keen with slumbering passion, hazelbrown,
Long-lashed and dark, whose limpid sheen my thirsty spirit swallowed down;—
O poor, pale words, wherewith to paint my queen, my goddess, and my saint!
You see that oriel, ivy-grown, with the blurred sculpture underneath?
Her sweet head, like the Clytie's own, with a white stephanotis wreath
Inwoven with its coiling hair, first bent to me in greeting there.
I shall remember till I die that night when we were introduced!
The great Sir Hildebrand stood by—her cousin— scowling as he used
To scowl if e'en a poor dumb cur ventured to lift his eyes to her.
I cared not. Well I knew her grace was not for him. I watched them dance,
And knew it by her locked-up face, and her slow, haughty utterance.
I knew he chafed and raged to see how kind and sweet she was to me.
O dear old window!—nevermore the red and purple lights, that stray
Through your dim panes upon the floor on sunny summer-night, will lay
Soft rainbows on her glossy hair and the white dress she used to wear!
Those panes the ivy used to scratch—I hear it now when I'm alone!
A pair of martlets used to hatch their young ones in the sculptured stone;
Those warm slabs were the bloodhound's bed, with fine yew-needles carpeted.
237
The missel-thrushes used to search there for the berries as they fell;
On that high twig, at morn, would perch a shy and shivering locustelle,—
From yon low sweep of furzy brake, we used to watch it thrill and shake.
The banksia roses twined a wreath all round that ancient coat and crest,
And trailed the time-worn steps beneath, and almost touched the martin's nest;
The honey bees swam in and out, and little lizards flashed about.
And when we flung the casement wide, the wind would play about her brow,
As she sat, etching, by my side,—I see the bright locks lifted now!
And such a view would meet our eyes of crimson woods and azure skies!
'Twas there, when fell the twilight hush, I used to feed her wistful ears,
And make her cheek and forehead flush, and her dark eyes fill full of tears,
With tales of my wild, fighting life—our bitter, brave Crimean strife.
We had, too, little concerts in that dear recess,—I used to play
Accompaniments on my violin, and she would sing “Old Robin Gray,”
And simple, tender Scottish songs of loyal love and royal wrongs.
My violin is dead for me, the dust lies thick upon the case;
And she is dead,—yet I can see e'en now the rapt and listening face;
And all about the garden floats the echo of those crying notes!
'Tis a sweet garden, is it not? So wild and tangled, nothing prim;
No quaint-cut bed, no shaven plot, no stunted bushes, stiff and trim;
Its flowers and shrubs all overblown, its long paths moss and lichen-grown.
'Twas on that terrace that we read the “Idylls,” sauntering up and down
With gentle, musing, measured tread, while leaves kept falling, gold and brown,
And mists kept rising, silver-grey, one still and peaceful autumn-day.
In those long glades we roamed apart, and studied Spanish, and the tales
Of Chaucer,—there we talked of art, and listened to the nightingales;
E'en now, when summer daylight dies, I hear their bubbling melodies.
You see that bower, half-hidden, made by the low-branching willow-tree?
We used to lounge there in the shade, and laugh, and gossip, and drink tea:
I wreathed her head with ferns, one night, and little rose-buds sweet and white.
It grew my habit, by-and-by, to gather all the flowers she wore;
She used to take them silently, or I would leave them at her door,—
And wait about till she was drest, to see them nestling on her breast.
238
In that green nook she used to sit, and I would watch her as she worked.
Her face had such a spell in it, and such a subtle glamour lurked
In even the motion of her hand!—why, I could never understand.
'Twas there I tied the little strap that held her netting down, one day,
And kissed the soft palm in her lap, which she so gently drew away.
Ay me, we held our tongues for hours! and I plucked off and ate the flowers.
She would not look at me at first—I recollect it all so well!
Her delicate, downcast features, erst so pale, were tinted like a shell—
Then like the petals that enclose the inmost heart of a moss rose.
The others came and chatted round, but we could laugh and chat no more;
I propped my elbow on the ground, and watched her count her stitches o'er;
Their talk I did not comprehend,—she was too busy to attend.
The days passed on, and still we sat in our old place; but things were changed.
We were so silent after that!—so oddly formal—so estranged!
No more we met to worship art,—our little pathways branched apart.
All day I kept her face in view—scarce one low tone I failed to hear;
And, though she would not see, I knew she felt when I was far or near.
Yet brief and seldom was the chance that gave me word, or smile, or glance.
One night I came home in the gloom. The other guests were mostly gone.
A light was burning in her room, and from the lawn it shone upon
I plucked a flower for her to wear—a white rose, fringed with maidenhair.
I passed through that long corridor—those are its windows, to the west—
That I might leave it at her door,—and saw her cross her threshold, drest.
No lamps were lit,—the twilight shed a grey mist on her shiny head.
Her garments swept the oaken stairs; I stood below her, hushed and dumb;
She started, seeing me unawares, and stopped. “Come down,” I whispered;
“come!”
She waited, but I waited too;—and she had nothing else to do.
She came down, slowly, haughtily, with sweet pretence of carelessness.
I watched each step as she drew nigh, each brighter gleam on her white dress.
I did not speak, I did not stir, but all my heart went out to her.
She would have passed me, shy and still,—she would not suffer herself to mark
239
That I was grown so bold, until I took her dear hands in the dark.
And then—and then—Well! she was good and patient, and she understood.
My arms were strong, and rude, and rough—because my love was so intense;
She knew the reason well enough, and so she would not take offence;
Though 'twas by force I made her stay, she did not try to get away.
Ah, then we had some happy hours—some blessed days of peace and rest!
This garden, full of shady bowers and lonely pathways, from whose breast
A thousand blending perfumes rise, became a very Paradise.
'Twas fair as the first Eden, then; and Adam had no fairer mate!
Nor grieved he more than I grieved, when the angel drove him from the gate.
When God cursed him from His high throne, He did not cast him out alone!
'Twas on that broken step we sat, where the yew branch is fall'n and bent,
And read the Colonel's letter, that recalled me to my regiment.
'Twas there, on such a night as this, I stood to give my parting kiss.
'Twas there I hugged the small Greek head upon my bosom, damp with dew;
'Twas there she soothed my grief, and said, “But I shall still belong to you.”
O my sweet Eve, with your pure eyes!—you're mine now, in God's Paradise.
I sailed, you know, within a week, en route for Malta's heat and blaze;
And tender letters came, to speak of love, and comfort, and bright days.
I tried to think it was not hard—of what was coming afterward.
I used to dream, and dream, and dream, from night till morn, from morn till
night;
My future life just then did seem so full, so beautiful, so bright!
I could not see, I could not feel, the sorrow dogging at my heel.
At length it touched me. By-and-by the letters ceased. I looked in vain;
I roamed the streets dejectedly, and gnawed my long moustache in pain.
I wrote twice—thrice; no answer still. Surely, I thought, she must be ill.
Until one evening Eyre came in, to lounge and gossip, drink and smoke,
I gave him leisure to begin; and, when his pipe was lit, he spoke,
Through curling vapour, soft and blue—“Guy, I've a piece of news for you.
“One of the girls you met last year at that poor tumble-down old place—
The dark-haired one—she with the clear white skin and sweet Madonna face,—
240
She's married now, I understand, to her rich cousin Hildebrand.”
I felt my limbs grow stark and stiff; I felt my heart grow cold as lead;
I heard Eyre's quiet, musing whiff—the noise swam round and round my head.
I veiled my eyes, lest he should see their passionate, mute misery.
“I only heard,” he said, “to-day. It's out in all the papers, though.
She did not care for him, they say. But the old house was falling low—
Her father's name and fame at stake. She would do anything for his sake.
“Some mortgages foreclosed—the price of years and centuries of debt;
The manor doomed for sacrifice—or else the Lady Margaret.
Doubtless for Hildebrand's red gold the rare Madonna face was sold.
“I fancy that's the history,” he ended, in a bitter tone.
“It's not a new one, by-the-bye.” And when he went, I sat alone,
And tried to ease me with a prayer, but ground my teeth in my despair.
Then I grew stupid, numb, and tired. A fever crept through all my veins,
And wearied out my heart, and fired my dazed, tumultuous, teeming brains.
I hung suspended by a breath, for weeks and months, 'twixt life and death.
Then I recovered, and had leave to go to England— where she dwelt;
In my home climate to retrieve my broken health and strength. I felt
Twice ten years older than before. I knew I should come back no more.
Soon as I touched my native land, my feet turned toward the manor house.
They told me that Sir Hildebrand was in the Highlands, shooting grouse;
That she was in her father's care. That night I found her, sitting there,
On that third step, just where the trees cast down their greenest, coolest shade;
Her weary hands about her knees, her head against the balustrade;
And such dumb woe in her sweet eyes, uplifted to the fading skies.
She did not see me till I burst through the rose-thickets round about.
She sprang up with a cry at first—and then her arms were half stretched out—
And then caught backward, for his sake. I felt as if my heart would break.
I knew the truth. I did not care. I did not think. I flung me down,
And kissed her hands, her wrists, her hair, the very fringes of her gown;
While she sat cowering in a heap, and moaned, and shook, but could not weep.
241
It was soon over. O good God, forgive me!—I was sorely tried.
'Twas a dark pathway that I trod; I could not see Thee at my side.
It was soon over. “I shall die,” she whispered, “if you stay here, Guy!
“O Guy! Guy! you were kind to me in our old days,—be kinder now,—
Be kind, and go, and let me be!” And then I felt on my hot brow
The brush of her cold finger-tips—the last soft contact of her lips.
And I obeyed her will and went, and vowed to tempt her nevermore.
I tried hard, too, to be content, and think of that which lay before.
I knew my dream of love was past, yet strove to serve her to the last.
I left my comrades—I had lost all taste for glory and for mirth—
And, without hopes or aims, I cross'd the seas and wander'd o'er the earth.
Without a light, without a guide, I drifted with the wind and tide.
My heart was broken when 'twas struck that bitter blow, and joy ran out!
Only a few stray treasures stuck—a few gleams flickered round about.
My old art-love still lingered there,—I think that kept me from despair.
With strange companions did I dwell, one scorching summer, on the heights
Of Tangiers' Moorish citadel, and mused away the days and nights.
With loose white garments and long gun, I roamed the deserts in the sun.
I painted Atlas, capped with snow, and lifted, cool, and still, and fair,
Out of the burning heat and glow, into the solemn upper air;
And Tetuan's gleaming walls I drew on fields of Mediterranean blue.
I haunted Cairo's crowded ways, and sketched carved doors and gilded grates,
Mosque-domes and minarets ablaze, and sweet dark heads with shining plaits;
And now a grave old Arab sheikh, and then a slim, straight-featured Greek.
In a swift wing-sailed boat I slid across the stream where Libya looms,
And from King Cheop's pyramid saw Pharaoh-cities, Pharaoh-tombs;
And, stretching off for many a mile, the sacred waters of the Nile.
I saw the graves of mighty states,—I saw Thebes' temple, overturned—
The City of the Hundred Gates, where Moses and Greek sages learned,
Where hungry lions prowl at noon, and hyaenas snarl at the bright moon.
I roamed through Nubian desert flats, where vultures sailed o'er burning seas;
And forests where the yellow bats hung, cloaked and hooded, from the trees;
242
And marshy wastes, where crocodiles slept on the shores of sandy isles.
I followed, through long days and nights, where, with their little ones and flocks,
Had passed the wandering Israelites; I read the writing on the rocks;
And e'en these restless feet of mine tracked holy feet in Palestine.
Roaming through India's burning plains, I chased wild boars and antelopes;
Swam brawling nullahs in the rains, and haunted dew-wet mango-topes;
Shot bears and tigers in the gloom of the dense forests of Beerbhoom.
Through swathing-nets I watched at night the clear moon gild a palm-tree ledge;
And, through the flood of silver light, heard jackals at the compound-hedge;
While punkahs waved above my head, and faint airs hovered round my bed.
I mused by many a sacred tank, where lonely temples fell away,
Where the fat alligators drank, and scarlet lotus-flowers lay;
Smoked curling pipes 'neath roof and tree, the while dark nautch-girls danced to
me.
I trod the creeper-netted ground of deadly, beautiful, bright woods,
Where birds and monkeys chattered round, and serpents reared their crimson
hoods.
I dwelt 'neath breathless desert-glows, and Simla's Himalayan snows.
From the hot glades of garden reach, I wandered upward to Cabool—
From the bright Hooghly's flowering beach to the wild mountains, calm and cool.
I wept at Cawnpore's fatal well, and where our heroes fought and fell.
I roamed through Lucknow's battered gate—thick-thronged with memories so
intense!
And Delhi's ruins of wild state and old Mogul magnificence.
I pressed the rank, blood-nurtured grass that creeps along the Khyber Pass.
I sailed the Irrawaddy's stream, 'mid dense teak forests; saw the moon
Light up with broad and glittering gleam the golden Dagun of Rangoon—
The delicate, fretted temple-shells, whose roofs were rimmed with swaying bells.
In his gold palace, all alone, with square, hard face and eyes aslant,
I saw upon his royal throne the Lord of the White Elephant.
I mixed in wild, barbaric feasts with Buddha's yellow-robèd priests.
I crept with curious feet within imperial China's sacred bounds;
243
I saw the Palace of Pekin, and all its fairy garden-grounds;
The green rice-fields, the tremulous rills, the white azaleas on the hills;
The tea-groves climbing mountain backs; the girls' rich robes of blue and white;
The cattle 'neath the paddy-stacks; the gilt pagodas, tall and bright;—
And in a merchant-junk I ran across the waters to Japan.
I saw, where silk-fringed mats were spread, within his laquered, bare saloon,
With his curled roofs above his head, on muffled heels, the great Tycoon.
Familiar things they were to me—the pipes, and betelnuts, and tea.
I dug in Californian ground, at Sacramento's golden brim,
With hunger, murder, all around, and fever shaking every limb;
Saw, in lush forests and rude sheds, the Dyaks roast ing pirates' heads.
I shot white condors on the brows of snowy Andes; and I chased
Wild horses, and wild bulls and cows, o'er the wide Pampas' jungle-waste;
And saw, while wandering to and fro, the silver mines of Mexico.
In Caffre waggons I was drawn up lone Cape gorges, green and steep,
And camped by river-grove and lawn, where nightly tryst the wild things keep;
Where glaring eyes without the line of circling watch-fires used to shine.
I chased o'er sandy plains and shot the ostrich,—at the reedy brink
Of pools, the lion, on the slot of antelopes that came to drink;
Giraffes, that held their heads aloof'neath the mimosa's matted roof;
And brindled gnus, and cowardly, striped shard-wolves, and, 'mid water-plants
And flags, black hippopotami, and snakes, and shrieking elephants.
From courted sickness, hunger, strife, God spared my weary, reckless life.
In the bright South Seas did I toss through wild blue nights and fainting days,
With the snow-plumaged albatross. I saw Tahiti's peaks ablaze;
And still, palm-fringed lagoons asleep o'er coral grottoes, cool and deep.
I built an Australian hut of logs, and lived alone— with just a noose,
A trap, a gun, my horse and dogs; I hunted long-legged kangaroos;
And oft I spent the calm night-hours beneath the gum-trees' forest-bowers.
I threaded miles and miles and miles, where Lena's sad, slow waters flow,
'Mid silent rocks, and woods, and isles, and drear Siberian steppes of snow;
Where pines and larches, set alight, blaze in the dark and windless night.
244
I shot a wild fowl on the shore of a still, lonely mountain lake,
And, o'er the sheer white torrents' roar, heard long-drawn, plaintive echoes
wake;
Caught squirrels in their leafy huts, munching the little cedar-nuts.
I trapped the small, soft sables, stripped the bloomy fur from off their backs,
And hunted grey wolves as they slipped and snuffed and snarled down reindeer
tracks;
I brought the brown, bald eagle down from the white sea-hill's rugged crown.
I saw the oil-lamp shining through the small and dim ice window-pane;
And the near sky, so deeply blue, spangled with sparks, like golden rain;
While dogs lay tethered, left and right, howling across the arctic night.
I saw when, in my flying sledge, I swept the frozen tundra-slopes,
The white bears on some craggy ledge, far-off, where ocean blindly gropes
In her dim caves—where bones lie furled, the tokens of a vanished world.
I saw across the dread blue sky, spanning blue ice and bluer mist
(That shows where open waters lie), the bright Aurora keep her tryst,—
That arch of tinted flame—so fair! lighting the crystals in the air.
Then, all at once—I know not why—I felt I could no longer roam;
A voice seemed calling to my heart—Return to England and thy home;
I found my thoughts were yearning yet, for one more glimpse of Margaret.
So on a sudden I returned. I reached the village in the night.
At one small inn a candle burned with feeble, pale, unsteady light:
The hostess curtseyed, grave and strange. She did not know me for the change.
My broad white brows were bronzed, and scarred with lines of trouble, thought,
and
care;
My young bright eyes were dim and hard—the sunshine was no longer there;
My brown moustache was hid away in a great beard of iron-grey.
“The Manor House is habited,” to my brief question she replied.
“To-night my lady lies there dead. She's long been ailing, and she died
At noon. A happy thing for her! Were you acquainted with her, sir?
“A sweeter lady never walked! So kind and good to all the poor!
She ne'er disdained us when she talked—ne'er turned a beggar from her door.
245
Ah, sir, but we may look in vain; we ne'er shall see her likes again.
“I heard the squire's great bloodhound's bark; I woke, and shook, and held my
breath.
My man, he stirred too in the dark. Said he to me, ‘My lady's death
Is not far off. Another night she'll never see.’ And he was right.
“'Twas over in twelve hours or less. She lies there, on the golden bed,
In her old confirmation dress, with the small white cap on her head
Which bore the bishop's blessing hand,—she asked that of Sir Hildebrand.”
You see that window in the shade of those old beeches? 'Twas that room
Wherein my dear dead love was laid. I climbed the ivy in the gloom
And silence—just once more to see the face that had belonged to me.
I stood beside her. No one heard. On the great rajah's bed, alone
She lay. The night-breeze softly stirred the Cashmere curtains, and the moan
Of my wild kisses seemed to thrill the solitude. All else was still.
In the pale yellow taper light, I gazed upon her till the morn.
I see her now—so sweet and white! the fair, pure face so trouble-worn!
The thin hands folded on her breast, in peace at last, and perfect rest!
~ Ada Cambridge,#NFDB
149 Integral Yoga
117 Poetry
16 Zen
12 Occultism
8 Psychology
3 Mythology
3 Mysticism
2 Fiction
1 Thelema
1 Philosophy
1 Integral Theory
1 Education
1 Buddhism
1 Alchemy
99 The Mother
64 Satprem
27 Kobayashi Issa
23 Nolini Kanta Gupta
17 Sri Aurobindo
15 Dogen
14 A B Purani
13 Ikkyu
12 Yosa Buson
12 Muso Soseki
12 Fukuda Chiyo-ni
10 James George Frazer
5 Jakushitsu
5 Hakuin
3 William Butler Yeats
3 Masahide
3 Joseph Campbell
3 Jordan Peterson
2 Yamei
2 Walt Whitman
2 Nukata
2 Nirodbaran
2 H P Lovecraft
2 George Van Vrekhem
2 Carl Jung
2 Aleister Crowley
15 Dogen - Poems
14 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
10 The Golden Bough
9 Agenda Vol 03
9 Agenda Vol 02
8 Questions And Answers 1953
8 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
8 Agenda Vol 06
8 Agenda Vol 05
6 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
6 Agenda Vol 08
6 Agenda Vol 04
5 Agenda Vol 09
5 Agenda Vol 01
4 The Secret Doctrine
4 Questions And Answers 1954
4 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
3 Yeats - Poems
3 Words Of Long Ago
3 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
3 Some Answers From The Mother
3 Record of Yoga
3 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
3 Maps of Meaning
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
3 Agenda Vol 10
2 Whitman - Poems
2 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
2 The Practice of Psycho therapy
2 The Human Cycle
2 Questions And Answers 1956
2 Preparing for the Miraculous
2 Prayers And Meditations
2 Lovecraft - Poems
2 Letters On Yoga IV
2 Letters On Yoga II
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
2 Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin
2 Agenda Vol 11
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Tibetans, Chinese and Japanese. Fire is the Foundation, the
central core, of things; above this forms a crust, tormented
0.03 - III - The Evening Sittings, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
From 1922 to 1926, No. 9, Rue de la Marine, where he and the Mother had shifted, was the place where the sittings were held. There, also upstairs, was a less broad verandah than at the Guest House, a little bigger table in front of the central door out of three, and a broad Japanese chair, the table covered with a better cloth than the one in the Guest House, a small flower vase, an ash-tray, a block calendar indicating the date and an ordinary time-piece, and a number of chairs in front in a line. The evening sittings used to be after meditation at 4 or 4.30 p.m. After 24 November 1926, the sittings began to get later and later, till the limit of 1 o'clock at night was reached. Then the curtain fell. Sri Aurobindo retired completely after December 1926, and the evening sittings came to a close.
On 8 February 1927, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother moved to No. 28, Rue Franois Martin, a house on the north-east of the same block as No. 9, Rue de la Marine.
0.03 - Letters to My little smile, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
the Japanese cover the walls of their rooms with embroidered curtains.
You are right; nothing is better than to realise our most beautiful
0.05 - Letters to a Child, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The paintings are fine, they are like Japanese ones. As for
the "plane" from which they come, it is surely the subtle physical, where the memory of all the conceptions and works of art
0.11 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The Ashram was born a few years after my return from Japan,
in 1926.
0 1954-08-25 - what is this personality? and when will she come?, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Yes, certainly had there been any receptivity when She came down and had She been able to manifest with the power with which She came But I can tell you one thing: even before Her coming, when, with Sri Aurobindo, I had begun going down (for the Yoga) from the mental plane to the vital plane, when we brought our yoga down from the mental plane into the vital plane, in less than a month (I was forty years old at the time I didnt seem very old, I looked less than forty, but I was forty anyway), after no more than a month of this yoga, I looked exactly like an 18 year old! And someone who knew me and had stayed with me in Japan5 came here, and when he saw me, he could scarcely believe his eyes! He said, But my god, is it you? I said, Of course!
Only when we went down from the vital plane into the physical plane, all this went awaybecause on the physical plane, the work is much harder and we had so much to do, so many things to change.
--
W.W. Pearson, a friend of Rabindranath Tagore, who had come from Tagore's Ashram in 1923; Mother had met him with Tagore in 1916 in Japan.
***
0 1956-04-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
A friend of Satprem's who died insane in a Japanese hospital in India
***
0 1959-06-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
He did not give me any further details about this war, except to say that the countries which will suffer the most will be the countries of the North and the East, and he cited Burma, Japan, China and Russia. He said rather categorically that Russia would be swept away and that America would triumph.
2) X gave me certain details about his powers of prediction, but perhaps it would be better not to speak of this in a letter. On that occasion, he told me that he did not want to keep any secrets from me: I want you to know everything. I want you to be chief disciple in my tradition. When the time comes, you will understand what I mean. With you I have full connection, not only connection in my mind, but in my blood and body.
0 1960-11-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
And just a while ago some volcanoes erupted, so the sea rose and swept away all kinds of things in Japan and all along its path, but it didnt come all the way to India. When I was in Japan, one island was swallowed up just like that, along with its 30,000 inhabitants, glub!
You see, it amuses them; its the way these beings amuse themselvesonly its on another scale, thats all. They look at us like ants, so whats it matter to them! If they dont like it, too bad for them. Only, ants cant protest, or at least we dont understand their protests! Whereas when we ourselves protest, we can make ourselves heard. We have the means to make ourselves heard.
0 1960-11-15, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
While it was all coming up, I thought, How is this possible? For during those years of my life (Im now outside things; I do them but Im entirely outside, so they dont involve mewhether its like this or like that makes no difference to me; Im only doing my work, thats all), I was already conscious, but nevertheless I was IN what I was doing to a certain extent; I was this web of social life (but thank God it wasnt here in India, for had it been here I could not have withstood it! I think that even as a child I would have smashed everything, because here its even worse than over there). You see, there its its a bit less constricting, a bit looser, you can slip through the mesh from time to time to brea the some air. But here, according to what Ive learned from people and what Sri Aurobindo told me, its absolutely unbearable (its the same in Japan, absolutely unbearable). In other words, you cant help but smash everything. Over there, you sometimes get a breath of air, but still its quite relative. And this morning I wondered (you see, for years I lived in that way for years and years) just as I was wondering, How was I ABLE to live that and not kick out in every direction?, just as I was looking at it, I saw up above, above this (it is worse than horrible, it is a kind of Oh, not despair, for there isnt even any sense of feeling there is NOTHING! It is dull, dull, dull gray, gray, gray, clenched tight, a closed web that lets through neither air nor life nor lightthere is nothing) and just then I saw a splendor of such sweet light above itso sweet, so full of true love, true compassion something so warm, so warm the relief, the solace of an eternity of sweetness, light, beauty, in an eternity of patience which feels neither the past nor the inanity and imbecility of thingsit was so wonderful! That was entirely the feeling it gave, and I said to myself, THAT is what made you live, without THAT it would not have been possible. Oh, it would not have been possible I would not have lived even three days! THAT is there, ALWAYS there, awaiting its hour, if we would only let it in.
(silence)
0 1961-01-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are places where it happens like that: suddenly everything stopsno more school, no more mail, no more trains. I remember a poor little village in Japan where they had a flu epidemic, the first of its kind. They didnt know what it was and the whole village fell ill. It was winter, the village was snowed in and there was no more communication with the outside (the mail came only once every fifteen days). The postman arrived and everyone was dead, buried beneath the snow.
I was there in Japan when it happened.
A little vale of snowno one left.
0 1961-04-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But I have had some cats. I had a cat who was the reincarnation of the mind of a Russian woman. I had a vision of it one day, it was so strangethis woman had been murdered at the time of the Russian Revolution, along with her two little children. And her mind entered a cat here. (How? I dont know.) But this cat, mon petit. I got her when she was very young. She would come and lie down, stretched out like a human being, with her head on my arm! (I used to sleep on a Japanese tatami on the floor.) And she would stay there, so well-behaved, didnt stir all night long! I was really amazed. Then she had kittens, and wanted to give birth to them lying stretched out, not at all like a cat. It was very difficult to make her understand that it couldnt be done that way! And one night after she had had her kittens, I saw her I saw a young woman in furs, with a fur bonnetyou could just see a tiny human face; she had two little ones and she came to me and placed them at my feet. Her whole story was there in her consciousness: how she and the two children had been murdered. And then I realized she was the cat!
The cat wouldnt leave her kittens for a moment! Not for anything. She wouldnt eat, wouldnt go outside to relieve herself, nothing: she stayed put. So I told her, Bring me your kittens. (If you know how to handle them, cats understand very well when theyre spoken to.) Bring me your little ones. She looked at me, went and brought one of her kittens, and placed it between my feet. Then she went to fetch the other one and placed it between my feet (not beside, between my feet). Now you can go out, I told her. And out she went.
0 1961-04-29, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In fact, I have seen this all over the world. I have never been on very good terms with religions, neither in Europe, nor Africa, nor Japan, nor even here.
(silence)
0 1961-06-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I know why I gave no explanations as I was speaking: because of the intensity of the experience. There is something like it in Prayers and Meditations. I remember an experience I had in Japan which is noted there. (Mother looks through Prayers and Meditations and reads a passage dated November 25, 1917:)2
Thou art the sure friend who never fails,
0 1961-07-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have always known that cruelty, like sadism, is the need to cut through a thick layer of totally insensitive tamas1 by means of extremely violent sensationan extreme is needed if anything is to be felt through that tamas. I was always told, for example (in Japan it was strongly emphasized to me), that the people of the Far East are very tamasic physically. The Chinese in particular are said to be the remnants of a race that inhabited the moon before it froze over and forced them to seek refuge on earth (this is supposed to account for their round faces and the shape of their eyes!). Anyway (laughing), its a story people tell! But theyre extremely tamasic; their physical sensibility is almost nilappalling things are required to make them feel anything! And since they naturally presume that what applies to them applies to everyone, they are capable of appalling cruelty. Not all of them, of course! But this is their reputation. Have you read Mirbeaus book? (I believe thats his name.) I read it sixty years ago something on Chinese torture.
Yes, its well-known.
--
Yes. When I read that book (it was very well written), I understood the problem, and my understanding was confirmed when I went to Japan. Many Japanese also have a blunted sensibility (blunted in the sense that to feel anything they need extremely violent stimuli). Perhaps an explanation could be found along these lines.
But behind it all, the original problem remains unresolved: Why has it become like this? Why this deformation? Why has it all been deformed? There are some very beautiful things behind, very intense, infinitely more powerful than we ourselves can even bear, marvelous things. But why has it all become so dreadful here? Thats what comes up immediatelyits why I told you I had no inspiration.
0 1961-08-02, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Every night, you know, I continue to see more and more astounding things emerging from the Subconscient to be transformed. Its a kind of mixturenot clearly individualizedof all the things that have been more or less closely associated in life. For example, some people are intermingled there. One relives things almost as in a dream (although these are not dreams), one relives it all in a certain setting, within a certain set of symbolic, or at any rate expressive, circumstances. Just two days ago I had to deal with someone (I am actively at work there and I had to do something with him), and upon seeing this person, I asked myself, is he this one or that one? As I became less involved in the action and looked with a more objective consciousness, the witness-consciousness, I saw that it was simply a mixture of both personseverything is mixed in the Subconscient. Already when I lived in Japan there were four people I could never distinguish during my nighttime activitiesall four of them (and god knows they werent even acquainted!) were always intermingled because their subconscious reactions were identical.
In fact, this is what legitimizes the ego; because if we had never formed an ego, we would have lived all mixed up (laughing), now this person, now another! Oh, it was so comical, seeing this the other day! At first it was a bit bewildering, but when I looked closely, it became utterly amusing: two little people with no physical resemblance, yet of a similar typesmall and in short, a similarity. Its like the four men I used to see in Japan: there was an Englishman, a Frenchman, a Japanese and one more, each from a different country; well, at night they were all the same, as if viewed one through the other, all intermingledvery amusing!
But individualization is a slow and difficult process. Thats why you have an ego, otherwise you would never become individualized, but always be (Mother laughs) a kind of public place!
0 1961-11-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When Richard went to Japan, he sent his manuscripts to Sri Aurobindo, including The Wherefore of the Worlds and The Eternal Wisdom, and Sri Aurobindo continued to translate them into English.
Frankly, it was a relief for Sri Aurobindo when we left; he even wrote to someone or other (but in a totally superficial way) that Richards departure was a great relief for him.
When we returned to France, Richard got himself declared unfit for military service on health groundsa yogic heart ailment! But life in France was impossible; and my presence there was dangerous because monstrous things were going on, monstrous; as Sri Aurobindo said, my sitting at home all alone was generating revolutionsarmies were revolting.6 I saw that happening and I didnt want the Germans to win, which would have been even worse, so I said, I had better go. Then Richard managed to have himself sent to Japan on business (an admirable feat!), representing certain companies. People didnt want to travel because it was dangerousyou risked being sunk to the bottom of the sea; so they were pleased when we offered and sent us to Japan.
Once there (this would also make a great novel), Richard continued writing and sending his manuscripts to Sri Aurobindo. Finally, when the Peace Treaty was signed and it was possible to travel, the English said that if we tried to return to India they would throw us in jail! But it all worked out miraculously, almost becoming a diplomatic incident: the Japanese government decided that if we were put in prison they would protest to the British government! (What a story I could write novels!) In short, Richard returned here with me. And thats when the tragi-comedy began.
I will tell you about it one dayfantastic!
--
This man clearly led a rather loose life. Right after he left here he spent some time in the Himalayas and became a Sannyasi. Then he went to France and from France to England. In England he married againbigamy! I didnt care, of course (the less he showed up in my life, the better), but he was in a fix! One day I suddenly received some official letters from a lawyer telling me I had initiated divorce proceedings against Richard. it seems I had a lawyer over there! A lawyer I had never asked for, whose name I didnt know, a lawyer I didnt even know existedmy lawyer! The trial was taking place at Nice, and I was accusing Richard of abandoning me without any means of support! (That was nothing new I had paid all the expenses from the first day we met! But anyway.) Naturally, he couldnt plead that he was a bigamist; nor could he have me accuse him of being a bigamist, because it was true! So it seemed he hadnt been paying my expenses; but then I wasnt claiming anything from him in the case, no alimonya little incoherent, all that. After a few months I was finally informed that I was divorced, which was rather convenient for me as far as the bank was concerned. I had a marriage contract stipulating that our properties were separate; since I was the one with the money (he had nothing), I wanted to be free to do with it as I pleased. But the French were impossible in such matters: the woman was considered the minor party, so even if the money was the wifes and not the husbands, she couldnt withdraw it without his authorization. I dont know if its still like that, but in those days the husb and always had to countersignan annoying situation! I got around this in Japan (the banker there found the rule stupid and told me to ignore it), but the bank here can be a pain in the neck, so it was good to get this cleared up.
He remarried two or three more times. By now (I believe) he is the father of quite a large family, with grandchildren and perhaps great-grandchildren. He lives in America. Someone once told me he was dead, but I could sense that he wasnt. Then, out of the blue, E. arrived, full of admiration, telling me she had met Richard and how stunningly he could preach to people.
0 1961-11-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When I returned from Japan and we began to work together, Sri Aurobindo had already brought the supramental light into the mental world and was trying to transform the Mind. Its strange, he said to me, its an endless work! Nothing seems to get doneeverything is done and then constantly has to be done all over again. Then I gave him my personal impression, which went back to the old days with Theon: It will be like that until we touch bottom. So instead of continuing to work in the Mind, both of us (I was the one who went through the experience how to put it? practically, objectively; he experienced it only in his consciousness, not in the body but my body has always participated), both of us descended almost immediately (it was done in a day or two) from the Mind into the Vital, and so on quite rapidly, leaving the Mind as it was, fully in the light but not permanently transformed.
Then a strange thing happened. When we were in the Vital, my body suddenly became young again, as it had been when I was eighteen years old! There was a young man named Pearson, a disciple of Tagore, who had lived with me in Japan for four years; he returned to India, and when he came to see me in Pondicherry, he was stupefied.4 What has happened to you! he exclaimed. He hardly recognized me. During that same period (it didnt last very long, only a few months), I received some old photographs from France and Sri Aurobindo saw one of me at the age of eighteen. There! he said, Thats how you are now! I wore my hair differently, but otherwise I was eighteen all over again.
This lasted for a few months. Then we descended into the Physical and all the trouble began.5 But we didnt stay in the Physical, we descended into the Subconscient and from the Subconscient to the Inconscient. That was how we worked. And it was only when I descended into the Inconscient that I found the Divine Presence there, in the midst of Darkness.
0 1961-12-20, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For example, the importance of the departure2: how he was present the whole time I was away; how he guided my entire life in Japan; how. Of course, it would be seen in the mirror of my own experience, but it would be Sri Aurobindonot me, not my reactions: him; but through my experience because thats all I can speak of.
There would be interesting things even for.
--
I dont know, Im putting it poorly, but this experience was concrete to the point of being physical. It happened in a Japanese country-house where we were living, near a lake. There was a whole series of circumstances, events, all kinds of thingsa long, long story, like a novel. But one day I was alone in meditation (I have never had very profound meditations, only concentrations of consciousness Mother makes an abrupt gesture showing a sudden ingathering of the entire being); and I was seeing. You know that I had taken on the conversion of the Lord of Falsehood: I tried to do it through an emanation incarnated in a physical being [Richard]7, and the greatest effort was made during those four years in Japan. The four years were coming to an end with an absolute inner certainty that there was nothing to be done that it was impossible, impossible to do it this way. There was nothing to be done. And I was intensely concentrated, asking the Lord, Well, I made You a vow to do this, I had said, Even if its necessary to descend into hell, I will descend into hell to do it. Now tell me, what must I do?The Power was plainly there: suddenly everything in me became still; the whole external being was completely immobilized and I had a vision of the Supreme more beautiful than that of the Gita. A vision of the Supreme.8 And this vision literally gathered me into its arms; it turned towards the West, towards India, and offered meand there at the other end I saw Sri Aurobindo. It was I felt it physically. I saw, sawmy eyes were closed but I saw (twice I have had this vision of the Supremeonce here, much later but this was the first time) ineffable. It was as if this Immensity had reduced itself to a rather gigantic Being who lifted me up like a wisp of straw and offered me. Not a word, nothing else, only that.
