THE
ART OF LIVING IN THE WORLD:
AWARENESS,
RESPECT, AND TRUST
Glenn
T. Webb
Professor
Emeritus, Pepperdine University
Academic
Advisor, Bukkyo University –Los Angeles Extension
The Japanese cultural
historian Okakura Kakuzo was fond of saying that the Tao, the
ancient Chinese teaching about truth, the Way, was in fact the “the art of
living in the world.” I’ve borrowed that idea for my talk today about
Japan-American relations. I think we can say that the Tao – this “art of
living” -- consists of being aware of others, respecting them, and then
trusting them in a spirit of peace. This applies to other people, cultures,
things and ideas alike.
We all live in a world today that exposes
everyone to everyone else. Our awareness of things around us leads to
respect for them; and respecting them leads to trusting them. Or so I
believe. Without trust we’re not going to get anything done. I am
particularly interested in promoting trust between Americans and Japanese.
I was born in Oklahoma. My parents were school-teachers. A
complicated series of events turned me into a student of Japan – for over 65
years of my life.
I first learned about Japan on my own through
books. I was ten when the Pacific War ended. Later, at the University of
Chicago, I took classes in Japanese language, history, religion, and art for
eight years. From 1964 to 1966 I was a student at Kyoto University on a
Fulbright grant. Since then, until my retirement in 2004, I
have been a professor of Asian studies at three American universities,
during which I spent a good part of each year in Kyoto.
In addition to strictly academic studies, I
have been practicing some of Japan’s most revered spiritual disciplines.
My wife Carol and I both practice the Way of Tea (chado or chanoyu)
and have taught that discipline in American universities. Carol has
earned credentials in the Way of Flowers (kado or
ikebana), and I have practiced and
taught calligraphy (shodo or the
Way of the Brush.) Closest to my heart is the Zen meditation (zazen) that I learned in Kyoto Zen
temples. That discipline has enriched my life over the years and the
lives of many of my students, some of whom direct Zen centers here and in
Europe.
In 2011, to my great honor and surprise, I
received the Order of the Rising Sun from the government of Japan, a
prestigious decoration that very few non-Japanese receive. In some small
measure this talk today is a way of expressing gratitude for my
decoration.
I am sure many of you have visited other
countries and have been perplexed by some of the customs there. I’ve
heard Americans say, “I don’t understand the Japanese way of thinking!”
And I’ve heard Japanese friends say, “I just don’t understand American
behavior.” In both cases I have recommended examining the beliefs behind
the strange ways of thinking or troubling behavior. If we dismiss the
unfamiliar as strange, and consider our own customs to be superior, we may try
to force our way on others. At that point, any hope of reaching an
understanding based on awareness, respect and mutual trust is lost. Our
differences can be explained by looking at religious teachings as well at
simple human values that we all have.
Happiness
Freedom and independence are the goals of
modern people, who want to live in a society that allows them to make as much
money as they want, do what they want (within the law), and let no one get in
their way of realizing their dreams. In today’s world, communism clearly is no
longer a workable political solution, and democratic societies are flourishing,
so reaching these goals appear to be possible only when free-market capitalism
is the order of the day.
People in the United States (and maybe in most
parts of the world) believe happiness is found in their independence and freedom,
and many of them credit God for the material wealth they believe they deserve.
But is that what makes everybody happy? Maybe not. For
people in Japan happiness seems to rest firmly in their relationships with
others. This difference was pointed out recently by Prof.
Mayumi Karazawa, who is a cultural psychologist at Tokyo Women’s
University.
A few years ago a serious survey was taken to
find out how happiness is defined in different parts of the world. Each
definition was then graded on a scale of happy to sad, and the degree of
happiness in each country was reported as a means of somehow changing behaviors
in order to bring a greater measure of happiness to countries that seemed sad.
On that survey Japan turned out to be a nation of very sad people!
This was especially puzzling to the scholars who created the survey.
After all, the Japanese hold the record for living longer than most
people in the world. So why are so many Japanese unhappy?
