Sunny
It’s cold. When it’s cold and I’m not feeling well, I think about all the unpleasant things.
To be honest, for a long time, I have not really liked the works of Mitsuo Aida (title omitted hereafter).
My first encounter with him was when one of my co-workers took the liberty of changing the calendar at the office where I used to work to the Mitsu Aida calendar. When she finished putting it up on the wall, she was pleased with herself, saying, “It’s good, it’s good.
Incidentally, she seemed to be quite a Mitsu Aida follower and always had a key chain with “Because I am human” on it hanging in her bag, not to mention a desk calendar.
I first thought, “What? At the same time, I couldn’t help but see Mitsuo Aida’s poem every day.
Happiness is always determined by oneself,” “I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it, which is it? The dimensions of others and the dimensions of myself are different, aren’t they?
However, I was a very pompous person at the time, and to tell the truth, I did not accept them. I secretly thought, “I understand it, but it’s just a lesson on how to get along in life,” rather than a poem. As the month changed, I was horrified each time I saw a new word.
Naturally, I couldn’t say such things to my colleague, a passionate believer, but rather, I would say, “It’s a good word,” or “It gives me the courage to live,” or some other sycophantic remark. That colleague always nodded at me with a big smile.
However, several decades have passed since then, and the Mitsuo Aida boom has passed (for a while, Mitsuo Aida’s words were posted in the toilets of every izakaya and Japanese-style pub I went to, as if by design).
When I read a book about Mitsuo Aida’s life, I thought to myself, “I see. I realized that Mitsuo Aida always said that he was a monk, not a calligrapher. Well, that suddenly became clear to me. He was speaking as a Zen-trained priest.
He was not trying to lecture anyone or give life lessons, but to express the spirit of Zen in easy-to-understand words. Once I realized this, the words I had heard so far began to take on a completely different meaning.
Mitsuo Aida is a man of great depth.
Suddenly I understood that he probably thought about it a lot and came up with those words. It is no wonder that he is different from the illustrated quotes sellers you often see on street corners. After all, there was a reason for the sale.
In a panic, I rifled through my unpublished notes and past works. Then I discovered that many of the words that were not major hits were quite good.
There were words that seemed gentle at first glance, but were quite harsh. The words of wisdom, which seemed to be a kind of pep talk, were just the tip of the iceberg, but beneath the surface was a deep and dark ocean of words, intertwined with poetic intuition and the spirit of Zen.
Mitsuo Aida did not come into the world until he was over 60 years old. It was only through hard work that he was able to “dare” to speak those words like the top of water.
I feel that he was more conscious of trying to help ordinary people who are lost in this world as a monk (居士) than as a calligrapher.
This experience made me keenly aware that one should not just look at trends on the surface.
Mitsuo Aida, I am sorry for hating you for so long. I like you a little more now.
See you later.
