Japanese Wisdom Quotes

God has brought a very wise Japanese lady into my life who lives in Calif. We've never met, but she has shared a tremendous amount of wisdom with me concerning unconditional love within relationships. Here is one of the things she said to me this evening when we were discussing "Soul Mates." "Soul mates aren't perfect people. They can come into your life and provide polar emotional experiences from intense love to intense pain. Growth comes from both. And a soul mate helps you grow. It isn't just "...and they lived happily ever after" but "...and they lived!" ~ From my mentor ~ Lori Chidori Phillips

If love goes too far, it turns into cruelty.

Any connoisseur knows you've got to be drunk to really enjoy a good romance.

To tell others that It is a rumor Will not do. When your own heart asks How will you respond?

Put simply, wabi sabi gives you permission to be yourself. It encourages you to do your best but not make yourself ill in pursuit of an unattainable goal of perfection. It gently motions you to relax, slow down and enjoy your life. And it shows you that beauty can be found in the most unlikely of places, making every day a doorway to delight.

Wabi is about finding beauty in simplicity, and a spiritual richness and serenity in detaching from the material world. Sabi is more concerned with the passage of time, with the way that all things grow and decay and how ageing alters the visual nature of those things. It’s less about what we see, and more about how we see.

Wabi sabi is an intuitive response to beauty that reflects the true nature of life. Wabi sabi is an acceptance and appreciation of the impermanent, imperfect, and incomplete nature of everything.

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, Courage to change the things which should be changed, and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other." - Reinhold Niebuhr

No art takes places without inspiration. Every artist also needs effective knowledge of his or her tools (e.g., does a certain brush function well with a particular kind of paint?). What’s more, artists need effective techniques for using those tools. Likewise, to express ourselves skillfully with maximum efficiency and minimum effort, we need to investigate the most effective ways of using the mind and body since, in the end, they are the only “tools” we truly possess in life.

The line between him and the enemy had simultaneously blurred and solidified. Somehow, while perhaps it shouldn't have, this thought provided a strange sense of peace.

Incense fills the air. It smells like the color purple, in a way I cannot explain.

We have to stop telling ourselves that everyone is watching, waiting for us to fail. They really aren’t.

Wabi sabi teaches us to be content with less in a way that feels like more. Less stuff, more soul. Less hustle, more ease. Less chaos, more calm. Less mass consumption and more unique creation. Less complexity, more clarity. Less judgment, more forgiveness. Less resistence, more resilience. Less bravado, more truth. Less control, more surrender. Less head, more heart.

For all their talk of democracy, the conquerors worked hard to engineer consensus; and on many critical issues, they made clear that the better part of political wisdom was silence and conformism. So well did they succeed in reinforcing this consciousness that after they left, and time passed, many non-Japanese including Americans came to regard such attitudes as peculiarly Japanese.

We are living in a time of brain-hacking algorithms, pop-up propaganda and information everywhere. From the moment we wake up, to the time we stumble into bed, we are fed messages about what we should look like, wear, eat and buy, how much we should be earning, who we should love and how we should parent.

It’s odd how one’s memories of youth turn out so bleak. Why does the business of growing up—one’s recollections of growth itself—have to be so tragic? I still haven’t found the answer. I doubt if anybody has. When I finally reach that stage at which the placid wisdom of old age... occasionally descends on a person, then I too may suddenly discover that I understand. But I doubt whether, by that time, understanding will have much point.

I remember a time in a class on a cold winter morning a Japanese girl came with a surgical mask & I thought “wow people would go to extremes NOT to get sick in Japan” afterwards on a break I approached her & asked in a cynical manner: why the mask? Are you afraid of catching a cold? & then she said “in Japan you use it when YOU are under the weather & you don’t want other people to get sick, it is the polite thing to do” wow! that's a lesson I will never forget

Humankind has accumulated generation upon generation of knowledge, the culmination of which is the vast and useful technological array we see everywhere in modern society. Despite this great accumulation of knowledge and technology, we still suffer from starvation and war. The difference between the past and the present is the difference between throwing rocks and shooting missiles. We are still in conflict. Suffering on a fundamental level hasn’t ceased. But we nevertheless persist in the notion that if we just amass a bit more knowledge, we’ll all be o.k. Maybe a new philosophy will do the trick, or a new system of government. But all of this has been tried many times. Knowledge builds on the past and has its place. Wisdom is beyond time. It’s the direct perception of reality as it is. And in this direct seeing of what is lies the potential of transformation—a transformation that is not merely a redecoration of the past but a transformation of humanity that embodies the eternally new.