Prof. Karazawa answered the question
by noting that the survey was culturally biased because it presumed that people
were most happy when they were free to do what they wanted. It did not
take into account that some people might regard such behavior to be selfish and
socially unacceptable. The survey placed “personal freedom” to be
happiness-producing whereas “caring for others” was not. Japanese
respondents always marked themselves happiest on the survey when
asked if looking after the welfare of others in their families or groups made
them happy. Prof. Karazawa pointed out that there are good
reasons why the Japanese define happiness differently. To conclude
that they are sad and in need of psychological help is to be unaware of some
core values in Japanese society.
Think about it.
If your happiness is defined by your dependence on your relatives and
friends, and their mutual dependence on you, then being independent and
responsibility-FREE is not going to be a high priority for you. You
may feel obliged to do well for them, so
your success is their success. Your
feeling of gratitude for what they have done for you may spur you on to efforts
that you might never make for yourself alone.
Feeling deeply your obligation to others -- known as on (恩) in Japanese -- is what gives
meaning to Japanese life.
If happiness in Japan can be mistaken by
Westerners as sadness, who knows what else can go wrong? The makers and interpreters of the survey I
referred to have clearly underestimated the Japanese reverence for
ancestors. That is because the experts
were not even aware of the true nature of that reverence.
There are many other aspects of Japanese life
that non-Japanese (myself included) have misunderstood about Japan and its
people. I will talk about some of those
things a little later, with personal examples.
But first, I want to talk about something that Japanese often get wrong
about arrogant and irresponsible Americans.
They mistakenly blame our behavior simply on our love for
independence. But why are we that
way? Are we just greedy by nature? I think that’s too simple. Just as we underestimate the history of
ancestor worship in Japan, my friends in Japan frequently underestimate the
legacy of religions in the lives of Jews, Christians and Muslims. People in Japan seem have a hard time wrapping
their minds around the Western notion of God.
Do You Believe in God?
This question puzzles my Japanese friends as
much as anything regarding life outside Japan.
There is nothing in Japanese reality that corresponds to the Creator of
the Universe, the Garden of Eden, and Adam and Eve. A monotheistic God of the universe doesn’t
exist, not in Shintoism, and not in Buddhism.
Japanese
almost without exception observe Shinto birth ceremonies and Buddhist funeral
religiously, just as their ancestors have for hundreds of years. And yet a random sampling of people on the
street in Japan (and a poll taken recently of 26 Japanese college students)
shows that none of them consider themselves to be religious at all!
Despite
that, their adherence to customs emanating from shrines and temples requires a
quick look at Shinto and Buddhist history in Japan. By taking that look it becomes easier to
understand how Japanese might struggle when Westerners ask them if they believe
in God.
As far
as I am concerned Shinto is not a religion.
Non-Japanese (me included) cannot convert to it because we have no
native ancestral records. Indeed, Shinto priests are and always have been
primarily record keepers for descendants of the immigrant groups that made up
the first prefectures of the Japanese islands.
There
are no doctrines that Shinto teaches.
There are prehistoric myths and ceremonial purifications and dances for
ancestral spirits, but nothing that you must “believe” in. Each child is taken to an ancestral shrine,
preferably by the paternal grandmother, some two months after its birth, to be
“introduced” to ancestors. And at age three, five and seven that child will
return to receive ancestral blessings.
Shinto priests who perform wedding ceremonies announce to ancestral
spirits the coming together of the two families in a marriage.
Buddhism
was chosen as the state religion in Japan by the nation’s first prefectural
“court” at Nara in the 6th century.
Buddhist priests were responsible for the education of children and the
cremation of the dead. The teachings of Japan’s various Buddhist denominations
were brought from China and faithfully replicated in Japan. Those teachings are
not taught so much as they are preserved in memorials to the dead, prayers for
the protection of the living, and a variety of practices for lay persons and
priests.
