Compassion

I loved that indescribable charm of the end of summer.

The gorgeous summer flowers have passed their peak, the scenery has settled, the air has become clear, and one can see far into the distance...

When I was young and sensitive, I loved that tingling, late-summer season—with its transparency that felt like electricity running through my nerves—more than anything else.

Since moving to the town where I live now at the foot of the Yatsugatake Mountains, that feeling has become even more pronounced.

The transition from late summer to autumn in this highland town is indeed linked to a human sentiment akin to melancholy, and it made me feel a sense of oneness with nature.

But look at it now...

For the past few years, the mood has changed; even here, after enduring a hot and harsh summer, the cold sets in all at once without us really being able to feel the autumn leaves.
I find myself wanting to resent the reality that I can only write about what I loved in the past tense.

If it is like this even in a place rich in nature, is it becoming rare for people living in the city to truly experience the changing of the seasons?

Japan is a country of constant natural disasters—earthquakes, typhoons, floods, and volcanic eruptions—but on the other hand, it is blessed with abundant nature and, above all, has distinct four seasons that are rare in the world.

This beautiful land has nurtured a rich aesthetic sensibility, which, incorporating the Buddhist view of impermanence, gave birth to the sense of "mono no aware," or the pathos of things, which cherishes the transient.

This was not just in literature or classical performing arts, but matured as an excellent wisdom and spirit for people to live while helping each other in daily life.

One of these is the "feeling of compassion" (sokuin no jo).

When reading the works of mathematician and author Masahiko Fujiwara, that term often appears.

The feeling of compassion (sokuin no jo) is the emotion of feeling pain in one's own heart upon seeing the suffering or difficulties of others.
This "spontaneous" aspect is the key.

Originally, it is a term that has been used since the time of Mencius in ancient China, but in Japan, it has also been passed down as a central emotion of Bushido.

Inazo Nitobe, who wrote "Bushido" and conveyed its spirit to foreign countries, describes the heart that feels the pathos of things and the "feeling of compassion" as the most important aspects of humanity and as a virtue unique to the Japanese people.

Fujiwara has been lamenting for twenty years, ever since he wrote "The Dignity of the Nation," that this has been lost in modern Japan.

On the other hand, I recently learned that phenomenological thinking is attracting attention in the fields of nursing and long-term care.

As is well known, phenomenology was proposed by Husserl and later, while changing its form, connected to Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre.
I, too, once took an interest in it as a new way of looking at the real world, but I remember getting stuck due to its depth.

It was the American nursing scholar Patricia Benner who introduced such phenomenological thinking into the world of nursing.

I cannot easily explain the details of that theory, but I am familiar with the research of people like Tetsuya Sakakibara.
It seems Benner focused primarily on the concepts of 'concern' and 'care' as expounded by Heidegger.

In human illness, there are manifestations of dysfunction at the cellular, tissue, and organ levels known as 'disease,' which are diagnosed and treated by physicians based on quantitative data obtained through medical and physiological examinations.

On the other hand, in contrast to 'disease,' the 'human experience of loss of ability and dysfunction' caused by such disease is called 'illness'.

Because 'illness' is a meaningful experience that is lived out with specific significance depending on the situation the individual is in and the concerns they hold, it cannot be resolved through medical approaches alone.
Helping with this is the true essence of 'nursing,' and for that reason, phenomenological philosophy is necessary.
That is the starting point for why Benner and others called for phenomenology in the nursing field.

If practitioners who share such sentiments were to challenge the current, overly busy nursing and caregiving environments and increase in number, it would be a source of supreme joy for me as well.

In recent years, as I have become prone to illness, I have had more involvement with the medical field.
Many people close to me also work there.
Furthermore, more people close to me have begun entering such facilities.
This is likely not just my own experience.
It is the trend of the world today.

By the way, you have probably already noticed.

If such movements are readily accepted and spread in the world of nursing and caregiving in our country, it must be because we Japanese originally possessed such qualities.

I would like to think so.

That is what is known as the 'feeling of compassion'.

While there are certainly fundamental differences between Western and Eastern ways of thinking, perhaps the things humans desire are the same in the end.

If possible, I would like the future we live in to be a gentle one.

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By the way, by the way

While I was idly turning these thoughts over in my mind, I realized something.

I have been complaining at length about the changes in the environment in recent years, but the surrounding nature, of course, does not even do that; it simply exists as it is.
That is a matter of course.

However, I am moved by that fact once again.

Things that live in nature exist just as they are, right here and now, as if that were the essence of life.

Even if things are slightly different from before, when the time comes, the sky grows high, the trees change color, and the wind blows gently.

Perhaps that is how it is.

I, too, want to learn from that, and live my remaining time just as it is, feeling it more intensely than ever before while surrounded by nature.