Hello, I’m Cheng Qing. Welcome to Relief for Life: Forty Introductions to Buddhism.

Last time dependent origination explained impermanence and no-self through the mutual dependence of all things. But what inner logic drives the world and our lives? This episode introduces karma.

Years ago I watched Rene Liu perform Later as an entire concert audience sang through tears. Beyond the emotion of collective singing, the song must have awakened many pasts and a sudden helplessness before life.

Why does life feel full of regret? Why do lovers miss each other? Even knowing a relationship’s final straw rarely tells us when its cracks began. Finally both parties can only sigh that perhaps they lacked affinity.

Why do we meet and separate? Such questions are difficult and seldom examined deeply.

In Hayao Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises, Jiro and Nahoko first meet on a train when wind lifts Jiro’s hat and Nahoko catches it. She says:‘The wind is rising.’Knowing Paul Valéry’s The Graveyard by the Sea, Jiro replies:‘We must try to live.’Thus their first encounter is complete.

Years later, wind takes Nahoko’s parasol as she sketches on a hill. Jiro happens to pass below, catches it, and returns it to her father. They meet again and gradually fall in love.

Wind recurs like a soul: it takes Jiro’s hat, moves Nahoko’s hair and clothes, and lets his aircraft fly. In earlier Miyazaki films it was background—in Nausicaä, a barrier against modern civilization’s consequences. Here invisible wind sometimes feels like the true protagonist.

The recurring image reveals the director’s deliberate meaning. To treat it only as a transition misses the secret of the title.

What is wind, and why does it rise?

Without it, the hat and parasol would not fall and the lovers would not meet. Wind is not visual decoration but an image of faith: conditions are propelled by karmic wind.

Midway through the film, Christina Rossetti’s lines appear:‘Who has seen the wind? Neither I nor you; but when the leaves hang trembling, the wind is passing through.’