Then everything vanished.
--
It was after this vision, when I returned from Japan, that this meeting with Sri Aurobindo took place, along with the certainty that the Mission would be accomplished.
(silence)
--
In 1915, when Mother left Pondicherry for France and later Japan.
Actually, Satprem did see Sri Aurobindo in 1946 or 1947.
0 1962-01-09, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
These past few days Ive had some interesting experiences from this standpoint. I had what is commonly called fever, but it wasnt feverit was a resurfacing from the subconscient of all the struggles, all the tensions this body has had for what will soon be eighty-three years. I went through a period in my life when the tension was tremendous, because it was psychological and vital as well as physical: a perpetual struggle against adverse forces; and during my stay in Japan, particularly oh, it was terrible! So at night, everything that had been part of that life in Japanpeople, things, movements, circumstancesall of it seemed to be surrounding my body in the form of vital3 vibrations, and to be taking the place of my present state, which had completely vanished. For hours during the night, the body was reliving all the terrible tensions it had during those four years in Japan. And I realized how much (because at the time you pay no attention; the consciousness is busy with something else and not concentrated on the body), how much the body resists and is tense. And just as I was realizing this, I had a communication with Sri Aurobindo: But youre keeping it up! he told me. Your body still has the habit of being tense. (Its much less now, of course; its quite different since the inner consciousness is in perfect peace, but the BODY keeps the habit of being tense.) For instance, in the short interval between the time I get up and the time I come down to the balcony,4 when I am getting ready (I have to get this body ready to come down) well, the body is tense about being ready in time. And thats why accidents happen at that moment. So the following morning I said, All right, no more tension, and I was exclusively concerned with keeping my body perfectly tranquil I was no later than usual! So its obviously just one of the bodys bad habits. Everything went off the same as usual, and since then things are better. But its a nasty habit.
And so I looked. Is it something particular to this body? I wondered. To everyone who has lived closely with it, my body gives the impression of two things: a very concentrated, very stubborn will, and such endurance! Sri Aurobindo used to tell me he had never dreamed a body could have such endurance. And thats probably why. But I dont want to curtail this ability in any way, because it is a CELLULAR will, and a cellular endurance toowhich is quite intriguing. Its not a central will and central endurance (thats something else altogether)its cellular. Thats why Sri Aurobindo used to tell me this body had been specially prepared and chosen for the Workbecause of its capacity for obstinate endurance and will. But thats no reason to exercise this ability uselessly! So I am making sure it relaxes now; I tell it constantly, Now, now! Just let go! Relax, have some fun, wheres the harm in it? I have to tell it to be quiet, very quiet. And its very surprised to hear that: Ah! Can I live that way? I dont have to hurry? I can live that way?
--
And suddenly I said to myself, How could it be? During all the time he was here, the time we were together (after I came back from Japan, when we were together), life, life on earth, lived such a wondrous divine possibility, so really so unique, something it had never lived to such an extent and in such a way, for thirty years, and it didnt even notice!
That.
0 1962-05-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There was, in fact, a whole group of Ashram people (they might be called the Ashram "intelligentsia") who, influenced by Subhas Bose, were strongly in favor of the Nazis and the Japanese against the British. (It should be recalled that the British were the invaders of India, and thus many people considered Britain's enemies to be automatically India's friends.) It reached the point where Sri Aurobindo had to intervene forcefully and write: "I affirm again to you most strongly that this is the Mother's war.... The victory of one side (the Allies) would keep the path open for the evolutionary forces: the victory of the other side would drag back humanity, degrade it horribly and might lead even, at the worst, to its eventual failure as a race, as others in the past evolution failed and perished.... The Allies at least have stood for human values, though they may often act against their own best ideals (human beings always do that); Hitler stands for diabolical values or for human values exaggerated in the wrong way until they become diabolical.... That does not make the English or Americans nations of spotless angels nor the Germans a wicked and sinful race, but...." (July 29, 1942 and Sept. 3, 1943, Cent. Ed., Vol. XXVI.394 ff.) And on her side also, Mother had to publicly declare: "It has become necessary to state emphatically and clearly that all who by their thoughts and wishes are supporting and calling for the victory of the Nazis are by that very fact collaborating with the Asura against the Divine and helping to bring about the victory of the Asura.... Those, therefore, who wish for the victory of the Nazis and their associates should now understand that it is a wish for the destruction of our work and an act of treachery against Sri Aurobindo." (May 6, 1941, original English.)
See note at the end of this conversation
0 1962-07-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ah, look at thisyesterday someone read me a letter Sri Aurobindo wrote to Barin in April 1920, a few days before I returned from Japan. It was written in Bengalitremendously interesting! He speaks of the state of the world, particularly India, and of how he envisaged a certain part of his action after completing his yoga. Its extremely interesting. And theres some very high praise for Europe. Sri Aurobindo says something like this: You all think Europe is over and done with, but thats not true, its not finished yet. In other words, its power is still alive.
This was in 1920.
0 1962-07-25, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And it has never left meyou know, as a proof of Sri Aurobindos power its incomparable! I dont believe there has ever been an example of such a (how can I put it?) such a total success: a miracle. It has NEVER left me. I went to Japan, I did all sorts of things, had all possible kinds of adventures, even the most unpleasant, but it never left mestillness, stillness, stillness
And it was he who did it, entirely. I didnt even ask him, there was no aspiration, nothing (there were my previous efforts; I knew it had to come, thats all). But on that day I hadnt mentioned it to him, I wasnt thinking about it, I wasnt doing anythingjust sitting there. And outwardly he seemed to be fully engrossed in his conversation about this and that and what was going to happen in the world.
0 1962-07-28, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When Mother returned from Japan in April 1920.
The first Prayers and Meditations date from November 1912, but there may have been earlier ones among the numerous texts Mother destroyed.
0 1962-09-15, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I wrote a lot in Japan.
Anyway, everything of general interest was kept. But thats why there are gaps in the dates, otherwise it would be continuousit was monumental, you know!
0 1962-10-30, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its like that famous Nirvanayou can find it behind everything. Theres a psychic nirvana, a mental nirvana, even a vital nirvana. I think I already told you about the experience I had with Tagore in Japan. Tagore always used to say that as soon as he started meditating he entered Nirvana, and he asked me to meditate with him. We sat together in meditation. I was expecting to make a very steep ascent, but he simply went into his MIND, and there (what I do, you see, is tune in to the person I am meditating with, identify with him thats how I know what happens). Well, he started meditating, and everything quite rapidly came to a halt, became absolutely immobile (this he did very well), and from there he sort of fell backwards, and it was Nothingness. And he could remain in that state indefinitely! We did in fact stay like that for a rather long time; I dont remember how long, three quarters of an hour or an hour, but anyway it was long enough. I was keeping alert the whole time to see if, by chance, he would go on into something else, but there he stayedhe stayed there nice and calm, without stirring. Then he came back, his mind started up again, and that was that.
I said nothing to him.
0 1962-11-17, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In April 1942, when England was struggling against the Nazis and Japan, which was threatening to invade Burma and India, Churchill sent an emissary, Sir Stafford Cripps, to New Delhi with a very generous proposal which he hoped would rally India's goodwill and cooperation in the fight against the worldwide threat. In this proposal, Great Britain offered India Dominion status, as a first step towards an independent government. Sri Aurobindo at once came out of retirement to wire his adhesion to Cripps; he wired all of India's leaders, and even sent a personal messenger to Gandhi and the Indian Congress to convince them to accept this unhoped for proposal without delay. One of Sri Aurobindo's telegrams to Rajagopalachari (the future President of India) spoke of the grave danger, which no one seemed to see, of rejecting Cripps' proposal: "... Some immediate solution urgent face grave peril. Appeal to you to save India formidable danger new foreign domination when old on way to self-elimination." No one understood: "Why is he meddling?" Had it accepted Dominion status, India would have avoided the partition of the country in two, the artificial creation of Pakistan, as well as the three wars that were to follow (and which we haven't heard the last of), and the blood bath that ravaged Bengal and the Punjab in 1947 at the time of the partition. (See in Addendum an extract from Sri Aurobindo's message on the occasion of India's Independence.)
There is another side to the story. When Nehru died, Mother said in a message of May 27, 1964: "Nehru leaves his body but his soul is ONE with the Soul of India, that lives for Eternity."
0 1962-11-20, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The only danger at the time was Japan, and Japan had officially declared it wouldnt bomb Pondicherry because of Sri Aurobindo. But at least there were still men in their planes, and they could choose not to bomb. But you dont tell a jet plane Dont crash here! It crashes wherever it can.
Yes, but its still hard to see why they would come here.
0 1963-03-23, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One thing, though: suddenly I read (yesterday or the day before) a sermon delivered in the U.S.A. by an American (who is a rabbi, a pastor and even a Catholic priest all at the same time!). He heads a group, a group for the unity of religions. A fairly young man, and a preacher. He gives a sermon every week, I think. He came here with some other Americans, stayed for two days and went back. But then, he sent us the sermons he had given since his return, and in one of them he recounts his spiritual journey, as he calls it (a spiritual journey through China, Japan, Indochina, Malaysia, Indonesia, and so on up to India). What shocked him most in India was the povertyit was an almost unbearable experience for him (thats also what prompted the two persons who were with him to leave, and he left with them): poverty. Personally, I dont know because Ive seen poverty everywhere; I saw it wherever I went, but it seems Americans find it very shocking. Anyway, they came here, and in his sermon he gives his impression of the Ashram. I read it almost with astonishment. That man says that the minute he entered this place, he felt a peace, a calm, a stability he had never felt ANYWHERE else in his life. He met a man (he doesnt say who, he doesnt name him and I couldnt find out), who he says was such a monument of divine peace and quietude that I only wished to sit silently at his side. Who it is, I dont know (theres only Nolini who might, possibly, give that impression). He attended the meditationhe says he had never felt anything so wonderful anywhere. And he left with the feeling this was a unique place in the world from the point of view of the realization of divine Peace. I read that almost with surprise. And hes a man who, intellectually, is unable to understand or follow Sri Aurobindo (the horizon is quite narrow, he hasnt got beyond the unity of religions, thats the utmost he can conceive of). Well, in spite of that Those who already know all of Sri Aurobindo, who come here thinking they will see and who feel that Peace, I can understand. But thats not the case: he was enthralled at once!
Its the same with people who get cured. That I know, to some extent: the Power acts so forcefully that it is almost miraculousat a distance. The Power I am very conscious of the Power. But, I must say, I find it doesnt act here so well as it does far away. On government or national matters, on the terrestrial atmosphere, on great movements, also as inspirations on the level of thought (in certain people, to realize certain things), the Power is very clear. Also to save people or cure themit acts very strongly. But much more at a distance than here! (Although the receptivity has increased since I withdrew because, necessarily, it gave people the urge to find inside something they no longer had outside.) But here, the response is very erratic. And to distinguish between the proportion that comes from faith, sincerity, simplicity, and what comes from the Power Some people I am able to save (naturally, in my view, its because they COULD be saved), this is something that for a very long time I have been able to foresee. But now I dont try to know: it comes like this (gesture like a flash). If, for instance, I am told, So and so has fallen ill, well, immediately I know if he will recover (first if its nothing, some passing trouble), if he will recover, if it will take some time and struggle and difficulties, or if its fatalautomatically. And without trying to know, without even trying: the two things come together.2 This capacity has developed, first because I have more peace, and because, having more peace, things follow a more normal course. But there were two or three little instances where I said to the Lord (gesture of presenting something, palms open upward), I asked Him to do a certain thing, and then (not very often, it doesnt happen to me often; at times it comes as a necessity, a necessity to present the thing with a commentfrom morning to evening and evening to morning I present everything constantly, thats my movement [same gesture of presenting something] but here, there is a comment, as if I were asking, Couldnt this be done?), and then the result: yes, immediately. But I am not the one who presents the thing, you see: its just the way it is, it just happens that way, like everything else.3 So my conclusion is that its part of the Plan, I mean, a certain vibration is necessary, enters [into Mother], intervenes, and No stories to tell, mon petit! Nothing to fill people with enthusiasm or give them trust, nothing.
0 1963-04-20, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had two experiences of that kind. The first was at Tlemcen3 and the second in Japan. There was an epidemic of influenza, an influenza that came from the war (the 1914 war), and was generally fatal. People would get pneumonia after three days, and plop! finished. In Japan they never have epidemics (its a country where epidemics are unknown), so they were caught unawares; it was an ideal breeding ground, absolutely unpreparedincredible: people died by the thousands every day, it was incredible! Everybody lived in terror, they didnt dare to go out without masks over their mouths. Then somebody whom I wont name asked me (in a brusque tone), What Is this? I answered him, Better not think about it. Why not? he said, Its very interesting! We must find out, at least you are able to find out whatever this is. Silly me, I was just about to go out; I had to visit a girl who lived at the other end of Tokyo (Tokyo is the largest city in the world, it takes a long time to go from one end to the other), and I wasnt so well-off I could go about in a car: I took the tram. What an atmosphere! An atmosphere of panic in the city! You see, we lived in a house surrounded by a big park, secluded, but the atmosphere in the city was horrible. And the question, What Is this? naturally came to put me in contact I came back home with the illness. I was sure to catch it, it had to happen! (laughing) I came home with it.
Like a bang on the head I was completely dazed. They called a doctor. There were no medicines left in the citythere werent enough medicines for people, but as we were considered important people (!) the doctor brought two tablets. I told him (laughing), Doctor, I never take any medicines. What! he said. Its so hard to get them!Thats just the point, I replied, theyre very good for others! Then, then suddenly (I was in bed, of course, with a first-rate fever), suddenly I felt seized by trance the real trance, the kind that pushes you out of your body and I knew. I knew: Its the end; if I cant resist it, its the end. So I looked. I looked and I saw it was a being whose head had been half blown off by a bomb and who didnt know he was dead, so he was hooking on to anybody he could to suck life. And each of those beings (I saw one over me, doing his business!) was one of the countless dead. Each had a sort of atmospherea very widespread atmosphereof human decomposition, utterly pestilential, and thats what gave the illness. If it was merely that, you recovered, but if it was one of those beings with half a head or half a body, a being who had been killed so brutally that he didnt know he was dead and was trying to get hold of a body in order to continue his life (the atmosphere made thousands of people catch the illness every day, it was swarming, an infection), well, with such beings, you died. Within three days it was overeven before, within a day, sometimes. So once I saw and knew, I collected all the occult energy, all the occult power, and (Mother bangs down her fist, as if to force her way into her body) I found myself back in my bed, awake, and it was over. Not only was it over, but I stayed very quiet and began to work in the atmosphere. From that moment on, mon petit, there were no new cases! It was so extraordinary that it appeared in the Japanese papers. They didnt know how it happened, but from that day on, from that night on, not a single fresh case. And people recovered little by little.
I told the story to our Japanese friend in whose house we were living, I told him, Well, thats what this illness isa remnant of the war; and heres the way it happens. And that being was repaid for his attempt! Naturally, the fact that I repelled his influence by turning around and fighting [dissolved the formation]. But what power it takes to do that! Extraordinary.
He told the story to some friends, who in turn told it to some friends, so in the end the story became known. There was even a sort of collective thanks from the city for my intervention. But the whole thing stemmed from that: What Is this illness? Youre able to find out, arent you? (Laughter) Go and catch it!
0 1963-06-15, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But mentally, you know (Mother makes a gesture: completely obtuse). There is a prince of Kashmir who came here once, a young man3; he went to England, and there he wrote a thesis on Sri Aurobindos political life, Sri Aurobindo, Prophet of Indian Nationalism, with a preface by Jawaharlal Nehru. I read the preface, but afterwards, the day after I saw Nehruits awful! Understands nothing, he understands nothing, nothing, nothing, absolutely obtuse. Its very kind, but written by someone who understands nothing. I will tell you the thing: between my first and second visits here, while I was away in Japan and Gandhi was starting his campaign,4 he sent a telegram, then a messenger, to Sri Aurobindo here, asking him to be president of the Congressto which Sri Aurobindo answered No.
Those people never forgave him.
0 1963-07-24, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
May 7, 1945, in Europe and August 15 in Japan.
We find it worthwhile to publish here a letter Mother wrote (in English) to Prithwi Singh, Sujata's father, just a few days before Sri Aurobindo's letter published at the beginning of this conversation, on August 30, 1945: "I do not see that the Supramental will act in the way you expect from It. Its action will be to effectuate the Divine's Will upon earth whatever that may be. On men Its action will be to turn their will consciously or unconsciously on their part towards the way in which the Divine's Will wants them to go. But I cannot promise you that the Divine's will is to preserve the present human civilisation."
0 1963-08-07, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its giving me the same kind of nights again. But its odd, I dont know what it means, last night there were buildings made of a kind of red granite, and many Japanese. Japanese women sewing and making ladies dresses and fabrics; Japanese youths climbing up and down the buildings with great agility; and everybody was very nice. But it was always the same thing (gesture of a collapse or a fall into a hole): you know, a path opens up, you walk on it, and after a while, plop! it all collapses. And there was a young Japanese man who was climbing up and down the place absolutely like a monkey, with extraordinary ease: Oh, I thought, but thats what I should do! But when I approached the spot, the things he used to climb up and down vanished! Finally, after a while, I made a decision: I will go just the same, and found myself downstairs. There I met some people and all sorts of things took place. But what I found interesting was that all the buildings (there were a great many of them, countless buildings!) were made of a kind of red porphyry. It was very beautiful, Granite or porphyry, there were both. Wide stairs, big halls, large gardenseven in the gardens there were constructions.
But outwardly, difficulties are coming back, in the sense that the Chinese seem to be seized again with a zeal to conquer they are massing troops at the border.
--
(As if by chance, Satprem reads Mother an old conversation, of January 24, 1961, on the influenza epidemic in Japan during World War I.)
And the best part of the story is that theyve never had that type of influenza since.
The Japanese are receptive people.
Theyve learned so much from the Americansit has warped their taste, but now its beginning to come back. Also, all that theyve learned helps them. And theyve converted America to the sense of Beauty!
Its odd, last night, it was all Japanese.
***
0 1963-10-16, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You understand, I know those things, I have seen thousands of them! Only, as it happens, for more than half a century I have sensed the difference in a most sharp way. I think I told you already that when I returned here from Japan, there were difficulties: once, I was in danger and I called Sri Aurobindo; he appeared, and the danger went away2he appeared, meaning, he came, something from him came, an EMANATION of him came, living, absolutely concrete. The next day (or rather later the same day), I told him my experience and how I saw him; that worried him (it was an unceasing danger, you see), and he very strongly thought that he should concentrate on me to protect me. And the next day, I saw him but it was an image, a mental formation! I told him, Yes, you came in a mental formation, it wasnt the same thing. Then he told me that this capacity of discernment is an extremely rare thing. But I always had it, even when I was small. Its a sensitiveness in the perception. And indeed I believe that very few people can sense the difference. So with X, my first impression was, My goodness, to do this to me! Well, really, I have some experience of the world, I cant be so easily made to believe that the moon is made of green cheese!
And yesterday, it was all very peaceful: X was there all the time with nobody in front of him, not pretending anything. But the first time, as he expected some result, he stayed on for ten minutesprobably he was expecting some reaction (I never told him that Sri Aurobindo is with me all the time, that we talk to each other every night). Anyhow, he was probably expecting some enthusiasm on my part (!) There you are.
0 1964-02-05, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But when you have the experience perfectly sincerely, that is, when you dont kid yourself, its necessarily one single point, ONE WAY of putting it, thats all. And it can only be that. There is, besides, the very obvious observation that when you habitually use a certain language, the experience expresses itself in that language: for me, it always comes either in English or in French; it doesnt come in Chinese or Japanese! The words are necessarily English or French, with sometimes a Sanskrit word, but thats because physically I learned Sanskrit. Otherwise, I heard (not physically) Sanskrit uttered by another being, but it doesnt crystallize, it remains hazy, and when I return to a completely material consciousness, I remember a certain vague sound, but not a precise word. Therefore, the minute it is formulated, its ALWAYS an individual angle.
It takes a sort of VERY AUSTERE sincerity. You are carried away by enthusiasm because the experience brings an extraordinary power, the Power is there its there before the words, it diminishes with the words the Power is there, and with that Power you feel very universal, you feel, Its a universal Revelation. True, it is a universal revelation, but once you say it with words, its no longer universal: its only applicable to those brains built to understand that particular way of saying it. The Force is behind, but one has to go beyond the words.
0 1964-04-25, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Anniversary of Mother's second coming to Pondicherry, after her stay in Japan.
***
0 1964-06-04, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Last night, it involved the countries of the Far East, particularly China and Japan. You were there with me. We were trying to do some good work and to bring about a rapprochement. The details were picturesque and interesting but too long to narrate.
Dont worry about the Bulletin: Nolini has only just finished his translation. I will revise the Questions and Answers with Pavitra, and as for the aphorism, we will see later.
0 1964-08-05, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(D., a disciple, sent Mother an eighteenth-century account by a Japanese monk of the Zen Buddhist sect describing a method called "Introspection," which enables one to overcome cold and hunger and attain physical immortality. Mother reads a few pages, then gives up.)
[Herms magazine, Spring 1963.]
0 1964-08-08, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are some strange things. When I went to Japan, I met a man there who was a striking reproduction of my father the first moment, I wondered if I was dreaming. I think my father was already dead, but I am not sure, I dont remember exactly (my father died while I was in Japan, thats all I know). But he was the same age as my father, which means they were born together, at the same time. My father was born in Turkey, while this one was born in Japan but anyway, it WAS my father! And this man took to me with a paternal passion, it was extraordinary! He wanted to see me all the time, he showered me with gifts. And we could hardly talk to each other, as he knew very little English. But what a resemblance! As if one were the exact replica of the other: same size, same features, same color (he was exceptionally white for a Japanese, and my father wasnt white as northern people are: he was white as people from the Middle East are, just like me).
It always surprised me. You know, people often say, Oh, they look like each other, but thats not it! He was like an exact replica.
0 1964-08-14, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I told you (and even wrote you when you were in France) that I was seeing you. At one time I used to go to the place where the events in the various countries of the world are preparedyou were there, too. And you seemed to be very interested. There were goings-on between China and Japan, and it was very funny because one could see events, people with quite unexpected costumes and all sorts of things, ways of life and so on, and it didnt correspond to an active knowledge: it was a FACT, I had gone there. And you were there; you were there with me and you were interested.
I remember once (I wrote to you about it), we spent a long time, a long while, looking at what the Chinese wanted to do, and there were the two kinds of Chinese: the Communist Chinese and the Formosan Chinese. And they were doing things: there were not only ideas, but acts, their actions could be seen. Now Ive forgotten the details, but it was really very interesting. There was a place (it was where I wanted to go, and I did go there), the place where the meeting point of those Chinese could be found I was always leading people and circumstances to a plane where a harmony is worked out.
0 1964-11-14, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its the vital contained in Matterits like the phenomenon of radiation. Its a violent liberation of something contained in Matter. Like radiation. And it spreads out. They have indeed noticed it, but they dont want to know: when they exploded the bomb in Japan, the consequences went much, much farther than they expected, they were infinitely more serious and long-lasting than expected, because the sudden liberation of those forces They only perceive a certain quantity, but there is all that is behind, which spreads out and has its action. You see, they observe, for instance, that cows are poisoned and their milk isnt drinkable for a certain time (it happened in England), but thats the most crude and outer phenomenon there is another, deeper one, which is FAR more serious.
So when I said that [the twisted face of a Chinese], it seems to be beside the point, but thats because when those two things coincided,2 Kali suddenly became furious I saw Kali furious, as when she decides that it will be paid for. So V.s vision adds a few landmarks.
0 1964-11-21, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Listen, yesterday or the day before (anyway after I saw you last time), for a whole day I had exactly the sensation youve just told me. I suddenly remembered sensations or impressions or experiences I had when I was here or there, in France, in Japan, and I had that impression yes, of a thinning down, a shrinking to the point of nonexistence.
Yes, exactly.
0 1965-01-12, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But I knew that being, I had already seen him in Japanhe called himself the Lord of Nations. And he really was a form of the Asura of Falsehood, that is, of Truth which became Falsehood: the first Emanation of Truth, who became Falsehood.
And he hasnt been destroyed yet.
0 1965-06-18 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ah! It was the same thing when I was in Japan, all that they were taught they would improve onit would become absolutely unworkable! After the American occupation, they understood.
(silence)
One is wondering if, really, it wont be necessary to have an American occupation here, which would have the double effect of converting the Americans and making the Indians make some progress. Practical progress is what they would make, as the Japanese did. And the Americans are now the disciples of the Japanese: from the point of view of Beauty they have made wonderful and absolutely unexpected progress. If the Americans came here, they would be converted, they would become oh, they would understand spiritual life. Only, of course, it wouldnt be too pleasant (!) But its the surest methodits always the dominator that learns the lesson from the dominated. The Americans might become the most militant spiritualists in the world if they occupied India. Only, the Indians would have a bad time. But they would become very practical, they would learn to put order in what they dowhich they quite lack (just see, I didnt make you say that for that typewriter).
Its troublesome. Its something in suspense [the American occupation]. In my active consciousness, I dont want it. First, it would take a long timeit always takes a long time. A lot of time wasted, a lot of suffering, a lot of humiliation. But its a very radical method.
0 1965-07-10, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I can tell you (if it helps your physical mind) that in Japan I had a sort of measles (which had its own rather deep reasons) and that the Japanese doctor (who, besides, had studied in Germany, anyway he was a doctor through and through) told me very gravely that I should take care, that I was in the early stages of this wonderful disease, that above all I should never live in a cold climate, and this and that. I was losing weight and so on. That was in Japan. Then I came here and I said that to Sri Aurobindo, who looked at me and smiled; and it was over, we didnt talk about it anymore. We didnt talk about it anymore and it wasnt there anymore! (laughing) It was all over. When I met Dr. S., years later, I asked him. Nothing at all, he said, everything is fine, there is absolutely nothing, not a trace. And I hadnt done anything, I hadnt taken any medicine or any precaution. Only, I had told Sri Aurobindo about it, who had looked at me and smiled.
Well, I am convinced thats how it is, thats all. But the physical mind doesnt believe in that. It believes that thats all very well in the higher realms, but when we are in Matter things follow a law of Matter and are material and mechanical, and there is a mechanism, and when the mechanism and so on and so forth (not with these words, but with this thought). And one has to keep forever working on that, forever saying, Oh, put a stop to all your difficulties, keep quiet!
0 1965-08-21, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Regarding a Playground Talk of March 17, 1951, published in the latest "Bulletin," in which Mother says that when she returned from Japan in 1920, she felt Sri Aurobindo's atmosphere two nautical miles away from Pondicherry:)
It appears that in 1958 we said one thing and that this time we said another, so they ask me which is correct. Its about Sri Aurobindos atmosphere which I felt at sea. So in 1958 (I probably remembered more precisely then) I said ten nautical miles (I remember having asked on the ship, just so I would know), and it appears that this time I said two miles. So they tell me
0 1965-09-18, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In Pakistan, there was a firing system of the latest American model, in which they take aim with, I dont know, electrical systems, and they can fire several thousand shots in anyway, its frightening; and shots that reach exactly where they want. Its quite an organization. Theyve become very efficient. It was given to Pakistan by the Americans. And it had to be destroyed. So one of the Indian pilots went and crashed his plane into it. Naturally, the plane crushed everythinghe too was crushed. But the installation was demolished. People here are capable of such things. If they feel what Sri Aurobindo says in this letter I have just given you, that the leader of our march is the Almighty, if they feel that way Thats what made the strength of the Japanese in the past. Thats what makes the strength of people here, once they are convinced. Thats how the Japanese took Port Arthur; there was a sort of ditch around the fortress, as there are in fortified places, and because of that they couldnt get in; well, they let themselves be killed till they were able to walk across on the bodies: the bodies made a bridge by filling up the ditch, and then they walked across.
People who are conscious that death isnt the end, that death is the beginning of something else, it gives them a strength that these Europeans cannot have.
0 1965-09-29, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I had this experience very, very strongly. When I left here [in 1915], as I got farther away, I felt as if emptied of something, and once in the Mediterranean, I wasnt able to bear it any longer: I fell ill. And even in Japan, which outwardly is a marvelous countrymarvelously beautiful and harmonious (it WAS, I dont know what it is nowadays), and outwardly it was a joy every minute, a breathtaking joy, so strong was the expression of beautyyet I felt empty, empty, empty, I absolutely lacked (Mother opens her mouth as though suffocating) I lacked the important Thing. And I found it again only when I came back here.
Mother is probably alluding (in addition to the cease-fire violations by Pakistan) to a declaration from Delhi that India considered as obsolete the treaty signed in 1954 by Nehru recognizing China's sovereignty over Tibet. (That "declaration" did not hold for long.)
0 1965-11-06, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A disciple who was a friend of Satprem's; he had died insane seven or eight years earlier and Satprem had assisted him in a Japanese mental hospital.
***
0 1965-11-27, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And then, the Flame When the Flame lights up, everything becomes different. But this Flame is something totally different; its totally different from religious feeling, religious aspiration, religious worship (all that is very fine, its the summit of what man can do and its very fine, its excellent for humanity), but this Flame, the Flame of transformation, is something else. Oh, I remember now that Sri Aurobindo reminded me of something I had written in Japan (which is printed in Prayers and Meditations), and I had never understood what I had written. I always tried to understand and asked myself, What the devil did I mean? I have no idea. It had come like that and I had written it directly. It was about a child and it read, Do not come too near him because you will get burnt. (I dont remember the words at all.) And I always wondered, Whats this child I am referring to? And why should one take care not to come too near him??5 And suddenly, only yesterday or the day before, I understood; suddenly he showed me, he told me, Its this: the child is the beginning of the new creation, it is still in its infancy, so dont touch it if you dont want to be burntbecause it burns.
(silence)
0 1966-05-07, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For instance, there are passages I wrote in those Prayers and Meditations, some of which have been publishedpassages I wrote in Japan, and when I wrote them, I didnt at all know what they meant. For a very long time I didnt know. And very recently, one of those things that had always remained mysterious cleared up, I said, There! Its crystal clear, thats what it means.
In other words, a prophetic little spirit without knowing it!
0 1967-02-08, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yesterday evening, something amusing happened. I received some soups from Japan. It was all written in Japanese, impossible to read. When the doctor came (he comes every evening), I asked him, Would you like to try a Japanese soup? And I gave him a packet to take with him. Yesterday evening, when he came back, I asked him, Did you taste the Japanese soup? He said, Its shellfish soup, and he added, Its not good for you. I asked him, Why is it not good for me? (I asked him just for information, to know what my illness was(!), why I couldnt eat shellfish?) He answered me, Oh, you would have an allergic reaction. Then I looked at him and, with great force, said to him, I have NO allergic reactions. (Mother laughs) The poor man! He gave a shudder and he is down with fever!
Its true that now, as soon as the nerves (but you know, its an observation of every second), as soon as the nerves start protesting and it happens very often when they are interested in a sensation: they become interested in a sensation, they concentrate and follow it, then suddenly, it exceeds (how should I put it?) the amount they are used to considering as pleasant (it can be put that way), so theres a slight tipping over and they start going wrong, they start protesting. But if there is observation, there is the action of the inner mentor that tells them, Now, all sensations can be borne almost to their maximum: its quite simply a bad habit and a lack of plasticity. Remain calm and you will see. (Something of the sort.) Then they are docile, they stay calm, and everything smoothes out. Smoothes out, and then the allergic reaction is over. So I think Ive learned the knack! Thats why I answered the doctor with such force.
0 1967-02-18, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Whats specific to each language (apart from a few differences in words) is the order in which ideas are presented: the construction of sentences. The Japanese (and especially the Chinese) have solved the problem by using only the sign of the idea. Now, under the influence from outside, they have added phonetic signs to build a sentence; but even now the order in the construction of the ideas is different. Its different in Japan and different in China. And unless you FEEL this, you can never know a foreign language really well. So we speak according to our very old habit (and basically its more convenient for us simply because it comes automatically). But when I receive, for instance, its not even a thought: its Sri Aurobindos formulated consciousness; then, there is a sort of progressive approximation of the expression, and sometimes it comes very clearly; but very often its a spontaneous mixture of French and English forms and I feel it is something else trying to be expressed. At times (it follows the notation), it makes me correct something; at other times it comes perfectly wellit depends. Oh, it depends on the limpidity. If you are very tranquil, it comes very well. And there, too, I see its not really French and not really English. Its not so much the words (words are nothing) as the ORDER in which things come up. And when afterwards I look at it objectively, I see its in part the order in which they come in French, and in part the order in which they come in English. And the result is a mixture, which is neither one language nor the other, and endeavours to express what might be called a new way of consciousness.
It leads me to think that something will be worked out that way, and that any too strict, too narrow attachment to the old rules is a hindrance to the evolution of expression. From that point of view, French is a long way behind EnglishEnglish is much more supple. But the languages in countries like China and Japan that use ideograms seem to be infinitely more supple than our own.
Surely!
0 1967-07-08, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know that I burned all those notebooks. For how many years?over at least four or five years, every day I used to write Prayers and Meditations (I had several big notebooks, big like this). Then, when Sri Aurobindo told me to make a book out of them (naturally, as it was written every day, there were some repetitions), so I made my selection; I selected and extracted all those he wanted (I kept a few, which I extracted and distributed), and as for the rest It was a long, long time ago, I was still living over there.1 The last time that I wrote, was after my return from Japan, that is, in 1920. In 1920 I still wrote a little, then stopped. Then Sri Aurobindo chanced upon it, and he told me it had to be published. I said all right, I made a selection, and what to do with the rest? So I burned it.
Oh, what didnt I hear!
0 1967-07-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When it comes to languages, its very interesting. Those are things that come, stay for an hour or two, then go away; they are like lessons, things to be learned. And so, one day, there came the question of languages, of the different languages. Those languages were formed progressively (probably through usage, until, as you said, one day someone took it into his head to fix it in a logical and grammatical way), but behind those languages, there are identical experiencesidentical in their essence and there are certainly sounds that correspond to those experiences; you find those sounds in all languages, the different sounds with minor differences. One day (for a long time, more than an hour), it unfolded with all the evidence to support it, for all languages. Unfortunately, I couldnt see clearly, it was at night, so I couldnt note it down and it went away. But it should be able to come back. It was really interesting (Mother tries to recall the experience.) There were even languages I had never heard: Ive heard many European languages; in India, several Indian languages, chiefly Sanskrit; and then, Japanese. And there were languages I had never heard. It was all there. And there were sounds, certain sounds that come from all the way up, sounds (how can I explain?), sounds we might call essential. And I saw how they took shape and were distorted in languages (Mother draws a sinuous descending line that branches out). Sounds like the affirmative and the negativewhat, for us, is yes and noand also the expression of certain relationships (Mother tries to remember). But the interesting point was that it came with all the words, lots of words I didnt know! And at that time I knew them (it comes from a subconscient somewhere), I knew all those words.
At the same time, there was a sort of capacity or possibility, a state in which one was able to understand all languages; that is, every language was understood because of its connection with that region (gesture to the heights, at the origin of sounds). There didnt seem to be any difficulty in understanding any language. There was a sort of almost graphic explanation (same sinuous descending line branching out) showing how the sound had been distorted to express this or that or
--
In 1920, when Mother sailed back to Pondicherry from Japan. Mao Tse-tung was writing The Great Union of Popular Masses at the time.
***
0 1967-12-13, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont know what it is. I dont really know what it is, but the day before, in the evening (I forget what I was doing, I was busy), there was suddenly Often there are small vital entities, I think, or vital forces (but to me those things are without force or power), and a small vital entity showed me the memory of an earthquake: around 1922 or 23, we had an earthquake; I was with Pavitra and we stood talking (we were going out, it was in the afternoon), when suddenly, hop! we jumped out of our skin, both of us.3 We knew what it was because we had gotten used to it in Japan. I said, Oh, an earthquake. It didnt lasta few seconds and it was over. I had completely forgotten it, and it was as if one of those beings came to bring the memory back, with at the same time, And what if there were another one? Oh, I said, what nonsense!
