Preface

this ink painting of wind

blowing through pines
who hears it?

--Ikkyu Sojun, 15th century Zen master (trans. Stephen Berg)

This blog is a new experiment for me. It will serve as a record of my thoughts on Zen, Taoism, depth psychology and psychotherapy, writing, reading, martial arts training, tea, and more or less anything else I feel like writing about.

Why Wind Through Pines? It's a classic image found throughout the poetry and music of China and Japan, suggesting ethereal beauty, impermanence, and melancholy. In China and Japan, the pine tree, as an evergreen, symbolizes stoic endurance and longevity, standing nobly upright between Heaven and Earth, just as a human being should. In this way, the pine embodies traditional Confucian ideals of virtue. But in Japanese, matsu, or pine, can also mean "to wait," and as such, the pine often serves as a symbol of longing in Japanese poetry.

While the pine stands firmly rooted in one place, the wind, in contrast, blows freely. In the Japanese Buddhist godai or five element system, kaze or fu (wind) represents growth, expansion, freedom of movement, open-mindedness, and carefree wandering, as well as elusiveness and evasion.

When the mercurial wind blows through the ancient and deeply-rooted pine forest, a haunting and ephemeral melody is produced. In Chinese music, Wind Through Pines is a classic qin melody called Feng Ru Song Ge. There is also at least one famous composition for the shakuhachi, or Japanese bamboo flute, called Matsukaze (pine wind or wind in pines).

Writing, and especially blogging, is like this: it passes in and out of existence like the sound of wind through pines. Even if a text endures for some time, the sound of its words in the mind of the reader is short-lived. Maybe someone will remember it, maybe not. Books will turn to dust, web pages will be lost in the ether, and writer and reader will both eventually die. But, as it is said in Zen, "life and death are of supreme importance." The way we live our lives matters, and therefore it matters what we think, read, and write. These words are like wind through pines, here today and gone tomorrow. But if my writing serves its purpose well, perhaps its echoes will linger in the minds of a few sympathetic readers, helping to awaken a deeper awareness and appreciation for virtue, wisdom, and the fleeting moments of beauty that make life worth living.