Yūgen - The Art of Seeing Life through New Eyes

Wherever you are, at whatever time of day you find yourself reading these lines, I want to ask you to pause... to take a breath...

If the external commotion embraces you too tightly, preventing you from approaching this reading with calm and the possibility of lingering on words, of internalizing phrases, do not worry. Return when you feel you can dedicate a few minutes just for yourself, to explore.

If the moment allows, if you feel the call to slow down the day's inertia, I invite you to join me on a tranquil journey through words. Without haste, with a calm spirit. Allow your shoulders to drop, releasing tension you might not even have known you carried. Close your eyes, or fix your gaze on a nearby point, seeking nothing, without judgment.

Take a deep, gentle inhale, filling your lungs with air. Exhale slowly, letting go. Repeat it three times, feeling the steady rhythm of your heart.

Bring your attention to your fingertips, to the brush of your index finger against your thumb. Feel on your skin what surrounds you, the warmth, the breeze, the stillness. Connect with your body's voice, with your presence.

Direct your ear towards the farthest sound, then the nearest. Don't seek to understand, just perceive the subtle melody that surrounds you.

From this stillness, where body and mind meet, where words resonate in the sensory, let us begin an inner journey. A journey to that beach that left an indelible mark on the cartography of your memory. Take your time and connect with that place. It's just you.

Before you, the sea breathes with a deep, ancient whisper. Its waves, a constant echo evoking our origins. The sun, with a paused dignity, bows towards the distant horizon line before yielding its kingdom to the moon. It covers with its golden veil a canvas formed by the sky, the clouds, the mirror of salty water, the sand that holds a thousand stories, the trees guarding the coast, the rocks sculpted by time... everything merges into a gradient of orange and ochre, while shadows, long and dancing, begin to awaken. They give volume to what was once flat. They adorn with mystery what lacked contrast. They reveal contours where before there was only light.

Nature, in its silent wisdom, needs no explanations, not even words; it simply envelops you in the warmth of its embrace. The fresh twilight breeze caresses your face, a light touch of that ephemeral moment. The air, imbued with the salty aroma, stimulates your sense of smell and your palate, a marine note that is both memory and present. Gulls, silhouettes navigating the vastness, cross the now ignited clouds. Their peculiar song intertwines with the relaxed murmur of the waves, a symphony disordered yet in perfect balance. As your senses surrender to this melody of stimuli, your attention is captured by the horizon, that diffuse boundary that awakens an innate curiosity, a reverent awe, a silent admiration.
Are you there? Do you allow these echoes to resonate within you? I ask you to invite both your inner self and your five senses to inhabit this moment. Transcend simple superficial memory and connect with the sensory essence of that recollection. Let go of haste, the to-do list, the worries of tomorrow and yesterday. Reconnect with those sensations, with that feeling that arises. Take all the time you need. Feel it.
If I were to ask you now to describe what you have just felt, would you be able to find the exact, precise words that fully encompass it?

In ancient Japan, in the soul of its aesthetics and poetry, there exists a word for that profound feeling, difficult to express, when reality reveals itself to us in its purest form, and yet, with a subtle hidden side.

That word is Yūgen (幽玄). It does not seek to describe, but to show the way. It attempts to capture that deep, subtle, and mysterious beauty associated with the implicit, with what is not seen at first glance. It is the shadow in the moonlight, the trace left by a bird's flight, that fleeting glimpse of consciousness arising from calm contemplation. In our European culture, too, we find a similar sensibility. The Greek philosopher Plotinus, for example, described beauty as not merely an external quality of things, but as an inner radiance that illuminates them. Something that only the eyes of the soul can recognize when our senses are finely tuned to receive it. It is in that contemplation, in that introspection detached from the din of routine, where that beauty unveils itself.

If you reflect from the calm I hope you have found, I am sure you can connect with that feeling. A feeling for which it is difficult to find the exact words, but which is simultaneously recognizable almost innately. It is not overwhelming emotion, but the placidity that precedes and accompanies the admiration of something vast.

Perhaps for you it wasn't a marine landscape that captivated your senses. Perhaps it was the immensity of a forest and its unique symphony of countless sounds, as if marking the steps of a discreet dance of branches and leaves surrendered to the wind. Or perhaps it was the imposing presence of a rock giant, its snow-covered summit contrasting with the rough skin of its base. Its silent and magnetic stillness accompanied only by the fresh mountain breeze and the uninterrupted flow of water seeking its course.

These places share a special ability to generate awe and an almost primordial attraction within us. Something easy to understand if we bear in mind the connection that binds us to the earth and its cycles, a connection that the rush of the modern world sometimes weakens. Yūgen invites us to reclaim it.

For beyond its origin in millennial Buddhism, Yūgen can be found in every moment of our lives. That vast and profound awe, that subtle beauty that reason cannot grasp and that fades when we try to verbalize it, pulses around us if we learn to see things with new eyes, through the lens of attention and an open heart
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Have you ever, faced with something as common as a city fountain, instead of just passing by, paused to contemplate the singular journey of water droplets splashing in the air? Have you observed the constantly changing forms of its jets, or listened to the vibrant sound of water hitting the stone surface? Have you gotten close enough to feel the variation in air temperature, that freshness emerging from constant movement?

Or faced with a tree of great beauty and antiquity, have you stopped to feel everything around it? Have you caressed its rough bark, thought about the years it has taken to reach the majesty it shares with you today, in this very moment? Have you watched its leaves surrender to the wind, each one dancing its own unrepeatable choreography?

Or a simple flame. Perhaps now, wherever you are, you can evoke its image. It barely illuminates the room you are in, casting shadows that dance with a low, warm light. In that stillness, the air seems to hold an echo. An almost imperceptible yet firm trace of the saline breeze that caressed your face on the shore of that beach. If I were to ask you now to describe where you would find Yūgen in that room illuminated by the faint flame, what would you tell me? It's not about its brilliance, but about how its light finds words in the gloom, how the beauty of the subtle finds its verses.

If you have managed to follow me this far, if you have allowed your inner self to connect with these images and sensations, I hope you are experiencing a comforting calm. And beyond that, perhaps, a special gratitude for life itself, for the simple yet complex fact of being human.

Yūgen is present in everything around us, whenever we are willing to stop, to pause, to feel with every fiber of our being and to reconnect with the essence. It is an active decision, an act of will within reach of all of us. Therefore, I want to invite you not only to understand Yūgen, but to live it.

May this vision open the door to a path where every moment is an opportunity to rediscover hidden beauty. A path towards a more fulfilling, more present, more human life.