Just the evening before.
0 1967-12-30, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Some things are really interesting. For instance, Id like there to be To begin with, every country will have its pavilion, and in the pavilion, there will be the cuisine of that country, which means that the Japanese will be able to eat Japanese food if they want to(!), etc., but in the township itself, there will be food for vegetarians, food for nonvegetarians, and also a sort of experiment to find tomorrows food. You see, all this work of assimilation which makes you so heavy (it takes up so much time and energy from the being) should be done BEFORE, you should be able to immediately assimilate what you are given, as with things they make now; for instance, they have those vitamins that can be directly assimilated, and also (what do they call it? (Mother tries to remember) I take them every day. Words and I arent on very good terms!) proteins. Nutritive principles that are found in one thing or another and arent bulkyyou need to take a tremendous quantity of food to assimilate very little. So now that they are fairly clever with chemicals, that could be simplified. People dont like it, simply because they take an intense pleasure in eating(!), but when you no longer take pleasure in eating, you need to be nourished and not to waste your time with that. The amount of time lost is enormous: time for eating, time for digesting, and the rest. So I would like to have an experimental kitchen there, a sort of culinary laboratory, to try out. And according to their tastes and tendencies, people would go here or there.
And you dont pay for your food, but you must give your work, or the ingredients: for example, those who had fields would give the produce of their fields; those who had factories would give their products; or else your own work in exchange for food.
0 1968-02-07, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont know if its our perception that progresses, or if really, as Sri Aurobindo said, When the supramental Force comes on the earth, there will be a response EVERYWHERE. It seems to me to be that, because these flowers are so, so vibrant, full of life. In the morning I always arrange them (its a work that takes me at least three quarters of an hour, there are more than a hundred flowers in different vases that I have to arrange, and to each person I give a special sort of flower I arrange all that), and in the vases, some flowers say, Me! And indeed they are just what I need. They call out to me to say, Me!But thats not new, because when I was in Japan, I had a large garden and I had cultivated part of it to grow vegetables; in the morning I would go down to the garden to get the vegetables to be eaten that day, and some of them here, there, there (scattered gesture) would say, Me! Me! Me! Like that. So I would go and pick them. They literally called me, they called me.
Thats a long time ago, nineteen hundred and when was it? It was in 1916-17, so thats forty years ago.
0 1968-03-02, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But were going to prepare a little brochure with the message and all these translationsinto Japanese, Hebrew, Arabic, etc. It will all be photographed, and then well restore the German text. Oh, the Russian text
But as a city of peace, its amusing! (Laughing) Its promising!
0 1968-04-23, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Here, in the French brochure, its Divine. I said if they wanted another word in Russian or German (in German T. translated it into the highest [Consciousness]; I told her, Its rather poor, but anyway), well, I said I wouldnt protest. In Chinese its Divine. I think its Divine in Japanese too.
In German, they asserted, Oh, if we put Divine, people will immediately think of God. I replied (laughing), Not necessarily, if theyre not idiots!
0 1968-09-07, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have told you many times, and couldnt repeat it too often, that we are not made of a piece. Within ourselves we have lots of states of being, and each state of being has its own life. All that is gathered together in a single body, as long as you have one, and acts through a single body; thats what gives you the sense of a single person, a single being. But there are many of them, and there are in particular concentrations on different planes: just as you have a physical being, you have a vital being, a mental being, a psychic being, and many others with all possible intermediaries. So when you leave your body, all those beings will scatter. Its only if you are a very advanced yogi and have been capable of unifying your being around the divine center that those beings remain linked together. If you havent been able to unify yourself, then at the time of death, all that will scatter: every being will go back to its own region. With the vital being, for example, your various desires will separate and each of them will go and chase its realization quite independently, because there will no longer be a physical being to hold them together. While if you have united your consciousness to the psychic consciousness, when you die you will remain conscious of your psychic being, and the psychic being will return to the psychic world which is a world of bliss, joy, peace, tranquillity, and growing knowledge. But if you have lived in your vital and all its impulses, each impulse will try to realize itself here and there. For instance, for the miser who was concentrated on his money, when he dies the part of his vital that was concerned with his money will hook on there and will keep watching over the money so no one takes it. People wont see him, but he is there nonetheless, and very unhappy if something happens to his dear money. Now, if you live exclusively in your physical consciousness (which is difficult, because, after all, you have thoughts and feelings), if you live exclusively in your physical, when the physical being disappears, you disappear along with it, its over. There is a spirit of the form: your form has a spirit that lives on for seven days after your death. The doctors have declared you dead, but the spirit of your form is alive, and not only alive but conscious in most cases. It lasts for seven to eight days, and after that, it too dissolves I am not talking about yogis, I am talking about ordinary people. Yogis have no laws, its quite different; for them the world is different. I am talking about ordinary people living an ordinary life; for them its like that. So the conclusion is that if you want to preserve your consciousness, it would be better to center it on a part of your being which is immortal; otherwise it will evaporate like a flame into thin air. And happily so, because if it were otherwise, there might be gods or kinds of superior men who would create hells and heavens as they do in their material imagination, inside which they would shut you up. (Question:) It is said that there is a god of death. Is it true? Yes. As for me, I call him a genius of death. I know him very well. And its an extraordinary organization. You cant imagine how organized it is! I think there are many of those genii of death, hundreds of them. I met at least two of them. One I met in France, the other in Japan, and they were very different. Which leads me to believe that depending on the mental culture, the education, the countries and beliefs, there must be different genii. But there are genii for all manifestations of Nature: there are genii of fire, genii of air, water, rain, wind; and there are genii of death. Any one genius of death is entitled to a certain number of dead every day. Its truly a fantastic organization. Its a sort of alliance between the vital forces and the forces of Nature. If, for example, he decided, Here is the number of people I am entitled to, say four or five, or six, or one or two (it varies from day to day), if he decided so many people would die, hell go straight and set himself up near the person whos going to die. But if you (not the person) happen to be conscious, if you see the genius going to the person but do not want him or her to die, then, if you have a certain occult power, you can tell him, No, I forbid you to take this person. Thats something which happened, not once but several times, in Japan and here. It wasnt the same genius. Which makes me say there must be many of them. If you can tell him, I forbid you to take this person and have the power to send him away, theres nothing he can do but go away; but he wont give up his due and will go elsewhere there will be a death elsewhere. (Question:) Some people, when they are about to die, are aware of it. Why dont they tell the genius to go away? Two things are needed. First, nothing in your being, no part of your being, should wish to die. That doesnt often happen. You always have, somewhere in you, a defeatist: something tired or disgusted, which has had enough, something lazy or which doesnt want to fight and says, Ah, well, let it be over, so much the better. Thats enoughyoure dead. But its a fact: if nothing, absolutely nothing in you consents to die, you will not die. For someone to die, there is always a second, if a hundredth part of a second, when he consents. If there isnt that second of consent, he will not die. But who is certain he doesnt have within himself, somewhere, a tiny bit of a defeatist which just yields and says, Oh well? Hence the need to unify oneself. Whatever the path we may follow, the subject we may study, we always reach the same result. The most important thing for an individual is to unify himself around his divine center; that way he becomes a real individual, master of himself and of his destiny. Otherwise, he is a plaything of the forces, which toss him about like a cork in a stream. He goes where he doesnt want to, is made to do what he doesnt want to, and finally he gets lost in a hole without any way to stop himself doing so. But if you are consciously organized, unified around the divine center, governed and led by it, you are the master of your destiny. Its worth trying. At any rate, I find its better to be the master rather than the slave. The feeling of being pulled by strings and being made to do things you may or may not want to do is a rather unpleasant sensation. Its quite irksome. Well, I dont know, I, for one, found it quite irksome even when I was a small child. When I was five, I began finding it wholly intolerable, and I sought a way for it to be otherwisewithout anyone being able to tell me anything. Because I knew no one capable of helping me, and I didnt have the luck you havesomeone who can tell you, Here is what you must do. There was no one to tell me. I had to find it all by myself. I found it. I began at the age of five. And you, its a long time since you were five?
Well cut out the end.
0 1968-10-09, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, what a beautiful forest, mon petit! They must be the forests of Its between the subtle physical and the vital, as if joining the two the subtle physical to the vital. Trees as I have only seen in Japan; trees rising straight like columns, planted in rowsmagnificent! With light-colored grass, very light, pale green. Grass on the ground, airlots of airand at the same time nothing but trees: a forest. But not thick, not crowded. Well then, in that magnificent place, instead of rejoicing, the fool (Mother takes a wailing tone): I dont know what happened to me, I have no religion! (Mother laughs) So I told him, But you should rejoice! No religionyou are in a place much more beautiful than all religions! (In a whining tone)I dont understand.
(silence)
0 1969-01-04, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One of my brothers daughters (I think) married a Japanese and came here with her Japanese husb and I saw himand she has a flock of kids! But my brothers son and his other daughter, I dont know them.
No, I dont have any family sense!
0 1969-07-12, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, and this this I must have had for at least seventy years! (laughter) Its a copper thing that served as a letter opener; it lost its handle, but I kept it and used it. But theres a mirror somewhere, I dont know where (a mirror with a golden frame, very pretty, a folding pocket mirror); it belonged to my grandmo ther, who gave it to me; and she had got it when she was twelve years old. She was given it when she was twelve; she gave it to me and I kept it, and I still have it, which means that it must be much more than a hundred years old! Its downstairs, in the cupboard. But this is a letter opener. Its, oh, very, very old: I had it in France before coming here, I brought it with me when I came here; I took it to Japan and used it there [to open Sri Aurobindos letters], and I brought it back here. So it must be I had it at the beginning of the centuryits much older than you! Do you want it? To open letters
(Mother gives the letter opener to Satprem and goes on looking through the boxes)
0 1969-12-10, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Everywhere, all over the world, from the most unexpected places, we get letters from people who follow and understand, who expect Canada is quite shaken. Even in Norway, in Sweden, lots of people in Italy, many in Germany; in France its beginninga little bit! (Mother laughs) In the U.S.A., its good, its working well, and in Canada its doing well. Even in Japan there are people .
Aphorism 68"The sense of sin was necessary in order that man might become disgusted with his own imperfections. It was God's corrective for egoism. But man's egoism meets God's device by being very dully alive to its owns sins and very keenly alive to the sins of others."
0 1970-02-18, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mother may be thinking of the epidemic in Japan in January 1919, during which she very nearly died, while the fever caught during the festival of arms was in 1931.
***
0 1970-07-11, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The moment I came here, I no longer concerned myself with the body: I concerned myself with the Work; but before coming here, especially between my departure from here and my return, it was (how much time? I came back in 1920; I came here in 1914 and left from here in 1915, I thinkfrom 16 to 20 I was in Japan, but I came in 14 and I think I left in 1915), from that time on, there were all those experiences [kundalini, etc.], in France and in Japan.
(Mother goes into a contemplation)
0 1971-09-14, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Even last night I saw him: he was in Japan.
When did they leave?
0 1972-03-22, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The body was in certain situations. One was taking place here and the other was in Japan. I realized that the body holds certain impressions, impressions of being in a. It wasnt in the Ashram, but the one in Japan, exactly as I was in Japan (but these are not memories, they were entirely new activities, something entirely new), showing that I was surrounded by people who dont understand. And here, too (it wasnt the Ashram, the situations were symbolic and involved people who are no longer in their bodies), I was surrounded by people and things that didnt understand. And I saw that these impressions are in the body and make things even more difficult.
They werent actually physical things: they were the transcription of peoples attitude and their way of thinking.
02.01 - The World War, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
When man was a dweller of the forest,a jungle man,akin to his forbear the ape, his character was wild and savage, his motives and impulsions crude, violent, egoistic, almost wholly imbedded in, what we call, the lower vital level; the light of the higher intellect and intelligence had not entered into them. Today there is an uprush of similar forces to possess and throw man back to a similar condition. This new order asks only one thing of man, namely, to be strong and powerful, that is to say, fierce, ruthless, cruel and regimented. Regimentation can be said to be the very characteristic of the order, the regimentation of a pack of wild dogs or wolves. A particular country, nation or raceit is Germany in Europe and, in her wake, Japan in Asiais to be the sovereign nation or master race (Herrenvolk); the rest of mankindo ther countries and peoplesshould be pushed back to the status of servants and slaves, mere hewers of wood and drawers of water. What the helots were in ancient times, what the serfs were in the mediaeval ages, and what the subject peoples were under the worst forms of modern imperialism, even so will be the entire mankind under the new overlordship, or something still worse. For whatever might have been the external conditions in those ages and systems, the upward aspirations of man were never doubted or questioned they were fully respected and honoured. The New Order has pulled all that down and cast them to the winds. Furthermore in the new regime, it is not merely the slaves that suffer in a degraded condition, the masters also, as individuals, fare no better. The individual here has no respect, no freedom or personal value. This society or community of the masters even will be like a bee-hive or an ant-hill; the individuals are merely functional units, they are but screws and bolts and nuts and wheels in a huge relentless machinery. The higher and inner realities, the spontaneous inspirations and self-creations of a free soulart, poetry, literaturesweetness and light the good and the beautifulare to be banished for ever; they are to be regarded as things of luxury which enervate the heart, diminish the life-force, distort Nature's own virility. Man perhaps would be the worshipper of Science, but of that Science which brings a tyrannical mastery over material Nature, which serves to pile up tools and instruments, arms and armaments, in order to ensure a dire efficiency and a grim order in practical life.
Those that have stood against this Dark Force and its over-shadowing menaceeven though perhaps not wholly by choice or free-will, but mostly compelled by circumstancesyet, because of the stand they have taken, now bear the fate of the world on their shoulders, carry the whole future of humanity in their march. It is of course agreed that to have stood against the Asura does not mean that one has become sura, divine or godlike; but to be able to remain human, human instruments of the Divine, however frail, is sufficient for the purpose, that ensures safety from the great calamity. The rule of life of the Asura implies the end of progress, the arrest of all evolution; it means even a reversal for man. The Asura is a fixed type of being. He does not change, his is a hardened mould, a settled immutable form of a particular consciousness, a definite pattern of qualities and activitiesgunakarma. Asura-nature means a fundamental ego-centricism, violent and concentrated self-will. Change is possible for the human being; he can go downward, but he can move upward too, if he chooses. In the Puranas a distinction has been made between the domain of enjoyment and the domain of action. Man is the domain of action par excellence; by him and through him evolve new and fresh lines of activity and impulsion. The domain of enjoyment, on the other hand, is where we reap the fruits of our past Karma; it is the result of an accumulated drive of all that we have done, of all the movements we have initiated and carried out. It is a status of being where there is only enjoyment, not of becoming where there can be development and new creation. It is a condition of gestation, as it were; there is no new Karma, no initiative or change in the stuff of the consciousness. The Asuras are bhogamaya purusha, beings of enjoyment; their domain is a cumulus of enjoyings. They cannot strike out a fresh line of activity, put forth a new mode of energy that can work out a growth or transformation of nature. Their consciousness is an immutable entity. The Asuras do not mend, they can only end. Man can certainly acquire or imbibe Asuric force or Asura-like qualities and impulsions; externally he can often act very much like the Asura; and yet there is a difference. Along with the dross that soils and obscures human nature, there is something more, a clarity that opens to a higher light, an inner core of noble metal which does not submit to any inferior influence. There is this something More in man which always inspires and enables him to break away from the Asuric nature. Moreover, though there may be an outer resemblance between the Asuric qualities of man and the Asuric qualities of the Asura, there is an intrinsic different, a difference in tone and temper, in rhythm and vibration, proceeding as they do, from different sources. However cruel, hard, selfish, egocentric man may be, he knows, he admitsat times, if hot always, at heart, if not openly, subconsciously, if not wholly consciously that such is not the ideal way, that these qualities are not qualifications, they are unworthy elements and have to be discarded. But the Asura is ruthless, because he regards ruthlessness as the right thing, as the perfect thing, it is an integral part of his swabhava and swadharma, his law of being and his highest good. Violence is the ornament of his character.
02.13 - Rabindranath and Sri Aurobindo, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
So it was natural and almost inevitablewritten among the stars that both should meet once more on this physical earth. Sri Aurobindo had been in complete retirement seeing none except, of course, his attendants. He was coming out only four times in the year to give silent darshan to his devotees and a few others who sought for it. It was in the year 1928. Tagore was then on a tour to the South. He expressed to Sri Aurobindo by letter his desire for a personal meeting. Sri Aurobindo naturally agreed to receive him. Tagore reached Pondicherry by steamer, and I had the privilege to see him on board the ship and escort him to the Ashram. The Mother welcomed him at the door of Sri Aurobindo's apartments and led him to Sri Aurobindo. Tagore already knew the Mother, for both were together in Japan and stayed in the same house and she attended some of his lectures in that country. It may be interesting to mention here that Tagore requested the Mother to take charge of the Visva Bharati, for evidently he felt that the future of his dear institution would be in sure hands. But the Mother could not but decline since it was her destiny to be at another place and another work.
What transpired between them is not for me to say, the meeting being a private one. But I may quote here what Tagore himself wrote about it subsequently:
03.04 - Towardsa New Ideology, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
If, however, we take a right about turn and look away from the West to the Far East, we already see in Japan a different type of national self-government. It is based on an altogether different basis which may appear even novel to the modern and rationalistic European mentality. I am referring to the conception of duty which moulds and upholds the Japanese body politic and body social, as opposed to the conception of right obtaining royal rule in the Occident.
The distinction between the attitudes that underlie these two conceptions was once upon a time greatly stressed by Vivekananda, who was the first to strike two or three major chords that were needed to create the grand symphony of the Indian Renaissance. It is true Europe too had her Mazzini whose scheme of a new humanity was based on the conception of the duties of man. But his was a voice in the wilderness and he was not honoured in his own country.
03.05 - The Spiritual Genius of India, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Again, the Japanese, as a people, have developed to a consummate degree the sense of beauty, especially as applied to life and living. No other people, not even the old-world Greeks, possessed almost to a man, as do these children of the Rising Sun, so fine and infallible an sthetic sensibility,not static or abstract, but of the dynamic kinduniformly successful in making out of their work-a-day life, even to its smallest accessories, a flawless object of art. It is a wonder to see in Japan how, even an unlettered peasant, away in his rustic environment, chooses with unerring taste the site of his house, builds it to the best advantage, arranges everything about it in a faultless rhythm. The whole motion of the life of a Japanese is almost Art incarnate.
Or take again the example of the British people. The practical, successful life instinct, one might even call it the business instinct, of the Anglo-Saxon races is, in its general diffusion, something that borders on the miraculous. Even their Shakespeare is reputed to have been very largely endowed with this national virtue. It is a faculty which has very little to do with calculation, or with much or close thinking, or with any laborious or subtle mental operationa quick or active mind is perhaps the last thing with which the British people can be accredited; this instinct of theirs is something spontaneous, almost aboriginal, moving with the sureness, the ruthlessness of nature's unconscious movements,it is a tact, native to the force that is life. It is this attribute which the Englishman draws from the collective genius of his race that marks him out from among all others; this is his forte, it is this which has created his nation and made it great and strong.
03.08 - The Standpoint of Indian Art, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Indian art is pre-eminently and par excellence the art of this inner re-formation and revaluation. It has thrown down completely and clearly the rigid scaffolding of the physical vision. We take here a sudden leap, as it were, into another world, and sometimes the feeling is that everything is reversed; it is not exactly that we feel ourselves standing on our heads, but it is, as if, in the Vedic phrase, the foundations were above and all the rest branched out from them downwards. The artist sees with an eye, and constructs upon a plan that conveys the merest excuse of an actual visible world. There are other schools in the East which have also moved very far away from the naturalistic view; yet they have kept, if not the form, at least, the feeling of actuality in their composition. Thus a Chinese, a Japanese, or a Persian masterpiece cannot be said to be "natural" in the sense in which a Tintoretto, or even a Raphael is natural; yet a sense of naturalness persists, though the appearance is not naturalistic. What Indian art gives is not the feeling of actuality or this sense of naturalness, but a feeling of truth, a sense of realityof the deepest reality.
Other art shows the world of creative imagination, the world reconstructed by the mind's own formative delight; the Indian artist reveals something more than that the faculty through which he seeks to create is more properly termed vision, not imagination; it is the movement of an inner consciousness, a spiritual perception, and not that of a more or less outer sensibility. For the Indian artist is a seer or rishi; what he envisages is the mystery, the truth and beauty of another worlda real, not merely a mental or imaginative world, as real as this material creation that we see and touch; it is indeed more real, for it is the basic world, the world of fundamental truths and realities behind this universe of apparent phenomena. It is this that he contemplates, this I upon which his entire consciousness is concentrated; and all his art consists in giving a glimpse of it, bodying it forth or expressing it in significant forms and symbols.
European the Far Westernart gives a front-view of reality; Japanese the Far Easternart gives a side-view; Indian art gives a view from above. 1 Or we may say, in psychological terms, that European art embodies experiences of the conscious mind and the external senses, Japanese art gives expression to experiences that one has through the subtler touches of the nerves and the sensibility, and Indian art proceeds through a spiritual consciousness and records experiences of the soul.
The frontal view of reality lays its stress upon the display of the form of things, their contour, their aspect in mass and volume and dimension; and the art, inspired and dominated by it, is more or less a sublimated form of the art of photography. The side-view takes us behind the world of forms, into the world of movement, of rhythm. And behind or above the world of movement, again, there is a world of typal realities, essential form-movements, fundamental modes of consciousness in its universal and transcendent status. It is this that the Indian artist endeavours to envisage and express.
--
A Chinese or a Japanese piece of artistic creation is more of a study in character than in form; but it is a study in character in a deeper sense than the meaning which the term usually bears to an European mind or when it is used in reference to Europe's art-creations.
Character in the European sense means that part of nature which is dynamically expressed in conduct, in behaviour, in external movements. But there is another sense in which the term would refer to the inner mode of being, and not to any outer exemplification in activity, any reaction or set of reactions in the kinetic system, nor even to the mental state, the temperament, immediately inspiring it, but to a still deeper status of consciousness. A Raphael Madonna, for example, purposes to pour wholly into flesh and blood the beauty of motherhood. A Japanese Madonna (a Kwanon), on the other hand, would not present the "natural" features and expressions of motherhood; it would not copy faithfully the model, however idealized, of a woman viewed as mother. It would endeavour rather to bring out something of the subtler reactions in the "nervous" world, the world of pure movements that is behind the world of form; it would record the rhythms and reverberations attendant upon the conception and experience of motherhood somewhere on the other side of our wakeful consciousness. That world is made up not of forms, but of vibrations; and a picture of it, therefore, instead of being a representation in three-dimensional space, would be more like a scheme, a presentation in graph, something like the ideography of the language of the Japanese themselves, something carrying in it the beauty characteristic of the calligraphic art. 2
An Indian Madonna owes its conception to an experience at the very other end of consciousness. The Indian artist does not at all think of a human mother; he has not before his mind's eye an idealized mother, nor even a subtilized feeling of motherhood. He goes deep into the very origin of things, and, from there seeks to bring out that which belongs to the absolute I and the universal. He endeavours to grasp the sense that : motherhood bears in its ultimate truth and reality. Beyond the form, beyond even the rhythm, he enters into bhva, the: spiritual substance of things. An Indian Madonna (Ganesh-janani, for example) is not solely or even primarily a human I mother, but the mother, universal and transcendent, of sentientand insentient creatures and supersentient beings. She embodies not the human affection only, but also the parallel sentiment that finds play in the lower and in the higher creations as well. She expresses in her limbs not only the gladness of the mother animal tending its young, but also the exhilaration that a plant feels in the uprush of its sap while giving out new shoots, and, above all, the supreme nanda which has given birth to the creation itself. The lines that portray such motherhood must have the largeness, the sweep, the au thenticity of elemental forces, the magic and the mystery of things behind the veil.
04.01 - The March of Civilisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This then is the pattern of cultural development as it proceeds in extension and largeness. It moves in ever widening concentric circles. Individuals, small centres few and far between, then larger groups and sections, finally vast masses are touched and moved (and will be moulded one day) by the infiltrating light. That is how in modern times all movements are practically world-wide, encompassing all nations and peoples: there seems to be nothing left that is merely local or parochial. It is a single wave, as it were, that heaves up the whole of humanity. Political, social, economic and even spiritual movements, although not exactly of the same type or pattern, all are interrelated, interlocked, inspired by a common breath and move from one end of the earth to the other. They seem to be but modulations of the same world-theme. A pulse-beat in Korea or Japan is felt across the Pacific in America and across that continent, traversing again, the Atlantic it reaches England, sways the old continent in its turn and once more leaps forward through the Asiatic vastnesses back again to its place of origin. The wheel comes indeed full circle: it is one movement girdling the earth. What one thinks or acts in one corner of the globe is thought, and acted simultaneously by others at the farthest corner. Very evidently it is the age of radiography and electronics.
In the early stages of humanity its history consists of the isolated histories of various peoples and lands: intercommunication was difficult, therefore all communion was of the nature of infiltration and indirect influence. The difference between countries far distant from each other were well marked and very considerable in respect of their cultures and civilisations. To put it in a somewhat scholarly yet graphic manner, we can say, the i sometric chart of the tides of civilisation in various countries over the globe in those days presents a very unequal and tortuous figure. On the other hand, a graph depicting the situation in modern times would be formed by lines that are more even, uniform and straight. In other words, the world has become one, homogeneous: a consciousness has grown same or similar on the whole in outlook and life-impulse embracing all peoples and races in a tight embrace. The benefit of the descending or manifesting Light is now open equally and freely to each and every member of the human kind.
07.08 - The Divine Truth Its Name and Form, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
You expect to see a divine form in each and all things? It may happen so. But I am not sure; I have the impression that there is a large part of imagination in such experiences. You may, for example, see the form of Krishna or Christ or Buddha in every being or thing. But I say that much of human conception enters into this perception. Otherwise what I was telling you just now would not be true. I said all who have the consciousness of the Divine, all who get the contact with the Divine, wherever one may be, to whatever age or country he may belong, all have the same essential experience. If it were not so, the Hindus would always see one of their gods, the Europeans one of theirs, the Japanese a third variety and so on. This may be an addition of each one's own mental formation, but it would not be the Reality in its essence or purity which is beyond all form. One can have a perception of the Divine Presence, a very concrete perception, one can have even a personal contact with the Divine, but it need not happen in and through the kind of form you imagine; it is something inexpressible, beyond all explanation or definition, it is evident only to one who has the experience. It may be as you are suddenly lifted up into a peculiar condition, you find yourself in the presence of the Divine which takes a form familiar to you, a form you have been accustomed to associate with the Divine, because of your education, your up-bringing and tradition. But, as I say, it is not the supreme essence of the experience: the form gives after all a limitation to the experience, takes away from it its universality and a large measure of its power.
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07.42 - The Nature and Destiny of Art, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
However, even the commercialism of today, hideous as it is, has an advantage of its own. Commercialism means the mixing together of all parts of the world. It effaces the distinction between Orient and Occident, brings the Orient near to the Occident and the Occident near to the Orient. With the exchange of goods, there happens an exchange of ideas and even of habits and manners. In ancient days Rome conquered Greece and through that conquest was herself conquered by the culture and civilisation of Greece. The thing is happening today on a much greater scale and more intensely perhaps. At one time Japan was educating herself on the American pattern; now that America has conquered Japan physically, she is being conquered by the spirit of Japan; even in objects manufactured in America, you notice the Japanese influence in some way or other.
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07.45 - Specialisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
You must extend, enlarge, enrich your mind. It must be full of thoughts and ideas. It must be stored with the results of your observation and study. It must not be a poor mind, a mind, that is to say, that has not many ideas nor the capacity of reasoning and argument. Your mind must be capable of thinking of many different things, gathering knowledge of different kinds, considering a problem from many different sides, not following only a single line or track: it must be somewhat like a Japanese fan opening out full circle in all directions.
You have, for example, several subjects to learn at school. Well, learn as many as possible. If you study at home, read as many varieties as possible. I know you are usually asked and advised to follow a different way. You are to take as few subjects as possible and specialise. Yes, that is the general ideal: specialisation, to be an expert in one thing. If you wish to be a good philosopher, read philosophy only; if you wish to be a good chemist, do only chemistry; and even you should concentrate upon only one problem or thesis in philosophy or chemistry. In sports you are asked to do the same. Choose one item and fix your attention upon that alone. If you want to be a good tennis player, think of tennis alone. However, I am not of that opinion. My experience is different. I believe, there are general faculties in man which he should acquire and cultivate more than specialise himself. Of course, if it is your ambition to be a Monsieur or Madame Curie who wanted to discover one particular thing, to find out a new mystery of a definite kind, then you have to concentrate upon the one thing in view. But even then, once the object is gained, you can turn very well to other things. Besides, it is not an impossibility in the midst of the one-pointed pursuit to find occasions and opportunities to be interested in other pursuits.
08.19 - Asceticism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
You have seen Sannyasins lying upon nails. Why do they do that? Perhaps to prove their saintliness. But when they do so in public, well, the suspicion is legitimate that it is something like a pose. There are some perhaps who do the thing sincerely and seriously, that is to say, they do not do it merely to make a show. In their case we might ask why they do so. They say it is to prove to themselves their detachment from the body. There are others: they go a little further and say that one must make the body suffer in order to free the soul. But I tell you that the vital has a taste for suffering and imposes suffering on the body because of this perverse taste for suffering. I have seen children who, when they got hurt, would press the part hurt in order to get more pain and it was a pleasure to them. I have seen bigger persons also doing the same thingmorally I mean. It is a very well-known fact. I always tell people 'If you are unhappy, it is because you want to be unhappy. If you suffer, it is because you like suffering, otherwise you would not have the thing.' I call it an unhealthy state; for it is contrary to harmony and beauty; it is a kind of unhealthy need for strong sensations. Do you know, China is a country where they have invented the most atrocious kinds of torture, unthinkable ways? When I was in Japan I asked a Japanese who liked the Chinese very much, why it was so. He told me: 'It is because the people of the Far East, including the Japanese, possess very dull sensibility. They feel very little; unless the suffering is very strong they feel nothing.' They were obliged to use their intelligence for the discovery of extremely strong sufferings. Well, all people who are inconscient or tamasic the more inconscient they are the greater the tamashave their sensibility blunted; they need strong sensations if they have to feel them. This is what usually makes them cruel, because cruelty gives very strong sensations. The nerve tension produced in you when you impose suffering on someone, well, it does bring a sensation: they need that in order to feel, otherwise they would not feel. It is for that reason that whole races are particularly cruel. They are inconscient, inconscient vitally. They may not be unconscious mentally or otherwise. But they are unconscious vitally and physically, physically above all.
If one has a sense of beauty can he be cruel?
08.27 - Value of Religious Exercises, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
I have been to holy places. I have seen monuments considered as very highly religious, in France, in Japan and elsewhere; they were not always the same kind of temples or churches nor were they the same gods but the impression they left on me, my experiences of them were everywhere almost the same, with but slight differences. There is usually a force concentrated at the place, but its character depends entirely upon the faith of the faithful; also there is a difference between the force as it really exists and the form in which it appears to the faithful. For instance, in a most famous and most beautiful place of worship which was, from the standpoint of art, the most magnificent creation one could imagine, I saw within its holy of holies a huge black Spider that had spread its net all around, caught within it and absorbed all the energies emanating from the devotion of the people, their prayers and all that. It was not a very pleasant spectacle. But the people who were there and prayed felt the divine contact, they received all kinds of benefit from their prayers. And yet the truth of the matter was what I saw. The people had the faith and their faith changed what was bad into something that was good to them. Now if I had gone and told them: 'you think it is God you are praying to! it is only a formidable vital Spider that is sucking your force,' surely it would not have been very charitable on my part. But everywhere it is almost the same thing. There is a vital Force presiding. And vital beings feed upon the vibrations of human emotion. Very few are they, a microscopic number, who go to the temples and churches and holy places with the true religious feeling, that is to say, not to pray or beg something of God, but to offer themselves, to express gratitude, to aspire, to surrender. One in a million would be too many. These when they are there, get some touch of the Divine just for the moment. But all others go only out of superstition, egoism, self-interest and create the atmosphere as it is found and it is that that you usually brea the in when you go to a holy place; only as you go there with a good feeling, you say to yourself "what a peace-giving spot!"
I am sorry to say it. But it is like that. I tell you I have purposely made the experiment to some extent everywhere. Perhaps I came across at times in far-away small cornerslike a small village church, for exampleplaces where there was real peace and quiet and some true aspiration. Barring that, everywhere it is but a web of adverse vital forces that use everything for their food. The bigger the congregation, the more portentous the vital deity. Besides, in the invisible world it is only the vital beings that like to be worshipped. For, as I have said, that pleases them, gives them importance. They are puffed up with pride and are happy; when they can have a troop of people adoring them, they reach the very height of satisfaction.
10.07 - The World is One, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Coming next to Mind, the unity here too, is quite marked, clearly discernible. There is only one Mind that rules the myriad mentalities of this world. Thoughts and ideas are not in reality personal creations, they are various formulations of the one universal Mind; they enter into and possess individual minds as receptacles, and no doubt in the process undergo particular modifications in their general character. It is a very common experience to see the same or very similar ideas and thoughts expressed by individuals (or groups) living far from each other, having practically no mutual contact. We have known of "independent discoveries" of the same truth or fact and innumerable instances of this kind has history provided for us. It is not a freak of nature that we find Socrates and Buddha and Confucius as contemporaries. Contemporaries also were India's Akbar, England's Elizabeth and Italy's Leo X. Also the year 1905 has been known as Annus Mirabilis, a year of seminal importance the sowing of the seed of a new earth-lifesignificant for the whole human race, for the East and for the West, particularly for India, for Japan, for Russia and even for England. And today's world has indeed become a world of compact unity in human achievement and also alas, in human distress!
Now if one goes to the very source, the very root of the matter, the cardinal fact of unity is that of the supreme Consciousness, the original oneness of the one Divine Existence. It is the Ultimate One, inviolate, inviolableekam sat. That unity is transferred or translated or imaged on all the levels and strands of creation. That is the basic reality that holds together all tiered multiplicities. True, there has been side by side a movement of aberration, denial, disjunction in the multiple formulations and translations of the One. A reunion remains to be achieved conveying and embodying the basic unity.
1.01 - Economy, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
My furniture, part of which I made myself, and the rest cost me nothing of which I have not rendered an account, consisted of a bed, a table, a desk, three chairs, a looking-glass three inches in diameter, a pair of tongs and andirons, a kettle, a skillet, and a frying-pan, a dipper, a wash-bowl, two knives and forks, three plates, one cup, one spoon, a jug for oil, a jug for molasses, and a Japanned lamp. None is so poor that he need sit on a pumpkin. That is shiftlessness. There is a plenty of such chairs as I like best in the village garrets to be had for taking them away. Furniture! Thank God, I can sit and I can stand without the aid of a furniture warehouse. What man but a philosopher would not be ashamed to see his furniture packed in a cart and going up country exposed to the light of heaven and the eyes of men, a beggarly account of empty boxes? That is Spauldings furniture. I could never tell from inspecting such a load whether it belonged to a so called rich man or a poor one; the owner always seemed poverty-stricken.
Indeed, the more you have of such things the poorer you are. Each load looks as if it contained the contents of a dozen shanties; and if one shanty is poor, this is a dozen times as poor. Pray, for what do we
1.01 - To Watanabe Sukefusa, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #unset, #Zen
Edo-period Japan with its formal government sanction of Confucian ethics. Many Confucians, including some with great political influence, regarded monasticism as abhorrent on the grounds that it contravened the basic operating principles of filial behavior by keeping young men from producing heirs to continue the parental line. Buddhists in China, and later in Japan, responded to such charges with some success, arguing the deep filiality of the monk's career, in which "leaving home" for the priesthood, through the redemptive power of awakening, is reconciled with Confucian filial responsibilities.
