"Over 4,500 years of Japanese history, Buddhism has encouraged the acceptance of sadness and discouraged the pursuit of happiness -- a fundamental distinction between Western and Eastern attitudes. The first of Buddhism's four central precepts is: suffering exists. Because sickness and death are inevitable, resisting them brings more misery, not less. "Nature shows us that life is sadness, that everything dies or ends," Hayao Kawai, a clinical psychologist who is now Japan's commissioner of cultural affairs, said. "Our mythology repeats that; we do not have stories where anyone lives happily ever after." Happiness is nearly always fleeting in Japanese art and literature. That bittersweet aesthetic, known as aware, prizes melancholy as a sign of sensitivity. Melancholia, sensitivity, fragility -- these are not negative things in a Japanese context."
It's interesting to see how religion shapes the thoughts of a group of people. Until recently, I strongly believed that religion was on the decline but recently I've come to realize that religion is more pervasive than I previously thought. It influences our art, literature, music, and politics in ways that we oftentimes don't even realize.
So what do you guys think? Do you think that melancholy should be prized? I used to think that there was a sort of self-reflective wisdom in melancholy, that couldn't be found anywhere else, but recently I've come to think that the best wisdom comes from a soul filled with happiness and inner peace!
You can read the rest of the article here - http://nytimes.com/2004/08/22/magazine/did-antidepressants-depress-japan.html
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