"For everything sacred has the substance of dreams and memories, and so we experience the miracle of what is separated from us by time or distance suddenly being made tangible. Dreams, memories, the sacred - they are all alike in that they are beyond our grasp. Once we are even marginally separated from what we can touch, the objected is sanctified; it acquires the beauty of the unattainable, the quality of the miraculous. Everything, really, has this quality of sacredness, but we can desecrate it at a touch. How strange man is! His touch defiles and yet he contains the source of miracles."
Yukio Mishima, Spring Snow
For the first time in years I'm re-reading Yukio Mishima's Sea of Fertility tetralogy starting with Spring Snow, from which I drew this passage. I've been a huge fan of Mishima (and a lot of Japanese literature) for decades, but this seems like an odd topic for this year's discussion of faith. Well, maybe not. I know a lot of people really dislike Mishima, but I've always found his work brilliant. In this case Mishima is discussing Buddhism, but I think the point he's making here is transcendent. As Mishima tells us, "How strange man is! His touch defiles and yet he contains the source of miracles."
Isn't God, no matter how one defines Her/Him/They/It beyond human comprehension? Isn't this sort of the point of something being described as being ineffable? And yet, we are supposed to believe that over the millennium there have been those who have, if not truly understood God, at least channeled the divine. Zarathustra, Moses, the Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad all, on some level, communicated with the divine. However, since his "touch defiles" there is the need for the appearance of new prophets (more on this later). That's the most complex part of the sentence, however, as Mishima follows it with "yet he contains the source of miracles." There's a profound difference being the mechanism through which God performs miracles and being the "source" of miracles. The classic Islamic critique of Jesus has been that while there are miracles associated with him, that doesn't mean that he was the "source" of the miracles. Even if the prophet is not the source of miracles, how do they act as conduits for the miracles without defiling them? For most Muslims the true miracle associated with Islam is the Quran itself. How could an unlettered, all to human, merchant produce a work of such majesty and complexity and beauty? Are we to believe that this is the one miracle that was never defiled by human touch?
Yukio Mishima, Spring Snow
For the first time in years I'm re-reading Yukio Mishima's Sea of Fertility tetralogy starting with Spring Snow, from which I drew this passage. I've been a huge fan of Mishima (and a lot of Japanese literature) for decades, but this seems like an odd topic for this year's discussion of faith. Well, maybe not. I know a lot of people really dislike Mishima, but I've always found his work brilliant. In this case Mishima is discussing Buddhism, but I think the point he's making here is transcendent. As Mishima tells us, "How strange man is! His touch defiles and yet he contains the source of miracles."
Isn't God, no matter how one defines Her/Him/They/It beyond human comprehension? Isn't this sort of the point of something being described as being ineffable? And yet, we are supposed to believe that over the millennium there have been those who have, if not truly understood God, at least channeled the divine. Zarathustra, Moses, the Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad all, on some level, communicated with the divine. However, since his "touch defiles" there is the need for the appearance of new prophets (more on this later). That's the most complex part of the sentence, however, as Mishima follows it with "yet he contains the source of miracles." There's a profound difference being the mechanism through which God performs miracles and being the "source" of miracles. The classic Islamic critique of Jesus has been that while there are miracles associated with him, that doesn't mean that he was the "source" of the miracles. Even if the prophet is not the source of miracles, how do they act as conduits for the miracles without defiling them? For most Muslims the true miracle associated with Islam is the Quran itself. How could an unlettered, all to human, merchant produce a work of such majesty and complexity and beauty? Are we to believe that this is the one miracle that was never defiled by human touch?
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