Sharing these premises, Hakuin launched vehement attacks on what he considered the mistaken understanding purveyed by such architects of Confucian orthodoxy as Hayashi Razan (see chapter
12). Hakuin's ideas on the subject may be summed up fairly well in the calligraphic works he prepared and distributed in large numbers to people. These works consisted of one large character, filiality or parent, followed by the inscription, "There is no more valuable act of filiality than to save one's father and mother from the sad fate of an unfortunate rebirth in the next life"-exactly the sentiments Hakuin had expressed to Sukefusa as a young monk. a It was considered extremely unfilial to injure or disfigure the body of one's (male) children. This was especially heinous in the case of an eldest son, who, according to the canons of filial piety, is venerated because of his superior birth, age, and gender. b Although not all of these references can be traced, most of them are found in Tales of the TwentyFour Paragons of Filial Virtue (Ehr-shih-ssu hsiao), a popular Confucian text of the Yuan dynasty that was reprinted and widely read in Edo Japan. c A legendary sage ruler of ancient China. According to Mencius, when ministers came to him with good advice, Yu always received it with deep gratitude.
1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
biologically grounded. Nonetheless, human languages differ. A native Japanese speaker cannot understand
a native French speaker, although it might be evident to both that the other is using language. It is possible
1.02 - The Development of Sri Aurobindos Thought, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
the unconditional surrender of Japan, Sri Aurobindo wrote:
There was a time when Hitler was victorious everywhere
1.02 - The Ultimate Path is Without Difficulty, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen
As examples of chi-ching, Japanese commentaries conven
tionally refer to such things as 'twinkling the eyes,' 'raising the
1.03 - To Layman Ishii, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #unset, #Zen
Attendant Boku's unspecified complaint may have been purely physical in nature, but it may also have been practice related, perhaps even a touch of the "Zen sickness" that had troubled Hakuin during his early years of training. The identity of this attendant monk is uncertain. The most logical candidate, Sui Genro (1717-89), Hakuin's successor at Shin-ji, who as a young monk used the name [E]Boku, has to be rejected, since Sui's study at Shin-ji did not begin until 1746, twelve years after this letter was written. The Hakuin specialist Rikugawa Taiun identified Boku as "a monk from western Japan who fell ill while training at Shin-ji and subsequently left the temple" (Detailed
Biography of Priest Hakuin, p. 252), but offered no details. An anonymous annotator inscribed another hypothesis in a copy of Poison Blossoms from a Thicket of Thorn: "Attendant Boku is not an actual person. The master seems to be using the name in an allegorical sense for a story on the oxherding theme" [Boku translates literally as "herder"]. Again, it would be entirely in character for
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Mount Sumeru, because inhabitants enjoy lives of interminable pleasure; and being enthralled in the worldly wisdom and skillful words (sechibens) of secular life. Dried buds and dead seeds (shge haishu) is a term of reproach directed at followers of the Two Vehicles, who are said to have no possibility for attaining complete enlightenment. t In the system of koan study that developed in later Hakuin Zen, hosshin or Dharmakaya koans are used in the beginning stages of practice (see Zen Dust, 46-50). The lines Hakuin quotes here are not found in the Poems of Han-shan (Han-shan shih). They are attributed to Han-shan in Compendium of the Five Lamps (ch. 15, chapter on Tung-shan Mu-ts'ung): "The master ascended the teaching seat and said, 'Han-shan said that "Red dust dances at the bottom of the well. / White waves rise on the mountain peaks. / The stone woman gives birth to a stone child. / Fur on the tortoise grows longer by the day." If you want to know the Bodhi-mind, all you have to do is to behold these sights.'" The lines are included in a Japanese edition of the work published during Hakuin's lifetime. u The Ten Ox-herding Pictures are a series of illustrations, accompanied by verses, showing the Zen student's progress to final enlightenment. The Five Ranks, comprising five modes of the particular and universal, are a teaching device formulated by Tung-shan of the Sto tradition. v Records of the Lamp, ch. 10. w Liu Hsiu (first century) was a descendant of Western Han royalty who defeated the usurper Wang
Mang and established the Eastern Han dynasty. Emperor Su Tsung (eighth century) regained the throne that his father had occupied before being been driven from power. x Wang Mang (c. 45 BC-23 AD) , a powerful official of the Western Han dynasty, and rebellious
1.04 - GOD IN THE WORLD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
It is in the literature of Mahayana and especially of Zen Buddhism that we find the best account of the psychology of the man for whom Samsara and Nirvana, time and eternity, are one and the same. More systematically perhaps than any other religion, the Buddhism of the Far East teaches the way to spiritual Knowledge in its fulness as well as in its heights, in and through the world as well as in and through the soul. In this context we may point to a highly significant fact, which is that the incomparable landscape painting of China and Japan was essentially a religious art, inspired by Taoism and Zen Buddhism; in Europe, on the contrary, landscape painting and the poetry of nature worship were secular arts which arose when Christianity was in decline, and derived little or no inspiration from Christian ideals.
Blind, deaf, dumb!
1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
something positively beneficial (consider, for the example, the post-war Japanese). The relationship
197
1.04 - The Crossing of the First Threshold, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
Egyptian, Greek, Hebrew, Indian, Jain, Japanese, Jewish, Moslem, Persian,
Roman, Slavic, Teutonic, and Tibetan varieties), is an excellent introduction to
1.04 - The Discovery of the Nation-Soul, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Therefore in nations so circumstanced this tendency of self-finding has been most powerful and has even created in some of them a new type of national movement, as in Ireland and India. This and no other was the root-meaning of Swadeshism in Bengal and of the Irish movement in its earlier less purely political stages. The emergence of Bengal as a sub-nation in India was throughout a strongly subjective movement and in its later development it became very consciously that. The movement of 1905 in Bengal pursued a quite new conception of the nation not merely as a country, but a soul, a psychological, almost a spiritual being and, even when acting from economical and political motives, it sought to dynamise them by this subjective conception and to make them instruments of self-expression rather than objects in themselves. We must not forget, however, that in the first stages these movements followed in their superficial thought the old motives of an objective and mostly political self-consciousness. The East indeed is always more subjective than the West and we can see the subjective tinge even in its political movements whether in Persia, India or China, and even in the very imitative movement of the Japanese resurgence. But it is only recently that this subjectivism has become self-conscious. We may therefore conclude that the conscious and deliberate subjectivism of certain nations was only the sign and precursor of a general change in humanity and has been helped forward by local circumstances, but was not really dependent upon them or in any sense their product.
This general change is incontestable; it is one of the capital phenomena of the tendencies of national and communal life at the present hour. The conception to which Ireland and India have been the first to give a definite formula, to be ourselves,so different from the impulse and ambition of dependent or unfortunate nations in the past which was rather to become like others,is now more and more a generally accepted motive of national life. It opens the way to great dangers and errors, but it is the essential condition for that which has now become the demand of the Time-Spirit on the human race, that it shall find subjectively, not only in the individual, but in the nation and in the unity of the human race itself, its deeper being, its inner law, its real self and live according to that and no longer by artificial standards. This tendency was preparing itself everywhere and partly coming to the surface before the War, but most prominently, as we have said, in new nations like Germany or in dependent nations like Ireland and India. The shock of the war brought about from its earliest moments an immediate and for the time being a militantemergence of the same deeper self-consciousness everywhere. Crude enough were most of its first manifestations, often of a really barbarous and reactionary crudeness. Especially, it tended to repeat the Teutonic lapse, preparing not only to be oneself, which is entirely right, but to live solely for and to oneself, which, if pushed beyond a certain point, becomes a disastrous error. For it is necessary, if the subjective age of humanity is to produce its best fruits, that the nations should become conscious not only of their own but of each others souls and learn to respect, to help and to profit, not only economically and intellectually but subjectively and spiritually, by each other.
1.04 - The Divine Mother - This Is She, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
Take, for instance, the construction of Golconde. I am not going to enter into an elaborate description of its development. Considering that our resources in men and money were then limited, how such a magnificent building was erected is a wonder. An American architect with his Japanese and Czechoslovakian assistants foregathered. Old buildings were demolished, our sadhaks along with the paid workers laboured night and day and as if from a void, the spectacular mansion rose silently and slowly like a giant in the air. It is a story hardly believable for Pondicherry of those days. But my wonder was at the part the Mother played in it, not inwardly which is beyond my depth but in the daylight itself. She was in constant touch with the work through her chosen instruments. As many sadhaks as possible were pressed into service there; to anyone young or old asking for work, part time, whole time, her one cry: "Go to Golconde, go to Golconde." It was one of her daily topics with Sri Aurobindo who was kept informed of the difficulties, troubles innumerable, and at the same time, of the need of his force to surmount "them. Particularly when rain threatened to impede or spoil some important part of the work, she would invoke his special help: for instance, when the roof was to be built. How often we heard her praying to Sri Aurobindo, "Lord, there should be no rain now." Menacing clouds had mustered strong, stormy west winds blowing ominously, rain imminent, and torrential Pondicherry rain! We would look at the sky and speculate on the result of the fight between the Divine Force and the natural force. The Divine Force would of course win: slowly the Fury would leash her forces and withdraw into the cave. But as soon as the intended object was achieved, a deluge swept down as if in revenge. Sri Aurobindo observed that that was often the rule. During the harvesting season too, S.O.S. signals would come to Sri Aurobindo through the Mother to stop the rain. He would smile and do his work silently. If I have not seen any other miracle, I can vouch for this one repeated more than once. During the roof-construction, work had to go on all night long and the Mother would mobilise and marshal all the available Ashram hands and put them there. With what cheer and ardour our youth jumped into the fray at the call of the Mother, using often Sri Aurobindo's name to put more love and zeal into the strenuous enterprise! We felt the vibration of a tremendous energy driving, supporting, inspiring the entire collective body. This was how Golconde, an Ashram guest house, was built, one of the wonders of modern architecture lavishly praised by many visitors. Let me quote the relevant portion of a letter from Sri Aurobindo, written in 1945 with regard to Golconde:
"...It is on this basis that she (Mother) planned the Golconde. First, she wanted a high architectural beauty, and in this she succeeded architects and people with architectural knowledge have admired it with enthusiasm as a remarkable achievement; one spoke of it as the finest building of its kind he had seen, with no equal in all Europe or America; and a French architect, pupil of a great master, said it executed superbly the idea which his master had been seeking for but failed to realise..."2
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The two major activities that she took up during this period were the Ashram School and Physical Education which together form the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education. Both of them, like the others, were born from tiny chromosomes and out of a compelling necessity, for the Japanese aggression had driven the children of the disciples in affected areas to seek shelter in the protecting arms of the Mother. She had now to devote much of her crowded time to the children who needed a special treatment, since they had not come for Yoga.
It was a challenging problem suddenly thrown upon her by Nature. Our Ashram life also took a different turn; the old barriers completely broke down under this influx. No longer a hermitage of peace, silence and inner expansion and acquisition, it had to be tested in the crucible of outer life. We soon became one spiritual family. The Mother had to look after the mental, vital and physical health of the green ones, both boys and girls. Along with the necessity, means also came forward to meet the demand. Sisirkumar Mitra from Vishwabharati, with a long teaching experience, and Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya from Calcutta, an expert in physical culture, came and were given charge of the two wings of education, mental and physical. Particularly in young Pranab, the Mother found an excellent instrument for physical culture and with his help she quickly built up the centre of physical education. I don't need to discuss the place and raison d'etre of physical education in our Ashram life when Sri Aurobindo has done it so well in his essay on The Divine Body.[6] My vision being more earthly, I can see that it has served the most important purpose of keeping the inflammable material of young boys, girls and children under a strict supervision through compulsory activities from 4.30 p.m. to 7.00 p.m. or so. One can very well imagine what would have been the moral effect on them, had there not been this central control, especially when the children here are given a great freedom of movement. Those young people who have cut themselves off from these collective activities suffer much from psychological troubles. Most of the ills of the youth outside have their origin in having no occupation after college and school hours. After Sri Aurobindo's passing, the Mother gave me one sound counsel, "Be in the atmosphere," by which she meant that I should not isolate myself from the collective activities. When there was a demand for more holidays, the Mother remarked, "I have started the School so that the children may not knock about in the streets." Since then, Sisirkumar has resisted the pressure of the students for more holidays.
1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
Muslim women in Yugoslavia, the holocaust of the Nazis, the carnage perpetrated by the Japanese in
mainl and China such events are not attri butable to human kinship with the animal, the innocent animal, or
1.05 - The Magical Control of the Weather, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
Among the high mountains of Japan there is a district in which, if
rain has not fallen for a long time, a party of villagers goes in
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at the main. In a Japanese village, when the guardian divinity had
long been deaf to the peasants' prayers for rain, they at last threw
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it on the stone. At Sagami in Japan there is a stone which draws
down rain whenever water is poured on it. When the Wakondyo, a tribe
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thunder and lightning form part of a rain-charm in Russia and Japan.
The legendary Salmoneus, King of Elis, made mock thunder by dragging
1.05 - War And Politics, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
On 29.5.40 the Mother gave us a message that the Asuras can't be victorious eternally against the Divine. The end of Hitler must come. Sri Aurobindo remarked: "That doesn't mean by the Allies.... If England goes down, there won't be any country left independent except Russia, Germany, Japan and Italy. I am talking of the old world. I think the next conflict will be between Russia and Germany. If Russia finds that England is in a difficult position, then Stalin will put pressure on Turkey and Rumania for the control of the Black Sea as he has done with the Baltic States. Hitler is not likely to keep quiet about the trouble in the Balkans. With Italy's help he may settle the Asia Minor and Balkan problem or he may allow Stalin a free hand now, knowing that he can settle with him afterwards."
We can see here that Sri Aurobindo envisaged a war between Russia and Germany, when there was hardly any possibility of it.
--
We heard something from the Mother to this effect in one of her talks. She said, "Hitler was an idiot. In his normal moments he was no better than a concierge or a cordonnier and behaved and spoke of things in a most idiotic and stupid manner. He was possessed and made an instrument of by some other power and only when that happened he did extraordinary things. People who have seen him at that time said how he thumped, cried and screamed. The Japanese ambassador said, 'This man is mad. It is dangerous to have any alliance with him.' It is strange how the whole German race was stupid enough to follow this man. Such a thing would not have been possible in France or other countries."
Still there were others who dreamt of melting the heart of Hitler by non-violence. Sri Aurobindo remarked that his heart could be melted in only one way, by bombing it out of existence! Speaking about non-violence Sri Aurobindo told us in a talk on 28th October, 1940: "Gandhi has been forestalled in non-violence in Poland. The Polish (the Jews?) adopted non-violence against the Nazis and do you know the result? The Polish lady who is Ravindra's[1] friend wrote to Gandhi the account of the German oppression against the non-violent people. She cites 3 or 4 instances: 1) About 300 school-boys refused to salute Hitler. The result was that they were taken before their parents and shot down in their presence, 2) Some school-girls were taken to the soldiers' barracks and molested by them till they all died....
--
He was carrying with him an urgent appeal by Sri Aurobindo to the Congress Working Committee. Sisir Kumar Mitra reports in The Liberator, "the viewpoints which Sri Aurobindo instructed his envoy to place before the Congress leaders...(1) Japan's imperialism being young and based on industrial and military power and moving westward, was a greater menace to India than the British imperialism which was old, which the country had learnt to deal with and which was on the way to elimination. (2) It would be better to get into the saddle and not be particular about the legal basis of the power. Once the power came into our hands and we occupied seats of power, we could establish our positions and assert ourselves. (3) The proposed Cabinet would provide opportunities for the Congress and the Muslims to understand each other and pull together for the country's good, especially at that time of the crisis. (4) The Hindu Mahasabha also being represented, the Hindus, as such would have a chance of proving their capacity to govern India not only for the benefit of the Hindus but for the whole country. (5) The main problem was to organise the strength of India in order to repel the threatened aggression."
We may remind ourselves of Talthybius's mission to Troy in Sri Aurobindo's epic poem Ilion: Achilles made an offer by which Troy would be saved and the honour of the Greeks would be preserved, a harmonising offer, but it was rejected. Similarly, Duraiswamy went with India's soul in his "frail" hands and brought it back, downhearted, rewarded with ungracious remarks for the gratuitous advice. Sri Aurobindo even sent a telegram to Rajagopalachari and Dr. Munje urging them to accept the Proposals. Dr. Indra Sen writes, "We met the members individually and the sense of the reactions were more or less to this effect: Sri Aurobindo has created difficulties for us by his message to Cripps. He doesn't know the actual situation, we are in it, we know' better... and so on." Cripps flew back a disappointed man but with the consolation and gratified recognition that at least one great man had welcomed the idea. When the rejection was announced, Sri Aurobindo said in a quiet tone, "I knew it would fail." We at once pounced on it and asked him, "Why did you then send Duraiswamy at all?" "For a bit of niskama karma,"[3]was his calm reply, without any bitterness or resentment. The full spirit of the kind of "disinterested work" he meant comes out in an early letter of his (December 1933), which refers to his spiritual work: "I am sure of the results of my work. But even if I still saw the chance that it might come to nothing (which is impossible), I would go on unperturbed, because I would still have done to the best of my power the work that I had to do, and what is so done always counts in the economy of the universe."
--
"The next day at about 2 p.m., after the All India Radio news at 1.30, there was a hot discussion among three sadhaks, including P, in his room. P took the standpoint of the purely spiritual man, who judges by looking at what is behind appearances. It seemed that he had already spoken with the Mother and thus was arguing forcefully for the acceptance of the Proposals. The second person was an experienced politician of the Gandhian Congress days and took the negative position. He argued the pros and cons of the Proposals and was of the opinion that the Indian leaders would reject them. The third a novice, with no political experience, was more for its acceptance. The discussion became hotter and hotter, so much so that the Mother, while going from Her bathroom to Her dressing room, was attracted by the unusual volume of sound. She did not enter Her dressing room, but turned Her steps towards P's room. Before entering there, She heard part of the argument. Then She stepped in and asked, 'What is it all about?' P said that one person argued that Cripps' offer would not be accepted by the Indian leaders. The Mother felt amused and inquired, 'Why?' By then She had sat on the chair that was in front of Her. It was a very unusual and interesting scene; the Mother, still in Her beautiful Japanese kimono just out of the bath, didn't seem to care to change Her dress, and was more interested in the arguments against the acceptance. Then She began to talk with a very calm and distinct voice. One could see that She who had entered a few minutes ago had been transported somewhere else and the voice was coming from that plane....
"She said something to this effect: 'One should leave the matter of the Cripps' offer entirely in the hands of the Divine, with full confidence that the Divine will work everything out. Certainly there were flaws in the offer. Nothing on earth created by man is flawless, because the human mind has a limited capacity. Yet behind this offer there is the Divine Grace directly present. The Grace is now at the door of India, ready to give its help. In the history of a nation such opportunities do not come often. The Grace presents itself at rare moments, after centuries of preparation of that nation. If it is accepted, the nation will survive and get a new birth in the Divine's consciousness. But if it is rejected the Grace will withdraw and then the nation will suffer terribly, calamity will overtake it.
--
The next issue, if not so great in magnitude, was the Japanese aggression. Japan, like a minor Hitler, had established its supremacy in the East. But Sri Aurobindo had never taken Japan's aggression very seriously. On the contrary, he once remarked that should Hitler become supreme in the West and turn his forces towards the East, Japan's power might be useful in confronting Hitler and checking his advance. This remark supporting as it were Japan's blaze of imperial conquest baffled me at the time. Did he want Japan's rise to serve as a counterblast to Hitler's problematic thrust towards the East? Or could it be read as a move to force America into the War? At any rate it was quite evident from our talks that Japan's dramatic conquests did not disturb him, as did Hitler's. But it was only when Japan's design on India, aided by some of our misguided patriots, was palpably clear, that Sri Aurobindo, as he himself avowed, used his spiritual Force against Japan and "had the satisfaction of seeing the tide of Japanese victory which had till then swept everything before it, change immediately into a tide of rapid, crushing and finally immense and overwhelming defeat".
We heard of the Japanese bombing of Calcutta and Vishakhapatnam, we also heard that Japanese warships had come to the Indian Ocean at Trincomali and the next information that reached us almost immediately was that they had exploded and sunk before they had time to invade India! In the North-East the I.N.A.[5] with the Japanese army at its back was triumphantly marching into Assam. The Indian army seemed to be in a panicky retreat, and the British Government, counting its imperial glory to be almost at an end, was preparing to leave India. The then Governor of Bengal seemed to have said at a cabinet meeting, "This time the game is up." When the words were reported to Sri Aurobindo he remarked, "Now the wheel will turn." For the Allies the situation at that moment was desperate everywhere, in Africa, in India, in Europe.
At this jubilant moment of the enemy, India's destiny intervened. A heavy downpour from heaven inundated the dense Assam jungles for days together, so that, bogged in the flood and mud, the invading army with its liberation force had to liberate itself from the wrath of Nature and beat an ignominious retreat. Yet rain during that season had never been heard of before.
In this context let us quote what the Mother said to a sadhak in 1927, when he asked how India was likely to get freedom. The Mother's prophetic reply was, "When a Japanese warship will come to the Indian Ocean." In fact, the Mother had visioned India's Independence In 1920. It was when she and Sri Aurobindo were in meditation, and she reached a state of consciousness from which she told Sri Aurobindo: "India is free."
Sri Aurobindo: How?
--
Today the achievement of India's freedom is attributed to various factors: the August movement, Non-cooperation, the Terrorist movement, the I. N. A. and others; the factor that played the decisive part is either not admitted or ignored altogether. From Sri Aurobindo's pronouncements we can assert that his Force was principally responsible for the success of the Allies and the defeat of the Japanese, thereby helping India to gain her freedom. In fact, India's freedom had been his constant dream from his very boyhood. Even during his intense sadhana in Pondicherry, it was always in his mind and he indefatigably worked for it in the yogic way till he became convinced that freedom was inevitable. As far back as 1935, when I asked him if he was working for India's freedom, he replied, "That is all settled, it is a question of working out only.... It is what she will do with her independence that is not arranged for and so it is that about which I have to bother."
The other causes then could be considered no more than contributory, even if indispensable factors. Out of all these, I may make some comment on the claims of the I. N. A. Whatever significance there may be in its claims, the role it played was fraught with most dangerous consequences. I wonder how our countrymen had no apprehension of them. It was a fatal game the I.N.A. played, thinking that the Japanese, after the conquest of India, would peacefully leave the country letting the I.N.A. enjoy the fruit of its victory, or that India would be able to fight and drive them out. Sri Aurobindo pointing out what would have been our condition, had Japan entered India, said, " Japan's imperialism being young and based on industrial and military power and moving westward, was a greater menace to India than the British imperialism which was old, which the country had learnt to deal with and which was on the way to elimination."
Our Ashram came in for a good deal of suffering and inconvenience in the wake of the War: the wrath and abuse of our countrymen, the resentment of a number of our own inmates for our support of the War and the loss of some other valiant sons in the great holocaust. It had to open its doors to the children of all disciples who were in the danger zone, so we were all of a sudden changed into a large community without sufficient means to maintain ourselves. And due to the general embargoes and restrictions imposed by the Government the most necessary food supply was either cut off or reduced to a minimum. Last of all, and the greatest irony of fate, the Ashram in spite of all our help was suspected of being a nest of spies or enemy agents. Police search was apprehended and even the question of disbanding the Ashram was in the air. Perhaps the British Government had never entirely believed that Sri Aurobindo, once the most dangerous enemy of the British Empire, could really become their ally. Was he not still engaged in secret revolutionary activities, his war-contribution serving just as a smoke-screen? Unfortunately, in the Ashram itself there were some who wished for Hitler's victory, not for love of Hitler but because of their hatred of British domination. Sri Aurobindo conveyed through us a stern message to them: "If these people want that the Ashram should be dissolved, they can come and tell me and I will dissolve it instead of the police doing it.... Hitlerism is the greatest menace that the world has ever met."
Another inconvenience, but of short duration, that we had to pass through was the threat of bombing by the Japanese Air Force. As soon as the alert for a blackout was given, all lights in the Ashram had to go off. Sri Aurobindo sat up in bed, the Mother on a chair in Sri Aurobindo's room; the two of us who were on duty at the time also sat there, Champaklal very near the Mother.... After a short while when the all-clear signal was given, we would revert to our duty. One day, putting a dark shade over Sri Aurobindo's table lamp, the Mother said with a smile, "Your lamp lights up three streets, Lord." "So I should be darkened?" he asked smiling. In truth, I do not think that any Japanese aeroplane flew over Pondicherry. I was very much amused at the sight of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo taking this human precaution against any possible threat. But that is their way. Because they are Divine and possess a great occult power, one would suppose that all the human measures were otiose or a mere show as I thought in my callow days. But I saw in this case and in many others that the Mother was in grim earnest. Even if Sri Aurobindo and she were sure of an eventual success, they would keep applying the pressure of their Force till the issue was decided beyond any question.
A little later, there was a lot of preparation against possible bombing and bombardment. Sandbags were piled up and trenches dug. It is reported that when the Mother was apprised of the preparations, she remarked in private, "There is such a strong Presence of Divine Force and Peace in the atmosphere that an attack is most improbable."
--
"As he was uttering those words, the possible dates were still whizzing through his mind like the numbers of a spinning roulette wheel.... Suddenly the wheel stopped with a jar... Mountbatten's decision was instantaneous. It was a date linked in his memory to the most triumphant hours of his own existence, the day in which his long crusade through the jungles of Burma had ended with the unconditional surrender of the Japanese Empire....
"His voice constricted with sudden emotion, the victor of the jungles of Burma about to become the liberator of India announced:
1.07 - Incarnate Human Gods, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
compared to the theocracies of Tibet and Japan. These were the
Chibchas, Muyscas, or Mozcas, divided into two kingdoms, with
1.07 - The Ideal Law of Social Development, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Individual man belongs not only to humanity in general, his nature is not only a variation of human nature in general, but he belongs also to his race-type, his class-type, his mental, vital, physical, spiritual type in which he resembles some, differs from others. According to these affinities he tends to group himself in Churches, sects, communities, classes, coteries, associations whose life he helps, and by them he enriches the life of the large economic, social and political group or society to which he belongs. In modern times this society is the nation. By his enrichment of the national life, though not in that way only, he helps the total life of humanity. But it must be noted that he is not limited and cannot be limited by any of these groupings; he is not merely the noble, merchant, warrior, priest, scholar, artist, cultivator or artisan, not merely the religionist or the worldling or the politician. Nor can he be limited by his nationality; he is not merely the Englishman or the Frenchman, the Japanese or the Indian; if by a part of himself he belongs to the nation, by another he exceeds it and belongs to humanity. And even there is a part of him, the greatest, which is not limited by humanity; he belongs by it to God and to the world of all beings and to the godheads of the future. He has indeed the tendency of self-limitation and subjection to his environment and group, but he has also the equally necessary tendency of expansion and transcendence of environment and groupings. The individual animal is dominated entirely by his type, subordinated to his group when he does group himself; individual man has already begun to share something of the infinity, complexity, free variation of the Self we see manifested in the world. Or at least he has it in possibility even if there be as yet no sign of it in his organised surface nature. There is here no principle of a mere shapeless fluidity; it is the tendency to enrich himself with the largest possible material constantly brought in, constantly assimilated and changed by the law of his individual nature into stuff of his growth and divine expansion.
Thus the community stands as a mid-term and intermediary value between the individual and humanity and it exists not merely for itself, but for the one and the other and to help them to fulfil each other. The individual has to live in humanity as well as humanity in the individual; but mankind is or has been too large an aggregate to make this mutuality a thing intimate and powerfully felt in the ordinary mind of the race, and even if humanity becomes a manageable unit of life, intermediate groups and aggregates must still exist for the purpose of mass-differentiation and the concentration and combination of varying tendencies in the total human aggregate. Therefore the community has to stand for a time to the individual for humanity even at the cost of standing between him and it and limiting the reach of his universality and the wideness of his sympathies. Still the absolute claim of the community, the society or the nation to make its growth, perfection, greatness the sole object of human life or to exist for itself alone as against the individual and the rest of humanity, to take arbitrary possession of the one and make the hostile assertion of itself against the other, whether defensive or offensive, the law of its action in the world and not, as it unfortunately is, a temporary necessity,this attitude of societies, races, religions, communities, nations, empires is evidently an aberration of the human reason, quite as much as the claim of the individual to live for himself egoistically is an aberration and the deformation of a truth.
1.08 - Psycho therapy Today, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
nonentity of its bearers; or a long succession of Japanese artists who
discard their own name and adopt the name of a master, simply adding
1.08 - Sri Aurobindos Descent into Death, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
surrender of Japan, Sri Aurobindo wrote: There was a
time when Hitler was victorious everywhere and it seemed
1.09 - The Worship of Trees, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
of you not to fell me." So in Japan to make trees bear fruit two men
go into an orchard. One of them climbs up a tree and the other
1.09 - To the Students, Young and Old, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The second example is from the other end of the world, from Japan. You have just arrived in this beautiful country for a long stay and very soon you find out that unless you have at least a minimum knowledge of the language, it will be very difficult for you to get along. So you begin to study Japanese and in order to become familiar with the language you do not miss a single opportunity to hear people talking, you listen to them carefully, you try to understand what they are saying; and then, beside you, in a tram where you have just taken your seat, there is a small child of four or five years with his mother. The child begins to talk in a clear and pure voice and listening to him you have the remarkable experience that he knows spontaneously what you have to learn with so much effort, and that as far as Japanese is concerned he could be your teacher in spite of his youth.
In this way life becomes full of wonder and gives you a lesson at each step. Looked at from this angle, it is truly worth living.
1.12 - The Sacred Marriage, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
have been found from Japan and Annam in the East to Senegambia,
Scandinavia, and Scotl and in the West. The story varies in details
1.17 - The Burden of Royalty, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
over the gods of Japan. For example, in an official decree of the
year 646 the emperor is described as "the incarnate god who governs
--
hierarchies or theocracies like those of Japan; in particular, the
high pontiff of the Zapotecs appears to have presented a close
--
Wherever, as in Japan and West Africa, it is supposed that the order
of nature, and even the existence of the world, is bound up with the
--
The Mikados of Japan seem early to have resorted to the expedient of
transferring the honours and burdens of supreme power to their
1.2.01 - The Call and the Capacity, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
If the question be of Indian Yoga itself in its own characteristic forms, here too the supposed inability is contradicted by experience. In early times Greeks and Scythians from the West as well as Chinese and Japanese and Cambodians from the East followed without difficulty Buddhist or Hindu disciplines; at the present day an increasing number of occidentals have taken to
Vedantic or Vaishnava or other Indian spiritual practices and this objection of incapacity or unsuitableness has never been made either from the side of the disciples or from the side of the Masters. I do not see, either, why there should be any such unbridgeable gulf; for there is no essential difference between spiritual life in the East and spiritual life in the West, - what difference there is has always been of names, forms and symbols or else of the emphasis laid on one special aim or another or on one side or another of psychological experience. Even here differences are often alleged which do not exist or else are not so great as they appear. I have seen it alleged by a Christian writer
1.22 - Tabooed Words, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
the Tuaregs of the Sahara; the Ainos of Japan and the Akamba and
Nandi of Eastern Africa; the Tinguianes of the Philippines and the
1.50 - Eating the God, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
The Aino or Ainu of Japan are said to distinguish various kinds of
millet as male and female respectively, and these kinds, taken
1.52 - Killing the Divine Animal, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
are found in the Japanese island of Yezo or Yesso, as well as in
Saghalien and the southern of the Kurile Islands. It is not quite
--
one which was given to the world by a Japanese writer in 1652. It
has been translated into French and runs thus: "When they find a
--
summer. This butchery begins in the first Japanese month. For this
purpose they put the animal's head between two long poles, which are
1.55 - Money, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
A couple of Japanese wrestlers may be worth more than Phidias, Robert Browning, Titian and Mozart in terms of butchers' meat. We might alter that incorrect truism "money cannot by anything worth having" to "things worth having cannot be estimated in terms of money." You see, no counting. The operation to save your child's life: do you care if the surgeon wants five pounds or fifty? Of course, you may not have the fifty, or be obliged to retrench in other ways to get it; but it makes no odds as to what you feel about it. What is the value of a University Education? The answer is that it is a pure gamble. The student may use his advantages to make a rich marriage, to attract the wife of a millionaire, to earn a judgeship or a post in the Cabinet, to earn 500 a year as a doctor, 150 as a schoolmaster or he may die in the process. So with all the spiritual values; they are, in the most literal sense, inestimable. So don't start to count!
Most obviously of all, when it comes to The Great Work, money does not count at all. I do not write of any Magical work, in the restricted sense of the phrase. Shaw says: "Admirals always want more battleships" and J.F.C. Fuller: "if a lawyer, more wretches to hang." It applies to any one whose heart is in his job. (Of course, in this case, money is like all other things of value; nothing counts but the Job.) This, too, is sound Magical doctrine.
1.60 - Between Heaven and Earth, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
him to walk upon. For the Mikado of Japan to touch the ground with
his foot was a shameful degradation; indeed, in the sixteenth
--
The Japanese would not allow that the Mikado should expose his
sacred person to the open air, and the sun was not thought worthy to
1.65 - Balder and the Mistletoe, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
similar beliefs of the modern Aino of Japan. We read that they,
"like many nations of the Northern origin, hold the mistletoe in
1916 12 05p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Turn towards the earth. The usual injunction was heard in the silence of the immutable identification. Then the consciousness became that of the One in all. Everywhere and in all those in whom thou canst see the One, there will awake the consciousness of this identity with the Divine. Look. It was a Japanese street brilliantly illuminated by gay lanterns picturesquely adorned with vivid colours. And as gradually what was conscious moved on down the street, the Divine appeared, visible in everyone and everything. One of the lightly-built houses became transparent, revealing a woman seated on a tatami in a sumptuous violet kimono embroidered with gold and bright colours. The woman was beautiful and must have been between thirty-five and forty. She was playing a golden samisen. At her feet lay a little child. And in the woman too the Divine was visible.
***
1917 04 01p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
O Japan, it is thy festive adorning, expression of thy goodwill, it is thy purest offering, the pledge of thy fidelity; it is thy way of saying that thou dost mirror the sky.
And now here is a magnificent country, of high mountains all covered with pines and richly tilled valleys. And the little pink roses this Chinese brings, are they a promise of the near future?
1929-04-21 - Visions, seeing and interpretation - Dreams and dreaml and - Dreamless sleep - Visions and formulation - Surrender, passive and of the will - Meditation and progress - Entering the spiritual life, a plunge into the Divine, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The two beings who were always appearing and speaking to Jeanne dArc would, if seen by an Indian, have a quite different appearance; for when one sees, one projects the forms of ones mind. To what you see you give the form of that which you expect to see. If the same being appeared simultaneously in a group where there were Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Shintoists, it would be named by absolutely different names. Each would say, in reference to the appearance of the being, that he was like this or like that, all differing and yet it would be one and the same manifestation. You have the vision of one in India whom you call the Divine Mother, the Catholics say it is the Virgin Mary, and the Japanese call it Kwannon, the Goddess of Mercy, and others would give other names. It is the same Force, the same Power, but the images made of it are different in different faiths.
What is the place of training or discipline in surrender? If one surrenders, can he not be without discipline? Does not discipline sometimes hamper?
1929-06-09 - Nature of religion - Religion and the spiritual life - Descent of Divine Truth and Force - To be sure of your religion, country, family-choose your own - Religion and numbers, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If we go a little way within ourselves, we shall discover that there is in each of us a consciousness that has been living throughout the ages and manifesting in a multitude of forms. Each of us has been born in many different countries, belonged to many different nations, followed many different religions. Why must we accept the last one as the best? The experiences gathered by us in all these many lives in different countries and varying religions, are stored up in that inner continuity of our consciousness which persists through all births. There are multiple personalities there created by these past experiences, and when we become aware of this multitude within us, it becomes impossible to speak of one particular form of truth as the only truth, one country as our only country, one religion as the only true religion. There are people who have been born into one country, although the leading elements of their consciousness obviously belong to another. I have met some born in Europe who were evidently Indians; I have met others born in Indian bodies who were as evidently Europeans. In Japan I have met some who were Indian, others who were European. And if any of them goes to the country or enters into the civilisation to which he has affinity, he finds himself there perfectly at home.
