Essays in Idleness: and Hojoki (Penguin Classics)

the aesthetics of deep responsiveness to the world typified in literary writing.

The tonseisha’s niche between the mundane and monastic worlds produced not only freedom but, frequently, a difficult tussle between ways of being that were at bottom hard to reconcile.

the Buddhist teaching on the impermanence of the phenomenal world pointed directly to the necessity for non-attachment, yet aware seemed often to be an end in itself, a way of binding one to this world through the moving experience of sighing over its passing beauty and delight.

An owner and his home vie in their impermanence, as the vanishing dew upon the morning glory.

I had never had wife and children, so there were no close ties that were difficult to break. I had no rank and salary to forgo. What was there to hold me to the world? I made my bed among the clouds of Ōhara’s mountains,35 and there I passed five fruitless years.

Wealth brings great anxiety, while with poverty come fierce resentments. Dependence on others puts you in their power, while care for others will snare you in the worldly attachments of affection. Follow the social rules, and they hem you in; fail to do so, and you are thought as good as crazy. Where can one be, what can one do, to find a little sa

My skill is poor, but then I do not aim to please the ears of others. I play alone, I sing alone, simply for my own fulfilment.

It is a most wonderful comfort to sit alone beneath a lamp, book spread before you,27 and commune with someone from the past whom you have never met.

What a glorious luxury it is to taste life to the full for even a single year. If you constantly regret life’s passing, even a thousand long years will seem but the dream of a night.