People
who ask if Japanese believe in God probably know little about Hinduism and
Buddhism. Hinduism originated in South
Asia well before 10,000 B.C., and Buddhism emerged from Hinduism in a
revolutionary form in the 6th century B.C., taught by a Hindu of the
military caste, Prince Sakyamuni, the historical Buddha.
Both
religions accept the notion that all sentient beings are blinded by an
ignorance centered in a perception of themselves as separate from each
other. That ignorance presumably is
carried through countless lives (reincarnation) until reaching a full perception
of self – called enlightenment or Buddhahood – a perception that is
undifferentiated from (or “empty of”) the separate self.
Hindus
believe Buddhaood will eventually take place collectively, as it were, at the
end of time. Buddhists, in contrast,
believe that individuals can achieve it, and then assist others still caught in
illusion, just as their founder the historical Buddha did in his lifetime.
Buddhism
teaches that we may bring a karmic residue from a past life into our present
one, but that we all are intimately connected to each other and to all other
things. That, for believers, is where
attention truly belongs.
For
that reason, happiness in Buddhism means waking up to the fact that you have no
substantial independence and that we ARE in fact each other! In this sense, the result of the
international survey on happiness, mentioned earlier, proves that Japanese
people are ideal Buddhists. It is natural that they regard people – especially
parents and ancestors – as their source of life.
Needless
to say, God is the source of life in Western religions. Today’s world is less than 1% Jewish, 32%
Christian, and23% Muslim. All of these
people base their faiths in scriptures that came out of the Middle Eastern
deserts between about 10,000 B.C. and 700 A.D.
Those
scriptures require the worship of a single Creator of the Universe, the God of
the Bible, but they do not agree on how to do that. Jesus was a Jew who taught a revolutionary
type of Judaism in the 1st century.
Mohammed was God’s “last prophet” who lived in the 7th
century. For the last 2,000 years, Jews, Christians and Muslims have fought and
killed each other over whose method of worship of God is correct and whose is
not.
They
believe that God made all of us, beginning with Adam and Eve, so we all are
God’s children. But they believe we will
be rewarded or punished after we die, depending on how closely we followed
God’s teachings, as defined in their particular faith, while we were on earth.
Each religion demands obedience to God and “death to the infidels!”
So do
Buddhists believe in God? How should
they answer? My Japanese friends want to
know. If they say “No” they will be in
trouble with half the people in the world.
But if they say “Yes” they will be asked to explain which religion (and
which denomination of that religion) they follow.
Western
societies regard their relationship to God as more important than
anything. They will emphasize each
individual’s independence “under God”.
That is the American dream, after all.
Just to make sure everyone gets the point, we even put “in God we trust”
on our money and into our pledge of national allegiance. And everyone says “Oh my God!” (OMG in
computer-speak) all the time.
Now that our religious heritages have been
given their proper due, it is time now for a little show and tell from personal
experience. Again, you will find the
following topics covered in more detail in the printed transcript of my
talk. They all have to do with
correcting misunderstandings between Japanese and Americans. My topics are (1) taking off shoes, (2) saying
goodbye, (3) changing jobs, (4) speaking age-appropriately, (5) saying please
and thank you, (6) putting others first with omoiyari, (7) being authentic with kokoro, and finally, (8) how I learned these things.
1.
Taking Off Shoes.
Many non-Japanese assume that the custom of
taking off shoes in Japan came about because floors symbolize sacred ground,
like the floors of Hindu temples and Muslim mosques. Nothing could be further from the truth! It’s about keeping floors clean. The Japanese are very practical.
One of the first things my family noticed about
life in Japan was how people did not wear shoes inside homes, temples, and
traditional restaurants. The shoes
stayed on, however, in Western hotels, theaters, banks, universities and
businesses. But in our son’s kindergarten and elementary schools shoes were
taken off and carefully placed in lockers at the entrance.
We finally learned how to take off our shoes in Japan.
