Word 056
Look out over the Yamato Basin and you will find three mountains standing apart from one another — Unebi, Miminashi, and Amanokagu. Together, they are known as the Yamato Sanzan, celebrated in verse since the age of the Man'yoshu.
Each is different. Unebi spreads its gentle slopes to the southwest; Miminashi holds a near-perfect cone at the center of the basin; Amanokagu, the lowest of the three, lets its soft ridgeline dissolve quietly into the sky. None resembles the others. And none tries to be anything other than what it is.
The poets of the Man'yoshu wrote of these mountains again and again — not to rank them by height, but to cherish each one exactly as it stood.
Never judge others by your own standards.
By instinct, we tend to unconsciously
measure others against ourselves.
Sometimes we look down on them,
sometimes we feel inferior,
sometimes we become self-deprecating.
That makes life exhausting and hard.
Others are others, and you are you.
Simply respect others — and respect yourself.
Today, the three mountains still stand as they always have — each tracing its own outline against the sky, steady and unchanged.