A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees

It is foolish to be in thrall to fame and fortune, engaged in painful striving all your life with never a moment of peace and tranquillity. Great wealth will drive you to neglect your own well-being in pursuit of it. It is asking for harm and tempting trouble. Though you leave behind at your death a mountain of gold high enough to prop up the North Star itself, it will only cause problems for those who come after you. Nor is there any point in all those pleasures that delight the eyes of fools. Big carriages, fat horses, glittering gold and jewels – any man of sensibility would view such things as gross stupidity. Toss your gold away in the mountains; hurl your jewels into the deep. Only a complete fool is led astray by avarice. Everyone would like to leave their name unburied for posterity – but the high-born and exalted are not necessarily fine people, surely. A dull, stupid person can be born into a good house, attain high status thanks to opportunity and live in the height of luxury, while many wonderfully wise and saintly men choose to remain in lowly positions, and end their days without ever having met with good fortune. A fierce craving for high status and position is next in folly to the lust for fortune. We long to leave a name for our exceptional wisdom and sensibility – but when you really think about it, desire for a good reputation is merely revelling in the praise of others. Neither those who praise us nor those who denigrate will remain in the world for long, and others who hear their opinions will be gone in short order as well. Just who should we feel ashamed before, then? Whose is the recognition we should crave? Fame in fact attracts abuse and slander. No, there is nothing to be gained from leaving a lasting name. The lust for fame is the third folly. Let me now say a few words, however, to those who dedicate themselves to the search for knowledge and the desire for understanding. Knowledge leads to deception; talent and ability only serve to increase earthly desires. Knowledge acquired by listening to others or through study is not true knowledge. So what then should we call knowledge? Right and wrong are simply part of a single continuum. What should we call good? One who is truly wise has no knowledge or virtue, nor honour nor fame. Who then will know of him, and speak of him to others? This is not because he hides his virtue and pretends foolishness – he is beyond all distinctions such as wise and foolish, gain and loss. I have been speaking of what it is to cling to one’s delusions and seek after fame and fortune. All things of this phenomenal world are mere illusion. They are worth neither discussing nor desiring.

Yoshida Kenkō was a Buddhist hermit from early 14th-century Japan; this Penguin book is a selection from his Essays in Idleness. The book reminded me strongly of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius; it is a sort of stream of consciousness work dealing with many topics about life, nature, virtue and other things, many of which seem really close to Western philosophy from similar times. Some of his remarks, such as the comments on women are utterly outdated and absolutely not PC, and nevertheless, some observations are, methinks, more needed today than they probably ever were, such as the quote I cited above.

Invisible Man

Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?

At the end of last year, before the pandemic hit full on and some months before the racial unrest in the US and elsewhere, I got myself a copy of Maya Angelou's I know why the caged bird sings, and along with it, I took the suggestion of getting Invisible man. While the overall idea of the novel seemed interesting —namely, a black man in the US that is invisible in the sense of being absolutely ignored or not recognized by others— while having nothing to do with the old H.G. Wells literal (sci-fi) invisible man, I got it mainly just out of curiosity and perhaps unconsciously due to the cover by JP King on Penguin Essentials edition.

The book turns out to be way more than what I was expecting, and while it does, of course, largely involve a racial discussion in it, it is far richer than that, and I mainly see it now as a discourse on identity, individuality and power, together with the role that an individual can play within groups and larger societies. Back on the racial thematic, interestingly and sadly enough, it deals at some point with police brutality as well (mind you, in the 1950's). The experience of reading it reminded me the one I had with Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, where the scope of the book was way more than what it is perceived to be just superficially and it turned out to be one of my favorite novels.

A great discussion about the novel is the one by John Green and I can only urge you to read it; this is nothing else than an essential piece of modern literature.