yugen

bilby Is is pronounced like yudgeon? Feb 15, 2009

edansmommy My first (and only) encounter with this word was in Alan Watts' The Book on the Taboo against Knowing Who you Are, where, in a footnote on the word yugen, he offers this quote from poet Zeami Motokiyo:

"To watch the sun sink behind a flower clad hill. To wander on in a huge forest without thought of return. To stand upon the shore and gaze after a boat that disappears behind distant islands. To contemplate the flight of wild geese seen and lost among the clouds. And, subtle shadows of bamboo on bamboo." All these are yugen....


Feb 14, 2009

gerbert Japanese aesthetic vocabulary. Originally "profound or mysterious" but now mainly "intuitively sensed" and lying "beyond" art, related to "eternal loneliness".

Can anybody confirm this? I thought for the longest time that yugen meant a heightened spiritual awareness. For instance like during a deep meditation. Oct 30, 2008