Truth, Goodness, Beauty

真善美 (shinzenbi): truth, goodness, beauty, the three ends of the mind set side by side, the true that knowing seeks, the good that doing seeks, and the beautiful that beholding seeks. 真 (shin) is the true and the real; 善 (zen) is the good; 美 (bi) is the beautiful. Each character is old, and the three were joined in modern Japanese to carry the philosophers' triad in Japanese dress; the dictionaries define the word as the highest state in which the ideal is realized, one value seen three ways. It became a commonplace, a poet's foil, a school motto over the gate. In kyūdō it is the discipline's declared aim: a schoolbook of the archers says the paper target is truth, goodness and beauty given form and the archer must be the same, and the All Nippon Kyudo Federation names the three as kyūdō's high standard, glossing 真 as the bow that does not lie, 善 as the composed mind, and 美 as the crystal the two form when they become one. Truth, Goodness, Beauty is the English that the scholars and the archers both use for it, and it is exact. 真善美 is composed of 真 (read shin) meaning "truth", 善 (read zen) meaning "goodness", and 美 (read bi) meaning "beauty".