Try to go a whole seven days without having to control everything, without stressing when things don't work out as you thought they would or should. As you do this, any time you feel the need to take charge, try to relax out of it, just to see what happens. Look for the good that happened precisely because things didn't work out the way you thought they would or should. And take your time. There really is no desperate hurry. When we constantly pursue perfection, our life speeds up. We make hasty decisions and snap judgments. Wabi sabi offers an opportunity to pause, reflect, check in with yourself and move from there. You'll likely feel relived, and make better choices.

A wabi sabi inspired world view opens up a space for love. Just as we're not perfect, neither is anyone else. What difference would it make if you saw others with your heart instead of seeing and judging with your eyes and mind? If you let go of the judgement and frustration and accepted who they are, without trying to change them, if you don't like what you find, that's useful information and you can choose what to do next. But just maybe that acceptance will give you a perspective and remind you of what really matters.

The Japanese have the wisdom to keep pleasure as one of their goals of healthy living. In our fury to be thin and healthy, we often overlook one of the most basic gifts of existence—the pleasure and satisfaction that can be found in the eating experience. When you eat what you really want, in an environment that is inviting, the pleasure you derive will be a powerful force in helping you feel satisfied and content. By providing this experience for yourself, you will find that it takes much less food to decide you’ve had “enough.

The fact is, there is no universal definition of wabi sabi in the Japanese language. Any attempt to express it will only ever be from the perspective of the person explaining it.

And therein lies a crucial observation: Japanese beauty is discovered in the experiencing, not just the seeing.

On the surface of Japanese beauty there is taste (the visual); beneath it is flavor (the experience).

taking inspiration from other cultures and interpreting it in the context of our own lives that we excavate the wisdom we most need.

Should we look at the spring blossoms only in full flower, or the moon only when cloudless and clear?

To the ancients, bears symbolized resurrection. The creature goes to sleep for a long time, its heartbeat decreases to almost nothing. The male often impregnates the female right before hibernation, but miraculously, egg and sperm do not unite right away. They float separately in her uterine broth until much later. Near the end of hibernation, the egg and sperm unite and cell division begins, so that the cubs will be born in the spring when the mother is awakening, just in time to care for and teach her new offspring. Not only by reason of awakening from hibernation as though from death, but much more so because the she-bear awakens with new young, this creature is a profound metaphor for our lives, for return and increase coming from something that seemed deadened. The bear is associated with many huntress Goddesses: Artemis and Diana in Greece and Rome, and Muerte and Hecoteptl, mud women deities in the Latina cultures. These Goddesses bestowed upon women the power of tracking, knowing, 'digging out' the psychic aspects of all things. To the Japanese the bear is the symbol of loyalty, wisdom, and strength. In northern Japan where the Ainu tribe lives, the bear is one who can talk to God directly and bring messages back for humans. The cresent moon bear is considered a sacred being, one who was given the white mark on his throat by the Buddhist Goddess Kwan-Yin, whose emblem is the crescent moon. Kwan-Yin is the Goddess of Deep Compassion and the bear is her emissary. "In the psyche, the bear can be understood as the ability to regulate one's life, especially one's feeling life. Bearish power is the ability to move in cycles, be fully alert, or quiet down into a hibernative sleep that renews one's energy for the next cycle. The bear image teaches that it is possible to maintain a kind of pressure gauge for one's emotional life, and most especially that one can be fierce and generous at the same time. One can be reticent and valuable. One can protect one's territory, make one's boundaries clear, shake the sky if need be, yet be available, accessible, engendering all the same.

It bears repeating: there is no single way to live your life; there is no single career path; there is no perfect way to build your career. There is only evolving it, and it’s up to you if you choose to do that in a way that brings you delight.

I carried with me the question “What is culture?” Food culture, fashion culture, Japanese culture . . . I wanted to understand this idea more. When people use the term “culture” they refer to a certain lifestyle followed by a number of people over a period of time—something we create by the way we live. So I decided to visit people instead of places.

You can see change happening right there. The bamboo is growing all the time, and is also sensitive to its dynamic environment. It’s firmly rooted but flexible. When the wind blows, the bamboo doesn’t resist; it lets go and moves with it. And still the forest grows. Think of the buildings in this earthquake-prone country. The ones that survive the shaking are those that can move when the trembling begins.

The Japanese see the seasons as signposts, visible reminders of our own natural rhytms. In modern life, these often get disrupted, as we extend our days with strong artificial light, interrupt our sensitive biorhytms with blue lights from our electronic devices and push ourselves to be highly productive just because it's another weekday. We push on, regardless of whether our body is trying to tell us it's time to hibernate, or get outside for some summer sunshine - and then we wonder why we get sick.

