Tim Laman —— Snow Country. A Thousand Cranes | Photography Friend

The traditional culture of Japan, through the secular interpretation of Zen Buddhism in the Kamakura period, evolved into a concept of stillness and profundity, which emphasizes discovering something complete and pure — one might say "nothingness containing everything." In the Heian period, the tranquil stillness that was expressed with more emotional tones, centered on profundity as an embodiment of anguish, began to separate. It instead exhibited characteristics more attuned to elegance, expressing feelings of solitude with a more refined tone. Unlike the indulgence in sorrow and sympathy found in *mono no aware*, it prompts people to continually experience its unpleasurable sense of loneliness — a spiritual form of "stillness."