間の問い

What is the nature of the question that cannot be answered? Not the unanswerable — for that is merely a question whose time has not arrived — but the question that dissolves on contact with the mind, like morning frost on a bronze bell.

Kaguya-hime, returned to the Moon, left behind only the robe of feathers and the elixir of life. The Emperor, overwhelmed by grief, ordered the elixir burned on the summit of Fuji-yama — the mountain closest to the moon. The smoke still rises. The question remains: what was gained by returning? What was lost by arriving?

The bar is not a place. It is a pause. It is the moment between the question and the breath that precedes the answer. Come sit in the interval. The bamboo knows no hurry.