A venerable Japanese proverb declares, “The silkworm-moth eyebrow of a woman is the axe that cuts down the wisdom of man.” Likewise, the oldest surviving collection of Chinese poetry, The Book of Odes, features an entomological tribute to a noblewoman’s face: “Her forehead cicada-like / her eyebrows like [the antennae of] the silkworm moth / What dimples, as she artfully smiled!” Throughout China’s imperial history, the attraction of a woman’s éméi (蛾眉)—her “moth-feeler eyebrows”—was a persistent theme.

Should we look at the spring blossoms only in full flower or the moon when cloudless and clear? Beauty is not only evident in the joyous, the loud, or the obvious. Wabi implies a stillness with an air of rising above the mundane. It's an acceptance of reality and an insight that comes with that. It allows us to realize that whatever our situation, there is beauty hiding somewhere... The feeling generated by recognizing the beauty found in simplicity... A sense of quiet contentment found away from the trappings of a materialistic world.

Zen Koans The koan is an enigmatic or paradoxical question used to develop a person’s Intuition.  Koans are a valuable tool in your quest for enlightenment, but how do they work and why use them? Koans work by confounding logic and forcing a person out of their normal thinking and into the realm of Intuition. In other words, the inherent meaning is inaccessible to rational understanding, but perhaps accessible to Intuition. This book presents some of the classic koans from traditional Zen, originally written hundreds of years ago in Japanese, and re-interpreted from early English translations into early 21st Century English. The underlying meaning is still there, so they will still work as a koan should, but they are expressed in language more easily understood by people in the 21st Century. Each koan encapsulates a profound truth for reflection. Zen counsels the lessening of the ego, not the strengthening of it as consumer culture would urge. Instead of making a name for ourselves in society, we should listen to the voice of pines and cedars when no wind stirs, in other words become no-thing, entering instead the field of pure being that is behind the phenomenal world.

There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life. There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche: “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” I can see in these words a motto which holds true for any psychotherapy. In the Nazi concentration camps, one could have witnessed that those who knew that there was a task waiting for them to fulfill were most apt to survive. The same conclusion has since been reached by other authors of books on concentration camps, and also by psychiatric investigations into Japanese, North Korean and North Vietnamese

The silence in the giant redwood forest near my house draws me...At eight in the morning, the great trees stand rooted in a silence so absolute that one's inmost self comes to rest. An aged silence. Some mornings I sleep through two alarms and awaken only after the first buses have arrived. I go anyway. There are hundreds of people in the woods before me. People speaking French, German, Spanish; people marveling to each other and calling to their children in Japanese, Swedish, Russian, and some languages I do not know. And children shrieking in the universal language of childhood. But the silence is always there, unchanged. It is as impervious to these passing sounds as the trees themselves.

To be sure, man's search for meaning may arouse inner tension rather than inner equilibrium. However, precisely such tension is an indispensable prerequisite of mental health. There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one's life. There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche: "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how." I can see in these words a motto which holds true for any psychotherapy. In the Nazi concentration camps, one could have witnessed that those who knew that there was a task waiting for them to fulfill were most apt to survive. The same conclusion has since been reached by other authors of books on concentration camps, and also by psychiatric investigations into Japanese, North Korean and North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camps.

There is, of course, a joy to finding confirmation of a suspicion you’ve carried around for half a century. But that satisfaction was tempered by the fact that Matsunaga’s research was sparked by more than just the desire to test an adage. He and his team hoped to explain the mystery behind the widespread collapse of marine ecosystems along the Japanese coast. They showed that clear-cutting on the island nation was what caused the devastation. Cutting so many trees led to a decline in the amount of fulvic acid, created by decomposing leaf fall in the forest, leaching into the groundwater that flows into the sea. This, in turn, reduced the quantity of iron in the island’s coastal waters. The lack of iron stopped the division and multiplication of microscopic marine life, which meant a famine for the sea creatures that depended on that life to survive. Cutting down trees, then, is not exclusively a suicidal act. It is homicidal as well.

When God created man,” Chiun had said, “he put a lump of clay in the oven. And when he took it out, he said, ‘It is underdone. This is no good. I have created a white man.’ Then he put another lump of clay in the oven, and to compensate for his error, he left it in longer. When he took it out, he said, ‘Oh, I have failed again. I have left it in too long. This is no good. I have created a black man.’ And then he put another lump of clay in the oven, this time a superior clay, molded with more care and love and integrity, and when he took it out, he said: ‘Oh, I have done it just right. I have created the yellow man.’ “And then to this man in whom he was pleased he gave a mind. To the Chinese, he gave lust and dishonesty. To the Japanese, he gave arrogance and greed. To the Koreans, he gave honesty, courage, integrity, discipline, beauty of thought, heart and wisdom. And because he had given them so much, he said, ‘I shall also give them poverty and conquerors because they have been given more already than any other man on earth. They are truly the perfect people in my sight, and in their wonderfulness, I am well pleased.’” Remo

