1705035025 So much of life is merely a farce. It is sometimes just as well to stand by and look at it and smile, perhaps better than to take part in it. Like a dreamer awakened, we see life, not with the romantic color of yesternight’s dream, but with a saner vision. We are more ready to give up the dubious, the glamorous and the unattainable, but at the same time to hold on to the few things that we know will give us happiness. We always go back to nature as an eternal source of beauty and of true and deep and lasting happiness. Deprived of progress and of national power, we yet throw open our windows and listen to cicadas or to falling autumn leaves and inhale the fragrance of chrysanthemums, and over the top there shines the autumn moon, and we are content.

1705035026

1705035027 For we are now in the autumn of our national life. There comes a time in our lives, as nations and as individuals, when we are pervaded by the spirit of early autumn, in which green is mixed with gold and sadness is mixed with joy, and hope is mixed with reminiscence. There comes a time in our lives when the innocence of spring is a memory and the exuberance of summer a song whose echoes faintly remain in the air, when as we look out on life, the problem is not how to grow but how to live truly, not how to strive and labor but how to enjoy the precious moments we have, not how to squander our energy but how to conserve it in preparation for the coming winter. A sense of having arrived somewhere, of having settled and having found out what we want. A sense of having achieved something also, precious little compared with its past exuberance, but still something, like an autumn forest shorn of its summer glory but retaining such of it as will endure.

1705035028

1705035029 I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its leaves are a little yellow, its tone mellower, its colors richer, and it is tinged a little with sorrow and a premonition of death. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor of the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and is content. From a knowledge of those limitations and its richness of experience emerges a symphony of colors, richer than all, its green speaking of life and strength, its orange speaking of golden content, and its purple of resignation and death. And the moon shines over it, and its brow seems white with reflection, but when the setting sun touches it with an evening glow, it can still laugh cheerily. An early mountain breeze brushes by and sends its shivering leaves dancing gaily to the ground, and you do not know whether the song of the falling leaves is the song of laughter or of parting tears. For it is the Song of the Spirit of Early Autumn, the spirit of calm and wisdom and maturity, which smiles at sorrow itself and praises the exhilarating, keen, cool air—the Spirit of Autumn so well expressed by Hsin Ch‘ichi:

1705035030

1705035031 “In my young days,

1705035032

1705035033 I had tasted only gladness,

1705035034

1705035035 But loved to mount the top floor,

1705035036

1705035037 But loved to mount the top floor,

1705035038

1705035039 To write a song pretending sadness.

1705035040

1705035041 “And now I’ve tasted

1705035042

1705035043 Sorrow’s flavors, bitter and sour,

1705035044

1705035045 And can’t find a word,

1705035046

1705035047 And can’t find a word,

1705035048

1705035049 But merely say, ‘What a golden autumn hour! ‘”

1705035050

1705035051 Notes

1705035052

1705035053 conviction, firm belief; being convinced.

1705035054

1705035055 past masters, people having practiced skill.

1705035056

1705035057 zest, keen enjoyment; gusto; relish.

1705035058

1705035059 mellower, made softer or more genial by experience.

1705035060

1705035061 joviality, the act of being merry, joyous, or jolly.

1705035062

1705035063 incorrigible humor, sympathetic laughter which is so strong that it is beyond correction.

1705035064

1705035065 heathen, pagan; irreligious person.

1705035066

1705035067 the life of the present, living only for the present moment; not caring about the past or the future.

1705035068

1705035069 envelop, combine in one wrapper; include.

1705035070

1705035071 extract its essence, take out from life its essential element.

1705035072

1705035073 a life hereafter, a life after this life that we are living.

1705035074

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