A little later, walking through the temple garden, Matthew suddenly looked up, bewildered. “Is this supposed to be tranquil, or is it meaningful?”
“Well,” I said, accustomed to these abrupt gunshots of sincerity, “I think the two are meant to be the same. The only meaning is the quiet you find within.”
“Oh yes, yes, of course,” he said, correcting himself quickly. “No either/or in Zen.”
"ONE OF THE MOST famous of all Zen stories, sometimes ascribed to Hakuin, tells of the lovely young girl, unmarried though pregnant, who is asked by an angry community to identify the father of her child. Spitefully, she points her finger at an old Zen monk long renowned for his purity. When confronted with the charge, the old monk simply replies, “Is that so?” and accepts responsibility for the child.
Many years pass, and the old monk diligently raises the child as if it were his own. His name is discredited now, his person derided. Then, abruptly, the girl confesses to her parents that she’d lied before — the monk had had nothing to do with her. Mortified, the family rushes to the monk to make amends, and tell him of the terrible error. In response, the monk simply replies, “Is that so?”"
"and again, as she sang, her eyes filled with tears. Monoganashii, she explained, the beauty of what’s fleeting."
Pico Iyer (1991). The Lady And The Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto. Nova Iorque: Knopf.
物悲しい; ものがなしい; monoganashii - sad; melancholy.
い - i (Part of the Hiragana Alphabet)
し - shi (Part of the Hiragana Alphabet)
悲 - jail cell, grieve, sad, deplore, regret
物 - thing, object, matter)
