mono no aware

is 'the pathos of things,', their sorrow and their tears, because life is in truth not as we would rather wish it to be. It is a sense of disappointment that can lead to sentimentality and nostalgia (possessing their own grace in the otherwise vulgar rush and armored transactions of daily life). Or it can lead to a sense of irony and paradox (a brand of stoicism that endures in the face of all odds and the certitude of death.).

On one level, the common on, mono no aware is accurately, I believe, translated as 'the pathos of things,' their sorrow and their tears, because life is in truth not as we would rather wish it to be. This sense of disappointment can lead to sentimentality and nostalgia, both of which possess their own grace in the otherwise vulgar rush and armored transactions of daily life. Or it can lead to a sense of irony and paradox, a brand of stoicism that endures in the face of all odds and the certitude of death. As ironic stoicism and graceful nostalgia, mono no aware has permeated the Japanese character until modern times, although it is not clear, given the psychological dislocations of the Pacific War and Japan's consequent singleminded transformation into a first-class economic power, that this particular character has survived the twentieth century. Mono no aware has its circumstantial origins in the historical experience of failure and defeat, which is why although individual American minds might understand it, it is or has been foreign to the construction of the American character as transmitted in history books and popular culture. Detached from the wholly mundane, however, and viewed from an enlightened or transpersonal perspective, mono no aware is the sense of wonder, mystery, and love that I have earlier discussed as yugen, and it is this sense that poetry ideally evokes, in the medieval view of it.

Esperanza U. Ramirez ChristensenThinkers

Esperanza U. Ramirez Christensen