Eyes in their last extremity

The season, the times recall in me and so many others the sense that we must both let go into and push through the suffering in our world. Akutagawa Ryunosuke  saw and he gave up, losing his will to live.

But as the bright snow of winter covers the many differences, I catch the light in the early morning and realize that we must not turn away from life now. This worlds needs your eyes and resolve, my eyes and resolve.

Reflecting on this, I remember Kawabata's word and the words of Ryunosuke, Dogen, and Ikkyu.

Eyes in their Last Extremity : excerpt and comment regarding Nobel laureate Kawabata’s Nobel essay:

The title of Kawabata's piece comes from the suicide note of the short-story writer Akutagawa Ryunosuke (1892-1927)

Akutagawa said that he seemed to be gradually losing the animal something known as the strength to live, and continued:
"I am living in a world of morbid nerves, clear and cold as ice... I do not know when I will summon up the resolve to kill myself. But nature is for me more beautiful than it has ever been before. I have no doubt that you will laugh at the contradiction, for here I love nature even when I am contemplating suicide. But nature is beautiful because it comes to my eyes in their last extremity."

Then Kawabata recalls this poem by Ikkyu: 
"Then I ask you answer. When I do not you do not.
What is there then on your heart, O Lord Bodhidharma?"
"And what is it, the heart?
It is the sound of the pine breeze in the ink painting."

In the words of the Chinese painter Chin Nung:
"You paint the branch well, and you hear the sound of the wind."

Dogen: "Are there not these cases?
Enlightenment in the voice of the bamboo.
Radiance of heart in the peach blossom."