Anyway. It is a beautiful book. Flicking through it again I found lots of little underlines and scrawls in the margins from my last reading. (Yes, I am one of THOSE people that likes to have a written dialogue with my books)
For example:
"If you have time, a lot of things are enjoyable. Making this kind of wood block, or collecting the wood for the fire, or even cleaning things - it's all enjoyable and satisfying if you give yourself time." Osamu Nakamura, (p70)
"Sometimes just to touch the ground is enough for me, even if not a single thing grows from what I plant. Often I'll go outside and just place my hands on the soil, even if there's no work to do on it. When I am filled with worries, I do that and I can feel the energy of the mountain and of the trees"Wakako Oe, p201
"It is important to me to be someone who has time...There's a term we have in Japanese, furyu: the characters are "wind" and "flow". Someone with furyu has time to write haiku, or can appreciate flowers, and they have space in their emotions to look at the moon or the stars. They're not too busy working or making money. Those people who don't have furyu are not full people." Gufu Watanabe, p245
"...the large external universe and the universe inside each person are not separate: they are the same. Thus dreams that jumans see are actually also the dreams of the universe. I don't feel that an individual human's origins and destiny are different from that of the universe as a whole." Masanori Oe, p285.
Its good instantly calming and centering and connecting-you-back-into-the-good-stuff stuff. May your lives be full of furyu.
4 comments:
Sounds like a wonderful book to look through!
One of MY favorite books too! I still read it with great pleasure. : - >
wow. A visit from published royalty! Andy, congratulations on a beautiful book. It is a joy.
Love.
It.
x
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