Resistance to the possibility of failure In my work helping people transition between careers, between lifestyles, and between life stages, I constantly come across resistance to being a beginner, due to an overwhelming fear of failure. If you start something new, it’s highly likely you will get things wrong along the way. There’s no doubt this is hard on the spirit as well as on the ego. It’s easy to see why so many people spend years on a track that is making them miserable now, to avoid the possibility of a mistake making them miserable in the future. This is particularly the case with people wanting to shift into a more creative way of living or earning their income from a creative profession. The risk is too high, the fear of failure too great, the ghosts of art teachers and other critics from the past too loud in their ears. But there is something they don’t realize: failing your way forward is progress. Each time you do it, you build up your store of inner wisdom, to draw on next time you need it. The “failure” does not have to be the end of the story. It can be the beginning of the next chapter, but only if you accept the imperfection, show yourself compassion, and choose to move forward.

You were raised with a very special status in Tibet. You must have come to this recognition of oneness over time.” “Yes, I have grown in my wisdom from study and experience. When I first went to Peking, now Beijing, to meet Chinese leaders, and also in 1956 when I came to India and met some Indian leaders, there was too much formality, so I felt nervous. So now, when I meet people, I do it on a human-to-human level, no need for formality. I really hate formality. When we are born, there is no formality. When we die, there is no formality. When we enter hospital, there is no formality. So formality is just artificial. It just creates additional barriers. So irrespective of our beliefs, we are all the same human beings. We all want a happy life.” I couldn’t help wondering if the Dalai Lama’s dislike of formality had to do with having spent his childhood in a gilded cage. “Was it only when you went into exile,” I asked, “that the formality ended?” “Yes, that’s right. So sometimes I say, Since I became a refugee, I have been liberated from the prison of formality. So I became much closer to reality. That’s much better. I often tease my Japanese friends that there is too much formality in their cultural etiquette. Sometimes when we discuss something, they always respond like this.” The Dalai Lama vigorously nodded his head. “So whether they agree or disagree, I cannot tell. The worst thing is the formal lunches. I always tease them that the meal looks like decoration, not like food. Everything is very beautiful, but very small portions! I don’t care about formality, so I ask them, more rice, more rice. Too much formality, then you are left with a very little portion, which is maybe good for a bird.” He was scooping up the last bits of dessert.

a Chinese poem says: Entering the forest, he does not disturb a blade of grass; Entering the water, he does not cause a ripple. For the image represents a number of qualities which are, in fact, aspects of the same thing. It represents the sage’s freedom and detachment of mind, a skylike consciousness in which experience moves without leaving any stain. As another poem says: The bamboo shadows sweep the stairs, But stir no dust. Yet, paradoxically, this detachment from is also a harmony with, for the man who goes into the forest without disturbing a blade of grass is a man in no conflict with nature. Like the Native American scouts, he walks without a single twig cracking beneath his feet. Like the Japanese architects, he builds a house which seems to be a part of its natural surroundings. The image also represents the fact that the way of the sage cannot be traced and followed, since no authentic wisdom can be imitated. Each man must find it for himself, because there is really no way of putting it into words, of reaching it by any specific methods or directions. But there is actually the most intimate connection between these two apparently separate uses of the metaphor—the way of the sage, on the one hand, and the impermanence of life, on the other. And the connection reveals the one deepest and most central principle of those Asian philosophies which so puzzle the Western mind by identifying the highest wisdom with what, to us, seems the doctrine of abject despair. Indeed, the word despair in a particular sense is the proper translation of the Hindu–Buddhist term nirvana—to “de-spirate,” to breathe out, to give up the ghost. We cannot understand how the Asians manage to equate this despair with ultimate bliss—unless, as we are prone to suppose, they are after all a depraved and spineless people, long accustomed to fatalism and resignation.

