3 Yasunari Kawabata Quotes on Spirituality

Yasunari Kawabata quotes on spirituality

6. Seeing the moon, he becomes the moon, the moon seen by him becomes him. He sinks into nature, becomes one with nature. The light of the 'clear heart' of the priest, seated in the meditation hall in the darkness before the dawn, becomes for the dawn moon its own light.

14. 'If you meet a Buddha, kill him. If you meet a patriarch of the law, kill him.' This is a well-known Zen motto. If Buddhism is divided generally into the sects that believe in salvation by faith and those that believe in salvation by one's own efforts, then of course there must be such violent utterances in Zen, which insists upon salvation by one's own efforts. On the other side, the side of salvation by faith, Shinran, the founder of the Shin sect, once said: 'The good shall be reborn in paradise, and how much more shall it be so with the bad.' This view of things has something in common with Ikkyu's world of the Buddha and world of the devil, and yet at heart the two have their different inclinations. Shinran also said: 'I shall not take a single disciple.' 'If you meet a Buddha, kill him. If you meet a patriarch of the law, kill him.' 'I shall not take a single disciple.' In these two statements, perhaps, is the rigorous fate of art.

15. The Zen disciple sits for long hours silent and motionless, with his eyes closed. Presently he enters a state of impassivity, free from all ideas and all thoughts. He departs from the self and enters the realm of nothingness. This is not the nothingness or the emptiness of the West. It is rather the reverse, a universe of the spirit in which everything communicates freely with everything, transcending bounds, limitless. There are of course masters of Zen, and the disciple is brought toward enlightenment by exchanging questions and answers with his master, and he studies the scriptures. The disciple must, however, always be lord of his own thoughts, and must attain enlightenment through his own efforts. And the emphasis is less upon reason and argument than upon intuition, immediate feeling. Enlightenment comes not from teaching but through the eye awakened inwardly. Truth is in 'the discarding of words', it lies 'outside words'. And so we have the extreme of 'silence like thunder', in the Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra.