Philosophers From Japan

"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."

"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)."

""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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"Chewing transforms even toxins into nutritive substances."

"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.""

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

""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."

"Memory is merely the process of tuning into vibrations that have been left behind in space and time."

"All of our punishment institutions, including jails, laws, church confessionals, and so forth, are systems of illusion. The order of the universe, the infinite justice of yin and yang, naturally takes care of all motion and compensation. We don't need to invent arbitrary ways to make balance with punishments."

"Although the future exists, you can avoid or alter it by changing you present condition. By the quality of our condition, we attract or are attracted to particular types of experiences. If our condition is good we do not attract or need to experience certain events that would otherwise be necessary to balance our lives. We exert control over and have responsibility for our future because it is determined by our present condition."

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

"When you are angry, it means you, yourself are unhappy. Even if you are wronged, you are still making yourself unhappy if you feel anger."

"If you are eating well and your condition is pure and clean, life itself becomes like the dreams or visions that you have when sleeping."

"See the person's eating and cooking, and then you can judge his or her spirituality."

"Whenever you wash dishes, cook, or clean, if you make no sound, this is smartness itself. A person who enters a house and makes a lot of noise is revealing a lack of spirituality; even cats and dogs do not make unnecessary sounds, and man as he naturally is does not make any either."

"If you think of harming someone, this is the same as actually doing it, in terms of the spiritual world, since the spiritual world is vibrational, which includes thinking."

"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."

"Pasteur originally conceived the idea of germs and of destroying them. Although this started as a personal thing, it has mushroomed into DDT, killing beetles and worms, resulting in food contamination, much sickness, and trouble. Although he is regarded as hero by modern medicine, Pasteur will be treated in much the same way as a warmonger when he is judged in the spiritual world."

"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!"

"Deliverance or enlightenment, therefore, consists of making every sentient being open his mental eye to this fact. It is not his ego-soul that makes him think, feel, desire, or aspire, but the Dharmakaya itself in the form of Bodhicitta or “wisdom-heart” which constitutes his ethical and religious being. Abandon the thought of egoism, and return to the universal source of love and wisdom, and we are released from the bond of evil karma, we are enlightened as to the reason of existence, we are Buddhas."

"The is now conceived by the human heart as love and wisdom, and its eternal prayer is heard to be the deliverance of the ignorant from their self-created evil karma which haunts them as an eternal curse. The process of deliverance is to awaken in the mind of the ignorant the Samyaksambodhi, or most perfect wisdom, which is the reflection of the Dharmakaya in sentient beings. This wisdom, this Bodhi, is generally found asleep in the benighted, who are in a spiritual slumber induced by the narcotic influence of evil karma, which has been and is being committed by them, because of their non-realization of the presence in themselves of the Dharmakaya."

"The Mahayana Buddhists offer a doctrine complementary to that of karma, in order to give a more satisfying and more human solution to our inmost religious needs. The doctrine of , therefore, must go side by side with that of karma; for through this harmonious co-working of the two, the true spirit of Buddhism will be more effectively realized. In this phase of development, Mahayana Buddhism must be said to be profoundly religious."

"Enlightenment is like everyday consciousness but two inches above the ground."

"We may sometimes ignore the claims of reason and rest satisfied, though usually unconsciously, with assertions which are conflicting when critically examined, but we cannot disregard by any means those of the religious sentiment which finds satisfaction only in the very fact of things. If it ever harbored some flagrant contradiction in the name of faith, it was because its ever-pressing demands had to be met with even at the expense of reason."

"This subtle spiritual system, of which all sentient beings are its parts or units, is like a vast ocean in which the eternal moonlight of Dharmakaya is reflected. Even a faint wavelet which is noticed in one part of the water is sure to spread, sooner or later, according to the resistance of the molecules, over its entire surface, and thus finally disturb the serenity of the lunar image in it."

"Likewise, at every deed, good or evil, committed by any of the sentient units of this spiritual organization, the Dharmakaya rejoices or is grieved. When it is grieved, it wills to counteract the evil with goodness; when it rejoices, it knows that so far the cause of goodness has been advanced."

