Buddhists From Japan

"Dôkyô Etan (1642–1721) Japanese Rinzai monk from the Myôshin-ji lineage, best known as the master of Hakuin Ekaku (1768–1768), the great Rinzai sect reformer. Etan was the son of a samurai and his concubine. He was raised in the household of Lord Matsudaira Tadatomo, where he was first introduced to Zen. On a trip to Edo in 1660, Etan became the disciple of Shidô Bu'nan (1603–1676), having already attained an experience of enlightenment. He received the master's certificate (J. inka) after only one year of practice. He then returned to his native Iiyama in Shinano, where he lived a simple life in a small hermitage called Shôju-an. From the hermitage Etan received his nickname, Shôju Rôji, “the old man of the Shôju hermitage.” None of Etan's writings were published, although some of his teachings are scattered within Hakuin's work."

"Here in the shadow of death it is hard To utter the final word. I'll only say, then, "Without saying." Nothing more, Nothing more."

"Hurrying to die, It’s difficult to find a last word. If I spoke the wordless word, I wouldn’t speak at all!"

"Realize that the taste of tea and the taste of Zen are the same and absorb the wind in the pines. Then will your mind be undefiled."

"Zen master Dairin Soto (1480-1568), founder of Nanshuji temple in Sakai, wrote [a verse] on a portrait of : Formerly, he maintained bonds to the unhindered cause of Amida Buddha's [Vow], Then changed schools and actively endeavored [in Zen]."

"The use of circle imagery became increasingly significant in formal portraits of various Zen masters, becoming standard beginning in the fifteenth century, and became known as Ensō-zo (circle portraits). In these images,the master is shown as if contained within a painted “halo”or round window frame within the larger format of the composition. One of the earliest examples is a set of portraits contained in an album depicting twenty-eight patriarchs, each one shown as a bust portrait contained within a round “frame.” The series of portraits begins with the first patriarch, Daruma (Bodhidharma), covered in a red robe..."

"A tune of non-being Filling the void: Spring sun Snow whiteness Bright clouds Clear wind."

"Dairin Soto (1480-1568), ninetieth abbot of Daitokuji temple in Kyoto and founder of Nanshuji Temple in Sakai, wrote on a portrait of . Jōō practiced Zen under Dairin and received the layman's title Ikkan ~53 in 1549, at the age of forty-eight."

"Also associated chiefly with Tofukuji was Daido Ichi'i (1292-1370), a native of Awaji Island. He came to the capital, studied under Kokan Shiren (1278-1346) and was eventually appointed to the most prestigious positions in Kyoto's monastic society: twenty- eighth abbot of Tofukuji and thirty-first of Nanzenji. Daido Ichi'i was renowned not only for his eminence in religious matters, but also for his scholarly accomplishments and literary talents as one of the leading Gozan literati of his days."

"You're a self-centered rascal, aren't you!"

"My whole life long I've sharpened my sword And now, face to face with death I unsheathe it, and lo - The blade is broken - Alas!"

"Lady Izumi Shikibu corresponds charmingly, but her behaviour is improper indeed. She writes with grace and ease and with a flashing wit. There is fragrance even in her smallest words. Her poems are attractive, but they are only improvisations which drop from her mouth spontaneously. Every one of them has some interesting point, and she is acquainted with ancient literature also, but she is not like a true artist who is filled with the genuine spirit of poetry. Yet I think even she cannot presume to pass judgment on the poems of others."

"暗きより暗き道にぞ入りぬべき遙かに照らせ山の端の月"

"Kuraki yori Kuraki michi ni zo lrinubeki Haruka ni terase Yama no ha no tsuki."

"Cited in Shūi Wakashū (c. 1005)."

"Buddhas bear the same relation to sentient beings as water does to ice. Ice, like stone or brick, cannot flow. But when it melts it flows freely in conformity with its surroundings. So long as one remains in a state of delusion he is like ice. Upon realization he becomes as exquisitely free as water. And remember, there is no ice which does not return to water. So you will understand there is no difference between ordinary beings and Buddhas except for one thing - delusion. When it is dissolved they are identical."