I learned how that is done in a Buddhist temple where I was
training. Many of my colleagues at Kyoto
University had apartments with a tiny space for shoes just inside the door. During
parties that space would be filled with a jumble of shoes. But in temples there is a slightly raised
wooden platform in front of a wall of shelves for shoes.
At first I thought the platform was there for
me to stand on before taking off my shoes.
I was corrected. Then I thought I
was supposed to take my shoes off and stand on the stone floor with my bare
feet, and then step up onto the platform to put my shoes away. Boy was that wrong!
The abbot himself demonstrated the correct way
by making me walk around barefoot on the stone floor. Then he gave me a clean white cloth to wipe
the bottom of my feet. The dirt from my
feet turned the cloth black. Then the
abbot brought a tray of food and placed the food on the floor. I got the message: the floors of the temple rooms are where
meals are served, so they must be kept spotlessly clean. This also goes for tatami floors in all traditional
buildings. From then on my family learned to step out of our shoes and step
directly up onto the platform, turn around and pick up our shoes, and arrange
them neatly on the floor or in spaces provided.
The Buddhist message involved here is provided
by a design on a 15th-century stone water basin behind the main hall
of Ryoan-ji in Kyoto. The message says,
in four Chinese characters reading clockwise from the top (but with my English
in proper order): “I Alone Know Feet” (吾唯足知: Be content with what you have). I’m sure the original Chinese phrase had
nothing to do with the Japanese custom of taking off shoes inside, because that
custom never existed in China. But the
word “feet” had deep meaning for Chinese Buddhist priests. It was a euphemism for the myriad sentient beings
whose importance each priest was to realize in himself.
2.
Saying Goodbye
All goodbyes are probably connected to
death. I guess I learned that in Japan,
because Americans don’t like goodbyes and they try to avoid death
altogether. The Japanese face them
head-on. Every goodbye is handled with
the mental attitude of “this could be the last time.” They must consider each goodbye a preparation
for the big one, because meeting friends at the airport or seeing them off at
the airport or train station is very important indeed.
Funerals in Japan basically last fifty years,
from the time the body is prepared, in front of relatives, to the service in
which the dead receives a posthumous Buddhist name, followed by a formal family
tea ritual meal, to the crematorium where relatives place white flowers over
the body, witness the cremation itself, and then take turn placing bone
fragments and ashes in an urn, which is kept at the temple where memorial
services are performed
for forty-nine years. After that the
family can relax.
Americans, on the other hand, can hardly wait
for the funeral to be over, for the body to be put in the ground (or the ashes
in a vault), and there are no special days or ceremonies to help relatives
remember the dead, who (according to Western religion) is in Heaven with
God. (Nobody talks publicly about
relatives going to Hell!)
All of this comes down to the number-one
complaint about American goodbyes that my wife and I hear all the time from
Japanese friends visiting the United States:
“Why do Americans close their door in our faces as we leave their home
after a party?”
First of all, in Japan it is not the custom to
visit friends in their homes. People
host each other in posh hotels and restaurants rather than expose them to a
home life that is quite private and “unworthy” of guests. But after leaving a fancy restaurant the
hosts will walk their guests to a taxi or bus or train, where the actual goodbyes
take place. Hosts should wave and bow
until their guests are out of sight. The
Japanese expression “one occasion one meeting” (ichigo-ichie一期一会)
expresses the proper feeling here: “This
could be our last time together.”
In this situation on American soil, which
commonly takes place in the hosts’ home, the guests are shown to the door, and
the door is shut after a “see you later.”
Japanese custom would only allow this if the hosts were trying to sever
future ties with their guests. It is
much worse than rude. No wonder Japanese
are curious if their American hosts are trying to say they don’t want to see
them anymore!
3.
Changing Jobs
Another American behavior that causes Japanese
concern is the habit of American college grads taking jobs with Japanese
companies, in Japan or abroad, and then leaving those jobs (usually for more
pay) for jobs somewhere else. That in
fact is a feature of the American business world. You find it also in the American academic
community. I sent out my resume to other
universities almost every year to see if they would offer me a salary that was
better than the one I had. The case is
quite different in Japan, both in business and in academia.