"The doctrine of karma is terrible; the doctrine of Parinamana is humane: karma is the law of nature, inflexible and irreconcilable; Parinamana is the heart of a religious being, filled with tears: the one is rigidly masculine and knows no mercy whatever; the other is most tenderly feminine, always ready to weep and help: the one is justice incarnate; the other is absolute love: the one is the god of thunder and lightning, who crushes everything that dares to resist him; the other is a gentle spring shower, warm, soft, and relaxing, and helping all life to grow: we bow before the one in awe and reverence; we embrace the other as if finding again the lost mother: we must have the one to be responsible for our own thoughts, feelings, aspirations, and deeds; but we cannot let the other go, as we need love, tolerance, humaneness, and kindheartedness."

"It was not merely a sense of mission… or even scholarly drive which provided Suzuki Sensei with his real internal motivation. I believe that behind his activities resided a religious Awakening. As a youth, under the guidance of Zen Master Soyen Shaku, he had become deeply realized through penetrating into the root-source of the universe of life-and-death. His "motivation" derived from no other than this realization… This Awakening functioned within Suzuki Sensei as an overwhelming Buddhist spirit of 'vow', aimed at bringing everyone to awaken to the same Reality. His scholarly study of Buddhism was undertaken in order to further this work, it was not the other way around."

"Suzuki's works on Zen Buddhism are among the best contributions to the knowledge of living Buddhism… We cannot be sufficiently grateful to the author, first for the fact of his having brought Zen closer to Western understanding, and secondly for the manner in which he has achieved this task."

"Though perhaps less universally known than such figures as Einstein or Gandhi (who became symbols of our time) Daisetz Suzuki was no less remarkable a man than these. And though his work may not have had such resounding and public effect, he contributed no little to the spiritual and intellectual revolution of our time."

"Somebody asked Joshu, "Buddha is the enlightened one and teacher of us all. He is naturally entirely free of all the passions (klesa), is he not?" Joshu said, "No, he is the one who cherishes the greatest of all the passions." "How is that possible?" "His greatest passion is to save all beings!" Joshu answered."

"The head is conscious while the abdomen is unconscious. When the master tells his disciples to "think" with the lower part of the body, he means that the koan is to be taken down to the unconscious and not to the conscious field of consciousness."

"The bodhisattva would revolve the identity-wheel of opposites or contradictions: black and white, dark and bright, sameness and difference, the one and the many, finite and infinite, love and hate, friend and foe, etc., etc. While in the midst of clouds and dust, infinitely variegated, the bodhisattva works with his head and face all covered with mud and ashes. Where the utmost confusion of passions rages in its indescribable furies, the bodhisattva lives his life in all its vicissitudes, as the Japanese proverb has it, “seven times rolling up and down, and eight times getting up straight.” He is like the in flame, whose color grows brighter and brighter as it goes through the baptism of fire."

"The Zen master is a strange sort of man. He will not listen to you and to what you may tell him about sciences modern or ancient. He knows his business better from his experience."

"Western people often wonder why the Chinese people have not developed many more sciences and mechanical contrivances. This is strange, they say, when the Chinese are noted for their discoveries and inventions such as the magnet, gunpowder, the wheel, paper, and other things. The principal reason is that the Chinese and other Asiatic peoples love life as it is lived and do not wish to turn it into a means of accomplishing something else, which would divert the course of living to quite a different channel."

"Some primitive people were once visited by an American scientist, and when they were told that Western people think with their heads, the primitive people thought that the Americans were all crazy. They said, "We think with the abdomen." People in China and also in Japan—I do not know about India—when some difficult problems come up, often say, "Think with your abdomen," or simply, "Ask your belly." So, when any question in connection with our existence comes up, we are advised to "think" with the belly—not with any detachable part of the body. "The belly" stands for the totality of one's being, while the head, which is the latest-developed portion of the body, represents intellection."