Heidegger once criticized that the expression "I have Time" ( Ich habe Zeit) is of deteriorated nature, because "time" is not an entity we can either possess or dispossess. "Time" rather determines our existence fundamentally. We had better express it: "I am time" (Ich bin Zeit). Then the expression "Time passes away" really means "I pass away", "I die". And "I kill time", therefore, means "I kill myself",and that is "suicide". Saicho, a famed Buddhist leader of Muromachi Period, wrote: " In the morning I might cherish the lively color of my face, but in the evening of the same day, I might be lying as a pale corpse. Once the wind of transience has blown over me, my eyes shall be shut, my breath shall cease forever, and my face turns pale. Then all the wailing of my kin is in vain. … And my body shall be cremated leaving nothing but white bones….".
Without existential awareness of our transience, no "nirvana" (true peace of mind) is possible. Until my wife and I had lost our beloved daughter Nozomi three and half years ago, I had never realized more deeply the bottomless sorrow and its Kairos- nature. In Psalm 90 also, which has quite different background from our culture, we find the verses that move our hearts.

If we do not have an attitude of readiness to face the reality of our life, "time" would lose its Kairos- nature. The following poem appeals to that effect.

The sense of piety and awe somehow emerge in the midst of somewhat ineffable experiences. Furthermore we are led to grasp that it occurs quite "naturally" only after we have fervently sought for it. In that sense it could be called a "mystery". The word "mystery" derives originally from a verb "to close mouth". How can a person ever talk about anything "ineffable" unless he has had an experience for which he could not find any word?
Human beings have evolved through a stupendously long time of 3.6 billion years and reached the apex( if we may use this word）of evolution on this planet as far as we know. Through this course we have produced, out of our need for social and collective life, a characteristic ability called language, which has to be articulate and analytical according to its very structure. And thus we have developed our mind and intelligence accordingly. The word "intelligence" derives from a verb that means "to select from among many items". Therefore it can function only within certain space and time. Whether in case of deducing or inducing, we have to expand and deepen our understanding repeating our efforts of separating things and articulating words. Needless to say, "to understand" originally means "to stand under". When we stand under something, we cannot stand over it. In Japanese we say "wakaru" when we "understand". And this word derives from a verb " wakeru", which means "to spearate". And in our language "wake" means a "reason", too. Such intelligence or reason has to stand over against "objects", which originally meant "things that are thrown in front of us". Our intelligence and reasoning, therefore, have to be always in dichotomy, split between subject and object. Thus whether syllogistically or dialectically we have to continue to theorize, to reason and to argue by means of mutual criticisms and verifications. In this way we have had to build our "great" civilizations.
On the other hand, we, in the concrete situations of our life, have experienced our mental and spiritual reality when we were somehow able to grasp the whole of our life "holistically" and " instantly" without inserting any "analytical thinking". We have called such a function of ours "insight" or "intuition" since ancient times.
It is often reported that in the last moment of one's impending death one somehow grasps all the experiences of one's life along with overwhelming emotions. Many ex-Kamikaze pilots told that in the last moment they had seen all the scenes of their lives like a grand panorama. We could indeed express it as "a direct glance" or "seeing inside", thus simply "insight" or "intuition". This sort of insight and intuition are often witnessed by poets and artists. We may say that it is particularly conspicuous in music which rejects any situational explanation and explanatory title. Such experience often emerges in philosophical insights (cf. Plotinus, Spinoza, Bergson, Whitehead, et al.) and even in scientific insights (in such cases as discovery of gravity and of Benzene Ring, and also in cases of fundamental changes of paradigm, etc.).

Dr. Arne A. Wyller, a world famous Swedish astro- physicist and Nobel Prize Winner, observes how superb are the structures of eyes of insect and of higher mammals, and he is overwhelmed how mysterious the process of evolution of human beings who have reached a stage to somehow produce the so-called "Trinitarian brain", which consists of the reptilian brain, the mammalian brain and the new cortical brain. He also marvels at how intricate the planetary system is in which we can breathe and eat being supported by the incredibly superb cosmic processes. All these realities have been produced out of almost zero probability. He suggests that we must perhaps hypothesize the existence of a hitherto unknown "planetary mind field" along with already known gravity field, electro-magnetic field, stronger and weaker nuclear power fields. He suggests that the whole process of evolution has not been caused only by the blind and accidental selection based on struggle for existence and survival of the fittest, etc. The whole process might have been possible only by corresponding to the instigation of the unfathomably intelligent Planetary Mind.
The contemporary science, which has experienced a grand breakthrough after modern age, has reached a radically new stage where we have to seek a holistic and integrating view-point. Our age, being promoted by such an intuition and insight, is facing a turning point for a qualitatively new paradigm. It might be a "post modern" appeal we often hear now.
Seen from that kind of viewpoint we could perceive that each chronos conceives a moment for kairos. In such kind of life there is no place for meaninglessness and ennui, and the whole life metamorphoses into ever moving kaleidoscopic interactions. Such living together (co-existence, community, cooperation, ethos) is not "Olympic Games" played by lunatics ( as pictured by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, a famous Japanese writer ), but a lively process full of incredibly profound "ratio" and "wisdom". In such a field of life the age-old and vain nihilism and egoism shall be disclosed as a fading void and essentially non-existent vanity (das Nichtige). I recall here a scene in Dostoyevski's " Brothers of Karamazov" where Alyosha tries to persuade a person who laments that life is nothing but a solitary and meaningless darkness. He almost cries out: "Such a person resembles a man who turns his back to the Sun and keeps looking only at his own shadow and lamenting. All he has to do is turn around and look up in the direction where the Sun shines. Then he is bound to realize that the sunshine is pouring on him and the birds are singing merrily all around him". That sort of 180 degree turning is repentance in its true meaning ( The word "repent" in Greek means just that!).