"The Zen disciple sits for long hours silent and motionless, with his eyes closed. Presently he enters a state of impassivity, free from all ideas and all thoughts. He departs from the self and enters the realm of nothingness. This is not the nothingness or the emptiness of the West. It is rather the reverse, a universe of the spirit in which everything communicates freely with everything, transcending bounds, limitless. There are of course masters of Zen, and the disciple is brought toward enlightenment by exchanging questions and answers with his master, and he studies the scriptures. The disciple must, however, always be lord of his own thoughts, and must attain enlightenment through his own efforts. And the emphasis is less upon reason and argument than upon intuition, immediate feeling. Enlightenment comes not from teaching but through the eye awakened inwardly. Truth is in "the discarding of words", it lies "outside words". And so we have the extreme of "silence like thunder", in the Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra."
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SuicidesNobel laureates in LiteratureNovelists from JapanShort story writers from JapanPeople from Osaka
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Yasunari Kawabata
Yasunari Kawabata [川端 康成 Kawabata Yasunari] (14 June 1899 – 16 April 1972) was a Japanese short story writer and novelist known for his spare, lyrical, and subtly-shaded prose. In 1968 he became the first Japanese writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.
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