“I turned on the tape again and – out of nowhere- heard Van der Post talking about how the moon in Japan was always three times larger than in any other place and how the Japanese had a deep affinity with the moon, renewing themselves, after earthquakes or wars, as cyclically as the moon.
The moon, I recalled, was the one possession that even monks did not renounce. When he lost his house in a fire, the Zen poet Masahide wrote, he found occasion for new hope: he now enjoyed a better view of the rising moon.”
-Pico Iyer, The Lady and The Monk
