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Step 7 of 7~8 min read
Reflection: What Moves You and What You Know
Reflect on the relationship between feeling and understanding in your own experience.
Prompts to consider
- Norinaga says to truly understand The Tale of Genji is to be moved by it, that deep emotional response is itself a form of knowing. Think of a work of art, music, or literature that has moved you most deeply. Did it teach you something? Can you articulate what, or does the attempt to articulate it already diminish what you know?
- Mono no aware is the pathos of beauty in its transience, you feel the beauty and the passing simultaneously. Think of something in your life, a relationship, a season, a period, that you hold in this double awareness. Does Norinaga's concept illuminate that experience, or does it miss something specific about it?
- Norinaga contrasts the 'true heart' (magokoro) with the 'artificially clever heart' that substitutes rational categories for genuine feeling. Can you identify a domain of your own life where you reach for concepts and principles when what is actually called for is simpler presence and feeling? What would it cost to stop doing that?
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