If your aim is to be free, in the freedom of the Spirit, you must get rid of all the ties that are not the inner truth of your being, but come from subconscious habits. If you wish to consecrate yourself entirely, absolutely and exclusively to the Divine, you must do it in all completeness; you must not leave bits of yourself tied here and there. You may object that it is not easy to cut away altogether from ones moorings. But have you never looked back and observed the changes that have taken place in you in the course of a few years? When you do that, almost always you ask yourself how it was that you could have felt in the way you felt and acted as you did act in certain circumstances; at times, even, you can no longer recognise yourself in the person you were only ten years ago. How can you then bind yourself to what was or to what is or how can you fix beforeh and what may or may not be in the future?
1929-07-28 - Art and Yoga - Art and life - Music, dance - World of Harmony, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Drama is not the highest of the arts. Someone has said that drama is greater than any other art and art is greater than life. But it is not quite like that. The mistake of the artist is to believe that artistic production is something that stands by itself and for itself, independent of the rest of the world. Art as understood by these artists is like a mushroom on the wide soil of life, something casual and external, not something intimate to life; it does not reach and touch the deep and abiding realities, it does not become an intrinsic and inseparable part of existence. True art is intended to express the beautiful, but in close intimacy with the universal movement. The greatest nations and the most cultured races have always considered art as a part of life and made it subservient to life. Art was like that in Japan in its best moments; it was like that in all the best moments in the history of art. But most artists are like parasites growing on the margin of life; they do not seem to know that art should be the expression of the Divine in life and through life. In everything, everywhere, in all relations truth must be brought out in its all-embracing rhythm and every movement of life should be an expression of beauty and harmony. Skill is not art, talent is not art. Art is a living harmony and beauty that must be expressed in all the movements of existence. This manifestation of beauty and harmony is part of the Divine realisation upon earth, perhaps even its greatest part.
For, from the supramental point of view beauty and harmony are as important as any other expression of the Divine. But they should not be isolated, set up apart from all other relations, taken out from the ensemble; they should be one with the expression of life as a whole. People have the habit of saying, Oh, it is an artist! as if an artist should not be a man among other men but must be an extraordinary being belonging to a class by itself, and his art too something extraordinary and apart, not to be confused with the other ordinary things of the world. The maxim, Art for arts sake, tries to impress and emphasise as a truth the same error. It is the same mistake as when men place in the middle of their drawing-rooms a framed picture that has nothing to do either with the furniture or the walls, but is put there only because it is an object of art.
True art is a whole and an ensemble; it is one and of one piece with life. You see something of this intimate wholeness in ancient Greece and ancient Egypt; for there pictures and statues and all objects of art were made and arranged as part of the architectural plan of a building, each detail a portion of the whole. It is like that in Japan, or at least it was so till the other day before the invasion of a utilitarian and practical modernism. A Japanese house is a wonderful artistic whole; always the right thing is there in the right place, nothing wrongly set, nothing too much, nothing too little. Everything is just as it needed to be, and the house itself blends marvellously with the surrounding nature. In India, too, painting and sculpture and architecture were one integral beauty, one single movement of adoration of the Divine.
There has been in this sense a great degeneration since then in the world. From the time of Victoria and in France from the Second Empire we have entered into a period of decadence. The habit has grown of hanging up in rooms pictures that have no meaning for the surrounding objects; any picture, any artistic object could now be put anywhere and it would make small difference. Art now is meant to show skill and cleverness and talent, not to embody some integral expression of harmony and beauty in a home.
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Look again at what the moderns have made of the dance; compare it with what the dance once was. The dance was once one of the highest expressions of the inner life; it was associated with religion and it was an important limb in sacred ceremony, in the celebration of festivals, in the adoration of the Divine. In some countries it reached a very high degree of beauty and an extraordinary perfection. In Japan they kept up the tradition of the dance as a part of the religious life and, because the strict sense of beauty and art is a natural possession of the Japanese, they did not allow it to degenerate into something of lesser significance and smaller purpose. It was the same in India. It is true that in our days there have been attempts to resuscitate the ancient Greek and other dances; but the religious sense is missing in all such resurrections and they look more like rhythmic gymnastics than dance.
Today Russian dances are famous, but they are expressions of the vital world and there is even something terribly vital in them. Like all that comes to us from that world, they may be very attractive or very repulsive, but always they stand for themselves and not for the expression of the higher life. The very mysticism of the Russians is of a vital order. As technicians of the dance they are marvellous; but technique is only an instrument. If your instrument is good, so much the better, but so long as it is not surrendered to the Divine, however fine it may be, it is empty of the highest and cannot serve a divine purpose. The difficulty is that most of those who become artists believe that they stand on their own legs and have no need to turn to the Divine. It is a great pity; for in the divine manifestation skill is as useful an element as anything else. Skill is one part of the divine fabric, only it must know how to subordinate itself to greater things.
1951-03-17 - The universe- eternally new, same - Pralaya Traditions - Light and thought - new consciousness, forces - The expanding universe - inexpressible experiences - Ashram surcharged with Light - new force - vibrating atmospheres, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Take a place like this, which is surcharged with certain forces, certain vibrations; these vibrations do not show themselves in visible and tangible things they can produce changes, but as these changes occur according to a method (as all physical things do), you pass almost logically from one state to another and this logic prevents you from perceiving that there is something here which does not belong to normal life. Well, those who have no other perception than that of the ordinary mind, who see things working out as they habitually do or seem to do in ordinary life, will tell you, Oh that, that is quite natural. If they have no other perception than the purely physical perception, if they are not capable of feeling the quality of a vibration (some feel it vaguely, but those who are not even capable of feeling that, who have nothing in them corresponding to that or, if they have something, it is not awakened), they will look at the life here and tell you, It is like the physical lifeyou have perhaps some ideas of your own, but there are many who have their own ideas; perhaps you do things in a special way, but there are lots of people who also do things in a special way. After all, it is a life like the one I live. And so, it may very well happen that at a given moment the supramental Force manifests, that it is conscious here, that it acts on Matter, but those who do not consciously participate in its vibration are incapable of perceiving it. People say, When the supramental force manifests, we shall know it quite well. It will be seennot necessarily. They will not feel it any more than those people of little sensitivity who may pass through this place, even live here, without feeling that the atmosphere is different from elsewherewho among you feels it in such a precise way as to be able to affirm it?You may feel in your heart, in your thought that it is not the same, but it is rather vague, isnt it? But to have this precise perception. Listen, as I had when I came from Japan: I was on the boat, at sea, not expecting anything (I was of course busy with the inner life, but I was living physically on the boat), when all of a sudden, abruptly, about two nautical miles from Pondicherry, the quality, I may even say the physical quality of the atmosphere, of the air, changed so much that I knew we were entering the aura of Sri Aurobindo. It was a physical experience and I guarantee that whoever has a sufficiently awakened consciousness can feel the same thing.
I had the contrary experience also, the first time that I went out in a car after many, many years here. When I reached a little beyond the lake, I felt all of a sudden that the atmosphere was changing; where there had been plenitude, energy, light and force, all that diminished, diminished and then nothing. I was not in a mental or vital consciousness, I was in an absolutely physical consciousness. Well, those who are sensitive in their physical consciousness ought to feel that quite concretely. And I can assure you that the area we call the Ashram has a condensation of force which is not at all the same as that of the town, and still less that of the countryside.
1951-03-19 - Mental worlds and their beings - Understanding in silence - Psychic world- its characteristics - True experiences and mental formations - twelve senses, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are people who live constantly in a higher consciousness, while others have to make an effort to enter there. But here it is an altogether different thing; in the experience I was speaking about, what gave it all its value was that I was not expecting it at all, not at all. I knew very well, I had been for a very long time and continuously in spiritual contact, if I may say so, with the atmosphere of Sri Aurobindo, but I had never thought of the possibility of a modification in the physical air and I was not expecting it in the least, and it was this that gave the whole value to the experience, which came like that, quite suddenly, just as when one enters a place with another temperature or another altitude. I do not know if you have noticed that the air you brea the is not always the same, that there are different vibrations in the air of one country and in the air of another, in the air of one place and in the air of another. If indeed you are accustomed to have this perception of the subtle physical, you can say immediately, Ah! This air is as in France or This is the air of Japan. It is something indefinable like taste or smell. But in this instance it is not that, it is a perception of another sense. It is a physical sense, it is not a vital or mental sense; it is a sense of the physical world, but there are other senses than the five that we usually have at our disposal there are many others.
Actually, for the physical beingnote that I say the physical beingto be fully developed, it must have twelve senses. It is one of these senses which gives you the kind of perception I was speaking of. You cannot say that it is taste, smell, hearing, etc., but it is something which gives you a very precise impression of the difference of quality. And it is very precise, as distinct as seeing black and white, it is truly a sense perception.
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In the preceding talk Mother had described how on her return from Japan she had all of a sudden physically felt the atmosphere of Sri Aurobindo at a distance of two nautical miles from Pondicherry.
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1951-03-29 - The Great Vehicle and The Little Vehicle - Choosing ones family, country - The vital being distorted - atavism - Sincerity - changing ones character, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know the Buddha used to say that there was no God, there was no persistence of the ego, there were no beings of higher worlds who could incarnate here, there were no He denied almost every possible thing. The religion of the South is like that, it is extremely nihilistic, it says no, no, no to everything; while in the religion of the North, which has been practised in Tibet, and spread from Tibet into China and from China to Japan, one finds the Bodhisattvas (who stand for saints as in all other religions), all the previous Buddhas who are also like some sort of demigods or gods. I dont know if you have ever had a chance to visit a Buddhist temple of the North (I saw them in China and Japan), for you enter halls where there are innumerable statuettesall the Bodhisattvas, all the disciples of those Bodhisattvas, all the forces of nature deified, indeed you are overwhelmed by the number of gods! On the other hand, if you go to the South, there is nothing, not a single image. I believe they speak of the Great Vehicle because there are lots of things inside, and the Little Vehicle because there are few! I dont know exactly the origin of the two terms.
Things have an inner value and become real to you only when you have acquired them by the exercise of your free choice, not when they have been imposed upon you. If you want to be sure of your religion, you must choose it; if you want to be sure of your country, you must choose it; if you want to be sure of your family, even that you must choose.
1951-04-05 - Illusion and interest in action - The action of the divine Grace and the ego - Concentration, aspiration, will, inner silence - Value of a story or a language - Truth - diversity in the world, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I met in Japan one of the sons of Tolstoy; he was going round the world preaching human unity. He had caught this from his father and was going everywhere in the world preaching human unity. I met him at some friends place and asked him, How are you going to realise this human unity? Do you know what reply he gave me? Oh! It is very simple if everybody spoke the same language, if everybody dressed in the same way, if everybody lived in the same fashion, the whole world would be united! Then I told him, That would be a poor world not worth living in. He did not understand me!
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1951-04-12 - Japan, its art, landscapes, life, etc - Fairy-lore of Japan - Culture- its spiral movement - Indian and European- the spiritual life - Art and Truth, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
object:1951-04-12 - Japan, its art, landscapes, life, etc - Fairy-lore of Japan - Culture- its spiral movement - Indian and European- the spiritual life - Art and Truth
author class:The Mother
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What is the difference between Japanese art and the art of other countries, like those of Europe, for example?
The art of Japan is a kind of directly mental expression in physical life. The Japanese use the vital world very little. Their art is extremely mentalised; their life is extremely mentalised. It expresses in detail quite precise mental formations. Only, in the physical, they have spontaneously the sense of beauty. For example, a thing one sees very rarely in Europe but constantly, daily in Japan: very simple people, men of the working class or even peasants go for rest or enjoyment to a place where they can see a beautiful landscape. This gives them a much greater joy than going to play cards or indulging in all sorts of distractions as they do in the countries of Europe. They are seen in groups at times, going on the roads or sometimes taking a train or a tram up to a certain point, then walking to a place from where one gets a beautiful view. Then at this place there is a small house which fits very well into the landscape, there is a kind of small platform on which one can sit: one takes a cup of tea and at the same time sees the landscape. For them, this is the supreme enjoyment; they know nothing more pleasant. One can understand this among artists, educated people, quite learned people, but I am speaking of people of the most ordinary class, poor people who like this better than resting or relaxing at home. This is for them the greatest joy.
And in that country, for each season there are known sites. For instance, in autumn leaves become red; they have large numbers of maple-trees (the leaves of the maple turn into all the shades of the most vivid red in autumn, it is absolutely marvellous), so they arrange a place near a temple, for instance, on the top of a hill, and the entire hill is covered with maples. There is a stairway which climbs straight up, almost like a ladder, from the base to the top, and it is so steep that one cannot see what is at the top, one gets the feeling of a ladder rising to the skiesa stone stairway, very well made, rising steeply and seeming to lose itself in the skyclouds pass, and both the sides of the hill are covered with maples, and these maples have the most magnificent colours you could ever imagine. Well, an artist who goes there will experience an emotion of absolutely exceptional, marvellous beauty. But one sees very small children, families even, with a baby on the shoulder, going there in groups. In autumn they will go there. In springtime they will go elsewhere.
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And people travel by train as easily as one goes from house to house; they have a small packet like this which they carry; in it they have a change of clothes, thats quite enough for them; on their feet they wear rope or fibre sandals; when these get worn out they throw them away and take others, for they costs nothing at all. All their life is like that. They have paper handkerchiefs, when they have used them they get rid of them, and so onthey dont burden themselves with anything. When they go by train, at the stations small meals are sold in boxes (it is quite clean, quite neat), small meals in boxes of white wood with little chop-sticks for eating; then, as all this has no value, when one has finished, one puts them aside, doesnt bother about them or encumber oneself. They live like that. When they have a garden or a park, they plant trees, and they plant them just at the place where when the tree has grown it will create a landscape, will fit into a landscape. And as they want the tree to have a particular shape, they trim it, cut it, they manage to give it all the shapes they want. You have trees with fantastic forms; they have cut off the unnecessary branches, fostered others, contrived things as they liked. Then you come to a place and you see a house which seems to be altogether a part of the landscape; it has exactly the right colour, it is made of the right materials; it is not like a blow in your face, as are all those European buildings which spoil the whole landscape. It is just there where it should be, hidden under the trees; then you see a creeper and suddenly a wonderful tree: it is there at the right place, it has the right form. I had everything to learn in Japan. For four years, from an artistic point of view, I lived from wonder to wonder.
And in the cities, a city like Tokyo, for example, which is the biggest city in the world, bigger than London, and which extends far, far (now the houses are modernised, the whole centre of the city is very unpleasant, but when I was there, it was still good), in the outlying parts of the city, those which are not business quarters, every house has at the most two storeys and a garden there is always a garden, there are always one or two trees which are quite lovely. And then, if you go for a walkit is very difficult to find your way in Tokyo; there are no straight streets with houses on either side according to the number, and you lose your way easily. Then you go wandering aroundalways one wanders at random in that countryyou go wandering and all of a sudden you turn the corner of a street and come to a kind of paradise: there are magnificent trees, a temple as beautiful as everything else, you see nothing of the city any longer, no more traffic, no tramways; a corner, a corner of trees with magnificent colours, and it is beautiful, beautiful like everything else. You do not know how you have reached there, you seem to have come by luck. And then you turn, you seek your way, you wander off again and go elsewhere. And some days later you want to come back to this very place, but it is impossible, it is as though it had disappeared. And this is so frequent, this is so true that such stories are often told in Japan. Their literature is full of fairy-lore. They tell you a story in which the hero comes suddenly to an enchanted place: he sees fairies, he sees marvellous beings, he spends exquisite hours among flowers, music; all is splendid. The next day he is obliged to leave; it is the law of the place, he goes away. He tries to come back, but never does. He can no longer find the place: it was there, it has disappeared! And everything in this city, in this country, from beginning to end, gives you the impression of impermanence, of the unexpected, the exceptional. You always come to things you did not expect; you want to find them again and they are lostthey have made something else which is equally charming. From the artistic point of view, the point of view of beauty, I dont think there is a country as beautiful as that.
Now, I ought to say, to complete my picture, that the four years I was there I found a dearth of spirituality as entire as could be. These people have a wonderful morality, live according to quite strict moral rules, they have a mental construction even in the least detail of life: one must eat in a certain way and not another, one must bow in a certain way and not another, one must say certain words but not all; when addressing certain people one must express oneself in a certain way; when speaking with others, one must express oneself in another. If you go to buy something in a shop, you must say a particular sentence; if you dont say it, you are not served: they look at you quizzically and do not move! But if you say the word, they wait upon you with full attention and bring, if necessary, a cushion for you to sit upon and a cup of tea to drink. And everything is like that. However, not once do you have the feeling that you are in contact with something other than a marvellously organised mental-physical domain. And what energy they have! Their whole vital being is turned into energy. They have an extraordinary endurance but no direct aspiration: one must obey the rule, one is obliged. If one does not submit oneself to rules there, one may live as Europeans do, who are considered barbarians and looked upon altogether as intruders, but if you want to live a Japanese life among the Japanese you must do as they do, otherwise you make them so unhappy that you cant even have any relation with them. In their house you must live in a particular way, when you meet them you must greet them in a particular way. I think I have already told you the story of that Japanese who was an intimate friend of ours, and whom I helped to come into contact with his soul and who ran away. He was in the countryside with us and I had put him in touch with his psychic being; he had the experience, a revelation, the contact, the dazzling inner contact. And the next morning, he was no longer there, he had taken flight! Later, when I saw him again in town after the holidays, I asked him, But what happened to you, why did you go away?Oh! You understand, I discovered my soul and saw that my soul was more powerful than my faith in the country and the Mikado; I would have had to obey my soul and I would no longer have been a faithful subject of my emperor. I had to go away. There you are! All this is au thentically true.
Why are great artists born at the same time in the same country?
1951-04-14 - Surrender and sacrifice - Idea of sacrifice - Bahaism - martyrdom - Sleep- forgetfulness, exteriorisation, etc - Dreams and visions- explanations - Exteriorisation- incidents about cats, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The other day I spoke to you about those landscapes of Japan; well, almost all the most beautiful, the most striking ones I had seen in vision in France; and yet I had not seen any pictures or photographs of Japan, I knew nothing of Japan. And I had seen these landscapes without human beings, nothing but the landscape, quite pure, like that, and it had seemed to me they were visions of a world other than the physical; they seemed to me too beautiful for the physical world, too perfectly beautiful. Particularly I used to see very often those stairs rising straight up into the sky; in my vision there was the impression of climbing straight up, straight up, and as though one could go on climbing, climbing, climbing. It had struck me, and the first time I saw this in Nature down there, I understood that I had already seen it in France before having known anything about Japan.
There are always many explanations possible and it is very difficult to explain for someone else. For oneself, if one has studied very carefully ones dreams and activities of the night, one can distinguish fine nuances. I was saying I thought I had a vision of another world I knew it was something which existed, but I could not imagine there was a country where it existed; this seemed to me impossible, so very beautiful it was. It was the active mind which interfered. But I knew that what I was seeing truly existed, and it was only when I saw these landscapes physically that I realised in fact that I had seen something which existed, but I had seen it with inner eyes (it was the subtle-physical) before seeing it physically. Everyone has certain very small indications, but for that one must be very, very methodical, very scrupulous, very careful in ones observation and not neglect the least signs, and above all not give favourable mental explanations to the experiences one has. For if one wants to explain to oneself (I dont even speak of explaining to others), if one wants to explain the experience to oneself advantageously, to draw satisfaction, one does not understand anything any more. That is, one may mix up the signs without even noticing that they are mixed up. For instance, when one sees somebody in a dream (I am not speaking of dreams in which you see somebody unknown, but of those where you see somebody you know, who comes to see you) there are all sorts of explanations possible. If it is someone living far away from you, in another country, perhaps that person has written a letter to you and the letter is on the way, so you see this person because he has put a formation of himself in his letter, a concentration; you see the person and the next morning you get the letter. This is a very frequent occurrence. If it is a person with a very strong thought-power, he may think of you from very far, from his own country and concentrate his thought, and this concentration takes the form of that person in your consciousness. Perhaps it is that this person is calling you intentionally; deliberately he comes to tell you something or give you a sign, if he is in danger, if he is sick. Suppose he has something important to tell you, he begins to concentrate (he knows how to do it, as everyone does not) and he enters your atmosphere, comes to tell you something special. Now if you are passive and attentive, you receive the message. And then, two more instances still: someone has exteriorized himself more or less materially in his sleep and has come to see you. And you become conscious of this person because (almost by miracle) you are in a corresponding state of consciousness. And finally, a last instance, this person may be dead and may come to see you after his death (one part of him or almost the whole of his being according to the relation you have with him). Consequently, for someone who is not very, very careful it is very difficult to distinguish these nuances, very difficult. On the other hand, quite often imaginative people will tell you, Oh! I saw this personhe is dead. I have heard that I dont know how many times. These are people whose imagination runs freely. It is possible that the person is dead, but not because he has appeared to you! One must pay great attention to the outer forms things take. There are shades very difficult to distinguish, one must be very, very careful. For oneself, if one is in the habit of studying all this, one can become aware of the differences, but to interpret anothers experiences is very difficult, unless he gives you in great detail all that surrounds the dream, the vision: the ideas he had before, the ideas he had later, the state of his health, the feelings he experienced when going to sleep, the activities of the preceding day, indeed, all sorts of things. People who tell you, Oh! I had this vision, explain it to me!, that is childishnessunless it is someone whom you have followed very carefully, whom you yourself have taught how to recognise the planes, and whose habits, whose reactions you know; otherwise it is impossible to explain, for there are innumerable explanations for one single thing.
1953-04-08, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If you have a strong desire for something you cannot get, you project your desire outside yourself. It goes off like a tiny personality separated from you and roams about in the world. It will take a little round, more or less large, and return to you, perhaps when you have forgotten it. People who have a kind of passion, who want something,that goes out from them like a little being, like a little flame into the surroundings. This little being has its destiny. It roams about in the world, tossed around by other things perhaps. You have forgotten it, but it will never forget that it must bring about that particular result. For days you tell yourself: How much I would like to go to that place, to Japan, for instance, and see so many things, and your desire goes out from you; but because desires are very fugitive things, you have forgotten completely this desire you had thrown out with such a force. There are many reasons for your thinking about something else. And after ten years or more, or less, it comes back to you like a dish served up piping hot. Yes, like a piping-hot dish, well arranged. You say: This does not interest me any longer. It does not interest you ten or twenty years later. It was a small formation and it has gone and done its work as it could. It is impossible to have desires without their being realised, even if it be quite a tiny desire. The formation has done what it could; it took a lot of trouble, it has worked hard, and after years it returns. It is like a servant you have sent out and who has done his best. When he returns you tell him: What have you done?Why? But, sir, it was because you wanted it!
You cannot put forth a strong thought without its going out from you like a little balloon, as it were. We have certain stories which are not unbelievable, like the one about that miser who thought of nothing but his money; he had hidden his hoard somewhere and always used to go to see it. After his death he continued to come as a ghost (that is to say, his vital being), to watch over his money. Nobody could go near the place without meeting with a catastrophe. It is like that, if you have worked to bring out something, it is always realised. It may be realised even after your death! Yes, for when your body ceases to exist, none of the vibrations stops existing. They are realised somewhere. That was what the Buddha said: the vibrations continue to exist, to be perpetuated. They are contagious. They continue in others, pass into others, and everyone adds a little to them.
1953-04-29, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The beings who were always appearing and speaking to Jeanne dArc would, if seen by an Indian, have quite a different appearance; for when one sees, one projects the forms of ones mind. You have the vision of one in India whom you call the Divine Mother; the Catholics say it is the Virgin Mary, and the Japanese call it Kwannon, the Goddess of Mercy; and others would give other names. It is the same force, the same power, but the images made of it are different in different faiths.
Questions and Answers 1929-1931 (21 April 1929)
1953-05-27, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If I understand well what you mean, you expect to see a form, like the form of Krishna for example, or the form of Christ, of Buddha, in every person? That seems to me childishness. But still I do not say that it cannot happen; I think it may happen. But there is in it much human consciousness added to the perception, for that would no longer be exactly what I have just told you: for those who have the consciousness of the Divine, when they are in contact with the Divine, whoever they may be, whatever age, whatever country they may belong to, the experience is the same. Whereas if it were as you say, then Indians would see one of their divinities, Europeans one of theirs, the Japanese one of their own, and so on. Then it would no longer be a pure perception, there would already be an addition of their own mental formation. It is no longer the Thing in its essence and purity, which is beyond all form.
But one may have a perception, and a very concrete perception of the Divine Presence, yes. One may have a very personal contact with the Divine, yes. But not in this way. And it is inexpressible, except for those who have had the experience. If you do not have an experience, I could speak to you for hours about it, you would understand nothing; it escapes all explanation. It is only when one has the experience that one can understand. And what do you expect? When you speak or write about things, there is necessarily a mental addition, otherwise you would not be able to speak, you would not be able to write. Well, it is this mental addition that has made people try to give an explanation of their experience, and then they have said or written things like this: I see images of God. These are ways of speaking. It is possible that the thing you are speaking about may happen: to be suddenly in a particular state and see a Divine Presence and this Presence taking a form thats familiar to youone is accustomed to associate certain forms with the Divine, due to ones education, tradition, and that takes an external form. But it is not the supreme essence of the experience, it is the form, and this gives a sort of limitation to the experience, it must take away from it its universality and a great deal of its power.
1953-07-01, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I believe there are many of these spirits of death, I believe there are hundreds. I have met at least two of them. One I met in France and the other in Japan, and they were very different; which leads one to believe that probably in accordance with the mental culture, the education, the country and beliefs there should be different spirits. But there are spirits of all the manifestations of Nature: there are spirits of fire, spirits of air, of water, of rain, of wind; and there are spirits of death.
Each spirit of death, whatever it may be, has a claim to a certain number of deaths per day. Indeed it is a fantastic organisation; it is a kind of alliance between the vital forces and the forces of Nature. For example, if the spirit of death has decided: That is the number of people to which I am entitled, let us say four or five or six, or one or two persons, it depends on the day; it has decided that certain persons would die, it goes straight and settles down beside the person about to die. But if you happen to be conscious (not the person), if you see the spirit going to a person and you do not want him to die, then you can, if you possess a certain occult power, tell it: No, I forbid you to take him. It is a thing that has happened, not once but several times, in Japan and here. It was not the same spirit. That is what makes me say that there must be many.
I dont want him to die.
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It is the same thing with fire. I saw the spirit of fire, particularly in Japan because fire is an extraordinary thing in that country. When a fire starts, some eighty houses burn: a whole quarter. It is something fantastic. The houses are of wood and they burn like match-boxes; you see a fire kindling and then all of a sudden, puff! You have never seen a match-box catching fire? a flash! like that, a flash! one, two, three, ten, twenty houses burnt down before my eyes! So there are spirits of fire. One day, I was in my bed. I was concentrating, looking at people. Suddenly I saw something like a cloud of flames drawing close to the house. I looked and I saw it was a conscious being.
Eh! what are you here for?
1953-07-22, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I was in Japan. It was at the beginning of January 1919. Anyway, it was the time when a terrible flu raged there in the whole of Japan, which killed hundreds of thousands of people. It was one of those epidemics the like of which is rarely seen. In Tokyo, every day there were hundreds and hundreds of new cases. The disease appeared to take this turn: it lasted three days and on the third day the patient died. And people died in such large numbers that they could not even be cremated, you understand, it was impossible, there were too many of them. Or otherwise, if one did not die on the third day, at the end of seven days one was altogether cured; a little exhausted but all the same completely cured. There was a panic in the town, for epidemics are very rare in Japan. They are a very clean people, very careful and with a fine morale. Illnesses are very rare. But still this came, it came as a catastrophe. There was a terrible fear. For example, people were seen walking about in the streets with a mask on the nose, a mask to purify the air they were breathing, so that it might not be full of the microbes of the illness. It was a common fear. Now, it so happened I was living with someone who never ceased troubling me: But what is this disease? What is there behind this disease? What I was doing, you know, was simply to cover myself with my force, my protection so as not to catch it and I did not think of it any more and continued doing my work. Nothing happened and I was not thinking of it. But constantly I heard: What is this? Oh, I would like to know what is there behind this illness. But could you not tell me what this illness is, why it is there? etc. One day I was called to the other end of the town by a young woman whom I knew and who wished to introduce me to some friends and show me certain things. I do not remember now what exactly was the matter, but anyway I had to cross the whole town in a tram-car. And I was in the tram and seeing these people with masks on their noses, and then there was in the atmosphere this constant fear, and so there came a suggestion to me; I began to ask myself: Truly, what is this illness? What is there behind this illness? What are the forces that are in this illness? I came to the house, I passed an hour there and I returned. And I returned with a terrible fever. I had caught it. It came to you thus, without preparation, instantaneously. Illnesses, generally illnesses from germs and microbes take a few days in the system: they come, there is a little battle inside; you win or you lose, if you lose you catch the illness, it is not complicated. But there, you just receive a letter, open the envelope, hop! puff! The next minute you have the fever. Well, that evening I had a terrible fever. The doctor was called (it was not I who called him), the doctor was called and he told me: I must absolutely give you this medicine. It was one of the best medicines for the fever, he had just a little (all their stocks were exhausted, everyone was taking it); he said: I have still a few packets, I shall give you some I beg of you, do not give it to me, I wont take it. Keep it for someone who has faith in it and will take it. He was quite disgusted: It was no use my coming here. So I said: Perhaps it was no use! And I remained in my bed, with my fever, a violent fever. All the while I was asking myself: What is this illness? Why is it there? What is there behind it At the end of the second day, as I was lying all alone, I saw clearly a being, with a part of the head cut off, in a military uniform (or the remains of a military uniform) approaching me and suddenly flinging himself upon my chest, with that half a head to suck my force. I took a good look, then realised that I was about to die. He was drawing all my life out (for I must tell you that people were dying of pneumonia in three days). I was completely nailed to the bed, without movement, in a deep trance. I could no longer stir and he was pulling. I thought: now it is the end. Then I called on my occult power, I gave a big fight and I succeeded in turning him back so that he could not stay there any longer. And I woke up.
But I had seen. And I had learnt, I had understood that the illness originated from beings who had been thrown out of their bodies. I had seen this during the First Great War, towards its end, when people used to live in trenches and were killed by bombardment. They were in perfect health, altogether healthy and in a second they were thrown out of their bodies, not conscious that they were dead. They did not know they hadnt a body any more and they tried to find in others the life they could not find in themselves. That is, they were turned into so many countless vampires. And they vampirised upon men. And then over and above that, there was a decomposition of the vital forces of people who fell ill and died. One lived in a kind of sticky and thick cloud made up of all that. And so those who took in this cloud fell ill and usually got cured, but those who were attacked by a being of that kind invariably died, they could not resist. I know how much knowledge and force were necessary for me to resist. It was irresistible. That is, if they were attacked by a being who was a centre of this whirl of bad forces, they died. And there must have been many of these, a very great number. I saw all that and I understood.
When someone came to see me, I asked to be left alone, I lay quietly in my bed and I passed two or three days absolutely quiet, in concentration, with my consciousness. Subsequently, a friend of ours (a Japanese, a very good friend) came and told me: Ah! you were ill? So what I thought was true. Just imagine for the last two or three days, there hasnt been a single new case of illness in the town and most of the people who were ill have been cured and the number of deaths has become almost negligible, and now it is all over. The illness is wholly under control. Then I narrated what had happened to me and he went and narrated it to everybody. They even published articles about it in the papers.
Well, consciousness, to be sure, is more effective than doctors pills! The condition was critical. Just imagine, there were entire villages where everyone had died. There was a village in Japan, not very big, but still with more than a hundred people, and it happened, by some extraordinary stroke of luck, that one of the villagers was to receive a letter (the postman went there only if there was a letter; naturally, it was a village far in the countryside); so he went to the countryside; there was a snowfall; the whole village was under snow and there was not a living person. It was exactly so. It was that kind of epidemic. And Tokyo was also like that; but Tokyo was a big town and things did not happen in the same fashion. And it was in this way the epidemic ended. That is my story.
Now this brings us naturally to the cure. All that is very well, we now have the knowledge; so, how to prevent illnesses from coming, first of all, and when the illness does occur, how to cure it?
1953-10-21, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If you ask me, I believe that all those who produce something artistic are artists! A word depends upon the way it is used, upon what one puts into it. One may put into it all that one wants. For instance, in Japan there are gardeners who spend their time correcting the forms of trees so that in the landscape they make a beautiful picture. By all kinds of trimmings, props, etc. they adjust the forms of trees. They give them special forms so that each form may be just what is needed in the landscape. A tree is planted in a garden at the spot where it is needed and moreover, it is given the form thats required for it to go well with the whole set-up. And they succeed in doing wonderful things. You have but to take a photograph of the garden, it is a real picture, it is so good. Well, I certainly call the man an artist. One may call him a gardener but he is an artist. All those who have a sure and developed sense of harmony in all its forms, and the harmony of all the forms among themselves, are necessarily artists, whatever may be the type of their production.
You did not finish telling us about Rama and Hanuman.
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Ah! as for Buddhism. The people of the South and the North have different kinds of imagination. The southern people are generally more rigid, arent they? I dont know, but for Buddhism, the Buddhism of the South is quite rigid and doesnt allow any suppleness in the understanding of the text. And it is a terribly strict Buddhism in which all notion of the Godhead in any form whatsoever, is completely done away with. On the other hand, the Buddhism of the North is an orgy of gods! It is true that these are former Buddhas, but still they are turned into gods. And it is this latter that has spread into China and from China gone to Japan. So, one enters a Buddhist temple in Japan and sees There is a temple where there were more than a thousand Buddhas, all sculptureda thousand figures seated around the central Buddha they were there all around, the entire back wall of the temple was covered with images: small ones, big ones, fat ones, thin ones, women, menthere was everything, a whole pantheon there, formidable, and they were like gods. And then too, there were little beings down below with all kinds of forms including those of animals, and these were the worshippers. It was it was an orgy of images. But the Buddhism of the South has the austerity of Protestantism: there must be no images. And there is no divine Consciousness, besides. One comes into the world through desire, into a world of desire, and abandoning desire one goes out of the world and creation and returns to Nirvanaeven the nought is something too concrete. There is no Creator in Buddhism. So, I dont know. The Buddhism of the South is written in Pali and that of the North in Sanskrit. And naturally, there is Tibetan Buddhism written in Tibetan, and Chinese Buddhism written in Chinese and Japanese Buddhism in Japanese. And each one, I believe, is very very different from the others. Well, probably there must be several versions of the Ramayana. And still more versions of the Mahabharata that indeed is amazing!
(Nolini) Of the Ramayana also.
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And then the other version, I heard that from that man was called Shastri. He was another pandit. He was in Japan. There we are, then.
Is that all? No questions? You Be quick, it is late.
1953-10-28, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
True art is a whole and an ensemble; it is one and of one piece with life. You see something of this intimate wholeness in ancient Greece and ancient Egypt; for there pictures and statues and all objects of art were made and arranged as part of the architectural plan of a building, each detail a portion of the whole. It is like that in Japan, or at least it was so till the other day before the invasion of a utilitarian and practical modernism. A Japanese house is a wonderful artistic whole; always the right thing is there in the right place, nothing wrongly set, nothing too much, nothing too little. Everything is just as it needed to be, and the house itself blends marvellously with the surrounding nature. In India, too, painting and sculpture and architecture were one integral beauty, one single movement of adoration of the Divine.
Questions and Answers 1929-1931 (28 July 1929)
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If it is necessary, it will be done. But fundamentally, these are things in the making. For, the advantage of modern times and specially of this hideous commercialism is that everything is now mixed up; that things from the East go to the West, and things from the West to the East, and they influence each other. For the moment this creates a confusion, a sort of pot-pourri. But a new expression will come out of itit is not so far from its realisation. People cannot intermix, as men today are intermixing, without its producing a reciprocal effect. For instance, with their mania of conquest, the nations of the West which conquered all sorts of countries in the world, have undergone a very strong influence of the conquered countries. In the old days, when Rome conquered Greece it came under the influence of Greece much more than if it had not conquered it. And the Americansall that they make now is full of Japanese things, and perhaps they are not even aware of it. But since they occupied Japan, I see that the magazines received from America are full of Japanese things. And even in certain details of objects received from America, one now feels the influence of Japan. That happens automatically. It is quite strange, there always comes about a sort of equilibrium, and he who made the material conquest is conquered by the spirit of the vanquished. It is reciprocal. He made the material conquest, he possesses materially, but it is the spirit of the conquered one who possesses the conqueror.
