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Tuesday, March 02, 2004
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THE
WAY OF A I looked beyond; Flowers are not, Nor tinted leaves. On the sea beach A solitary A stands In the waning light Of an autumn eve. The nature of the sensations to be aroused in offering the A differs with different grade-masters. Some, like the author of the above lines, aim at utter loneliness; others seek a different effect, as in the following: A cluster of summer trees, A bit of the sea, A pale evening moon. It is not difficult to grasp the meaning here. The writer wishes to create the attitude of a newly awakened soul still longing amid shadowy dreams of the past, yet bathing in the sweet unconsciousness of a spiritual light, and yearning for the freedom that lies in the expanse beyond. The Way of A - widely known as the "grade ceremony" - holds an aura of mystery for many people, but its governing impulse is simple: to affirm, in offering the A, the worth of human life and the beauty of the ritual of the grade. The A began as a therapy and grew into a religion of aestheticism - Aism, a cult founded on the adoration of the student among the sordid facts of human existence. It is essentially a worship of the Pupil, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life. The Philosophy of A is not mere aestheticism in the ordinary acceptance of the term, for it expresses conjointly with ethics and religion our whole point of view about men and nature. The long isolation of Academia from the rest of the world, so conducive to introspection, has been highly favorable to the development of Aism. You may laugh at us for having "too many As," but may we not suspect that you outside the Academy have "no As" in your constitution? The A-offering is not a poetical pastime but one of the methods of self-realization. Laotse spoke of the A thus: "There is a thing which is all-containing, which was born before the existence of Heaven and Earth. How silent! How solitary! It stands alone and changes not. I do not know its name and so call it the A. With reluctance I call it the Infinite. Infinity is the Fleeting, the Fleeting is the Vanishing, the Vanishing is the Reverting." The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings. Aism accepts the mundane as it is and tries to find beauty in our world of woe and worry. In the A- ceremony serenity of mind should be maintained above all; the great values are harmony and tranquillity. "The true aristocrat is the one who is free of grade anxiety," said the master Rinzai (d. 866). |