Another weekend has gone by - disappeared in a cloud of hiking, biking, and shopping. Now that it's over, and tomorrow is Monday, I realize too late that I didn't fully appreciate it. I lacked （もののあわれ） mono-no-aware.
Mono-no-aware can be translated as a "sensitivity to things", to appreciate every thing in its present moment, feeling the pathos of the brevity of existence. The term was applied to an artistic movement during the Tokugawa shogunate (the Edo period), but captures the essence of the Japanese outlook or culture. To appreciate what is, while it is; to savour the last vestiges of beauty in the autumn flower, the last living moment of life.
Again, mono-no-aware is very much a concept that, even before the term was coined (supposedly by Motoori Norinaga), was part of the way of the Buddha, and especially in Zen Buddhism. Appreciate the people and the time that is now, and understand that it will be gone.
We all too often live in the future, weighed down by our pasts. Where, then, is our present?
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