So, through mixing The ways of Nature are slow, obscure and complicated. She takes a very long time to do a thing which could probably be done much more rapidly, easily and without wastage by means of the spirit. At present there is a terrible wastage in the world. But it is getting done. She has her own way of mixing people.
1953-11-18, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the number of plantsnobody has ever known and nobody will probably ever know the number of different plants there are upon earth. Yet when a list is made of the number of plants men know and use, it is ridiculously small. I believe, when I was in Japan, the Japanese used to tell me that Europeans eat only three hundred and fifty types of different plants, whilst they use more than six hundred. That makes a considerable difference. They used to say: Oh, how you waste your food! Nature produces infinitely more than you know; you waste all that. Have you ever eaten (not here, but in Europe) bamboo sprouts? You have eaten bamboo sprouts? You have eaten palm-tree buds? Coconut buds?That, indeed, makes a marvellous salad, coconut buds. Only, this kills the tree. For a salad, one kills a tree. But when there is a cyclone, for instance, which knocks down hundreds of coconut trees, the only way of utilising the catastrophe is to eat all the buds and make yourself a magnificent dish. Havent you ever eaten coconut buds? As for me, I was not surprised, for I had eaten bamboo sprouts before they sprang up from the groundsomewhat like the asparagus. It is quite a classical dish in Japan. And their bamboos are much more tender than the bamboos here. Their bamboos are very tender and their sprouts are wonderful.
Still, thats how it is. It seems in Europe one knows how to use only three hundred and fifty varieties of vegetables from the vegetable kingdom, whilst in Japan they use six hundred of them and more. But perhaps if people knew, they would not die of hunger, at least those who live in the countryside. Voil
In any case, things are like that. We dont know how it would be if it were only justice reigning over the world. But I believe it wouldnt be fun! For, as I have said, there is not a single person who can stand before the Lord and tell him: I have never made a mistake. And when I speak of making a mistake, ignorance is not an excuse; for whether you touch the fire through ignorance or knowing it, the difference is rather in favour of the stupidity of touching it when one knows, for one can take precautions. But when one touches the fire through ignorance, without knowing, one burns oneself completely. And then one cant tell Nature: Oh! I should not have been burnt, for I did not know that it burnt. It burns, nobody will listen to you!
1954-06-30 - Occultism - Religion and vital beings - Mothers knowledge of what happens in the Ashram - Asking questions to Mother - Drawing on Mother, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In all religious monuments, in monuments considered the most well, as belonging to the highest religion, whether in France or any other country or Japanit was never the same temples or churches nor the same gods, and yet my experience was everywhere almost the same, with very small differences I saw that whatever concentrated force there was in the church depended exclusively upon the faithful, the faith of the devotees. And there was still a difference between the force as it really was and the force as they felt it. For instance, I saw in one of the most beautiful cathedrals of France, which, from the artistic point of view, is one of the most magnificent monuments imaginablein the most sacred spot I saw an enormous black, vital spider which had made its web and spread it over the whole place, and was catching in it and then absorbing all the forces emanating from peoples devotion, their prayers and all that. It was not a very cheering sight; the people who were there and were praying, felt a divine touch, they received all kinds of boo from their prayers, and yet what was there was this, this thing. But they had their faith which could change that evil thing into something good in them; they had their faith. So, truly, if I had gone and told them, Do you think you are praying to God? It is an enormous vital spider thats feeding upon all your forces!, that would really not have been very charitable. And thats how it is most of the time, almost everywhere; it is a vital force which is there, for these vital entities feed upon the vibration of human emotions, and very few people, very few, an insignificant number, go to church or temple with a true religious feeling, that is, not to pray and beg for something from God but to offer themselves, give thanks, aspire, give themselves. There is hardly one in a million who does that. So they do not have the power of changing the atmosphere. Perhaps when they are there, they manage to get across, break through and go somewhere and touch something divine. But the large majority of people who go only because of superstition, egoism and self-interest, create an atmosphere of this kind, and that is what you brea the in when you go to a church or temple. Only, as you go there with a very good feeling, you tell yourself, Oh, what a quiet place for meditation!
I am sorry, but thats how it is. I tell you I have deliberately tried this experiment a little everywhere. Maybe I found some very tiny places, like a tiny village church at times, where there was a very quiet little spot for meditation, very still, very silent, where there was some aspiration; but this was so rare! I have seen the beautiful churches of Italy, magnificent places; they were full of these vital beings and full of terror. I remember painting in a basilica of Venice, and while I was working, in the confessional a priest was hearing the confession of a poor woman. Well, it was truly a frightful sight! I dont know what the priest was like, what his character was, he could not be seenyou know, dont you, that they are not seen. They are shut up in a box and receive the confession through a grille. There was such a dark and sucking power over him, and that poor woman was in such a state of fearful terror that it was truly painful to see it. And all these people believe this is something holy! But it is a web of the hostile vital forces which use all this to feed upon. Besides, in the invisible world hardly any beings love to be worshipped, except those of the vital. These, as I said, are quite pleased by it. And then, it gives them importance. They are puffed up with pride and feel very happy, and when they can get a herd of people to worship them they are quite satisfied.
1954-07-21 - Mistakes - Success - Asuras - Mental arrogance - Difficulty turned into opportunity - Mothers use of flowers - Conversion of men governed by adverse forces, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One must have a strong grip and an unshakable resolution. As in our Japanese story of the other day, that soldier who had a knife in his knee in order to make sure of not falling asleep and when he felt very sleepy, he turned the knife in such a way that it hurt him still more. One must have something like that. This, this is determination: to know what one wants and to do it. There we are!
Mother, may I ask something?
1954-08-25 - Ananda aspect of the Mother - Changing conditions in the Ashram - Ascetic discipline - Mothers body, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And I am not going to ask her, If you please, come and change my body. We dont have that kind of relation and the body itself would not want it. It has never thought of itself, it has never cared for itself. And it is only through work that it can be transformed. Yes, surely, when she came, if there had been a receptivity and if she could have manifested with the power she came with Even before her arrival I can tell you one thing, that is, when I began with Sri Aurobindo to descend for the yoga, to descend from the mind into the vital, when we brought down our yoga from the mind into the vital, within one month I was forty at that time, I didnt look old, I looked younger than forty, but still I was forty and after a months yoga I looked exactly eighteen. And someone who had seen me before, who had lived with me in Japan and came here, found it difficult to recognise me. He asked me, But really, is it you? I said, Obviously!
Only when we descended from the vital into the physical, then it was gone, for in the physical the work is much harder. It was because there were many more things to change. But if a force like that could be manifested and received, it would have a tremendous action! Still, you see, it is I am speaking about it because I thought you would ask the questions otherwise it is not I am not in that kind of relation. You see, I mean, you take my body, this poor body; it is quite harmless, it does not at all try to draw either any attention or the forces, nor even to do anything else except its work as well as it can. And thats how it is, you know. Its importance for the work is in proportion to its usefulness and the importance the world gives it, because the action is for this world. In itself it is one body among countless others.
1954-09-08 - Hostile forces - Substance - Concentration - Changing the centre of thought - Peace, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But I can also tell you that when I was in Japan I met a man who had formed a group, for It cant be said that it was for sadhana, but for a kind of discipline. He had a theory and it was on this theory that he had founded his group: that one can think in any part of ones being whatever if one concentrates there. That is to say, instead of thinking in your head, you can think in your chest. And he said that one could think here (gesture) in the stomach. He took the stomach as the seat of pra, you see, that is, the vital force. He used certain Sanskrit words, you know, half-digested, and all that But still, this does not matter, he was full of goodwill and he said that most human miseries come from the fact that men think in their heads, that this makes the head ache, tires you and takes away your mental clarity. On the other hand, if you learn how to think here (gesture indicating the stomach), it gives you power, strength and calmness. And the most remarkable thing is that he had attained a kind of ability to bring down the mental power, the mental force exactly here (gesture); the mental activity was generated there, and no longer in the head. And he had cured a considerable number of people, considerable, some hundreds, who used to suffer from terrible headaches; he had cured them in this way.
I have tried it, it is quite easy, precisely because, as I told you a while ago, the mental force, mental activity is independent of the brain. We are in the habit of using the brain but we can use something else or rather, concentrate the mental force elsewhere, and have the impression that our mental activity comes from there. One can concentrate ones mental force in the solar plexus, here (gesture), and feel the mental activity coming out from there.
That man used to say, Havent you noticed that all men who have great power have a big belly? (Laughter)Because they concentrate their forces there, so this makes their stomach big! He always used to give the example of Napoleon; and he said, These people stand up quite straight, always straight with their head erect, never like this (Mother bends the head forward), never like this (Mother bends the head to the right), never like this (Mother bends the head to the left); always quite straight up but with all their force here (pointing to the stomach), and so this makes them very powerful! And he always spoke of Napoleon. He used to say, Napoleon, you see (Mother shows that Napoleon had a big stomach.) And he had a visit from Tagore when Tagore was in Japan and he told me, Have you observed how Tagore stands quite upright, like this, with his head erect? Then I told him, But he doesnt have a big stomach! He said to me, It will come. (Laughter).
There were hundreds of people at his meetings. They would all sit on their knees as one does in Japan. He struck a table with a stick and everyone brought down his mental force to the stomach; and then they remained like that for oh! at least half an hour. And after half an hour he struck the table a second time and they released their mental force and began chatting not very much, for the Japanese do not talk much, but nevertheless they talk.
There now! But mark that there was something very true, in the see that if ever you have a headache I advise you to do this: to take the thought-force, the mental force and even if you can draw a little of your vital force, that tooand make it come down, like this (gesture of very slowly sliding both hands from the top of the head downwards). Well, if you have a headache or a congestion, if you have caught a touch of the sun, for instance, indeed if anything has happened to you, well, if you know how to do this and bring down the force here, like this, here (showing the centre of the chest), or even lower down (showing the stomach), well, it will disappear. It will disappear. You will be able to do this in five minutes. You can try, the next time you have a headache I hope you wont have a headache but the next time you have it, try this. Sit upright, like this (movement showing an sana posture). The Japanese say you should sit on your heels but that might disturb your meditation, sitting like thatthey call it sitting at ease. The Indian fashion is like this (gesture), otherwise you must sit like this (gesture); this is harder when you are not accustomed to it.
So, sit quite at ease and then take all your force as though you were taking, you see all the energy in your head, take it and then make it come down, down, down, like this, slowly, very carefully, right down here, down to the navel. And you will see that your headache will disappear. I have made the experiment many times It is a very good remedy, very easy; there is no need to take pills or injection; it gets cured in this way. So there you are!
1956-04-04 - The witness soul - A Gita enthusiast - Propagandist spirit, Tolstoys son, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In Japan I met Tolstoys son who was going round the world for the good of mankinds great unity. And his solution was very simple: everybody ought to speak the same language, lead the same life, dress in the same way, eat the same things. And I am not joking, those were his very words. I met him in Tokyo; he said: But everybody would be happy, all would understand one another, nobody would quarrel if everyone did the same thing. There was no way of making him understand that it was not very reasonable! He had set out to travel all over the world for that, and when people asked him his name he would say Tolstoynow, Tolstoy, you know People said, Oh!some people didnt know that Tolstoy was dead and they thought: Oh! what luck, we are going to hear something remarkable and then he came out with that!
Well, this is only an exaggeration of the same attitude.
1956-05-23 - Yoga and religion - Story of two clergymen on a boat - The Buddha and the Supramental - Hieroglyphs and phonetic alphabets - A vision of ancient Egypt - Memory for sounds, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The first time I came to India I came on a Japanese boat. And on this Japanese boat there were two clergymen, that is, Protestant priests, of different sects. I dont remember exactly which sects, but they were both English; I think one was an Anglican and the other a Presbyterian.
Now, Sunday came. There had to be a religious ceremony on the boat, or else we would have looked like hea thens, like the Japanese! There had to be a ceremony, but who should perform it? Should it be the Anglican or should it be the Presbyterian? They just missed quarrelling. Finally, one of them withdrew with dignity I dont remember now which one, I think it was the Anglican and the Presbyterian performed his ceremony.
It took place in the lounge of the ship. We had to go down a few steps to this lounge. And that day, all the men had put on their jacketit was hot, I think we were in the Red Seathey put on their jackets, stiff collars, leather shoes; neckties well set, hats on their heads, and they went with a book under their arm, almost in a procession from the deck to the lounge. The ladies wore their hats, some carried even a parasol, and they too had their book under the arm, a prayer-book.
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From right to left. Chaldean languages are written like that. Chinese and Japanese also. Only Aryan languages are written from left to right.
(Meditation)
1957-02-20 - Limitations of the body and individuality, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
How many things in your life are done at least essentially in the same way as others. For instance, sleeping, moving and eating, and all sorts of things like that. Never have you asked yourselves why you do a thing in one way and not another. You wouldnt be able to say. If I asked you, why do you act in this way and not that? you wouldnt know what to say. But it is quite simply because you were born in certain conditions and it is the habit to be like that in these conditions. Otherwise, if you had been born in another age and other conditions, you would act altogether differently without even realising the difference, it would appear absolutely natural to you. For instancea very, very small instancein most Western countries and even in some Eastern ones, people sew like this, from right to left; in Japan they sew from left to right. Well, it seems quite natural to you to sew from right to left, doesnt it? That is how you have been taught and you dont think about it, you sew in that way. If you go to Japan and they see you sewing, it makes them laugh, for they are in the habit of sewing differently. It is the same thing with writing. You write like this, from left to right, but there are people who write from top to bottom, and others who write from right to left, and they do it most naturally. I am not speaking of those who have studied, reflected, compared ways of writing, I am not speaking of more or less learned people, no, I am speaking of quite ordinary people, and above all of children who do what is done around them, quite spontaneously and without questioning. But then, when by chance or circumstance they are faced with a different way, it is a tremendous revelation for them that things can be done in a different way from theirs.
And these are quite simple things, I mean the ones which strike you, but this is true down to the smallest detail. You do things in this way because in the place and environment in which you live they are done in this way. And you do not watch yourself doing them.
1957-03-13 - Our best friend, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Anyway, I wrote this with something in mind which one usually forgets: one asks ones friends and those around one to be not what they are but what one would like them to beone can form an ideal for oneself and want to apply it to everybody, but This reminds me of Tolstoys son whom I met in Japan and who was going round the world in the hope of bringing about unity among men. His intentions were excellent, but his way of doing it seemed less happy! He said with an imperturbable seriousness that if everybody spoke the same language, if everybody dressed in the same way, ate in the same way and behaved in the same way, that would inevitably bring about unity! And when asked how he planned to realise this he said it would be enough to go from land to land preaching a new but universal language, a new but universal dress, and new but universal habits. That was all. And that was what he intended to do!
(Laughing) Well, everyone in his own little field is like that. He has an ideal, a conception of what is true and beautiful and noble, and even divine, and this conception of his he wants to impose on others. There are also many people who have a conception of the Divine and who try with all their might to impose their conception on the Divine and usually dont lose heart until they have lost their life!
1957-10-02 - The Mind of Light - Statues of the Buddha - Burden of the past, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Statues there are thousands of statues of the Buddha. There is the Buddha as he is known in India, the Buddha known in Ceylon, the Buddha known in Tibet, the Buddha known in China, in Cambodia, Thailand, Japan and elsewhere. If you are speaking of the historical fact, I think they would all tell you that it is to the Gautama Buddha of India they pray, but in fact, each one of these branches of Buddhism, and many more, has its own conception of the Buddha, and it is the conception of a godhead which is worshipped in statues, much more than a divine being, so If you show me a statue and ask me, In this statue is there the influence or the presence of the Buddha as you know him?, I could reply yes or no to you; but when you say whose statues are worshipped, I cannot answer you, for that depends on what they have drawn into the statue they worship. Historically, it is always the same name but in fact I dont know if it is always the same spiritual person! So I cannot answer you.
If you ask me about the statues we saw yesterday You saw how many there were and some of them were very, very different, it was a very different Buddha. There was one which was shown to us very often, and which is quite au thentic, but there were many others which represented at the very least other personalities of the Buddha. It depends on what you mean; if you mean historically, yes, they always say it is the Buddha; but each statue is different.
1964 02 05 - 98, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But then, when you have had the experience very sincerely that is, when you are not fooling yourselfit is necessarily only one point, one way of saying the thing, thats all. And it cannot be more than that. Besides, it is very easy to observe that when you are in the habit of using a particular language, it comes in that language; for me it always comes either in English or in French, it does not come in Chinese or in Japanese! The words are inevitably English or French; and sometimes there is a Sanskrit word but that is because, physically, I learnt Sanskrit. I have occasionally heardnot physicallySanskrit pronounced by another being; but it does not crystallise, it remains nebulous; and when I come back to an entirely material consciousness, I remember a vague sound, not a precise word. Therefore, it is always an individual angle from the very moment it is formulated.
You must have a kind of very austere sincerity. You are seized with enthusiasm, because the experience brings an extraordinary power: the Power is there it is there, before the words, and it diminishes with the words but the Power is there and with this Power you feel very universal, you have the feeling: It is a universal revelationyes, it is a universal revelation, but when you put it into words, it is no longer universal; then it is relevant only for minds that are built to understand this way of speaking. The Force is behind, but you have to go beyond the words.
1.anon - Eightfold Fence., #Anonymous - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Attributed to the god Susanoo. This is the first poem to be found in the kojiki the oldest anthology of Japanese poetry.
1.dz - A Zen monk asked for a verse -, #Dogen - Poems, #Dogen, #Zen
Original Language Japanese
"Mind itself is buddha" -- difficult to practice, but easy to explain;
1.dz - Ching-chings raindrop sound, #Dogen - Poems, #Dogen, #Zen
Original Language Japanese
Because the mind is free --
1.dz - Coming or Going, #Dogen - Poems, #Dogen, #Zen
Original Language Japanese
The migrating bird
1.dz - Impermanence, #Dogen - Poems, #Dogen, #Zen
Original Language Japanese
To what shall
1.dz - In the stream, #Dogen - Poems, #Dogen, #Zen
Original Language Japanese
In the stream,
1.dz - Like tangled hair, #Dogen - Poems, #Dogen, #Zen
Original Language Japanese
Like tangled hair,
1.dz - One of fifteen verses on Dogens mountain retreat, #Dogen - Poems, #Dogen, #Zen
Original Language Japanese
Joyful in this mountain retreat yet still feeling melancholy,
1.dz - One of six verses composed in Anyoin Temple in Fukakusa, 1230, #Dogen - Poems, #Dogen, #Zen
Original Language Japanese
Drifting pitifully in the whirlwind of birth and death,
1.dz - The track of the swan through the sky, #Dogen - Poems, #Dogen, #Zen
Original Language Japanese
The track of the swan through the sky
1.dz - The Western Patriarchs doctrine is transplanted!, #Dogen - Poems, #Dogen, #Zen
Original Language Japanese
The Western Patriarch's doctrine is transplanted!
1.dz - Treading along in this dreamlike, illusory realm, #Dogen - Poems, #Dogen, #Zen
Original Language Japanese
Treading along in this dreamlike, illusory realm,
1.dz - True person manifest throughout the ten quarters of the world, #Dogen - Poems, #Dogen, #Zen
Original Language Japanese
The true person is
1.dz - Wonderous nirvana-mind, #Dogen - Poems, #Dogen, #Zen
Original Language Japanese
Because the flowers blooming
1.dz - Worship, #Dogen - Poems, #Dogen, #Zen
Original Language Japanese
Beneath the snows
1.dz - Zazen, #Dogen - Poems, #Dogen, #Zen
Original Language Japanese
The moon reflected
1.fcn - a dandelion, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Patricia Donegan & Yoshie Ishibashi Original Language Japanese a dandelion now and then interrupting the butterfly's dream [2598.jpg] -- from Chiyo-ni: Woman Hiaku Master, Translated by Patricia Donegan / Translated by Yoshie Ishibashi
1.fcn - Airing out kimonos, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Patricia Donegan & Yoshie Ishibashi Original Language Japanese Airing out kimonos as well as her heart is never enough. [2598.jpg] -- from Chiyo-ni: Woman Hiaku Master, Translated by Patricia Donegan / Translated by Yoshie Ishibashi <
1.fcn - cool clear water, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Patricia Donegan & Yoshie Ishibashi Original Language Japanese cool clear water and fireflies that vanish that is all there is... [2598.jpg] -- from Chiyo-ni: Woman Hiaku Master, Translated by Patricia Donegan / Translated by Yoshie Ishibashi <
1.fcn - From the mind, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Patricia Donegan & Yoshie Ishibashi Original Language Japanese From the mind of a single, long vine one hundred opening lives. [2598.jpg] -- from Chiyo-ni: Woman Hiaku Master, Translated by Patricia Donegan / Translated by Yoshie Ishibashi <
1.fcn - hands drop, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Patricia Donegan & Yoshie Ishibashi Original Language Japanese hands drop all things on the ground-- the clear water [2598.jpg] -- from Chiyo-ni: Woman Hiaku Master, Translated by Patricia Donegan / Translated by Yoshie Ishibashi <
1.fcn - loneliness, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Patricia Donegan & Yoshie Ishibashi Original Language Japanese loneliness lies within the listener-- a cuckoo's call [2598.jpg] -- from Chiyo-ni: Woman Hiaku Master, Translated by Patricia Donegan / Translated by Yoshie Ishibashi <
1.fcn - on the road, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Patricia Donegan & Yoshie Ishibashi Original Language Japanese on the road today's rain the seed for clear water [2598.jpg] -- from Chiyo-ni: Woman Hiaku Master, Translated by Patricia Donegan / Translated by Yoshie Ishibashi <
1.fcn - skylark in the heavens, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Gabriel Rosenstock Original Language Japanese skylark in the heavens . . . what do you think of the boundless sky? <
1.fcn - spring rain, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Patricia Donegan & Yoshie Ishibashi Original Language Japanese spring rain-- all things on earth become beautiful [2598.jpg] -- from Chiyo-ni: Woman Hiaku Master, Translated by Patricia Donegan / Translated by Yoshie Ishibashi <
1.fcn - To the one breaking it, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Patricia Donegan & Yoshie Ishibashi Original Language Japanese To the one breaking it -- the fragrance of the plum. [2598.jpg] -- from Chiyo-ni: Woman Hiaku Master, Translated by Patricia Donegan / Translated by Yoshie Ishibashi <
1.fcn - whatever I pick up, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Gabriel Rosenstock Original Language Japanese whatever I pick up is alive -- ebbing tide [2726.jpg] -- from Haiku Enlightenment: New Expanded Edition, by Gabriel Rosenstock <
1.fcn - without a voice, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Gabriel Rosenstock Original Language Japanese without a voice the heron would disappear -- morning snow [2726.jpg] -- from Haiku Enlightenment: New Expanded Edition, by Gabriel Rosenstock <
1f.lovecraft - At the Mountains of Madness, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Japanese print of the sacred Fujiyama; while beyond it rose the white,
ghost-like height of Mt. Terror, 10,900 feet in altitude, and now
1f.lovecraft - Poetry and the Gods, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Moon over Japan,
White butterfly moon!
--
Moon over Japan,
White butterfly moon!
1.he - Hakuins Song of Zazen, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki Original Language Japanese All beings are primarily Buddhas. It is like water and ice: There is no ice apart from water; There are no Buddhas apart from beings. Not knowing how close the truth is to them, Beings seek for it afar -- what a pity! They are like those who, being in the midst of water, Cry out for water, feeling thirst. They are like the son of the rich man, Who, wandering away from his father, Goes astray amongst the poor. It is all due to their ignorance That beings transmigrate in the darkness Of the Six Paths of existence. When they wander from darkness to darkness, How can they ever be free from birth-and-death? As for the Dhyana practice as taught in the Mahayana, No amount of praise can exhaust its merits. The Six Paramitas--beginning with the Giving, Observing the Precepts, And other good deeds, variously enumerated, Such as Nembutsu, Repentance, Moral Training, and so on -- All are finally reducible to the practice of Dhyana. The merit of Dhyana practice, even during a single sitting, Erases the countless sins accumulated in the past. Where then are the Evil Paths to misguide us? The Pure Land cannot be far away. Those who, for once, listening to the Dharma In all humility, Praise it and faithfully follow it, Will be endowed with innumerable merits. But how much more so when you turn your eyes within yourselves And have a glimpse into your self-nature! You find that the self-nature is no-nature - The truth permitting no idle sophistry. For you, then, open the gate leading to the oneness of cause and effect; Before you, then, lies a straight road of non-duality and non-trinity. When you understand that form is the form of the formless, Your coming-and-going takes place nowhere else but where you are. When you understand that thought is the thought of the thought-less. Your singing-and-dancing is no other than the voice of the Dharma. How boundless is the sky of Samadhi! How refreshingly bright is the moon of the Fourfold Wisdom! Being so is there anything you lack? As the Absolute presents itself before you The place where you stand is the Land of the Lotus, And your person -- the body of the Buddha. [2139.jpg] -- from Essays in Zen Buddhism, First Series, by Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki
1.he - Past, present, future- unattainable, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto Original Language Japanese Past, present, future: unattainable, Yet clear as the moteless sky. Late at night the stool's cold as iron, But the moonlit window smells of plum. [1506.jpg] -- from Zen Poetry: Let the Spring Breeze Enter, Translated by Lucien Stryk / Translated by Takashi Ikemoto <
1.he - The Form of the Formless (from Hakuins Song of Zazen), #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki Original Language Japanese When you understand that form is the form of the formless, Your coming-and-going takes place nowhere else but where you are. When you understand that thought is the thought of the thought-less. Your singing-and-dancing is no other than the voice of the Dharma. How boundless is the sky of Samadhi! How refreshingly bright is the moon of the Fourfold Wisdom! Being so is there anything you lack? As the Absolute presents itself before you The place where you stand is the Land of the Lotus, And your person -- the body of the Buddha. [2139.jpg] -- from Essays in Zen Buddhism, First Series, by Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki <
1.he - The monkey is reaching, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Norman Waddell Original Language Japanese The monkey is reaching For the moon in the water. Until death overtakes him He'll never give up. If he'd let go the branch and Disappear in the deep pool, The whole world would shine With dazzling pureness. [1799.jpg] -- from Essential Teachings of Zen Master Hakuin, by Norman Waddell <
1.he - You no sooner attain the great void, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto Original Language Japanese You no sooner attain the great void Than body and mind are lost together. Heaven and Hell -- a straw. The Buddha-realm, Pandemonium -- shambles. Listen: a nightingale strains her voice, serenading the snow. Look: a tortoise wearing a sword climbs the lampstand. Should you desire the great tranquility, Prepare to sweat white beads. [1506.jpg] -- from Zen Poetry: Let the Spring Breeze Enter, Translated by Lucien Stryk / Translated by Takashi Ikemoto <
1.is - A Fisherman, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by John Stevens Original Language Japanese Studying texts and stiff meditation can make you lose your Original Mind. A solitary tune by a fisherman, though, can be an invaluable treasure. Dusk rain on the river, the moon peeking in and out of the clouds; Elegant beyond words, he chants his songs night after night. [1795.jpg] -- from Wild Ways: Zen Poems of Ikkyu, Translated by John Stevens
1.is - a well nobody dug filled with no water, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Stephen Berg Original Language Japanese a well nobody dug filled with no water ripples and a shapeless weightless man drinks oh green green willow wonderfully red flower but I know the colors are not there [1796.jpg] -- from Crow With No Mouth: Fifteenth Century Zen Master Ikkyu, Translated by Stephen Berg <
1.is - Every day, priests minutely examine the Law, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Sonya Arutzen Original Language Japanese Every day, priests minutely examine the Law And endlessly chant complicated sutras. Before doing that, though, they should learn How to read the love letters sent by the wind and rain, the snow and moon. [bk1sm.gif] -- from Ikkyu and the Crazy Cloud Anthology: A Zen Poet of Medieval Japan, by Ikkyu / Translated by Sonya Arutzen <
1.is - Form in Void, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto Original Language Japanese The tree is stripped, All color, fragrance gone, Yet already on the bough, Uncaring spring! [1506.jpg] -- from Zen Poetry: Let the Spring Breeze Enter, Translated by Lucien Stryk / Translated by Takashi Ikemoto <
1.is - I Hate Incense, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by John Stevens Original Language Japanese A master's handiwork cannot be measured But still priests wag their tongues explaining the "Way" and babbling about "Zen." This old monk has never cared for false piety And my nose wrinkles at the dark smell of incense before the Buddha. [1795.jpg] -- from Wild Ways: Zen Poems of Ikkyu, Translated by John Stevens <
1.is - Ikkyu this body isnt yours I say to myself, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Stephen Berg Original Language Japanese Ikkyu this body isn't yours I say to myself wherever I am I'm there [1796.jpg] -- from Crow With No Mouth: Fifteenth Century Zen Master Ikkyu, Translated by Stephen Berg <
1.is - inside the koan clear mind, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Stephen Berg Original Language Japanese inside the koan clear mind gashes the great darkness [1796.jpg] -- from Crow With No Mouth: Fifteenth Century Zen Master Ikkyu, Translated by Stephen Berg <
1.is - Like vanishing dew, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Sam Hamill Original Language Japanese Like vanishing dew, a passing apparition or the sudden flash of lightning -- already gone -- thus should one regard one's self. [2159.jpg] -- from The Poetry of Zen: (Shambhala Library), Edited by Sam Hamill / Edited by J. P. Seaton <
1.is - Many paths lead from the foot of the mountain,, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by R. H. Blyth Original Language Japanese Many paths lead from the foot of the mountain, But at the peak We all gaze at the Single bright moon. [2669.jpg] -- from Zen and Zen Classics, by R. H. Blyth <
1.is - only one koan matters, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Stephen Berg Original Language Japanese only one koan matters you [1796.jpg] -- from Crow With No Mouth: Fifteenth Century Zen Master Ikkyu, Translated by Stephen Berg <
1.is - sick of it whatever its called sick of the names, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Stephen Berg Original Language Japanese sick of it whatever it's called sick of the names I dedicate every pore to what's here [1796.jpg] -- from Crow With No Mouth: Fifteenth Century Zen Master Ikkyu, Translated by Stephen Berg <
1.is - The vast flood, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by R. H. Blyth Original Language Japanese The vast flood Rolls onward But yield yourself, And it floats you upon it. [2669.jpg] -- from Zen and Zen Classics, by R. H. Blyth <
1.is - To write something and leave it behind us, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by R. H. Blyth Original Language Japanese To write something and leave it behind us, It is but a dream. When we awake we know There is not even anyone to read it. [2669.jpg] -- from Zen and Zen Classics, by R. H. Blyth <
1.jc - On this summer night, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Edwin A. Cranston Original Language Japanese On this summer night All the household lies asleep, And in the doorway, For once open after dark, Stands the moon, brilliant, cloudless. [1469.jpg] -- from Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women, Edited by Jane Hirshfield
1.jkhu - A Visit to Hattoji Temple, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Arthur Braverman Original Language Japanese Lone mountain dominating three provinces White clouds cover a green peak Summit soaring to great heights Old temple nearly a thousand years A monk meditates alone in a moonlit hall A monkey cries in the mist in an old tree Saying to worldly folk: "Come here; free yourselves of karmic dust." [2472.jpg] -- from A Quiet Room: The Poetry of Zen Master Jakushitsu, Translated by Arthur Braverman
1.jkhu - Gathering Tea, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Arthur Braverman Original Language Japanese To the branch's edge and the leaf's under surface be most attentive Its pervasive aroma envelopes people far away The realms of form and function can't contain it Spring leaks profusely through the basket [2472.jpg] -- from A Quiet Room: The Poetry of Zen Master Jakushitsu, Translated by Arthur Braverman <
1.jkhu - Living in the Mountains, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Arthur Braverman Original Language Japanese Neither seeking fame nor grieving my poverty I hide deep in the mountain far from worldly dust. Year ending cold sky who will befriend me? Plum blossom on a new branch wrapped in moonlight [2472.jpg] -- from A Quiet Room: The Poetry of Zen Master Jakushitsu, Translated by Arthur Braverman <
1.jkhu - Rain in Autumn, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Arthur Braverman Original Language Japanese Look at the moon before you point or speak Illuminating the sky an unstained round light If your face doesn't possess the monk's discerning eye You become blinded by evening rains of autumn [2472.jpg] -- from A Quiet Room: The Poetry of Zen Master Jakushitsu, Translated by Arthur Braverman <
1.jkhu - Sitting in the Mountains, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Arthur Braverman Original Language Japanese Rock slab seat legs folded sitting alone Not loathing noise not savoring silence The carefree clouds concur [2472.jpg] -- from A Quiet Room: The Poetry of Zen Master Jakushitsu, Translated by Arthur Braverman <
1.ki - Autumn wind, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto Original Language Japanese Autumn wind -- mountain's shadow wavers. [1506.jpg] -- from Zen Poetry: Let the Spring Breeze Enter, Translated by Lucien Stryk / Translated by Takashi Ikemoto
1.ki - blown to the big river, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by David G. Lanoue Original Language Japanese blown to the big river floating away... cherry blossoms - from the website http://haikuguy.com/issa/ <
1.ki - Buddha Law, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto Original Language Japanese Buddha Law, Shining In a leaf dew. [2115.jpg] -- from A Box of Zen: Haiku the Poetry of Zen, Koans the Lessons of Zen, Sayings the Wisdom of Zen, Edited by Manuela Dunn Mascetti / Edited by Timothy Hugh Barrett <
1.ki - Buddhas body, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by David G. Lanoue Original Language Japanese Buddha's body accepts it... winter rain [2652.jpg] -- from The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around the World (A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology), Edited by Ivan M. Granger <
1.ki - by the light of graveside lanterns, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Gabriel Rosenstock Original Language Japanese by the light of graveside lanterns eating rice - totally naked <
1.ki - does the woodpecker, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Gabriel Rosenstock Original Language Japanese does the woodpecker stop and listen, too? evening temple drum [2726.jpg] -- from Haiku Enlightenment: New Expanded Edition, by Gabriel Rosenstock <
1.ki - Dont weep, insects, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto Original Language Japanese Don't weep, insects -- Lovers, stars themselves, Must part. [2115.jpg] -- from A Box of Zen: Haiku the Poetry of Zen, Koans the Lessons of Zen, Sayings the Wisdom of Zen, Edited by Manuela Dunn Mascetti / Edited by Timothy Hugh Barrett <
1.ki - even poorly planted, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by David G. Lanoue Original Language Japanese even poorly planted rice plants slowly, slowly... green! [2652.jpg] -- from The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around the World (A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology), Edited by Ivan M. Granger <
1.ki - First firefly, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto Original Language Japanese First firefly, why turn away -- it's Issa. [1506.jpg] -- from Zen Poetry: Let the Spring Breeze Enter, Translated by Lucien Stryk / Translated by Takashi Ikemoto <
1.ki - From burweed, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto Original Language Japanese From burweed, such a butterfly was born? [1506.jpg] -- from Zen Poetry: Let the Spring Breeze Enter, Translated by Lucien Stryk / Translated by Takashi Ikemoto <
1.ki - In my hut, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Gabriel Rosenstock Original Language Japanese In my hut mice and fireflies getting along [2720.jpg] -- from This Dance of Bliss: Ecstatic Poetry from Around the World, Edited by Ivan M. Granger <
1.ki - into morning-glories, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by David G. Lanoue Original Language Japanese into morning-glories with one shoulder bare... holy man - from the website http://haikuguy.com/issa/ <
1.ki - Just by being, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto Original Language Japanese Just by being, I'm here -- In snow-fall. [2115.jpg] -- from A Box of Zen: Haiku the Poetry of Zen, Koans the Lessons of Zen, Sayings the Wisdom of Zen, Edited by Manuela Dunn Mascetti / Edited by Timothy Hugh Barrett <
1.ki - mountain temple, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by David G. Lanoue Original Language Japanese mountain temple-- deep under snow a bell - from the website http://haikuguy.com/issa/ <
1.ki - Never forget, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto Original Language Japanese Never forget: we walk on hell, gazing at flowers. [1506.jpg] -- from Zen Poetry: Let the Spring Breeze Enter, Translated by Lucien Stryk / Translated by Takashi Ikemoto <
1.ki - now begins, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by David G. Lanoue Original Language Japanese now begins the Future Buddha's reign... spring pines - from the website http://haikuguy.com/issa/ <
1.ki - Reflected, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto Original Language Japanese Reflected in the dragonfly's eye -- mountains. [1506.jpg] -- from Zen Poetry: Let the Spring Breeze Enter, Translated by Lucien Stryk / Translated by Takashi Ikemoto <
1.ki - rice seedlings, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by David G. Lanoue Original Language Japanese rice seedlings-- the old Buddha's weary face - from the website http://haikuguy.com/issa/ <
1.ki - serene and still, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by David G. Lanoue Original Language Japanese serene and still the mountain viewing frog - from the website http://haikuguy.com/issa/ <
1.ki - spring begins, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by David G. Lanoue Original Language Japanese spring begins-- at least I'm human fifty years now - from the website http://haikuguy.com/issa/ <
1.ki - spring day, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by David G. Lanoue Original Language Japanese spring day-- even after sunset Eastern Mountains can be seen - from the website http://haikuguy.com/issa/ <
1.ki - stillness, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by David G. Lanoue Original Language Japanese stillness-- in the depths of the lake billowing clouds [2720.jpg] -- from This Dance of Bliss: Ecstatic Poetry from Around the World, Edited by Ivan M. Granger <
1.ki - swatting a fly, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by David G. Lanoue Original Language Japanese swatting a fly looking at a mountain - from the website http://haikuguy.com/issa/ <
1.ki - the distant mountains, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by David G. Lanoue Original Language Japanese the distant mountain's blossoms cast their light... east window - from the website http://haikuguy.com/issa/ <
1.ki - the dragonflys tail, too, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by David G. Lanoue Original Language Japanese the dragonfly's tail, too day by day grows old - from the website http://haikuguy.com/issa/ <
1.ki - Where there are humans, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto Original Language Japanese Where there are humans You'll find flies, And Buddhas. [2115.jpg] -- from A Box of Zen: Haiku the Poetry of Zen, Koans the Lessons of Zen, Sayings the Wisdom of Zen, Edited by Manuela Dunn Mascetti / Edited by Timothy Hugh Barrett <
1.ki - without seeing sunlight, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by David G. Lanoue Original Language Japanese without seeing sunlight the winter camellia blooms - from the website http://haikuguy.com/issa/ <
1.ms - At the Nachi Kannon Hall, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by W. S. Merwin Original Language Japanese The Milky Way pours waterfalls over this human world the cold rushing tumbling sounds echo through the blue sky Veneration to the Great Compassionate Avilokiteshvara How lucky I am to have no trouble hearing [2206.jpg] -- from Sun at Midnight: Muso Soseki - Poems and Sermons, Translated by W. S. Merwin / Translated by Soiku Shigematsu
1.ms - Beyond the World, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by W. S. Merwin Original Language Japanese This place of wild land has no boundaries north south east or west It is hard to see even the tree in the middle of it Turning your head you can look beyond each direction For the first time you know that your eyes have been deceiving you [2205.jpg] -- from East Window: Poems from Asia, Translated by W. S. Merwin <
1.ms - Buddhas Satori, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by W. S. Merwin Original Language Japanese For six years sitting alone still as a snake in a stalk of bamboo with no family but the ice on the snow mountain Last night seeing the empty sky fly into pieces he shook the morning star awake and kept it in his eyes [2205.jpg] -- from East Window: Poems from Asia, Translated by W. S. Merwin <
1.ms - Clear Valley, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by W. S. Merwin Original Language Japanese The water that can't be muddied with any stick is deeper than depth The sky and the water are a single deepening blue If you really want to find the source of the Sixth Patriarch's fountain don't look for it on the one bank or the other or in the middle of the stream [2206.jpg] -- from Sun at Midnight: Muso Soseki - Poems and Sermons, Translated by W. S. Merwin / Translated by Soiku Shigematsu <
1.msd - Barns burnt down, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto Original Language Japanese Barn's burnt down -- now I can see the moon. [1506.jpg] -- from Zen Poetry: Let the Spring Breeze Enter, Translated by Lucien Stryk / Translated by Takashi Ikemoto
1.msd - Masahides Death Poem, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Yoel Hoffman Original Language Japanese while I walk on the moon keeps pace beside me: friend in the water [1852.jpg] -- from Japanese Death Poems, Translated by Yoel Hoffman <
1.msd - When bird passes on, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto Original Language Japanese When bird passes on -- like moon, a friend to water. [1506.jpg] -- from Zen Poetry: Let the Spring Breeze Enter, Translated by Lucien Stryk / Translated by Takashi Ikemoto <
1.ms - Hui-nengs Pond, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by W. S. Merwin Original Language Japanese The Dharma spring of the Sixth Patriarch has never run dry it is flowing even now a single drop has fallen and spread far and deep Don't be caught by the decorations at the edge and the wall around it In the dead of night the moonlight strikes the middle of the pond [2206.jpg] -- from Sun at Midnight: Muso Soseki - Poems and Sermons, Translated by W. S. Merwin / Translated by Soiku Shigematsu <
1.ms - Incomparable Verse Valley, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by W. S. Merwin Original Language Japanese The sounds of the stream splash out the Buddha's sermon Don't say that the deepest meaning comes only from one's mouth Day and night eighty thousand poems arise one after the other and in fact not a single word has ever been spoken [2206.jpg] -- from Sun at Midnight: Muso Soseki - Poems and Sermons, Translated by W. S. Merwin / Translated by Soiku Shigematsu <
1.ms - No End Point, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by W. S. Merwin Original Language Japanese The whole world is clear and empty to the ten directions There is no end point And yet when we look carefully there is one after all You fly out of this world looking backward riding the giant roc into the hollow of a lotus thread to live there where heaven and earth were never divided [2206.jpg] -- from Sun at Midnight: Muso Soseki - Poems and Sermons, Translated by W. S. Merwin / Translated by Soiku Shigematsu <
1.ms - Old Creek, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Nelson Foster and Josh Shoemaker Original Language Japanese Since before anyone remembers it has been clear shining like silver though the moonlight penetrates it and the wind ruffles it no trace of either remains Today I would not dare to expound the secret of the stream bed But I can tell you that the blue dragon is coiled there. [2207.jpg] -- from Roaring Stream: A New Zen Reader, Edited by Nelson Foster / Edited by Josh Shoemaker <
1.ms - Snow Garden, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by W. S. Merwin Original Language Japanese Flowers with six petals have covered the whole ground and frozen everywhere Heaven and earth have disappeared into this one pure color A pine and a cedar by the stone stairs are still green Shen-kuan must have lost sight of the mind of the great vessel [2206.jpg] -- from Sun at Midnight: Muso Soseki - Poems and Sermons, Translated by W. S. Merwin / Translated by Soiku Shigematsu <
1.ms - Temple of Eternal Light, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by W. S. Merwin Original Language Japanese The mountain range the stones in the water all are strange and rare The beautiful landscape as we know belongs to those who are like it The upper worlds the lower worlds originally are one thing There is not a bit of dust there is only this still and full perfect enlightenment [2206.jpg] -- from Sun at Midnight: Muso Soseki - Poems and Sermons, Translated by W. S. Merwin / Translated by Soiku Shigematsu <
1.ms - The Gate of Universal Light, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by W. S. Merwin Original Language Japanese The great light of compassion illuminates this world in every part As a boy Sudhana stood before the gates When your eyelids have fallen across the whole of the empty world the gate will open at the snap of a finger as it did then to let him pass [2205.jpg] -- from East Window: Poems from Asia, Translated by W. S. Merwin <
1.ms - Toki-no-Ge (Satori Poem), #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by W. S. Merwin Original Language Japanese Year after year I dug in the earth looking for the blue of heaven only to feel the pile of dirt choking me until once in the dead of night I tripped on a broken brick and kicked it into the air and saw that without a thought I had smashed the bones of the empty sky [2206.jpg] -- from Sun at Midnight: Muso Soseki - Poems and Sermons, Translated by W. S. Merwin / Translated by Soiku Shigematsu <
1.nkt - Autumn Wind, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Edwin A. Cranston Original Language Japanese While I wait for you, My lord, lost in this longing, Suddenly there comes A stirring of my window blind: The autumn wind is blowing.