"Toyoda Kiichiro was the founder of the in 1937. His short career with the firm was enough to lay the foundations for its successful later growth into one of the giants of the car industry worldwide. In particular, Toyoda introduced two of the most important elements in what later became known as the Toyota Production System: just-in-time production and kaizen or continuous improvement. His influence on production and supply chain management in the years since his death has been immense; probably no other manager since Henry Ford has so revolutionised the concepts and processes of manufacturing management."

"Forbes.com readers and editors rank Sakichi Toyoda as the 13th most influential businessman of all time... Sakichi Toyoda was a weaver who, in 1924, invented a loom that would detect an error and automatically cease production, preventing the creation of defective goods. He later sold the patent on his machine to a British firm for about $150,000. That money was used to help his son found a start-up, Toyota , which would become the world’s second-biggest carmaker."

"[The Japanese auto industry should] catch up with America in three years. Otherwise the Japanese auto industry will never stand on its own."

"My father served the State by investing a weaving machine. He told me to make automobiles. It is difficult to create an automobile industry."

"The thieves may be able to follow the design plans and produce a loom. But we are modifying and improving our looms every day. They do not have the expertise gained from the failures it took to produce the original. We need not be concerned. We need only continue as always, making our improvements."

"Japan has a lot of engineers who work at desks. When it comes to implementation, though, they lose confidence and haven't got the courage of their convictions when other people criticize them. Engineers like that can't build cars. Success in this industry demands engineers who have the courage and the decisiveness to implement ideas."

"Before you say you can't do something, try it."

"All things that are in the world are linked together, one way or the other. Not a single thing comes into being without some relationship to every other thing. Scientific intellect thinks here in terms of natural laws of necessary causality; mythico-poetic imagination perceives an organic, living connection; philosophic reason contemplates an absolute One. But on a more essential level, a system of circuminsession has to be seen here, according to which, on the field of Śūnyatā, all things are in a process of becoming master and servant to one another. In this system, each thing is itself in not being itself, and is not itself in being itself. Its being is illusion in its truth and truth in its illusion. This may sound strange the first time one hears it, but in fact it enables us for the first time to conceive of a force by virtue of which all things are gathered together and brought into relationship with one another, a force which, since ancient times, has gone by the name of "nature" (physis)."

"People give names to persons and things, and then suppose that if they know the names, they know that which the names refer to."

"A crisis is taking place in the contemporary world in a variety of forms, cutting across the realms of culture, ethics, politics, and so forth. At the ground of these problems is the fact that the essence of being human has turned into a question mark for humanity itself."

"In the locus of emptiness, beyond the human standpoint, a world of "dependent origination" is opened up in which everything is related to everything else. Seen in this light, there is nothing in the world that arises from "self-power" and yet all "self-powered" workings arise from the world."

""Nothingness" is generally forced into a relationship with "being" and made to serve as its negation, leading to its conception as something that "is" nothingness because it "is not" being. This seems to be especially evident in Western thought, even in the "nihility" of nihilism. But insofar as one stops here, nothingness remains a mere concept, a nothingness only in thought. Absolute nothingness, wherein even that "is" is negated, is not possible as a nothingness that is thought but only as a nothingness that is lived. It was remarked above that behind person there is nothing at all, that is, that "nothing at all" is what stands behind person. But this assertion does not come about as a conceptual conversion, but only as an existential conversion away from the mode of being of person-centered person. Granted what we have said about the person-centered self-prehension of person as being intertwined with the very essence and realization of the personal, the negation of person-centeredness must amount to an existential self-negation of man as person. The shift of man as person from person-centered self-prehension to self-revelation as the manifestation of absolute nothingness – of which I shall speak next – requires an existential conversion, a change of heart within man himself."

"Through the sincerity cultivated by Christian morality the values and ideals established by that morality itself are revealed as fictions."

"In principle, when we distinguish being from beings, we transcend the realm of things that are. It is not that we go to some other world beyond the world we know, or enter into some different realm of beings. Such notions constitute, for Heidegger, a vulgar form of metaphysics with which true philosophy (metaphysics as science) has nothing in common. Philosophy does not go beyond beings ontically to other beings that dwell beyond or behind. It transcends beings ontologically in the direction of being."