The ten rules of ikigai We’ll conclude this journey with ten rules we’ve distilled from the wisdom of the long-living residents of Ogimi: Stay active; don’t retire. Those who give up the things they love doing and do well lose their purpose in life. That’s why it’s so important to keep doing things of value, making progress, bringing beauty or utility to others, helping out, and shaping the world around you, even after your “official” professional activity has ended. Take it slow. Being in a hurry is inversely proportional to quality of life. As the old saying goes, “Walk slowly and you’ll go far.” When we leave urgency behind, life and time take on new meaning. Don’t fill your stomach. Less is more when it comes to eating for long life, too. According to the 80 percent rule, in order to stay healthier longer, we should eat a little less than our hunger demands instead of stuffing ourselves. Surround yourself with good friends. Friends are the best medicine, there for confiding worries over a good chat, sharing stories that brighten your day, getting advice, having fun, dreaming . . . in other words, living. Get in shape for your next birthday. Water moves; it is at its best when it flows fresh and doesn’t stagnate. The body you move through life in needs a bit of daily maintenance to keep it running for a long time. Plus, exercise releases hormones that make us feel happy. Smile. A cheerful attitude is not only relaxing—it also helps make friends. It’s good to recognize the things that aren’t so great, but we should never forget what a privilege it is to be in the here and now in a world so full of possibilities. Reconnect with nature. Though most people live in cities these days, human beings are made to be part of the natural world. We should return to it often to recharge our batteries. Give thanks. To your ancestors, to nature, which provides you with the air you breathe and the food you eat, to your friends and family, to everything that brightens your days and makes you feel lucky to be alive. Spend a moment every day giving thanks, and you’ll watch your stockpile of happiness grow. Live in the moment. Stop regretting the past and fearing the future. Today is all you have. Make the most of it. Make it worth remembering. Follow your ikigai. There is a passion inside you, a unique talent that gives meaning to your days and drives you to share the best of yourself until the very end. If you don’t know what your ikigai is yet, as Viktor Frankl says, your mission is to discover it.

As Japan recovered from the post-war depression, okonomiyaki became the cornerstone of Hiroshima's nascent restaurant culture. And with new variables- noodles, protein, fishy powders- added to the equation, it became an increasingly fungible concept. Half a century later it still defies easy description. Okonomi means "whatever you like," yaki means "grill," but smashed together they do little to paint a clear picture. Invariably, writers, cooks, and oko officials revert to analogies: some call it a cabbage crepe; others a savory pancake or an omelet. Guidebooks, unhelpfully, refer to it as Japanese pizza, though okonomiyaki looks and tastes nothing like pizza. Otafuku, for its part, does little to clarify the situation, comparing okonomiyaki in turn to Turkish pide, Indian chapati, and Mexican tacos. There are two overarching categories of okonomiyaki Hiroshima style, with a layer of noodles and a heavy cabbage presence, and Osaka or Kansai style, made with a base of eggs, flour, dashi, and grated nagaimo, sticky mountain yam. More than the ingredients themselves, the difference lies in the structure: whereas okonomiyaki in Hiroshima is carefully layered, a savory circle with five or six distinct layers, the ingredients in Osaka-style okonomiyaki are mixed together before cooking. The latter is so simple to cook that many restaurants let you do it yourself on table side teppans. Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki, on the other hand, is complicated enough that even the cooks who dedicate their lives to its construction still don't get it right most of the time. (Some people consider monjayaki, a runny mass of meat and vegetables popularized in Tokyo's Tsukishima district, to be part of the okonomiyaki family, but if so, it's no more than a distant cousin.) Otafuku entered the picture in 1938 as a rice vinegar manufacturer. Their original factory near Yokogawa Station burned down in the nuclear attack, but in 1946 they started making vinegar again. In 1950 Otafuku began production of Worcestershire sauce, but local cooks complained that it was too spicy and too thin, that it didn't cling to okonomiyaki, which was becoming the nutritional staple of Hiroshima life. So Otafuku used fruit- originally orange and peach, later Middle Eastern dates- to thicken and sweeten the sauce, and added the now-iconic Otafuku label with the six virtues that the chubby-cheeked lady of Otafuku, a traditional character from Japanese folklore, is supposed to represent, including a little nose for modesty, big ears for good listening, and a large forehead for wisdom.

10. Contain the fury; rein in the irate glare. Do not respond with anger at personal differences. People all have their own mind and all hold their own opinions. What is right for us can be wrong for them; what is wrong for them can be right for us. And there is no guarantee that we are the sages and that they are the fools. We are all just ordinary people. How can anyone set a rule for what is right and what is wrong? We all have our share of wisdom and of foolishness like an endless circle. This being the case, even though others glare at us irately, let us instead worry about our own failings. And even though we alone are in the right, let us go along with the multitude and offer them our support.

As Jefferson wrote in a letter to Charles Yancey: “The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves, nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.” In the age of our Founders, this human impulse to demand the right of co-creating shared wisdom accounted for the ferocity with which the states demanded protection for free access to the printing press, freedom of assembly, freedom to petition the government, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech. General George Washington, in a speech to officers of the army in 1783, said, “If men are to be precluded from offering their sentiments on a matter which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences that can invite the consideration of mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of speech may be taken away, and dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” But the twentieth century brought its own bitter lessons. The new and incredibly powerful electronic media that began to replace the printing press—first radio and film and then television—were used to indoctrinate millions of Germans, Austrians, Italians, Russians, Japanese, Chinese, and others with elaborate abstract ideologies that made many of them deaf, blind, and numb to the systematic leading of tens of millions of their fellow human beings “to the slaughter.

