Fariha’s Reviews > The Temple of the Golden Pavilion > Status Update

From the point of view of knowledge, beauty is never a consolation. It may be a woman, it may be one’s wife, but it’s never a consolation. Yet from the marriage between this beautiful thing which is never a consolation, on the one hand, and knowledge, on the other, something is born, It is as evanescent as a bubble and utterly hopeless. Yet something is born. That something is what people call art!”

But there is no such thing as individual knowledge, a particular knowledge belonging to one special person or group. Knowledge is the sea of humanity, the field of humanity, the general condition of human existence... Well, beauty-beauty that you love so much—is an illusion of the remaining part, the excessive part, which has been consigned to knowledge. It is an illusion of the “other way to bear life”

“Action, you say. But don’t you see that the beauty of this world, which means so much to you, craves sleep and that in order to sleep it must be protected by knowledge?

Let’s put it this way—human beings possess the weapon of knowledge in order to make life bearable.For animals such things aren’t necessary.Animals don’t need knowledge or anything of the sort to make life bearable.But human beings do need something,& with knowledge they can make the very intolerableness of life a weapon,though at the same time that intolerableness is not reduced in the slightest.

What transforms this world is-knowledge. Do you see what I mean? Nothing else can change anything in this world. Knowledge along is capable of transforming the world, while at the same time leaving it exactly as it is. When you look at the world with knowledge, you realize that things are unchangeaole and at the same time are constantly being transformed.

It is written in the Miscellany on the cosmic forces, Yin and Yang, that, after a hundred years have passed and objects have been transformed into spirits, the hearts of men are deceived; and this is given the name of Tsukumogami, the year of the mournful spirit. It is the custom of the world to remove one’s old household utensils each year before the advent of Spring and to throw them into the alley; [...]

The continuity of our lives is preserved by being surrounded by the solidified substance of time which has lasted for a given period. Take, for example, a small drawer, which the carpenter has made for the convenience of some household. With the passage of time, the actual form of this drawer is surpassed by time itself and, after the decades and centuries have elapsed,it is as though time had become solidified [...]

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, ...