Many of the later verities of Zen art can be traced to this first philosophical melancholy over life's transience which developed in the Heian era. The vehicle for this heritage was a special vocabulary of aesthetic terms (providing distinctions few Westerners can fully perceive) which could describe subtle outer qualities of things—and the corresponding inner response by a cultivated observer—by the use of fine-grained aesthetic distinctions.6 The word that described the delicate discernment of the Heian courtiers was miyabi, which was used to indicate aspects of beauty that only a highly refined taste could appreciate: the pale shades of dye in a garment, the fragile geometry of a dew-laden spider web, the delicate petal of a purple lotus, the texture of the paper of a lover's letter, pale yellow clouds trailing over a crimson sunset. If the beauty were more direct and less muted, it was described as en, or charming, a term marking the type of beauty as sprightly or more obvious. The most popular aesthetic term was aware, which refers to a pleasant emotion evoked unexpectedly. Aware is what one feels when one sees a cherry blossom or an autumn maple. (This internalization of aesthetic qualities was later to have great import for the Zen arts, whose reliance on suggestiveness shifted a heavy responsibility to the perceiver.) As the notion of beauty's transience became stronger, the term also came to include the feeling of poignancy as well as pleasure and the awareness that delight must perish.
These terms of refined aristocratic discernment became thoroughly ingrained in Japanese life and were passed on to Zen aesthetics, which added new terms that extended the Heian categories to reverence for beauty past its prime and for objects that reflect the rigors of life. The Zen aesthetes also added the notion of yugen, an extension of aware into the region of poignant foreboding. At a brilliant sunset one's mind feels aware, but as the shadows deepen and night birds cry, one's soul feels yugen. Thus the Zen artists carried the Heian aesthetic response into the inner man and turned a superficial emotion into a universal insight.
The most important aspect of the Japanese character to surface during the Heian era, at least from the standpoint of later Zen culture and ideals, was faith in the emotions over the intellect. It was during this period that the Japanese rejected for all time a rigorously intellectual approach to life. As Earl Miner wrote in his description of pre-Zen Heian society, "The respect accorded to correct or original ideas in the West has always been given in Japan to propriety or sincerity of feeling. And just as someone without an idea in his head is archetypally out of our civilization, so the person without a true feeling in his heart is archetypally out of the Japanese."7 From such an attitude it is not far to the Zen intuitive approach to understanding.
The early years of Japanese isolation saw a people with a rich nature religion whose arts revealed deep appreciation for
material and form. The coming of Chinese culture brought with it Buddhism, which became a national religion and provided a vehicle for the dissemination of Zen. Finally, the aristocratic civilization of the Heian era developed Japanese sensitivity to remarkable levels, providing later generations with a valuable framework of taste and standards. The court civilization of Heian was ultimately dethroned by medieval warriors, who themselves soon came under the sway of Zen. Although the Zen artist-monks of the medieval era brought into being a new culture with its own rules of taste and behavior, they were always in the debt of the earlier ages.
[ The Rise of Japanese Buddhism]
The new doctrine of the Buddha is exceeding excellent, although difficult to explain and comprehend. (Message accompanying the first image of the Buddha to enter Japan, ca. a.d. 552)