It's not our memories but the person we have become because of those past experiences that we should treasure.

and they were deeply moved not so much by the poetry as by their sensitivity to poetry; not so much by the genius of the poem as by their wisdom in understanding the poem; not in knowing the poem but in knowing the poem demonstrated the higher side of themselves and of the Japanese spirit—

One of the most commonly used mantras in Buddhism focuses on controlling negative emotions: “Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ,” in which oṃ is the generosity that purifies the ego, ma is the ethics that purifies jealousy, ṇi is the patience that purifies passion and desire, pad is the precision that purifies bias, me is the surrender that purifies greed, and hūṃ is the wisdom that purifies hatred.

The ten rules of ikigai We’ll conclude this journey with ten rules we’ve distilled from the wisdom of the long-living residents of Ogimi: 1. Stay active; don’t retire. Those who give up the things they love doing and do well lose their purpose in life. That’s why it’s so important to keep doing things of value, making progress, bringing beauty or utility to others, helping out, and shaping the world around you, even after your “official” professional activity has ended. 2. Take it slow. Being in a hurry is inversely proportional to quality of life. As the old saying goes, “Walk slowly and you’ll go far.” When we leave urgency behind, life and time take on new meaning. 3. Don’t fill your stomach. Less is more when it comes to eating for long life, too. According to the 80 percent rule, in order to stay healthier longer, we should eat a little less than our hunger demands instead of stuffing ourselves. 4. Surround yourself with good friends. Friends are the best medicine, there for confiding worries over a good chat, sharing stories that brighten your day, getting advice, having fun, dreaming … in other words, living. 5. Get in shape for your next birthday. Water moves; it is at its best when it flows fresh and doesn’t stagnate. The body you move through life in needs a bit of daily maintenance to keep it running for a long time. Plus, exercise releases hormones that make us feel happy. 6. Smile. A cheerful attitude is not only relaxing—it also helps make friends. It’s good to recognize the things that aren’t so great, but we should never forget what a privilege it is to be in the here and now in a world so full of possibilities. 7. Reconnect with nature. Though most people live in cities these days, human beings are made to be part of the natural world. We should return to it often to recharge our batteries. 8. Give thanks. To your ancestors, to nature, which provides you with the air you breathe and the food you eat, to your friends and family, to everything that brightens your days and makes you feel lucky to be alive. Spend a moment every day giving thanks, and you’ll watch your stockpile of happiness grow. 9. Live in the moment. Stop regretting the past and fearing the future. Today is all you have. Make the most of it. Make it worth remembering. 10. Follow your ikigai. There is a passion inside you, a unique talent that gives meaning to your days and drives you to share the best of yourself until the very end. If you don’t know what your ikigai is yet, as Viktor Frankl says, your mission is to discover it.

It is a cold December night in Kyōtō, the ancient capital of Japan. I have cycled through the darkness to Shōren-in, a small temple off the tourist trail, nestled at the foot of the Higashiyama mountains. Tonight, the temple gardens are gently illuminated, the low light spinning a mysterious yarn across the silhouetted pines and chimerical bamboo groves.

The Buddha said long ago that when anyone in the future met with his teachings, it would be the same as meeting him in person. Therefore we can “meet the Buddha” today in the form of teachers, teachings, or our own practice. Saying we want to meet the Buddha is like saying we want to meet the awakened state of our own mind. We don’t have to change who we are in order to meet the Buddha in this way. The purpose of our meeting is not to become a student of another culture or to discover someone else’s wisdom. We’re not practicing Indian culture to become Indian, or practicing Japanese or Tibetan culture to become Japanese or Tibetan. Our purpose is to discover who we truly are, to connect with our own wisdom.

The commonplace idea that math is a manmade language is comically dumb. We know what manmade languages are like: English, German, French, Spanish, Japanese, and so on. None of these has any resemblance whatsoever to math. How can a human being invent π or e? How can a human pluck Euler’s Formula out of nothing? The reason why people are so keen to say that math is manmade is because if they’re wrong then the converse is true: man is mathmade! That is, of course, exactly the position of ontological mathematics, and it represents the highest possible wisdom

Art with depth, however, is more than surface glitter, for it bespeaks the eternity which is its background and which "lines" the foreground; it is profound in that it veils a wisdom and insight from which we can learn something more each time we return to it for additional nourishment and understanding. Rather than being entertainment, it is an aspect of the self-cultivation of the artist which, if we are open to his or her message, will also transform us and lead us to a higher sense of possibility than we might have otherwise realized.

