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!!P38zFLDUYUh/x/40603465#40608842
6/26/2025, 9:50:18 PM
>TOYO EICHO
>東陽英朝
>Died on the twenty-fourth day of the eighth month, 1504 at the age of seventy-seven
>All four pillars of enlightenment
>Crumble at once—
>See! See!
>Moonlight wreathing coral branches—
>What does it mean?
>Now all grows as dark
>As the palace of hell in
>The grasp of Satan
>Katsu!
>Toyo wrote these words while sitting upright; he then put down his brush and died.
>The “four pillars of enlightenment” are four qualities ascribed to nirvana by Buddhist scriptures: everlastingness, contentment, truth (liberation from the illusions of self), and purity. Nirvana is described as a state beyond life and death, but while dying Toyo looks straight at death and sees in it the naked truth of absolute destruction. For a moment he considers the image of perfection and harmony (the moon lighting the corals in the water), but this vision gives way to a darker one of death. The final “Katsu!” wipes out the several images and brings the poem back to the here and now at the moment of death.
>東陽英朝
>Died on the twenty-fourth day of the eighth month, 1504 at the age of seventy-seven
>All four pillars of enlightenment
>Crumble at once—
>See! See!
>Moonlight wreathing coral branches—
>What does it mean?
>Now all grows as dark
>As the palace of hell in
>The grasp of Satan
>Katsu!
>Toyo wrote these words while sitting upright; he then put down his brush and died.
>The “four pillars of enlightenment” are four qualities ascribed to nirvana by Buddhist scriptures: everlastingness, contentment, truth (liberation from the illusions of self), and purity. Nirvana is described as a state beyond life and death, but while dying Toyo looks straight at death and sees in it the naked truth of absolute destruction. For a moment he considers the image of perfection and harmony (the moon lighting the corals in the water), but this vision gives way to a darker one of death. The final “Katsu!” wipes out the several images and brings the poem back to the here and now at the moment of death.
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