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Lafcadio Hearn - Kokoro
artists for centuries, is said to have been slightly changed since my advent to the country; and not a few
other mountains have in the same short time taken totally new forms. Only the general lines of the land,
the general aspects of its nature, the general character of the seasons, remain fixed. Even the very beauty
of the landscapes is largely illusive, - a beauty of shifting colors and moving mists. Only he to whom
those landscapes are familiar can know bow their mountain vapors make mockery of real changes which
have been, and ghostly predictions of other changes yet to be, in the history of the archipelago.
The gods, indeed, remain, - haunt their homes upon the hills, diffuse a soft religious awe through the
twilight of their groves, perhaps because they are without form and substance. Their shrines seldom pass
utterly into oblivion, like the dwellings of men. But every Shinto temple is necessarily rebuilt at more or
less brief intervals; and the holiest, - the shrine of Ise, - in obedience to immemorial custom, must be
demolished every twenty years, and its timbers cut into thousands of tiny charms, which are distributed
to pilgrims.
From Aryan India, through China, came Buddhism, with its vast doctrine of impermanency. The builders
of the first Buddhist temples in Japan - architects of another race - built well: witness the Chinese
structures at Kamakura that have survived so many centuries, while of the great city which once
surrounded them not a trace remains. But the psychical influence of Buddhism could in no land impel
minds to the love of material stability. The teaching that the universe is an illusion; that life is but one
momentary halt upon an infinite journey; that all attachment to persons, to places, or to things must be
fraught with sorrow; that only through suppression of every desire - even the desire of Nirvana itself -
can humanity reach the eternal peace, certainly harmonized with the older racial feeling. Though the
people never much occupied themselves with the profounder philosophy of the foreign faith, its doctrine
of impermanency must, in course of time, have profoundly influenced national character. It explained
and consoled; it imparted new capacity to bear all things bravely; it strengthened that patience which is a
trait of the race. Even in Japanese art - developed, if not actually created, under Buddhist influence - the
doctrine of impermanency has left its traces. Buddhism taught that nature was a dream, an illusion, a
phantasmagoria; but it also taught men how to seize the fleeting impressions of that dream, and how to
interpret them in relation to the highest truth. And they learned well. In the flushed splendor of the
blossom-bursts of spring, in the coming and the going of the cicada, in the dying crimson of autumn
foliage, in the ghostly beauty of snow, in the delusive motion of wave or cloud, they saw old parables of
perpetual meaning. Even their calamities - fire, flood, earthquake, pestilence - interpreted to them
unceasingly the doctrine of the eternal Vanishing.
All things which exist in Time must perish. The forests, the mountains, - all things thus exist. In
Time are born all things having desire.
The Sun and Moon, Sakra himself with all the multitude of his attendants, will all, without
exception, perish; there is not one that will endure.
In the beginning things were fixed; in the end again they separate: different combinations cause other
substance; for in nature there is no uniform and constant principle.
All component things must grow old; impermanent are all component things. Even unto a grain of
sesamum seed there is no such thing as a compound which is permanent. All are transient; all have the
inherent quality of dissolution.
All component things, without exception, are impermanent, unstable, despicable, sure to depart,
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