Ten Needles

I. Certain People

I know that certain people exist in this world. Whatever they intuit, they dissect at the same time. To them, in other words, a single rose appears beautiful and yet, in the end, also appears as a specimen of the rose family in a botany textbook—even at the very moment when they are plucking it....

Those who merely intuit are happier than they are. One of the virtues called earnestness is denied to such people—the people who intuit and dissect at once. They exhaust their lives in a terrible game. Every happiness diminishes for them because they dissect it, while every pain, for the same reason, will increase. The words “Had they never been born” apply precisely to them.

II. We

We are not necessarily ourselves alone. All our ancestors breathe within us. If we do not obey the ancestors who live inside us, we are bound to fall into misery. The expression “the karma of the past” was probably devised as a metaphorical explanation of such misery. To “discover ourselves” is to discover the ancestors within us. At the same time, it is to discover the gods in heaven who rule us.

III. The Crow and the Peacock

The most dreadful fact for us is that in the end we cannot transcend ourselves. Once every optimistic blindfold is removed, a crow can never become a peacock. A single line written by a poet is always the whole of his poetry.

IV. A Bouquet in Midair

Science explains everything. The future, too, will explain everything. Yet what we value is science itself, or art itself—the bouquets caught in midair by the leaps of our spirit. Even if we do not say, “Man is nothing,” there is no extraordinary difference among us “as human beings.” Baudelaire “as a human being” fills every mental hospital. But neither *The Flowers of Evil* nor *Little Poems in Prose* has ever been created by their hands.

V. 2 + 2 = 4

It is true that 2 + 2 = 4. In reality, however, we must recognize that innumerable factors lie within the plus sign. That is to say, every problem is contained in that +.

VI. Heaven

If heaven can be made at all, it can be made only on earth. This heaven would, of course, be one where roses bloom among thorns. There, apart from those who rest content in the despair called “resignation,” great numbers of dogs are walking about. Still, becoming a dog is not such a bad thing either.

VII. Confession

Every confession may move our hearts. Yet the form of every confession is this: “Do not do what I have done. Do what I tell you.”

VIII. Still Other People

I know another kind of people as well. They do not know how to grow readily weary of anything. They seek to possess ever more of a woman, an idea, a carnation, or a piece of bread. Consequently, no one lives more luxuriously than they do. At the same time, no one lives more miserably. Before they know it, they have become slaves to all manner of things. Thus, even if they give heaven to others—or give them the road that leads to heaven—heaven can never become their own. The phrase “many desires destroy the self” may be bestowed upon them. Not even a fan of peacock feathers or a dish of suckling pig fed on human milk could ever satisfy them by itself. Inevitably, they cannot help seeking even sorrow and suffering (in addition to the natural sorrows and sufferings granted without their seeking them). There a single ditch has been dug, cutting them off from other people. They are not fools. But they are fools beyond fools. The only thing that could save them would be to turn into people other than themselves. Therefore, there can be no possible road to salvation for them.

IX. A Voice

One might suppose that amid the shouting of a multitude, the voice of a single person speaking could never be heard. In fact, however, it is always heard, so long as one flame remains within our hearts—though at times his voice may have to wait for the microphone of a later age.

X. Words

We cannot easily communicate our feelings to other people. Whether they can be communicated depends entirely on those who receive them. This was true in the ancient story of the Buddha holding up a flower and Mahakashyapa responding with a smile; even a newspaper article running to more than a hundred lines will be utterly incomprehensible when it finds no answering feeling in another person. The one who understands “his” words will always be “a second him.” Yet that “him,” too, is invariably growing like a plant. Therefore, the words he spoke in one period can be understood only by a “second him” belonging to a corresponding period. Indeed, even the man himself in one period may appear a stranger to himself in another. Fortunately, however, the “second him” believes that he has understood “his” words.

—July 1927—

[Posthumous manuscript]