Director, Environmental Studies
Professor of English

YUGEN AND SAIGYO

Yūgen

An important aesthetic ideal in classical Japanese literature, particularly in the Shinkokinshu Period and in medieval Japanese aesthetics.

It is often translated as “subtlety and depth” (or “mystery and depth”).

Yugen is subtle in various ways
>> expression: suggestive, rather than descriptive, of feeling and scene
>> beauty: subdued, serene beauty, rather than the gorgeous.
>> emotion: tranquil sorrow. Although quiet, this emotion runs deeper than normal personal emotions.

Its “depth” is also informed by Buddhist nondualistic notions of reality and consciousness.
1. reality:
>> impermanence, which leads to quiet sorrow
>> reality involves distinct things but they lack “thingness” because they interexist in a single interwoven web. This gives a feeling of boundlessness, which >> can involve a sense of quiet but sad yearning for what cannot be comprehended.
>> ultimate sacred reality is nothing other than this world: form is emptiness and emptiness is form
>> radical equality of all things. Thus a bare hut in autumn evening is as beautiful as a cherry tree in full bloom.
>> no distinction between essence or depth and surface: suchness of things as they are is infinitely “deep” because of their infinite interrelatedness

2. consciousness & meditative technique: shikan meditation’s fusion of subject and object

Language is seen as limited and distorting, but it has the potential to suggest Buddhist experience and evoke a scene. Similarly, poetic language is not centered on symbols of one thing standing for another. Language needs to evoke the Buddhist suchness of things in themselves.

Thus yūgen refers to both a state of mind (tranquility, sorrow, clear vision of the suchness of things) and reality (impermanent, boundless, radically interwoven, and ultimately sacred). Indeed, it implies a nondualistic fusion of the two. One image of it is a simple hut by a bay in autumn dusk.

Saigyō

12th century Buddhist monk who was one of the primary court poets in the Shinkokinshu era. He bridged the Heian and medieval periods of Japanese literature, and could be considered one of the last great Heian poets and the first great medieval poet.

He was famous for nature poetry, with cherry blossoms and the moon as his two most common images.

Within the context of nature poems, he also wrote about Buddhist experience. Scholars have debated whether his poems express spiritual realization or religious failure. Some have said his poems reflect attachment to nature and thus his failure as a Buddhist. LaFleur rejects Ienaga’s claim that Saigyō did not succeed in Buddhist enlightenment but was instead enlightened by nature. According to LaFleur, for Saigyō nature was in fact the Buddha, and his religious experience in nature was thoroughly Buddhist.

LaFleur also argues that Saigyō participated in the history of the “enlightenment of plants and trees” debate within Buddhism. For him nature was ultimate reality, and it served as a companion and teacher.

Some of these aspects can be seen in Saigyō’s famous kokoro naki poem. It states that even someone “without passions or heart” (a term that also could indicate a monk) would feel sorrow (aware) in a scene of a bird flying into the autumn dusk. While this could be read as an indication of his failure to remain detached, which results in grief which a monk should not feel, it is best to read it as an indication that there is a type of sorrowful feeling-state that one feels even when one has achieved Buddhist realization. It is a tranquil sorrow at the realization of the beauty and value but impermanence of things.

He also was drawn to a special kind of loneliness, sabi, which was not an personal emotion one tries to avoid but a tranquil sorrow one tries to cultivate. This term gets further developed by the haiku poet Basho.

Nondualism

Nondualism is not a specific idea or doctrine in Buddhism as much as a basic orientation or perspective, particularly in Mahayana Buddhism. That is, Buddhists tend to approach an issue or idea in a nondualistic way. There are various main areas where we can see this nondualistic approach.

1. Reality: Rather than dividing things from each other, Buddhists see things as radically interrelated. It is not that there are no distinctions (a view that is called monism), because things are distinct. Yet they interexist in a seamless web of interdependence.

2. Subject and object: Our consciousness is rooted in the assumption that our self is separate from the world-out-there, and that subjective consciouness is separate from objective reality. Buddhist experience is one in which the subject and object merge. Our language can't really capture such an experience, but we could say there is only "reality-consciousness."

3. Sacred and profane, ultimate reality and the phenomenal world. These distinctions are a delusion. There is only this reality, and it is ultimate reality. The Heart Sutra states it this way: "form (the phenomenal world) is emptiness (ultimate reality) and emptiness is form."

4. Englightenment and ignorance. Mahayana Buddhism in particular has questioned this very basic distinction in Buddhism. The main nondualistic response is the doctrine of original enlightenment: we are all Buddhas, we just don't realize it; this moment and every moment is full and perfect, but our delusions make us think there are things to desire and fear.

5. Practice and realization, means and end. If we are all orginally enlightened, what happens to practice? How can we practice meditation in order to become enlightened if we are already enlightened? The famous Japanese Zen monk Dogen put it this way: practice (e.g., meditation) is not a means of achieving a goal, it is a way of manifesting one's essential enlightenment. As a doctor "practices" medicine, the Zen monk practices (puts into practice) enlightenment.

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