7. Calmness of Mind. The Yogi breathing above mentioned is fit rather for physical exercise than for mental balance, and it will be beneficial if you take that exercise before or after Meditation. Japanese masters mostly bold it very important to push forward. The lowest part of the abdomen during Zazen, and they are right so far as the present writer's personal experiences go. 'If you feel your mind distracted, look at the tip of the nose; never lose sight of it for some time, or look at your own palm, and let not your mind go out of it, or gaze at one spot before you.' This will greatly help you in restoring the equilibrium of your mind. Chwang Tsz[FN#248] thought that calmness of mind is essential to sages, and said: "The stillness of the sages does not belong to them as a consequence of their skilful ability; all things are not able to disturb their minds; it is on this account that they are still. When water is still, its clearness shows the beard and eyebrows (of him who looks into it). It is a perfect level, and the greatest artificer takes his rule from it. Such is the clearness of still water, and how much greater is that of the human spirit? The still mind of the sage is the mirror of heaven and earth, the glass of all things." Forget all worldly concerns, expel all cares and anxieties, let go of passions and desires, give up ideas and thoughts, set your mind at liberty absolutely, and make it as clear as a burnished mirror. Thus let flow your inexhaustible fountain of purity, let open your inestimable treasure of virtue, bring forth your inner hidden nature of goodness, disclose your innermost divine wisdom, and waken your Enlightened Consciousness to see Universal Life within you. "Zazen enables the practiser," says Kei-zan,[FN#249] "to open up his mind, to see his own nature, to become conscious of mysteriously pure and bright spirit, or eternal light within him." [FN#248]

On the afternoon of August 9, hearing the news that Nagasaki had been bombed, Emperor Hirohito called an imperial conference at which his ministers debated the wisdom of surrender. After hours of talk, at 2 a.m. Hirohito stated that he felt Japan should accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, terms of surrender proposed in late July by Truman (who had only become president on Roosevelt’s death in April). But Potsdam called for the emperor to step down; and his ministers insisted that their acceptance depended on Hirohito being allowed to remain as sovereign—an astute demand that would ensure a sense of national exoneration. James F. Byrnes, the U.S. secretary of state, did not deal directly with this, and on August 14 Japan surrendered at Hirohito’s command. The next day, the entire country heard with astonishment the first radio broadcast from a supreme ruler, now telling them squeakily, in the antiquated argot of the imperial court, that he was surrendering to save all mankind “from total extinction.” Until then, Japan’s goal had been full, all-out war, as a country wholly committed; any Japanese famously preferred to die for the emperor rather than to surrender. (One hundred million die together! was the slogan.) Today the goal was surrender: all-out peace. It was the emperor’s new will. Later that day a member of his cabinet, over the radio, formally denounced the United States for ignoring international law by dropping the atomic bombs. In 1988, on the forty-seventh anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, when the mayor of Nagasaki accused Hirohito of responsibility for the war and its numerous atrocities, he inadvertently stirred up petitions for his own impeachment, and nationwide protests and riots calling for his assassination. A month afterward, in January 1989, Hirohito died at age eighty-seven, still emperor of Japan. Eleven days later the mayor, whom the Nagasaki police were no longer protecting, was shot in the back. He barely survived.

The strength of the two cultures was very different too: Japanese women instinctively understood yesterday and today and tomorrow. Call it wisdom. And they had staying power. American women only knew today and tended to come to pieces when just one day went wrong.

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, Courage to change the things which should be changed, and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

There is much wisdom in the classic saying “mens sana in corpore sano” (“a sound mind in a sound body”): It reminds us that both mind and body are important, and that the health of one is connected to that of the other. It has been shown that maintaining an active, adaptable mind is one of the key factors in staying young.

After winning the battle, tighten your helmet.

Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ,” in which oṃ is the generosity that purifies the ego, ma is the ethics that purifies jealousy, ṇi is the patience that purifies passion and desire, pad is the precision that purifies bias, me is the surrender that purifies greed, and hūṃ is the wisdom that purifies hatred.

All the art of the old Japanese painters (who in almost all periods were monks) is explained if it is understood that, for them, the visible world was a perpetual allusion to Wisdom, like that great tree which, with unutterable majesty, says No to evil for us’ (ibid.).

The people around us seem to be dressed in every kind of clothing from every nation and era in human history. I see people dressed in modern military uniforms, animal skins, togas, tribal regalia, European and Japanese armor, robes, breeches, long dresses, short dresses, and suits. Some people wear not much clothing at all. It's as though we're on the back lot of a movie studio and actors from a hundred different exotic movies mingle together. But these people are real, not costumed performers.

Maximum Brainpower: Challenging the Brain for Health and Wisdom

mental discipline (samadhi), and wisdom (panna).

It is a religion that emphasizes ethical conduct (sila), mental discipline (samadhi), and wisdom (panna).

