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.