Status Updates From Az ​aranytemplom

is this book going to cure me or am i delusional again?

Yes, this was really the coast of the Sea of Japan! Here was the source of all my unhappiness, of all my gloomy thoughts, the origin of all my ugliness and all my strength. It was a wild sea. The waves surged forward in an almost continuous mass, hardly letting one see the smooth, gray gulfs that lay between one wave and the next. Piled up over the open sea, the great cumuli of clouds revealed a heaviness...

At that moment some sort of meaning flashed through my mind. But no sooner was I aware of this flash than it disappeared and I lost the meaning. I stood there for a while, but the icy wind that blew against my body robbed me of all thought. I began walking into the wind. The meager fields merged into stony, barren land. The grass was withered; the only unwithered green was that of some mosslike weeds ...

The station, the whistle, even the grating voice on the loudspeaker that echoed in the early dawn air, all reiterated a single feeling, reinforced it, and spread a dazzling, lyrical prospect before my eyes. The morning sun cut the great platform into sections. The sound of shoes running along the platform, the persistent, monotonous ringing of the station bell, the sound of a wooden clog splitting, ...

I want to get away from all my surroundings.From the smell of powerlessness that everyone round me gives off so strongly.The Superior is powerless.Terribly powerless.I’ve understood that,too.”
You want to get away from the Golden Temple also?”
“Yes indeed!From the Golden Temple also.”
“Is even the Golden Temple powerless?”
“No,the Goiden Temple certainly isn’t powerless!lt's the root of everyone else’s powerlessness.

The way Mishima writes about Japanese culture often leaves the impression that he believes it is a part of the natural world. Simila to a flower or mountain. Infact each flower and mountain holds a place in Japanese culture like a temple or piece of clothing. While some aspects of the natural world are cultivated by men, such as rice or chickens, those things, like Japanese culture, are no less part of the natural

In this vast, vague world of objects the bee and the summer chrysanthemum only remained to be “put in order,” as it were. The flying of the bee and the shaking of the flower did not differ in the slightest from the rustling of the wind. In this still, frozen world everything was on an equal footing, and that form which had emitted so powerful a charm was extinct.

In my experience, therefore there was nothing in the nature of accumulation. There was no thickness of the kind that could form a mountain by piling one stratum upon another. Yet one thing I knew was that among all these experiences certain small elements-elements that were not swallowed up in the dark sea of time, elements that did not subside into meaningless and interminable repetition—would be linked together...

It was inevitable that this woman should have changed, just as the features of this earth are changed by the time that the light from a distant star has finally reached it. If at the time when I saw her from the gate of the Nanzen Temple she and I had been joined in anticipation of today’s meeting, such changes as had taken place in her since then could be effaced; with only a few small alterations,

One small decision followed another, and the effects of contrast and symmetry converged with infallible artistry. The flowers and leaves, which had formerly existed as they were,, had now been transformed into flowers and leaves as they ought to be. The cattails and the irises were no longer individual, anonymous plants belonging to their respective species, but had become terse, direct manifestations

His likings were limited to things such as music, which vahished instantly, or flower arrangements, which faded in a matter of days; the brief beauty that the player brings into being transforms a given period or time into pure continuance; it is certain never to be repeated; like the existence of dayflies and other such shortlived creatures, beauty is a perfect abstraction and creation of life itself.