ABSTRACT
Yu¯gen -幽玄. This Japanese concept stands for a unique sense of mystery. According to
Yuasa (1993), it means profound or suggestive mystery. Literally, it signifies ‘dim’, ‘deep’,
esthetic or ‘mysterious’ (Woolley 2012). It is fittingly imbued with an aesthetic sensibil-
ity. The mysterious is also is related to mysticism, riddles, and a philosophical disposi-
tion. In fact, Huizinga (1955) finds the birth of philosophy in the riddles of the ancient
Indian Vedic texts. Appreciating yu¯gen requires an active role on the part of both per-
former and observer (should there be one), as the observations on ‘attendance’ below
explain. The moon is also rich in connotations. It plays a key role in Buddhist writings
and kenjutsu manuals, as seen in the previous essay. The mystery under a midnight
moon is the yin (陰) to the yang’s (陽) intellectual clarity of the high noon sun. Yet,
appreciating the mystery means dwelling deeply in it, not leaving it untouched. Only
then do we develop the kind of gnostic insight that allows us to feel our way to a
perspective where nothingness and everything, spontaneity and deliberation, emotion
and reason, means and ends, is and ought, and the subpersonal and the reflective are
unified in contradictorily Nishidan tension. The catalyst is an imaginative education.
Through it, the mysteries of mushin as a skillful striving are both unraveled and
reconnected through a joyful pedagogical lens where a holistic enactivism is built into
the rich framework of practices and communities. In the end, the remaining challenge
is how to articulate the dark and deep mystery of the living experience such that we
may gain insight without erroneously believing that we have disclosed its deepest
secrets.