Young Japanese college students are commonly
recruited by Japanese companies for jobs.
Interviews take place before graduation, and afterwards students choose
and/or are selected by Japanese companies, rather like pledges joining
fraternities and sororities in the U.S.
However, the similarity stops there.
Because the majority of company hires made in Japan this way
traditionally last forever, with student employees becoming like adopted family
members and companies like adoptive families.
The Japanese corporation IS a family. There are responsibilities on both sides. Employees trust their bosses to protect them,
guide them, and almost guarantee their success.
In turn, corporate bosses expect loyalty and an all-out effort to succeed
from their employees. Any doubt that
employer or employee is not “in it for the long haul” is unthinkable. The relationship is long lasting, maybe
through the marriage of the employee, the birth of his or her child, and even
after the death of the employer.
The Japanese way in business and education will
not change, I suspect, any more than the American way will. But both sides should understand the
expectations. Only if expectations can
be adjusted to fit the realities will there be smooth sailing ahead.
4.
Speaking Age-Appropriately
I often hear Americans say something like this
about showing respect to others: “Before
I show someone respect they have to show me they deserve it. They have to earn
my respect.” With that attitude, a
language that automatically requires a form of polite and respectful speech
when speaking to elders or authority figures will be considered “un-American” –
or worst of all, “hypocritical”.
It used to be that American children were
expected to speak when spoken to by their elders with “sir” and “m’am”. But even that custom exists today only in the
American south, where it also seems to be dying.
The Japanese case of age-based language may be
unique in the world. Instead of polite
phrases added to show respect, spoken Japanese is a complicated system of
significant language changes that show your own position vis-a-vis the person
you are speaking to -- in terms of dependence and responsibility. We all grow
older, of course, and in Japan responsibility comes with age, and your language
should reflect your own awareness of that. The younger speaker also must speak
in a way that shows dependence and trust.
I came to Japan with a textbook-form of
Japanese that I used with everyone.
Little kids thought I was crazy because I sounded like I was dependent
on them. And I’m sure my elders thought
I was not dependent enough on them. Of
course everyone excused my ignorance of the language because I was a
foreigner. But with time I caught on and
my speech pattern became a bit more appropriate to my age.
The Japanese term for this system of speech is joge,
meaning “high/low”, which unfortunately sounds like some sort of master/servant
system of classic feudalism. Japan’s
society requires a language of mutual dependence and responsibility. I hope it never dies. English cannot change structurally the way Japanese
does. But if it could, the fabric of
American society would become stronger because Americans would be more
respectful.
5. Saying “Please” and “Thank You”
Americans could become more respectful towards
each other if they would say “please” and “thank you” more often. Nowadays, when Americans ask someone to do
something for them, they often say things like, “I need this done by
tomorrow.” That’s a demand not a request. The “please” in English (and in other Western
languages) actually means “if you please,” i.e., “if it is convenient for you,”
or “if possible …” In Japanese, too, it
literally is a request: “I beg of you…”
– “onegai shimasu…” (お願いします...)
Americans say “thank you” rather often, but
probably without understanding its original meaning. “Thank you” implies that someone has done
something for you that you will remember (or “think of”) forever. It shows your indebtedness when you say it. In Japanese the sense of obligation is even
stronger. “Arigato gozaimasu” (有り難う御座います)refers to the difficulty that you have created for the
person you are speaking to. In other
words, when you thank someone in Japanese you are in effect apologizing! As a matter of fact, I wonder if that
expression and the other words that amount to saying you are sorry in Japanese
(sumimasen, gomen, etc.) are not practically synonyms in conversation.
6. Putting Others First
With Japanese Omoiyari
Putting others first in everything you say or
do is omoiyari (思いやり).
It is a matter of truly respecting others. From a very early age, Japanese children are
taught to be aware of what other people seem to need and to satisfy that need
for them very quietly and without being asked.