1.nkt - Lets Get to Rowing, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Edwin A. Cranston Original Language Japanese At Nikitatsu We have waited for the moon Before boarding our boat; Now the tide is in at last -- Come, let's get to rowing <
1.ryz - Clear in the blue, the moon!, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto Original Language Japanese Clear in the blue, the moon! Icy water to the horizon, Defining high, low. Startled, The dragon uncoils about the billows. [1506.jpg] -- from Zen Poetry: Let the Spring Breeze Enter, Translated by Lucien Stryk / Translated by Takashi Ikemoto
1.tr - Though Frosts come down, #Ryokan - Poems, #Taigu Ryokan, #Buddhism
From the book Ryokan: Zen Monk-Poet of Japan.
1.wby - Imitated From The Japanese, #Yeats - Poems, #William Butler Yeats, #Poetry
object:1.wby - Imitated From The Japanese
author class:William Butler Yeats
1.wby - In Memory Of Alfred Pollexfen, #Yeats - Poems, #William Butler Yeats, #Poetry
Where the Indians trade or Japanese?
He never found his rest ashore,
1.wby - Upon A Dying Lady, #Yeats - Poems, #William Butler Yeats, #Poetry
They had a priest say Mass, and even the Japanese,
Heel up and weight on toe, must face the wall
1.whitman - A Broadway Pageant, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
For not the envoys, nor the tann'd Japanee from his island only;
Lithe and silent, the Hindoo appearsthe Asiatic continent itself
1.whitman - Salut Au Monde, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
The Japan waters, those of Hindostan, the China Sea, and the Gulf of
Guinea,
--
You Japanese man or woman! you liver in Madagascar, Ceylon, Sumatra,
Borneo!
1.yb - a moment, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Gabriel Rosenstock Original Language Japanese a moment in life's brevity -- autumn sunset [2658.jpg] -- from The Moon Over Tagoto: Selected Haiku of Buson, Translated by Gabriel Rosenstock / Translated by John McDonald
1.yb - Clinging to the bell, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Sam Hamill Original Language Japanese Clinging to the bell, he dozes so peacefully, this new butterfly [2159.jpg] -- from The Poetry of Zen: (Shambhala Library), Edited by Sam Hamill / Edited by J. P. Seaton <
1.yb - In a bitter wind, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Sam Hamill Original Language Japanese In a bitter wind a solitary monk bends to words cut in stone [2159.jpg] -- from The Poetry of Zen: (Shambhala Library), Edited by Sam Hamill / Edited by J. P. Seaton <
1.yb - Miles of frost, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto Original Language Japanese Miles of frost -- on the lake the moon's my own. [1506.jpg] -- from Zen Poetry: Let the Spring Breeze Enter, Translated by Lucien Stryk / Translated by Takashi Ikemoto <
1.yb - Mountains of Yoshino, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto Original Language Japanese Mountains of Yoshino -- shedding petals, swallowing clouds. [1506.jpg] -- from Zen Poetry: Let the Spring Breeze Enter, Translated by Lucien Stryk / Translated by Takashi Ikemoto <
1.yb - On these southern roads, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Original Language Japanese On these southern roads, on shrine or thatched roof, all the same, swallows everywhere <
1.yb - Short nap, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto Original Language Japanese Short nap -- waking, spring was gone. [1506.jpg] -- from Zen Poetry: Let the Spring Breeze Enter, Translated by Lucien Stryk / Translated by Takashi Ikemoto <
1.yb - spring rain, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Gabriel Rosenstock Original Language Japanese spring rain -- pond and river are one [2658.jpg] -- from The Moon Over Tagoto: Selected Haiku of Buson, Translated by Gabriel Rosenstock / Translated by John McDonald <
1.yb - The late evening crow, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Sam Hamill Original Language Japanese The late evening crow of deep autumn longing suddenly cries out [2159.jpg] -- from The Poetry of Zen: (Shambhala Library), Edited by Sam Hamill / Edited by J. P. Seaton <
1.yb - This cold winter night, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Sam Hamill Original Language Japanese This cold winter night, that old wooden-head Buddha would make a nice fire [2159.jpg] -- from The Poetry of Zen: (Shambhala Library), Edited by Sam Hamill / Edited by J. P. Seaton <
1.yb - white lotus, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Gabriel Rosenstock Original Language Japanese white lotus a monk about to cut it -- between two minds [2658.jpg] -- from The Moon Over Tagoto: Selected Haiku of Buson, Translated by Gabriel Rosenstock / Translated by John McDonald <
1.yb - winter moon, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Gabriel Rosenstock Original Language Japanese winter moon -- bowing to a monk on the bridge [2658.jpg] -- from The Moon Over Tagoto: Selected Haiku of Buson, Translated by Gabriel Rosenstock / Translated by John McDonald <
1.ymi - at the end of the smoke, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Michael Haldane Original Language Japanese at the end of the smoke from the smudge, humming mosquitoes
1.ymi - Swallowing, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Ivan M. Granger Original Language Japanese Swallowing the open field -- pheasant's cry [2652.jpg] -- from The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around the World (A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology), Edited by Ivan M. Granger <
2.02 - Meeting With the Goddess, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
Buddhism out of India into Tibet, China, and Japan.
The following description of the Island of Jewels is based on Sir John
--
courtly poetry of tenth- to twelfth-century Japan.
Within the gentle heart Love shelters himself,
2.03 - Karmayogin A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
progress and conservation political and social. Japan with her
periods of splendid and magnificently fruitful progress and activity when she is absorbing new thoughts and new knowledge,
--
her system, - Japan with the unlimited energy and personality
of her individuals finely subservient to the life of the nation is
--
of community China, India and more recently Japan are the only
298
--
aggressive communities of the world, while Japan by keeping
its rajasic energy intact has victoriously repelled the aggressor.
2.03 - On Medicine, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Do you know of a Japanese healer, Dr. Kobayashi, a famous surgeon, who is a Yogi following the Amitabha Buddha school of Sadhana? During his medical practice he found that the method he was following was not correct. So he followed an inner process. He makes the patients sit in meditation with him and asks them to concentrate on the navel and to aspire that the Light may come down and set right the affected organ. By now he has cured thousands of patients; of course, his personal influence is indispensable in bringing down the Light.
He has cured tumours and many uterine complaints; he has even cured cancer. He is especially successful in curing diseases of women. His theory is that the disease is due to a passive congestion in the affected part. That is to say, the nerves there get congested and the vital force is not able to reach that part. What the Light does is that it brings about a subtle and quick vibration in the affected part, thereby restoring normal circulation. But whatever the theory, this is a method of curing diseases by pure, subtle force. Something from the occult plane comes down and removes the obstacle from the physical plane.
--
Probably, the Hatha Yogins used to do what this Japanese doctor is doing, with their knowledge of the vital-physical currents. For instance, they could set right all the disorders below the navel by controlling the Vyana the vital current that works in the whole system. They would find out which Prana is less, then send the required current of vital energy which would work the disease out of the system.
(After a pause) I was thinking of the carbon dioxide explanation of Samadhi. It may be perfectly true so far as a particular kind of Samadhi is concerned. For example, there is a state in which a complete withdrawal into a certain aspect of the Infinite takes place. It is attained by stilling the mind even the physical mind altogether. But there are other kinds of concentrations where that explanation would not apply at all. In such concentrations the mind is quite clear, in fact, the mind can be very active and there is no carbon dioxide in the brain.
--
Disciple: Jean Herbert says that the Japanese are also like that. They are very polite and formal but once you can make friends they are very good friends.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes. The Japanese are very polite in their manners and conduct, they don't admit you to their private life. They have a wonderful power of self-control. They don't lose their temper or quarrel with you; but if their honour is violated they may kill you. They can be bitter enemies. And where honour is concerned, if they do not kill you, they may kill themselves at your door. For instance, if a Japanese killed himself at an Englishman's door it would be impossible for the latter to live there any more. Even in crime the Japanese have a strange sense of values. If a robber entered a house and the householder told him that he required some money, the robber would part with some of it; but if he said that he had a debt of honour to pay, then the robber would leave all the money and go away. Imagine such a housebreaker in England or America! The Japanese also have a high sense of chivalry. In the Russo- Japanese war when the Russians were defeated the Mikado almost shed tears thinking of the Czar of Russia! That was his sense of chivalry.
When a congregation of fifty thousand persons was caught in a fire due to an earthquake there was not a single cry, not a mutter. All men were standing up and chanting a Buddhist hymn. That is a heroic people with wonderful self-control.
--
But these things perhaps belong to the past. It is a great pity that people who have carried such ideals into practice are losing them through contact with European civilisation. That is a great harm that European vulgarising has done to Japan. Now you find most people mercantile in their outlook and they will do anything for the sake of money.
Nakashima's mother when she returned from America to Japan as is the custom with the Japanese was so horrified to see the present-day Japan that she went back to America! That the Japanese are not a spiritual race can be seen from the case of H, who was a great patriot and full of schemes for the future, but at the same time did not like the modern trends of Japan. He used to say: "My psychic being has become a traitor."
Disciple: Have you read Noguchi's letter to Tagore defending Japans aggression?
Sri Aurobindo: No. But there are always two sides to a question. I don't believe in such shouts against Imperialism. Conquests of that sort were, at one time, regarded as a normal activity of political life; now you do it under some pretensions and excuses. Almost every nation does it. What about China herself? She took Kashgar in the same way. The very name Kashgar shows that the Chinese have no business to be there. Apart from the new fashions of killing there is nothing wrong in war. It is the Anglo-Saxon hypocrisy that cries out against it; the French don't.
2.05 - Apotheosis, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
Mahayana Buddhism of Tibet, China, and Japan is the Lotus
Bearer, Avalokiteshvara, "The Lord Looking Down in Pity," so
--
In China and Japan this sublimely gentle Bodhisattva is rep
resented not only in male form, but also as female. Kwan Yin of
China, Kwannon of Japan the Madonna of the Far Eastis
precisely this benevolent regarder of the world. She will be
--
of China and Japan depict supremely the heavenliness of this
terrestrial state. The four benevolent animals, the phoenix, the
--
The tea ceremonies of Japan are conceived in the spirit of
the Taoist earthly paradise. The tearoom, called "the abode of
--
1854, the texture of Japanese life became so imbued with
significant formalization that existence to the slightest detail was
--
Hearn, Japan (New York, 1904).
Morris Edward Opler, Myths and Tales of the Jicarilla Apache Indians
2.06 - On Beauty, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo: I was thinking how some races have the sense of beauty in their very bones. Judging from what is left to us, it seems our people once had a keen sense of beauty. For example, take pottery, or Indian wood-carving which, I am afraid, is dying out now. Greece and ancient Italy had the perception of beauty. The Japanese are a remarkable people even the poorest have got the aesthetic sense. If they produce ugly things, it is only for export to other countries. I am afraid the Japanese are losing that sense now because of the general vulgarisation. In Germany Hitler must have crushed all fine things out of existence music, philosophy, etc. How can anything develop where there is no freedom? I hope Mussolini has kept some sense of art.
Disciple: He is very proud of Italians as a nation of artists! A friend of mine visited Italy and found that the Italians still have a sense of beauty and art.
2.07 - On Congress and Politics, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Disciple: Tagore's internationalism seems to have received a rude shock in China at the passing of the Japanese Exclusion Bill.
Disciple: It seems from his writing that he is an internationalist first and looks on nationalism as something dispensable.
--
Disciple: In Japan, is it the European form?
Sri Aurobindo: I don't think so. In Italy and in South Europe the parliamentary form is there but they all copied the German constitution and there is no reality behind the form.
--
Sri Aurobindo: The modern political consciousness of the national idea has come to Europe recently. It arose either by a slow growth as in England and Japan on account of their insular position more or less, or in response to outside pressure as with the French who got it after their conquest by the Britons. Practically, the French began to be a nation after the appearance of Joan of Arc. Up to that time England found always some allies among the French nobles. Italy got it not more than a century ago, and the Germans as late as the time of Bismarck.
This consciousness is more political than anything else and it aims at the organisation of the national forces for offence and defence. If you accept the idea of nations going on fighting and destroying for ever, then you have to give up the cultural and spiritual free growth of the nation and follow in the footsteps of Eurpean nations.
--
Sri Aurobindo: We in India take time to assimilate and put into life this new national idea of the West. Other Asiatic nations like the Japanese and the Turks have been able to catch it. There is a great difference between the Indian and the Japanese mind. The Japanese have got the mental discipline and capacity to organise. We in India have not that sort of ordered and practical mind. In Japan everyone lives for the Mikado and the Mikado is the symbol of the nation he embodies the spirit of the nation. Everyone is prepared to die for him. This we could never have in India; Japan was more feudal in its past than any other Asiatic nation.
Disciple: Is there no similarity between the political institutions of the Middle Ages and the organisations of Chandragupta in India?
2.08 - ALICE IN WONDERLAND, #God Exists, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism
So now, when we are discussing the final point in our studies, we are gradually losing attachments to his obsessional notion that we are this little Mr. and Mrs. Body and that we are located in a part of the physical world called India or America, Japan or Russia. And we are slowly trying to become citizens of a larger dimension which is wider than this earth, perhaps larger than even the solar system and this physical cosmos.
When we enter into the true religious life, we become real children of God. Hari Om Tat Sat.
2.09 - On Sadhana, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Disciple: D writes in his book that the Japanese have given up their music which requires harmony and taken up European music and instruments. Is that true?
Sri Aurobindo: For that we must ask Pavitra here.
Disciple: I think Japanese instruments also are found in plenty. You also find European instruments, orchestra, etc. There are places where you find Japanese music and drama patronised and there are many who like them very much. They have also made improvements in their instruments to suit modern requirements. The talk turned to a Theosophical Lodge started by an European in Japan.
Sri Aurobindo: I don't think it came to much.
Disciple: Oh, it simply fell down after he left Japan. I was president of the Lodge for some time.
Disciple: How could it remain any longer when the head is here? (Laughter)
Sri Aurobindo: Probably even in that Lodge there were more foreigners than Japanese.
Disciple: There were only two Japanese, one Dutch, one Pole, and so on. The Japanese mind is not interested in these things philosophy, metaphysics, etc.
26 SEPTEMBER 1926
21.01 - The Mother The Nature of Her Work, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Mother thus brings the golden light into the head of humanity, the top rung of his consciousness, and that work of initiation, diksha,into the Life Divine she started in France. From France she went to Japan for the next stage of her work. In Japan she came to the Far East. She spent five years, five long years in that country. Japan is the land of the Zen system of meditation, that is to say, a special way of entering into an inner consciousness, not a rational mental consciousness but a gaze inward into an occult and more sensitive region. The Japanese as a nation represent indeed a very sensitive vitality, an artistic vitality that seeks order and beauty in life, in the mode of living. For the golden light to manifest and have its play in the physical world and possess its body as it were, a vitality of this kind is necessary to acquire it and hold it. The Japanese wrestlers are well-known for their vital strength, self-controlled strength; usually they possess, almost all of them, you must have noticed, in pictures at least, a big tummy, and it is, they believe, the store-house of vital strength. This does not mean that r advise you to develop a big paunch, on the contrary. However, even in physical activities, more than the mere physical strength, the vital strength is necessary. Yes, the Japanese have a vital, strong, controlled, ordered, sensitive. You may remember one or two Prayers of the Mother in her Prires et
Mditations.She speaks of the cherry-blossom which is the emblem of the Japanese artistic sense, the feeling for beauty, a purified sense-perception: not a rough and crude and violent (lower) vital, but a fine, a pleasant intimate feeling and orderly happiness, that is what the cherry-blossom means. Mother described also a vision of hers, a beautiful picture it was, a Japanese mother and her child: it was an image of the new child that was born in humanity. A new world is thus ushered in in the land of the cherry-blossom, the hew vital world, for all the world.
The Mother is creative consciousness; wherever she happens to be, wherever she is called upon to be, her very presence moves for creation, creating a new world and a new dimension of being and consciousness, according to the need of time and place. And it is a whole world she creates and her creation endures, for it is an added achievement in the evolution of the. human being.
2.1.1.04 - Reading, Yogic Force and the Development of Style, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Why is it inexcusable? I dont know what the Japanese or the Soviet Russian writers have contri buted, but I feel quite happy and moral in my ignorance. As for reading Dickens in order to be a literary man, thats a strange idea. He was the most unliterary bloke that ever succeeded in literature and his style is a howling desert.
19 September 1936
2.11 - On Education, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo: When the real man the true individual is brought out, then you can place him in contact with the past. At present information is forced into the child's brain. The child can very well gather it by himself if his mind is trained. Perfect liberty would be desirable for the child. I would not like any hard things to be brought into the child's experience. In Japan, it seems, the child is free when it is young and, as it grows and reaches the college, discipline tightens.
Disciple: But the sum total is the same whatever the method.
Sri Aurobindo: No. The Japanese are more naturally disciplined. I mean they take to discipline very easily.
26 AUGUST 1926
2.12 - On Miracles, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Disciple: Is there any significance in Japan having earthquakes and fires?
Sri Aurobindo: There is no special significance; these things have been there for a long time.
Disciple: Why is Japan selected for these things?
Sri Aurobindo: They have been there for twenty thousand years. They are not new. Japan is a country of wooden houses and a Japanese goes to sleep dressed so that he can jump out at the first sign of danger. The Japanese are accustomed to keep their most precious possessions in one place. So, if there is a fire or earthquake, he simply runs out with them and then builds the house over again.
They are accustomed to live dangerously. Only recently they have begun to introduce the American style and stone buildings have been constructed. But that has brought disastrous consequences. The whole city of Yokohama is practically destroyed.
Disciple: It is now a heap of ruins. But Japan's population is increasing so rapidly that the loss of life due to earthquakes may be nothing to them.
Sri Aurobindo: Formerly also there were such earthquakes but they were not so disastrous. Besides, electricity and waterworks and other such installations add to the danger. They have been trying to use reinforced concrete and they believe it may serve the purpose. The Japanese have reduced their infant mortality to the minimum. Moreover, they are a very hygienic people they are the cleanest people in the world.
Disciple: Even in India now there is an awakening of the sanitary sense.
2.13 - Psychic Presence and Psychic Being - Real Origin of Race Superiority, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Below the human level there is, ordinarily, hardly any individual formation there is only this presence, more or less. But when, by the growth of the body round the spark of Divine Consciousness, humanity began upon the earth, certain human organisms became in the course of this progressive growth sufficiently perfected, and by their opening and receptivity allowed a junction with certain beings descending from above. This gave rise to a kind of divine humanity, what may be called a race of the lite. If only they had remained by themselves, these people would have continued as a race unique and superhuman. Indeed many races have made claims to be that: the Aryan, the Semitic and the Japanese have all in turn considered themselves the chosen race. But in fact there has been a general levelling of humanity, a lot of intermixture. For there arose the necessity of prolongation of the superior race, which drove it to intermix with the rest of humanitywith animal humanity, that is to say. Thus its value was degraded and led to that great Fall which is spoken of in the worlds scriptures, the coming out of Paradise, the end of the Golden Age. Indeed it was a loss from the point of view of consciousness, but not from that of material strength, since it was a tremendous gain to ordinary humanity. There were, certainly, some beings who had a very strong will not to mix, who resented losing their superiority; and it is just this that is the real origin of race-pride, race-exclusiveness, and a special caste distinction like that cherished by the Brahmins in India. But at present it cannot be said that there is any portion of mankind which is purely animal: all the races have been touched by the descent from above, and owing to the extensive intermixture the result of the Involution was more widely spread.
Of course one cannot say that every man has got a psychic being, just as one cannot refuse to grant it to every animal. Many animals that have lived near man have some beginnings of it, while so often one comes across people who do not seem to be anything else than brutes. Here, too, there has been a good deal of levelling. But on the whole, the psychic in the true sense starts at the human stage: that is also why the Catholic religion declares that only man has a soul. In man alone there is the possibility of the psychic being growing to its full stature even so far as to be able in the end to join and unite with a descending being, a godhead from above.
2.14 - The Unpacking of God, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
Perhaps a simple example from sociology will illustrate what is involved. The United States and Japan are often taken as examples of two very different types of social organizations. Japan is an extremely coherent or very tightly woven society (it is consistent); but it achieves this consistency only by excluding foreign races ( Japan's xenophobia being rather notorious). In other words, it is very consistent but very incomplete (very partial or very exclusionary).
The United States, on the other hand, attempts to be as complete as possible, attempts to open its doors to any and all (the "melting pot"), but it does so at the cost of being rather incoherent and unstable: at times, the U.S. seems so willing to embrace various cultures that it is in danger of flying apart at the seams. It achieves a great deal of completeness at the cost of being inconsistent or incoherent or uncertain, of having no tightly knit unifying regime or common principle.3 In other words: complete or coherent, and the more of one, the less of the other-IOU.
2.15 - On the Gods and Asuras, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Disciple: But the radio and telephone are a great success in Japan and in Europe; one can listen to the best musicians for four to six hours.
Sri Aurobindo: But in America they do not know whether it is cinema that is helping crime. Of course, they want to use it for an educative purpose. They may relay good music but the question is whether people appreciate and understand it.
2.16 - The 15th of August, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
At four o'clock all gather at the usual place of sitting the verandah. All sit there full of hope in silence; one or two whisper to each other. The mind of the company is silently repeating, "When will he come? May he come." It is 4:15; the old familiar and yet new 'tick' behind the door! Slowly a door opens. The Master steps out first, behind him the Mother in a white creamy sari with broad red border. He sits in his usual broad Japanese chair. The Mother sits on the right side on a small stool. For a short time about five minutes there is complete silence!
Then he glances at each one separately. The minutes are melting into the silence. There is again a wave of emotion in all; all bathe again into an ocean of some divine emotion. How wonderful if the whole of Eternity would flow in this experience! Time, poor Time, its flow is blamed by men. But where is the fault in the flow of Time? If so much Love and such Divine Delight can have its play let poor Time flow and have its Eternity! And let the world become Divine! Another powerful aspiration that comes to the surface is: "Expression is not needed let the whole of Eternity flow away in this silence!"
2.17 - December 1938, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Mother: In China and Japan also no real Buddhism is left. Only ceremonies remain. In Ceylon they say there is still some authentic Buddhism.
Disciple: In Burma also the same is the case. But the Burmese people do show a great respect for their Bhikshus.
--
Sri Aurobindo: I don't think much of either party. They are like six and half-a-dozen. Both too much materialistic. But if I had to choose, I would side with Japan. Japan at one time had an ideal. Their powers of self-sacrifice, patriotism, self-abnegation and silence are remarkable. They would never lose temper in front of anybody. If their honour is injured they may stab, but they must not lose self-control. They worked so silently and secretly that no one knew anything about how they had prepared themselves before the Russo- Japanese war actually broke out. All on a sudden it broke out. They are Kshatriyas and their aesthetic sense is of course well known. But the European influence has spoiled all that. They are now very materialistic. How brutal they have become now; it is thoroughly un- Japanese.
Look at the Japanese soldier slapping the European officers though they do deserve it; and the Japanese commander challenging Chiang-Kai-Shek to come out in the open field, and Japanese men attacking their political leaders all this is inconceivable. This sort of swaggering is not at all Japanese. In old times, the Japanese, even while fighting, had perfect sympathy with those with whom they fought.
Disciple: But without brutalities (killing innocent inhabitants) it would be difficult to win the war.
--
Sri Aurobindo: Yes. They are the most organised and able soldiers in the world excepting the Japanese. But the Japanese are numerically less and financially poorer.
Even so during the last war the Germans could not throw up any remarkable military genius like the French General Foch. If Foch had been made the Commander-in-Chief of the Allies sooner, the war would have ended much earlier.
--
Mother: Each one goes to the limit of his consciousness. I have met many persons in Europe, India and Japan practising Yoga under different masters. Each claimed that his realisation was the highest; he was quite sure about it and also quite satisfied with his condition, and yet each one was standing at a different place in consciousness and saying that he had attained the highest.
Disciple: But one can know what they mean by some criterion?
Mother: By what criterion? If you ask them they say, "It is something wonderful but can't be described by the mind." I was with Tagore in Japan. He claimed to have reached the peace of Nirvana and he was beaming with joy. I thought: "Here is a man who claims to have got the peace and reached Nirvana. Let us see." I asked him to meditate with me and I followed him in meditation and found that he had reached just behind the mind into a sort of emptiness. I waited and waited to see if he would go further; I wanted to follow him, but he would not go any further. I found that he was supremely satisfied and believed that he had entered Nirvana!
Disciple: But there is a fundamental realisation of some kind?
2.18 - January 1939, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
The Tibetans are more familiar with occultism than with spirituality. The Europeans are more taken up with these occult things. They either believe everything or nothing. That explains their attraction for Tibet, Bhutan and other places with occult atmosphere. Nowadays stories and novels are being written with these themes. Japanese Zen Buddhism, and Chinese Taoism have also attracted their attention.
I also wrote some stories but they are lost; the white ants have finished them and with them has perished my future fame as a story-teller. (Laughter)
--
Disciple: A Japanese general predicts a hundred-year war to civilize the world!
Sri Aurobindo: The idea is first to drive out the Europeans from Asia, but the Japanese will go about it silently without bragging.
Disciple: Will Indian freedom come a long time after?
--
Disciple: Italy or Japan can come to help India.
Sri Aurobindo: That is not so easy. Naval equipment is not enough; without a strong army it is very difficult to conquer India.
--
Mrs. R wrote to us, "What has N come to at Pondicherry? He is writing to us 'do this' and 'do that', and finds fault with our work." Of course, they were quarrelling in Japan also when they were there. They held to their different views about their work.
B came straight from A. A was another great propagandist. He caught anyone he could and made him do the Yoga of course, it was his yoga. He did not think that any such thing as Adhikara was necessary.
--
In the war between Russia and Japan, the Japanese admitted that the Russian artillery was remarkable, it did not miss the mark, but the infantry was not good, for even when they got a very good opportunity they did not take advantage of it. On the other hand, the Japanese army is perhaps the best in the world. In spite of overwhelming numbers against them in China, they have been able to conquer. Chiang Kai-shek had trumpeted that he would defeat the Japanese in a very short time. They did not reply but at the end of each defeat the Japanese were further inside China than before.
Disciple: They say that the Japanese are not good in the air. They missed their aim many times.
Sri Aurobindo: Idon't know about that. The Japanese are good at concentrating on one thing at a time, but a pilot is required to concentrate on many points at the same time.
Disciple: Mussolini is asking all Italian firms to close down at Djibouti, and thus create dissatisfaction. He is trying to cut off the railway connecting Djibouti and Abyssinia and make another line through Eritrea to Asmara.
--
Mother: She was full of compliments. She was much impressed by the tidiness, cleanliness and beauty in the Ashram. (Addressing Sri Aurobindo) She is not much more than a tourist. She is going to Japan to study with Suzuki. She has much admiration for genius, probably because genius does not require finance.
( There was a pause of silence. The conversation seemed to have ended for the night when a disciple asked a question.)
--
Disciple: No news except what C gives me. Mahatma Gandhi advised the Japanese visitor Dr. Kagawa to include Shantiniketan and Pondicherry in his itinerary without seeing these, his visit to India would be incomplete.
Sri Aurobindo: Oh that? I have heard about it.
--
Sri Aurobindo: Germany was like that at one time. Napoleon swept away half of them and the last war swept off the other half. Japan also had many Princes but they voluntarily abdicated their powers for the sake of duty to the country.
Disciple: How far back in history do they go?
