Mono no aware
All along this road
not a single soul-only
autumn evening
Kono michi ya
yuku hito nashi ni
aki no kure
-Matsuo Basho, just before his death in November 1694
"All things 'go' somewhere: they evolve, with or without us, into new forms. So as the decades pass, we should try not always to futilely fight these transformations. As the Japanese know, there is much unnoticed beauty in wabi-sabi--the old, the worn, the tumble-down, those things beginning their transformation into something else. We can embrace this process of devolution: embellish it when strength avails, learn to love it.
"There is beauty in weathered and unpainted wood, in orchards overgrown, even in abandoned cars being incorporated into the earth. Let us learn...to put unwise or unneeded roads 'to bed,' help a little in the healing of the natural contours, the re-vegetation by native plants. Let us embrace decay, for it is the source of all new life and growth."
Mono no aware, the Japanese call it: the somewhat melancholy awareness of the impermanence of things." -Morris Berman
Mono no aware (物の哀れ), literally "the pathos of things", and also translated as "an empathy toward things", or "a sensitivity to ephemera", is a Japanese term used to describe the awareness of impermanence (無常 mujō), or transience of things, and a gentle sadness (or wistfulness) at their passing.
The term was coined in the 18th century by the Edo period Japanese cultural scholar Motoori Norinaga, and was originally a concept used in his literary criticism of The Tale of Genji, and later applied to other seminal Japanese works including the Man'yōshū. It became central to his philosophy of literature, and eventually to Japanese cultural tradition.
...The word is derived from the Japanese word mono (物), which means "thing", and aware (哀れ), which was a Heian period expression of measured surprise (similar to "ah" or "oh"), translating roughly as "pathos", "poignancy", "deep feeling", or "sensitivity", or "aware". Thus, mono no aware has frequently been translated as "the 'ahh-ness' of things", life, and love. Awareness of the transience of all things heightens appreciation of their beauty, and evokes a gentle sadness at their passing.
-Wikipedia
"It’s this “aesthetic empathy of things and feelings” connected with time’s passing that the eighteenth century literary scholar, Motoori Norinaga, defined as mono no aware, which I’ve seen variously described as
- deep impressions produced by small things
- sympathetic sadness
- an intense, nostalgic sadness, connected with autumn and the vanishing away of the world
- a serene acceptance of a transient world
- a gentle pleasure found in mundane pursuits soon to vanish
In his popular novel, Musashi, the story of Japan’s best-known swordsman, Yoshikawa Eiji writes describes mono no aware from the warrior’s perspective:
"In the case of the samurai there is such a thing as an appreciation of the poignancy of things… a real samurai, a genuine swordsman has a compassionate heart, he understands the poignancy of life."
One of the reasons for my strong interest in Japanese literature and aesthetics is this acceptance of sadness as an essential ingredient of life. And (perhaps mistakenly) I’ve always regarded Jefferson’s assertion that the pursuit of Happiness is an unalienable Right as a kind of denial of the rightful place of sadness in human experience-that in pursuing happiness we are simultaneously fleeing sadness." -Jonathon Delacour