19 July 2021 – Grace & Melancholy

Melancholy is the Happiness of Being Sad

“Traveling into the human heart . . . is a good recipe for melancholy,” Ann Tashi Slater tells us in her article, “Japan and the Happiness of Melancholy”.

Impermanence. Transiency. Change. We all know these are conditions of life. We live with them constantly. We sincerely, sometimes madly, hope that the desirable in our lives will stay, and just as fervently, that we can avoid the unfortunate. We can’t. They won’t. But we mostly resist the reality of the way the world works. Many desperately hang on to other beliefs. The rewards after death. Reincarnations into other beings and always, always, the escapes into addictions, work, and overload of chosen and involuntary activities. All this wears on us and typically causes varying levels of sadness, usually hidden behind anger, despair, and hopelessness.

The culture of Japan has a way of coping with this unhappy way of living. Honor and lament melancholy; find the bittersweet in sadness. Cherish the pain and balance sadness with happiness. Sounds strange and impossible. For example, when a dear one dies, feel the mourning, but also the grace of the experience and memories of “the good times.” 

Slater says that melancholy in Japan is even “celebrated and given equal space: a kind of reasonable acceptance of “what is.” If you want to know more about this Japanese attitude toward melancholy, be sure to catch Slater’s essay.

Here is my attempt to capture the essence of the opening epigram by Hugo. Note that the alternating verses go back and forth between happy experiences and sad ones, the prime ingredients of melancholy.

Grace & Melancholy

Melancholy is the happiness of being sad. 

Victor Hugo

I didn’t change

I amended

I couldn’t remember a time when I wasn’t sad

not about anything in particular

just the whole catastrophe of getting on

This is how everything should be

with gratitude for impermanence

like an unrippled winter coy pond

I didn’t grow up

A child stared from my mirror

later I saw my reflection

a poor, tattered, used-up thing

The children caught fireflies

six white moths at the window

I laid atop the quilt

the old bush warbler concluded

I wasn’t cured

Nobody was ever cured

River frog floated in the rain barrel

Swirls of tadpoles in the water

Some of us went out to the summer meadow

our thin clothes dripped acute raindrops

summer moon emerging from cloud peaks

That twilight, different from others

everyone celebrated

Their faces exactly the same faces

their movements slow and labored

They ate rare foods and drank fine wine

and no gem of joy creased one brow

Who started the occasion never discovered

Who wanted it even more obscure

Most everyone turned out shuffling feet

chins bobbed near their chests

Nothing new except four bluebells nodding 

Split wood stacked against the winter coming

For a long time, I thought it better

that everyone die especially me

After all, nothing lasted

Arrivals and departures

Being present means trapped 

between was and will be

Impermanence 

Gentle Fragility

Beyond broken

death before birth

crackle of brittle leaves 

spiraling but never arriving

Existence futile broken     

no door to enter

thrashed at the gate 

wind chimes hung still and tarnished

chestnuts expanded

plums ripened                             

song of longing absent

Akita laid head between paws

This is as it should be

The magic gone over the rampart

riding fast over the hills

down the deep road toward the narrow East 

A rib-worn horse tethered to a leaning post   

Puffed brown sparrows

Black-wrapped crows

Frost laced windows

Riddles held their secrets

Late winter withered pampas grass

Ice pellets whispered against the door

Fallen leaves buried under grasses

Reminders of afterglows

a forgotten conversation

dust whisked into memory

Background

This background is going to seem obscure, and it should be. Recently I was doing research on the Shingon sect of Buddhism for a project I’m working on. (Shingon is one of two esoteric (secret) Buddhist sects in Japan, the other being Tendai.) As I said earlier, one site presented a link to an article, “Japan and the Happiness of Melancholy” by Ann Tashi Slater , HuffPost, 31 October 2016. The juxtaposition of “happiness” with “melancholy,” may seem incongruous on the surface. However, anyone who has studied Japanese culture and literature knows that this paradox runs through the arts, and in particular, through poetry. 

I have studied Japanese martial arts and culture for over 20 years. I’m also writing a book with my Japanese teacher who is a 7th Dan martial artist (Aikido), a Shingon priest, and keishi (lineage holder) for his family’s samurai clan. My contact with persons and things Japanese bears out the way of life and attitude described in my poem.

Exploration 1: Do you think it’s possible to combine sadness with happiness? If so, how?

Exploration 2: What is the “grace” in sadness?

Exploration 3: Do you think you could adapt to melancholy in the way the poem presents it.