Maximum Brainpower: Challenging the Brain for Health and Wisdom,

Zen in the Art of Archery was translated into more than five languages and became a worldwide bestseller. The Japanese version was published in 1946. Hand in hand with the Zen and New Age booms in Europe and the United States, it was very fashionable as a trendy kind of "wisdom" from the 1950s through the 1970s. There is a surprisingly large number of foreigners who have said they formed their image not only of Japanese archery, but of Japanese culture itself, from reading Zen in the Art of Archery. The book became a widely discussed topic among the Japanese cultural elite as well. It is no exaggeration to say that it was accepted as a central text in the discussion of "Japaneseness" which took place form the 1960s through the 1970s. Proclaiming that the book presented the ideal image of Japanese culture and believing in Herrigel's writings 100 percent, countless numbers of people took it as the starting point for the development of their theories of Japaneseness. I do not know of any other document on the theory of Japaneseness that has been accepted this uncritically. Zen in the Art of Archery was a magic mirror that, for Japanese people, reflected the ideal image they had of themselves.

The flowers keep on blooming, wheter or not you make mistakes.

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, Courage to change the things which should be changed, and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, Courage to change the things which should be changed, and the Wisdom to distinguish

You need to realize that when you practice from the state of the beginner all the way to the stage of immutable wisdom, then you must go back to the status of the beginner again. Let me explain in terms of your martial arts. As a beginner you know nothing of stance or sword position, so you have nothing in yourself to dwell on mentally. If someone strikes at you, you just fight, without thinking of anything. Then when you learn various things like stance, how to wield a sword, where to place the attention, and so on, your mind lingers on various points, so you find yourself all tangled up when you try to strike. But if you practice day after day and month after month, eventually stance and swordplay don’t hang on your mind anymore, and you are like a beginner who knows nothing. This is the sense in which it is said that the beginning and the end are the same, just as one and ten become neighbors when you have counted from one to ten. It is also like the highest and lowest notes of a musical scale becoming neighbors below and above a cycle of the scale. Just as the highest and lowest notes resemble each other, since buddhas are the highest human development they appear to be like people who know nothing of Buddha or Buddhism, having none of the external trappings that people envision of buddhas. Therefore the afflictions of unaware lingering in the beginning and the immutable wisdom in the end become one. The cogitating side of your brain will vanish, and you will come to rest in a state where there is no concern. Completely ignorant people don’t show their wits, it seems, because they haven’t got any. Highly developed intelligence doesn’t show because it has already gone into hiding. It is because of pseudo-erudition that intelligence goes to one’s head, a ludicrous sight.

This book is an invitation to relax into the beauty of your life in any given moment, and to strip away all that is unnecessary, to discover what lies within.

Undoubtedly, you are overwrought from re-wroughting hand-wrought iron out right. But I think in time you will iron things out for yourself. Stay holstered and strapped to your side. It is said, ‘when genius matures it goes into hixibn’–“hiding.” You will know of this wisdom one day. --Thomas Kannon Sword Master, The Lady and the Samurai

My idea was to copy the sentences that inspired me into a notebook. Over time, I thought, this would become a personal collection of my favorite words of wisdom.

A Japanese scholar, Raicho Hiratsuka, said that. In order not to fail in the end, you have to be dependent on yourself, and know that you can handle things, and most importantly, bring a little humor into the despair. Lightness, imagination, flexibility—these are the things that go into making a new start.

The point of the pilgrimage,” as a Buddhist priest told the traveling author Oliver Statler on his journey around the Japanese island of Shikoku, “is to improve yourself by enduring and overcoming difficulties.” In other words, if the journey you have chosen is indeed a pilgrimage, a soulful journey, it will be rigorous. Ancient wisdom suggests if you aren't trembling as you approach the sacred, it isn't the real thing. The sacred, in its various guises as holy ground, art, or knowledge, evokes emotion and commotion.

One of the most common sayings in Japan is “Hara hachi bu,” which is repeated before or after eating and means something like “Fill your belly to 80 percent.” Ancient wisdom advises against eating until we are full. This is why Okinawans stop eating when they feel their stomachs reach 80 percent of their capacity, rather than overeating and wearing down their bodies with long digestive processes that accelerate cellular oxidation.

had time to become what the Japanese called an idoru, a software representation that was better than the real thing, smarter and sexier than any possible human mind or form, like those wide-eyed, faux-innocent anime brats or the simulated stars of pornography and romance. Sex wasn’t the half of it – there were other codes, other keys, in the semiotics of charm: the subtle suggestions of wisdom, the casual hints at a capacity for violence, the assumed readiness to command, the mirroring glance of empathy; all the elements that went to make up an image of a man that men would die for and women would fall for.

Hmm. That reminds me of a line that the writer Kurt Vonnegut quoted in one of his books: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.” It’s in the novel Slaughterhouse-Five.