People in Japan have done this for my family for years and years.
Let me give you a couple of examples of what I
am talking about. We first stepped on
Japanese soil back in the days when visitors made the trip by cargo ship. My wife and I, with our 3-year-old son, took
an 11-day voyage from San Francisco to Kobe in 1964, year of the Tokyo
Olympics. We had five huge suitcases and a trunk, which were still with us on
the train ride to Kyoto. As soon as the
train stopped at Kyoto Station, on a hot and muggy July day, our son Burke
began to cry.
Very
soon, out of nowhere appeared a maiko-san,
a beautiful young apprentice geisha, and asked in English if she could be of
assistance. As soon as I explained in halting Japanese how we couldn’t find our
luggage, she disappeared for a few minutes, only to reappear with a couple of
little goldfish in a vinyl bag of water!
Almost immediately our son stopped crying. The maiko-san
then took us to the taxi stand outside, showed us a taxi that was already
packed with our luggage, put us in another taxi, and then bowed and waved as
our taxis rolled away towards our hotel.
Some eight years ago our first-born son Burke
died, when he was only 45 years old.
When he died many of our Christian friends tried to console us by saying
thing such as “God had better plans for him,” or “he is in a better place
now.” These friends meant well, but
their words didn’t console us. To
suggest that God is always in control, that He has plans for us including the
death of our son, and that Burke is better off away from us – these ideas left
us heart-broken. It was equally hurtful
to be told, “You just have to get over this.
Move on with your life.”
What really helped us was what our Japanese
friends did: they placed a small picture
of our son on their home altars where he receives their respectful offerings of
incense, candle-light, and food every day.
Now he is a member of their families, too, and that is very comforting
to us. Our Christian clergy-friends never mention Burke’s name anymore when
they visit us. But Japanese Buddhist
priests go directly to the little altar we have set up for him and offer words
of prayerful greeting. Nothing cheers us up more than that.
7. Being
Authentic with Kokoro
Kokoro
(心) is the source of wisdom
and compassion in Japan. It is the fuel
of putting others first -- omoiyari. If
you always try to be rational and not allow your emotions get in the way of
doing what is right, you are living in the modern world. The mind and reason have been valued over
heart and feelings ever since ancient Greek philosophers told us to do so. Once
reason became the foundation of Greek philosophy, religion, too, was viewed
through the lens of the intellect. Since God was Truth and Truth was Reason,
the view quickly grew that emotion was the actual source of ungodliness and sin.
Ancient sages in India and China have given
different advice. They told us to find a
balance between reason and feeling, or as they put it, wisdom and compassion.
That is the advice that Japanese and other Asians took to heart. The Japanese
term kokoro was hridaya or citta in
ancient India, terms that refer to feeling, sensation and mental
operation. At the beginning of the
Christian era they were translated in Chinese Buddhist texts with the character
that the Japanese call kokoro.
Once again, our religions are responsible for
these mixed messages. Americans sometimes say, ‘In my heart of hearts I know
this is true.” A modern version, when we
think something is unreasonable but true, is, “We need to think outside the
box.” Perhaps that box is reason, and
thinking outside it is kokoro. Several years ago I gave some lectures in
Japan I entitled “Heart of Oneness” – using the Japanese phrase “Kokoro wa hitotsu” (心は一つ).
Those lectures proved to be popular with my audience. I do think we have common needs and
aspirations that cannot be defined by our differences in religion or anything
else. We have the same kokoro.
8. How I
Learned All This
The things I’ve talked about today I’ve learned
through experience, mostly. But I would
never have experienced them at all if my professors at Kyoto University had not
shown me the way. I mean that
literally. “The Way” may be “the art of
living in the world,” as Okakura Tenshin put it. But my professors insisted that I needed to
live that art myself. It was not enough
that I should gather documents and do research about Japanese history and
culture. They expected me to put myself
in it whole-heartedly. How could I see
the picture if I didn’t get in it?