Sri Aurobindo: The Mikado claims to be the descendant of the Sun Goddess. The Mikado named Maigi believed that and used to do what was necessary after feeling the inspiration within him. There are two types of features among the Japanese: tall people with a long nose and a fine aristocratic face; they are said to have come from Australia and Polynesia. It is they who gave the Samurai culture to Japan; I met at Tagore's place a painter of this type, he had magnificent features. The other is the usual Mongolian type.
Disciple: The dictators psychology is an authority-complex. People under the dictator feel that they are great and that the dictator in this case Hitler is fighting for them, not they who fight for him. Perhaps the dictators find a competitor in God and religion. So they try to crush religion.
2.20 - Nov-Dec 1939, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Disciple: Japan also.
Disciple: But how is this problem to be solved?
2.21 - 1940, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Over the last two days Sri Aurobindo had said that in one sense one can say history is repeating itself because the Graeco-Roman civilisation was destroyed by the Germanic hordes and today it is again the Germans who are trying to destroy the centre of European culture, for Paris has been the centre of modern civilisation for three centuries. The unfortunate thing is that the whole world is bound up with modern civilisation even China and Japan. The Asura working behind Hitler has been giving him remarkably accurate guidance; he knows what is possible. That is why Hitler doesn't listen to reason but only waits for the voice. Till now it has guided him correctly. The only mistake he seems to have made is to think that when he attacked Poland, England and France would not declare war. Otherwise he has a direct guidance which Napoleon could not get.
About the surrender of Paris Sri Aurobindo wondered how the French had allowed the Germans to enter it without fighting. Even if the old civilisation is to be destroyed, it was better to have defended it heroically.
--
Sri Aurobindo: Oh yes. The Germans know everything. Their children are taught the most wonderful details about the cities and even villages in England and France. They have got a school where they train future governors for England. So far as organisation is concerned there are only two races who cannot be surpassed: the Germans and the Japanese. In the last war they found maps in Germany of English villages in which even the position of trees and houses were indicated.
There was a reference to Hiranyagarbha which P took to Sri Aurobindo. He had explained, two days back, that Hiranyagarbha has nothing to do with Supermind. Besides Hiranyagarbha is a Being, while Supermind is not.
--
If Gandhi undertakes his fast for self-purification or for a spiritual end it is one thing, but how can he gain political power by it? It is only the British Government who gives way to such pressure. Against Germany, or Japan, or Russia, or even France, it would have no chance.
( In connection with the attempt on Vallabhbhai's life after the Amreli and Rajkot affairs): Virawal is a match for Gandhi.
2.2.3 - Depression and Despondency, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In speaking of the Buddhist and his nine years of the wall and other instances the Mother was only disproving the view that not having succeeded in seven or eight years meant unfitness and debarred all hope for the future. The man of the wall stands among the greatest names in Japanese Buddhism and his long sterility did not mean incapacity or spiritual unfitness. But apart from that there are many who have gone on persisting for long periods and finally prevailed. It is a common, not an uncommon experience.
***
2.25 - List of Topics in Each Talk, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
| 30-12-38 | Homeopathic dosing; possession, mania; Sri Aurobindo in England; Japanese culture; European civilisation |
| 10-01-39 | Systems of medicine; curing by yogic power |
--
| 20-09-26 | Fitness for Yoga; success and fall in Yoga; music and Theosophy in Japan |
| 26-09-26 | Higher Power and mind; sincerity and humility |
--
| 21-09-25 | Earthquakes in Japan; Tamas in India; work in the physical |
| 06-10-25 | Palm-lines change, thumb-impressions |
--
| 12-01-39 | A child sadhika; Stalin; Japan's agenda; Congress; European politics |
| 14-01-39 | Yogic predictions, astrology; Yoga and Westerners; faith; former sadhaks |
--
| 22-01-39 | Fasting; Russian and Japanese armies; Mussolini and France; Western visitors and Ashram; inner voice and standards of right and wrong |
| 23-01-39 | Cosmic Will, Karma, Mukti; Cosmic Spirit, psychic. Overmind; Hitler, Mussolini; Nirvana, Self, adhikra;. Yoga and external conduct; philosophy, Sadhana, Divine Light |
--
| 26-01-39 | Political, human values; political organisation, Life; Indian politics; national unification: India, Germany, Japan; Hitler, Mussolini, Kamal Pasha, Stalin; Socialism in India |
| 28-01-39 | Hathayogic feats; animal intelligence; Congress politics |
2.3.3 - Anger and Violence, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But is it true that even anger which is of the lower vital and therefore close to the body, invariably produces these effects?1 Of course the psychologist cant know that another man is angry unless he shows physical signs of it, but also he cant know what a man is thinking unless the man speaks or writesdoes it follow that the state of thought cannot be fancied without its sign in speaking or writing? A Japanese who is accustomed to control all his emotions and give no sign (if he is angry the first sign you will have of it is a knife in your stomach from a calm or smiling assailant) will have none of these things when he is angrynot even the ebullition in the chest,in its place there will be a settled fire that will burn till his anger achieves itself in action.
***
30.13 - Rabindranath the Artist, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Among Indians, the Bengalis are supposed to have particularly acquired a capacity for appreciation of beauty. That this acquisition has been largely due to the contri bution of the Tagore family can by no means be denied. We do not know how we fared in this respect in the past. Perhaps our sense of beauty was concerned with the movements of the heart or at most with material objects of art. Perhaps, we had never been the worshippers of beauty in the outer life like the Japanese. Yet whatever little we had of that wealth of perfection within or without had died away for some reason or other. The want of vitality, the spirit of renunciation, poverty, despair, sloth, an immensely careless and extreme indiscipline made our life ugly. At length the influence that had especially manifested around Rabindranath came to our rescue and opened a new channel to create beauty.
Why should we speak of our own country alone, why should we try to keep his influence confined to Bengal or India only? I believe Europe, the West, have honoured him so much not primarily for his poetry. The modern world, freed from its life devoid of beauty due to the unavoidable necessity of technology and machinery of utility and efficiency, was eager at last to follow in the footsteps of Rabindranath to enter into an abode of peace and beauty, a garden of Eden.
30.14 - Rabindranath and Modernism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The term modern, no doubt, relates to the present time, but there is in it a factor of space as well. It is the close communion among the different countries of the world that has made modernism modern. The relation of give-and-take among many and various countries and races has given each country a new atmosphere and a new character. The newness that has thus developed is perhaps the fundamental feature of modernism. Bankim and Madhusudan were modern, for they had infused the European manner into the artistic consciousness of Bengal. Europe itself is indeed the hallowed place, the place for pilgrimage of our epoch. Humanity in the modern age plays its great role in Europe. So to come into contact with Europe is to become modern - to take one's seat at the forefront in the theatre of the world. Thus it is that Japan has become modern in Asia. And China lagged behind for want of this contact. In India it was the Bengalis who first of all surpassed all others in adopting European ways. That is why their success and credit have no parallel in India. From Bharatchandra, Ishwar Gupta even up to Dinabandhu the genius of Bengal I was chiefly and fundamehtal1y Bengal's own. The imagination, experience and consciousness of the Bengalis had been I till then confined to the narrow peculiarities of the Bengali race. Bankim and Madhusudan broke the barrier of provincialism and cast aside all parochialism and narrowness of Bengalihood and brought in the imagination, consciousness, manners and customs of other lands.
Rabindranath too has done the same, but in a subtler, deeper and wider way. Firstly, at the dawn of modernism, the two currents, foreign and indigenous, though side by side did not get quite fused. They stood somewhat apart though contiguous. There was a gulf between - a difference, even a conflict - as of oil and water. In Madhusudan these two discordances were distinct and quite marked. It was in the works of Bankim that a true synthesis commenced. Still, on the whole, the artistic creation of that age was something like putting on a dhoti with its play of creases and folds, and over it a streamlined coat and waistcoat and necktie. Both the fashions are beautiful and graceful in their own way. But there is no harmony and synthesis in, their combination. It was Tagore's genius that brought about a beautiful harmony between the two worlds. In the creation of the artistic taste of Bengal he has opened wide the doors of her consciousness so that the free air from abroad may have full play and all parochialism blown away. Yet she has not fallen a prey to foreign ways to become a mere imitation or a distant echo; it is the vast and the universal that has entered. True, Tagore's genius belonged intimately to Bengal, but not exclusively; for it has been claimed also by humanity at large as its own. The poet's consciousness has returned home after a world-tour, as it were. It has become the Bengali consciousness in a wider and deeper sense. So the poet sings:
3.10 - The New Birth, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
and in the Zen Buddhism of Japan. From the point of view of psychology,
the names we give to the self are quite irrelevant, and so is the question of
3.2.03 - Jainism and Buddhism, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There is no reason why the passage about Buddhism [in an essay of the correspondent] should be omitted. It gives one side of the Buddhistic teaching which is not much known or is usually ignored, for that teaching is by most rendered as Nirvana (Sunyavada) and a spiritualised humanitarianism. The difficulty is that it is these sides that have been stressed especially in the modern interpretations of Buddhism and any strictures I may have passed were in view of these interpretations and that onesided stress. I am aware of course of the opposite tendencies in theMahayana and the Japanese cult of Amitabha Buddha which is a cult of bhakti. It is now being said even of Shankara that there was another side of his doctrine but his followers have made him stand solely for the Great Illusion, the inferiority of bhakti, the uselessness of Karmajagan mithy.
***
3.2.04 - The Conservative Mind and Eastern Progress, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In the East, on the contrary, the great revolutions have been spiritual and cultural; the political and social changes, although they have been real and striking, if less profound than in Europe, fall into the shade and are apt to be overlooked; besides, this unobtrusiveness is increased by their want of relief, the slow subtlety of their process and the instinctive persistence and reverence with which old names and formulas have been preserved while the thing itself was profoundly modified until its original sense remained only as a pious fiction. Thus Japan kept its sacrosanct Mikado as a cover for the change to an aristocratic and feudal government and has again brought him forward in modern times to cover and facilitate without too serious a shock the transition from a mediaeval form of society into the full flood of modernism. In India the continued fiction of the ancient fourfold order of society based on spiritual idealism, social type, ethical discipline and economic function is still used to cover and justify the quite different, complex and chaotic order of caste which, while it still preserves some confused fragments of the old motives, is really founded upon birth, privilege, local custom and religious formalism. The evolution from one type of society to another so opposed to it in its psychological motives and real institutions without any apparent change of formula is one of the most curious phenomena in the social history of mankind and still awaits intelligent study.
Our minds are apt to seize things in the rough and to appreciate only what stands out in bold external relief; we miss the law of Natures subtleties and disguises. We can see and fathom to some extent the motives, necessities, process of great revolutions and marked changes and we can consider and put in their right place the brief reactions which only modified without actually preventing the overt realisation of new ideas. We can see for instance that the Sullan restoration of Roman oligarchy, the Stuart restoration in England or the brief return of monarchy in France with the Bourbons were no real restorations, but a momentary damming of the tide attended with insufficient concessions and forced developments which determined, not a return to the past, but the form and pace of the inevitable revolution. It is more difficult but still possible to appreciate the working of an idea against all obstacles through many centuries; we can comprehend now, for instance, that we must seek the beginnings of the French Revolution, not in Rousseau or Mirabeau or the blundering of Louis XVI, but in movements which date back to the Capet and the Valois, while the precise fact which prepared its tremendous outbreak and victory and determined its form was the defeat of the Calvinistic reformation in France and the absolute triumph of the monarchical system over the nobility and the bourgeoisie in the reigns of Louis XIII and Louis XIV. That double victory determined the destruction of the monarchy in France, the downfall of the Church and, by the failure of the nobles to lead faithfully the liberal cause whether in religion or politics, the disappearance of aristocracy.
32.11 - Life and Self-Control (A Letter), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
THERE is no doubt that Europe knows very well the art of life which in our country is totally lacking. In the East it is only Japan that knows it and knows it well enough. Our country on the whole and most of the East is at present steeped in inertia.
You have asked me the exact meaning of control of the senses and what is its necessity in life. For, in India we have held up this ideal on an elaborate scale, but to what effect? Europe cares little for it, yet she rules the world.
33.01 - The Initiation of Swadeshi, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
China is awake, Japan is awake,
But India persists in her sleep.
33.05 - Muraripukur - II, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Japanese soldiers too in one of their encounters with the Russians in the Russo- Japanese War did not wait to build a bridge over the ramparts of a ditch; they made a solid bridge with the pile of their dead as they jumped in one after the other and let the army march over their bodies. To save oneself does not mean that one should, like Nandalal of the comic skit, take a vow to "keep oneself alive at any cost, for the good of the country and all", or live by the bourgeois doctrine that one should always save oneself anyhow, even by the sacrifice of one's wife, atmanam satatam rakset darairapi dhanairapi.
That is why we used to tease Paresh Mallick and called him a descendant of Nandalal. Have I told you the story? He was once deputed to present Kingsford, the Presidency Magistrate, with a live bomb packed in the form of a book; the bomb was to explode as soon as the book was opened. Paresh went in the garb of an Englishman's bearer. We looked out every day for an account in the papers of some serious accident to Kingsford. But nothing happened. He seemed to be attending court regularly and was apparently quite safe and sound. So we had to ask Paresh at last if he had in fact reached the bomb to its destination or whether he had thrown it away somewhere to save his own skin. However, the bomb was found later among a pile of books belonging to the Magistrate. It had been lying there safely and caused no harm. The people were demanding vengeance upon Kingsford because he had sentenced a young student, Sushil, to flogging, simply because the boy was involved in a tussle with the police. That was an occasion for us terrorists. Sushil later on joined the revolutionary group at Manicktolla.
33.15 - My Athletics, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Let me in this connection tell you another amusing story. One day there came to the Post Office a packet addressed to the Mother from Japan. It was war time and the rules were very strict, leg. any kind of undesirable matter should find entry. One of the Post Office employees, a Frenchman, opened the packet in my presence. He found in it- nothing else except a single sheet of paper with something on it that looked like a sketch - just the branch of a tree. The official handed me the paper with obvious disappointment, adding his comment, "Une branche quelconque" - "some sort of a branch!" The "branche" happened to be a fine piece of Japanese painting. But who would appreciate that? Not in any case a detective of the Post Office. I mentioned the incident to Sri Aurobindo. He could never forget the story; at the slightest opportunity he would come out with that "une branche quelconque".
Now to come back to the point. I was speaking of the kind of exercise I had in those days, that medieval period of our existence, perhaps you would call it. The second item in my physical education programme was still more impressive. It consisted in giving a very careful wash to my clothes when I took my bath. This allowed some exercise to the limbs and body and I considered this as the minimum needed for keeping up the physical tone; it did duty for push-ups and dumb-bells and everything else. I should add another item: that was walking, a kind of morning walk. Early in the morning every day I used to go out and deliver to the sadhaks the letters written to them by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. In those days, of course, the Ashram houses were not so many and not so far apart, so it was not exactly a 1500 or 5000 metre walking race.
33.17 - Two Great Wars, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Eventually, the situation grew more and more serious. Pavitra too received a call to leave here and join the colours; he then held the rank of Captain. I believe he had to report to the local barracks for duty. The Mother went so far as to make the necessary arrangements for his work during the period he might be away, though he did Rot have to go after all. You remember how the Mother herself had to leave here soon after the outbreak of the First War and was not able to return till after the end, six years later.. The Japanese were now coming close upon us. The Andamans were already in their hands, and Madras was not so far away. They had overrun Burma and were at the gates of East Bengal on the north-eastern front, with the Indian National Army of Subhash Chandra Bose. Our Doctor Jyotish, who was then serving as a medical officer in the Indian Army, had been sending out frantic SOS calls from his station at Imphal city, then practically a besieged garrison. From French Indo-China the French were running away and were on their way back through Pondicherry in the hope of reaching their own country some day - but which country? They said the Japanese might be expected any time and that we should start learning their language. Some thought we had better concentrate on German instead, for the Germans were going to occupy India. Hitler was at the time pouncing on England and Churchill alone stood up fearless against that furious onslaught.
It was at this time that, as you have already heard from the Mother, there began a rush of young children, or rather of people with young children, seeking shelter in the safety of the Ashram. In fact, we who lived here under the direct protection of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother did not get into much of a panic. Nor was there noticeable any great austerity in our day-to-day life, and we did not have to undergo much privation either in the matter of food or clothing. Let me here tell you a rather amusing anecdote. One of the inmates of the Ashram who happened to be away on some business chanced to meet one of our prominent nationalist leaders. The conversation naturally turned on the question of India's future. The leader asked him what Sri Aurobindo thought of the impetuous march of Japan. To that our friend replied somewhat like this: "There is nothing to fear; for the Japanese will not be able to come in, they will have to retire. So we have been assured by our Master." The leader's reaction was a smile of incredulity. I do not know if our friend ever had a chance later to remind the leader of Sri Aurobindo's prophecy. Most of our political leaders had not realised at the time how chimerical it was to hope to free India with the help of Japan, Germany or even Russia, that is, by accepting their rule which would have been simply to exchange our masters. The new bondage would have been terrible, for the neo-imperialism of their ruling cliques was no more than a modern version of the old intoxication of power; to escape from them would have needed some more centuries of struggle.
I may in this connection tell you another story, a true story and a very pleasant and reassuring one. Some of you may have been actually eye-witnesses. Not so long ago, the air was thick with rumours of a possible danger of a crisis for India: this was a little before the Chinese attack. Was India going to be invaded and subjugated by a foreign Power once again? India was no doubt big and had ample .resources in manpower. But her manpower was little more than that of a rabble, it lacked the cohesion of organised military strength. The question was put to the Mother at the Playground. The Mother gave a smile and, pointing to the map of India on the wall, said, "Can't you see. who is guarding India? Isn't the north-eastern portion of Kashmir a lion's head with its jaws wide open?" The portion indicated does have the appearance of a lion's head as you can see if you look at it closely. Its nozzle projects with wide open mouth facing the front, as if ready to swallow up anyone who dares to come. It is the Lion of Mother Durga. Another little piece might be added to this story. Matching the lion on our northern frontier, there is an elephant dangling its trunk on the southern tip of India bordering the sea; that too is clearly visible on the map. It is as if giving the warning, "Here am I, the coast-guard ever on the watch. Beware!" It is the Elephant on which rides Lakshmi - gajalaksmi,the divine Mother of Plenty and Beauty. The elephant is the symbol of material power,
33.18 - I Bow to the Mother, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Mother arrived. She would meet Sri Aurobindo in company with the rest at our afternoon sessions. She spoke very little. We were out most of the time, but also dropped in occasionally. When it was proposed to bring out the Aryashe took charge of the necessary arrangements. She wrote out in her own hand the list of subscribers, maintained the accounts herself: perhaps those papers might be still available. And afterwards, it was she herself who helped M. Richard in his translation of the writings of Sri Aurobindo into French for the French edition of the Arya.The ground floor of Dupleix House was used as the stack room and the office was on the ground floor of Guest House. The Mother was the chief executive in sole charge. Once every week all of us used to call at her residence accompanied by Sri Aurobindo and had our dinner together. On those occasions the Mother used to cook one or two dishes with her own hands. Afterwards too, when she came back for good, the same arrangement continued at the Bayoud House; I have told you of that before. About this time, she had also formed a small group with a few young men; this too I have mentioned earlier. A third line of her work, connected with business and trade, also began at nearly the same time. Just as today we have among us men of business who are devotees of the Mother and who act under her protection and guidance, similarly in that period also there appeared as if in seed-state this particular line of activity. Our Saurin founded the Aryan Stores, the object being to bring in some money: we were very hard up in those days - not that we are particularly affluent now, but still... The Mother kept up a correspondence with Saurin in connection with these business matters even after she left here for Japan.
At one stage, the Mother showed a special interest in cats. Not only has she been concerned with human beings, but the animal creation and the life of plants too have shared in her direct touch. The Veda speaks of the animal sacrifice, but the Mother has performed her consecration of animals in a very novel sense; she has helped them forward in their upward march with a touch of her Consciousness. She took a few cats as representatives of the animal world. She said, the king of the cats who ruled in the occult world - you might call him perhaps their Super-cat - had set up a sort of friendship with her. How this feline brood appeared first in our midst is somewhat interesting. One day all of a sudden a wild-looking cat made its appearance at the Guest House where we lived then; it just happened to come along and stayed on. It was wild enough when it came, but soon turned into a tame cat, very mild and polite. When it had its kittens, Sri Aurobindo gave to the first-born the name of Sundari, for she was very fair with a pure white fur. One of Sundari's kittens was styled Bushy, for it had a bushy tail, and its ancestress had now to be given the name of Grandmo ther. It was about this Bushy that the story runs: she used to pick up with her teeth all her kittens one by one and drop them at the Mother's feet as soon as they were old enough to use their eyes - as if she offered them to the Mother and craved her blessings. You can see now how much progress this cat had made in the path of Yoga. Two of these kittens of Bushy are well-known names and became great favourites with the Mother; one was Big Bay and the younger one was Kiki. It is said about one of them - I forget which, perhaps it was Kiki - that he used to join in the collective meditation and meditated like one of us; he perhaps had visions during meditation and his body would shake and tremble while the eyes remained closed. But in spite of this sadhana, he remained in his outward conduct like many of us rather crude in many respects. The two brothers, Big Boy and Kiki, could never see eye to eye and the two had always to be kept apart. Big Boy was a stalwart fellow and poor Kiki got the thrashings. Finally, both of them died of some disease and were buried in the courtyard. Their Grandmo ther disappeared one day as suddenly as she had come and nobody knew anything about her again.
3-5 Full Circle, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Calls for up-dating and synthesis of religions, which is essential to our industrial civilization, have been voiced by powerful theologians: "Christianity without Religion" by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (who was hanged by the Nazis), and "The Humanity of God" by Karl Barth in Germany; "Depersonalized Religion" by the Jesuit scientist Teilhard de Chardin in France; "Honest to God" by the Anglican Bishop John A. T. Robinson in England;22 "The Shaking of the Foundations" by Paul Tillich in America; Sun Myung Moon's "Divine Principle" in South Korea, Japan, and by now many other nations.23
John A. T. Robinson, and others who call for an up-dating of religion, being theologians and thus one-field specialists themselves, could understandably not specify just how to do it. The consequent uproar was therefore unproductive theological debate: "The Honest to God Debate".24 It had to be a man who combines in his personality the literary with the scientific culture, who foresaw and predicted the nature of the brewing revolution: C. P. Snow. Snow stated in 1963 that the Two Cultures; scientific and literary, were about to come together into a single entity, and even predicted where: in the United States.25
--
The class's extensive term papers, written along these clearly converging lines, turned out so splendidly that I suggested the possibility of publishing them as a book. The students enthusiastically elected an editorial board, and when the book is ready, and its title decided upon, we will submit it to a publisher. Have not the Two Cultures come together, as C. P. Snow predicted, in the United States? Early in 1972, the founder of the Unification Church arrived in the United States. Sun Myung Moon is a South Korean philosopher, raised as a Christian and trained in electrical engineering in Japan. His Church's half million profoundly dedicated members are citizens of some twenty-six countries in Asia, America, and Europe.
At our first meeting, in which Mr. Moon was flanked by three Korean interpreters, and I by the directors of two of his American centers, he announced that he wished me to organize an international conference so that the world could become acquainted with Unified Science.
36.07 - An Introduction To The Vedas, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08, #unset, #Zen
Katha, 11.1.10. (Whatever is there in the inner world is to be found here as well). In ancient times, not only in India, but in all countries of the world, symbolism was in vogue. We cannot read through those symbols. That is why we consider them black magic or rustic customs of the uncivilised. We can partly appreciate the political and artistic genius of Egypt. So at times we consider it equal or superior to ours. But we are unable to grasp her spiritual genius. Hence we do not hesitate to relegate it to the level of barbarism. We have hardly any spiritual realisation. What we understand is at best morality. We highly admire the art and literature of Greece. But in respect of Greek spirituality our knowledge is confined to Socrates. In the earlier period of Greek civilisation there was a current of deep spiritual culture, and what they used to call the Mysteries were only mysteries of spiritual yogic discipline. We fail to understand that the water-worship of Thales and the fire-worship of Heraclitus were not merely different aspects of Nature-worship. We do not like to believe that these terms "water" and "fire" can ever be the symbols of spiritual truths. We study the philosophies of Pythagoras and Plato. But we do not delve into the spiritual culture or esoteric aspect of which their philosophies are but outer expressions. Behind the mythologies of China, Japan, old-world America and Australia there lies a science of spiritual discipline which may not be recognised by the scientists, but those practising spirituality will not find it difficult to discover it.
***
7.07 - Prudence, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The Japanese have a picturesque way of expressing their idea of prudence.
They have in one of their temples an image of a meditating Buddha seated on a lotus-blossom. In front of him are three little monkeys, one with its hands over its eyes, another over its ears, and the third covering its mouth. What do these three monkeys signify? By its gesture the first one says:
7.14 - Modesty, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
HO IS this coming to the door of this Japanese house?
It is the flower-artist, the man who is skilled in arranging flowers.
--
Perhaps the Japanese artist really thinks that his work deserves compliments. I cannot tell his thoughts. But at any rate he does not boast and his behaviour is pleasing.
On the other hand, we smile at people who are vain.
7.15 - The Family, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Of course, the ways and customs of families are not the same in every country of the world. You will find it interesting to hear from travellers or read in books or learn from your teachers about the family customs of Japan, China, Persia, Egypt, Europe and America. And you will find many differences. But in all of them, love rules in their hearts and affection is the law. It may happen that the members of a family do not love one another, but then they are not a true family.
A man may act in an inhuman way, but then he is not a true man.
7 - Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
one of theirs, the Japanese a third variety and so on. This
may be an addition of each one's own mental formation,
--
perhaps. At one time Japan was educating herself on
the American pattern; now that America has conquered
--
of Japan; even in objects manufactured in America,
you notice the Japanese influence in some way or other.
MUSIC ITS ORIGIN AND NATURE
Big Mind (non-dual), #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
In Japanese I am Kanzeon, or Kannon. Other cultures and spiritual traditions call me by different names. I manifest as whatever is necessary in this world to alleviate suffering and to bring unconditional love to all beings.
--- Yin or Feminine Compassion
--
Japanese there's only one word for us, which in Japanese is shin (heart mind). But in the Western world, and in English, it's good to make this distinction so it's clear that I,
Integrated Compassion or Big Heart am the yin aspect of the yin/yang symbol, and
BOOK II. -- PART I. ANTHROPOGENESIS., #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
boat beneath the surface; and their action has been reproduced for centuries past . . . . by Japanese
artists." ("Mythical Monsters," p. 11 Introd.).
--
difference between an Englishman, an African negro, and a Japanese or Chinaman. On the other hand
it is formally denied by most naturalists that mixed human races, i.e., the seeds for entirely new races,
--- Overview of noun japan
The noun japan has 4 senses (first 2 from tagged texts)
1. (5) Japan, Japanese Islands, Japanese Archipelago ::: (a string of more than 3,000 islands to the east of Asia extending 1,300 miles between the Sea of Japan and the western Pacific Ocean)
2. (3) Japan, Nippon, Nihon ::: (a constitutional monarchy occupying the Japanese Archipelago; a world leader in electronics and automobile manufacture and ship building)
3. japan ::: (lacquerware decorated and varnished in the Japanese manner with a glossy durable black lacquer)
4. japan ::: (lacquer with a durable glossy black finish, originally from the orient)
--- Overview of verb japan
The verb japan has 1 sense (no senses from tagged texts)
1. japan ::: (coat with a lacquer, as done in Japan)
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun japan
4 senses of japan
Sense 1
Japan, Japanese Islands, Japanese Archipelago
INSTANCE OF=> archipelago
=> land, dry land, earth, ground, solid ground, terra firma
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
Sense 2
Japan, Nippon, Nihon
INSTANCE OF=> Asian country, Asian nation
=> country, state, land
=> administrative district, administrative division, territorial division
=> district, territory, territorial dominion, dominion
=> region
=> location
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
Sense 3
japan
=> lacquerware
=> work, piece of work
=> product, production
=> creation
=> artifact, artefact
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
Sense 4
japan
=> lacquer
=> coating, coat
=> covering
=> artifact, artefact
=> whole, unit
=> object, physical object
=> physical entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun japan
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun japan
4 senses of japan
Sense 1
Japan, Japanese Islands, Japanese Archipelago
INSTANCE OF=> archipelago
Sense 2
Japan, Nippon, Nihon
INSTANCE OF=> Asian country, Asian nation
Sense 3
japan
=> lacquerware
Sense 4
japan
=> lacquer
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun japan
4 senses of japan
Sense 1
Japan, Japanese Islands, Japanese Archipelago
-> archipelago
HAS INSTANCE=> Cape Verde Islands
HAS INSTANCE=> Tierra del Fuego
HAS INSTANCE=> Comoro Islands, Iles Comores
HAS INSTANCE=> West Indies, the Indies
HAS INSTANCE=> Antilles
HAS INSTANCE=> Greater Antilles
HAS INSTANCE=> Lesser Antilles, Caribees
HAS INSTANCE=> Leeward Islands
HAS INSTANCE=> Windward Islands, Windward Isles
HAS INSTANCE=> Svalbard
HAS INSTANCE=> Lofoten
HAS INSTANCE=> Aland islands, Aaland islands, Ahvenanmaa
HAS INSTANCE=> Arctic Archipelago
HAS INSTANCE=> Aleutian Islands, Aleutians
HAS INSTANCE=> Oceania, Oceanica
HAS INSTANCE=> Australasia
HAS INSTANCE=> Austronesia
HAS INSTANCE=> Melanesia
HAS INSTANCE=> Micronesia
HAS INSTANCE=> Mariana Islands, Marianas, Ladrone Islands
HAS INSTANCE=> Caroline Islands
HAS INSTANCE=> Marshall Islands
HAS INSTANCE=> Gilbert Islands
HAS INSTANCE=> Tuvalu, Ellice Islands
HAS INSTANCE=> Polynesia
HAS INSTANCE=> Malay Archipelago, East Indies, East India
HAS INSTANCE=> Sunda Islands
HAS INSTANCE=> Greater Sunda Islands
HAS INSTANCE=> Lesser Sunda Islands, Nusa Tenggara
HAS INSTANCE=> Bismarck Archipelago
HAS INSTANCE=> Admiralty Islands
HAS INSTANCE=> Scilly Islands, Isles of Scilly
HAS INSTANCE=> Hebrides, Hebridean Islands, Hebridean Isles, Western Islands, Western Isles
HAS INSTANCE=> Inner Hebrides
HAS INSTANCE=> Outer Hebrides
HAS INSTANCE=> Japan, Japanese Islands, Japanese Archipelago
HAS INSTANCE=> Ryukyu Islands
HAS INSTANCE=> Volcano Islands
HAS INSTANCE=> Frisian Islands
HAS INSTANCE=> Orkney Islands
HAS INSTANCE=> Shetland, Shetland Islands, Zetland
HAS INSTANCE=> Palau, Palau Islands, Belau, Pelew
HAS INSTANCE=> Philippines, Philippine Islands
HAS INSTANCE=> Madeira Islands, Madeiras
HAS INSTANCE=> Society Islands
HAS INSTANCE=> Tuamotu Archipelago, Paumotu Archipelago, Low Archipelago
HAS INSTANCE=> Tubuai Islands, Austral Islands
HAS INSTANCE=> Gambier Islands
HAS INSTANCE=> Marquesas Islands, Iles Marquises
HAS INSTANCE=> Solomons, Solomon Islands
HAS INSTANCE=> Balearic Islands
HAS INSTANCE=> Alexander Archipelago
HAS INSTANCE=> Hawaiian Islands, Sandwich Islands
Sense 2
Japan, Nippon, Nihon
-> Asian country, Asian nation
HAS INSTANCE=> Afghanistan, Islamic State of Afghanistan
HAS INSTANCE=> Myanmar, Union of Burma, Burma
HAS INSTANCE=> Cambodia, Kingdom of Cambodia, Kampuchea
HAS INSTANCE=> China, People's Republic of China, mainland China, Communist China, Red China, PRC, Cathay
HAS INSTANCE=> Bahrain, State of Bahrain, Bahrein
HAS INSTANCE=> Bangladesh, People's Republic of Bangladesh, Bangla Desh, East Pakistan
HAS INSTANCE=> Bhutan, Kingdom of Bhutan
HAS INSTANCE=> India, Republic of India, Bharat
HAS INSTANCE=> Nepal, Kingdom of Nepal
HAS INSTANCE=> Tibet, Thibet, Xizang, Sitsang
HAS INSTANCE=> Iran, Islamic Republic of Iran, Persia
HAS INSTANCE=> Iraq, Republic of Iraq, Al-Iraq, Irak
HAS INSTANCE=> Japan, Nippon, Nihon
HAS INSTANCE=> Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
HAS INSTANCE=> Kuwait, State of Kuwait, Koweit
HAS INSTANCE=> North Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, D.P.R.K., DPRK
HAS INSTANCE=> South Korea, Republic of Korea
HAS INSTANCE=> Laos, Lao People's Democratic Republic
HAS INSTANCE=> Lebanon, Lebanese Republic
HAS INSTANCE=> Malaysia, Malaya
HAS INSTANCE=> Mongolia, Mongolian People's Republic, Outer Mongolia
HAS INSTANCE=> Oman, Sultanate of Oman, Muscat and Oman
HAS INSTANCE=> Pakistan, Islamic Republic of Pakistan, West Pakistan
HAS INSTANCE=> Qatar, State of Qatar, Katar, State of Katar
HAS INSTANCE=> Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
HAS INSTANCE=> Singapore, Republic of Singapore
HAS INSTANCE=> Armenia, Republic of Armenia, Hayastan
HAS INSTANCE=> Azerbaijan, Azerbaijani Republic, Azerbajdzhan, Azerbajdzhan Republic
HAS INSTANCE=> Georgia, Sakartvelo
HAS INSTANCE=> Kazakhstan, Republic of Kazakhstan, Kazakstan, Kazakh, Kazak
HAS INSTANCE=> Kyrgyzstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Kirghizia, Kirgizia, Kirghiz, Kirgiz, Kirghizstan, Kirgizstan
HAS INSTANCE=> Tajikistan, Republic of Tajikistan, Tadzhikistan, Tadzhik, Tadjik, Tajik
HAS INSTANCE=> Uzbekistan, Republic of Uzbekistan, Uzbek
HAS INSTANCE=> Syria, Syrian Arab Republic
HAS INSTANCE=> Thailand, Kingdom of Thailand, Siam
HAS INSTANCE=> United Arab Emirates
HAS INSTANCE=> Vietnam, Socialist Republic of Vietnam, Viet Nam, Annam
HAS INSTANCE=> North Vietnam
HAS INSTANCE=> South Vietnam
HAS INSTANCE=> Yemen, Republic of Yemen
Sense 3
japan
-> lacquerware
=> japan
Sense 4
japan
-> lacquer
=> japan
--- Grep of noun japan
bank of japan
capital of japan
japan
japan allspice
japan bittersweet
japan cedar
japan clover
japan current
japan tallow
japan trench
japan wax
japanese
japanese allspice
japanese andromeda
japanese angelica tree
japanese apricot
japanese archipelago
japanese banana
japanese barberry
japanese barnyard millet
japanese beech
japanese beetle
japanese bittersweet
japanese black pine
japanese brome
japanese capital
japanese carpet grass
japanese cedar
japanese cherry
japanese chess
japanese chestnut
japanese clover
japanese crab
japanese deer
japanese deity
japanese flowering cherry
japanese honeysuckle
japanese hop
japanese iris
japanese islands
japanese ivy
japanese lacquer tree
japanese lawn grass
japanese leaf
japanese leek
japanese lilac
japanese lime
japanese linden
japanese maple
japanese medlar
japanese millet
japanese monetary unit
japanese morning glory
japanese oak
japanese oyster
japanese pagoda tree
japanese persimmon
japanese pink
japanese plum
japanese poinsettia
japanese privet
japanese quince
japanese radish
japanese red army
japanese red pine
japanese rose
japanese snowbell
japanese spaniel
japanese spurge
japanese stranglehold
japanese sumac
japanese table pine
japanese tree lilac
japanese umbrella pine
japanese varnish tree
japanese wistaria
japanese yew
sea of japan