"Ironically, it was not in his nihilistic view of Buddhism but in such ideas as amor fati and the Dionysian as the overcoming of nihilism that Nietzsche came closest to Buddhism, and especially to Mahāyāna."

"Previous ideals and values undermine themselves and collapse into nothing precisely as a result of the effort to make them consummate and exhaustive."

"From the perspective of Buddhism, Sartre’s notion of existence, according to which one must create oneself continually in order to maintain oneself within nothing, remains a standpoint of attachment to the self – indeed, the most profound form of this attachment – and as such is caught in the self-contradiction this implies."

"In the religiosity of Zen Buddhism, demythologization of the mythical and existentialization of the scientific belong to one and the same process."

"On the one hand, nihilism is a problem that transcends time and space and is rooted in the essence of human being, an existential problem in which the being of the self is revealed to the self itself as something groundless. On the other hand, it is a historical and social phenomenon, an object of the study of history. The phenomenon of nihilism shows that our historical life has lost its ground as objective spirit, that the value system which supports this life has broken down, and that the entirety of social and historical life has loosened itself from its foundations. Nihilism is a sign of the collapse of the social order externally and of spiritual decay internally - and as such signifies a time of great upheaval. Viewed in this way, one might say that it is a general phenomenon that occurs from time to time in the course of history."

"Speaking biologically, fruit in a slightly shriveled state is holding its respiration and energy consumption down to the lowest possible level. It is like a person in meditation: his metabolism, respiration, and calorie consumption reach an extremely low level. Even if he fasts, the energy within the body will be conserved. In the same way, when mandarin oranges grow wrinkled, when fruit shrivels, when vegetables wilt, they are in the state that will preserve their food value for the longest possible time."

"If 22 bushels (1,300 pounds) of rice and 22 bushels of winter grain are harvested from a quarter acre field such as one of these, then the field will support five to ten people each investing an average of less than one hour of labor per day. But if the field were turned over to pasturage, or if the grain were fed to cattle, only one person could be supported per quarter acre. Meat becomes a luxury food when its production requires land which could provide food directly for human consumption. This has been shown clearly and definitely. Each person should ponder seriously how much hardship he is causing by indulging in food so expensively produced."

"The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings."

"Eventually I decided to give my thoughts a form, to put them into practice, and so to determine whether my understanding was right or wrong."

"Within one thing lie all things, but if all things are brought together not one thing can arise...A person can analyze and investigate a butterfly as far as he likes, but he cannot make a butterfly."

"My ultimate dream is to sow seeds in the desert. To revegetate the deserts is to sow seed in people's hearts."

"Nature , or the body itself, serves as a capable guide. But this subtle guidance goes unheard by most people because of the clamor caused by desire and by the activity of the discriminating mind."

"He who thinks that macrobiotic living is merely a cure for physical ailments, however, can never rea be helped. It is not a new medicine to stop pain or suffering, but rather a teaching that goes to the source of pain and eradicates it."

"Sickness is the first warning that we have made a wrong judgement. A healthy person is never unhappy.""

"Some people think that macrobiotic philosophy is no more than the teaching of a diet - the eating of brown rice, carrots, and gomashio (sesame salt), others imagine that it is summed up in the statement, "Don't eat cake and sugar." How far from the truth!"

"Macrobiotic living is the process of changing ourselves so that we can eat anything we like without fear of becoming ill; it enables us to live a joyful life during which we can achieve anything we choose.""

""You are what you eat." Nothing else. Never. If you are nourished with cow's milk and later with herbs, you'll become someone whose whole life is good only for being exploited by others."

"Chewing transforms even toxins into nutritive substances."

"Ohsawa liked to shock people in order to move them to action. Thus, his writing can be extreme at times."

"His writing on diet was written with the French in mind. Ohsawa had observed that no matter how limited he made his dietary suggestions, the French always cheated and ate a broader range of foods. Thus, he made a dietary suggestion of brown rice, gomashio (sesame salt), and a little bancha tea only. This diet became known as diet number seven and was to be used for short times as with a fast. When this diet was brought to the United States, however, Americans were able to follow it without cheating and for long and, at times, dangerous periods of time."