In closing I would like to tell you one final
story that more than anything else may suggest how you, too, might be more
aware, respectful and trusting in the world.
Before I left the University of Chicago to study at Kyoto University in
1964 I had pretty much written my doctoral dissertation and thought I could
finish the research in one year. My
research was focused on the art and architecture (and artists and patrons) of
late-16th-early-17th-century Japan – the Momoyama and
Early Edo periods.) I knew I had to know quite a lot about Japanese Buddhism
and how it worked. I had read a lot and
thought I knew enough to simply contact all of the temple abbots and set up
times for my visits. My professors,
however, strongly suggested that since most of the temples of my research
belong to the Rinzai Zen denomination of Buddhism I should actually train in a
Zen temple as a practical matter, and to consult with priests of other
denominations as well.
My first temple visit was arranged, the
Director of the Kyoto National Museum accompanied me, I brought all my
photographic equipment, and the abbot received us in his room overlooking the
garden. We enjoyed tea, and spoke (in
Japanese) for well over an hour. At some
point I asked politely when I might actually begin my work. It was as though I had not asked. Conversation continued.
Several times I brought up the subject, but each time my request was
ignored.
The last time I asked, the abbot looked me in
the eye and said rather gruffly in Japanese, “I have no intention of showing
you these materials Mr. Webb.” Thinking
I had misunderstood him, I suggested that I could come some other time. The abbot (who it turns out spent two years
at Yale) then said the same thing to me in English. I was totally perplexed. We were ushered out
to the entrance gate of the temple, put in a taxi, and the abbot waved goodbye
until we were out of sight.
I went back to the temple many times, hoping
the abbot would change his mind. But he
did not. Instead, he invited me to start
sitting zazen at the temple with the
novice priests. To make a long story
short, I trained there and in other temples for the rest of the time I was
studying in Kyoto, and every year when I came back as a professor with my
University of Washington students. Since
then I have practiced and taught what I learned for fifty years. My life has
changed.
I often came back to that first temple where
the abbot seemed so rude, to participate in and sometime lead intensive
meditations. One winter, after the
grueling weeklong meditation at the first of each year, I entered the little
toilet room, squatted down over the hole in the floor, admired the garden
outside, enjoyed the freshly-cut camellia branch in the bamboo vase hanging on
the wall, and proceeded to do my business.
When I finished I reached behind me to the
tissue box, and felt not tissues but one of the paintings I had asked to see so
long ago. The abbot must have silently
opened the sliding door behind me, unrolled the scroll (a National Treasure) on
the tissue box, and left.
I smiled at the simplicity. Here was the masterpiece in its natural
state, and I didn’t have the slightest desire to take its picture. I think the
abbot and I had reached a level of awareness, respect and trust for each other
that I could not have reached otherwise.
Now I knew with my own heart-mind how precious everything is, all the time.
And I was supremely grateful.
Before leaving the temple that day I rolled the scroll up properly, handed
the scroll back to the abbot, and bowed deeply.
I saw him frequently over the years, until he died.
9. My
Advice
In light of what recent surveys (such as the
one examined by Prof. Karazawa) might reveal about happy and unhappy people in
the world, I have advice for Japanese and non-Japanese alike. First, I would advise Westerners to revive
their Jewish, Christian, and Muslim beliefs about putting others first. Christians may have the strongest mandate, especially
when it comes to loving everyone unconditionally. But all Western religions describe paths of
righteousness where taking care of the needs of others is a high priority.
I feel the Western world in modern times has
put freedom and individuality (along with rampant ambition and greed) ahead of
service to other for too long. We
instinctively know our happiness does not really depend on those things in
life. But we haven’t replaced them with
the kind of consideration for others that the Japanese call “omoiyari”. We should.
My advice to Japanese, who scored so badly on
the aforementioned happiness survey that they appear to be “the world’s most
unhappy people,” is to take pride in your score! That is because you have something still alive
in your culture that the rest of the world has lost. My challenge to you is to show the world how
all of us can put others first. Thank
you.
