January 27, 2019, Tokyo New Year Gathering (Pacifico Yokohama National Convention Hall; broadcast live to 8 locations nationwide)

It is in the Study of the Present, in the here and now of our current life, that we must escape from the infinite loop, from the Cave of Karmic Destiny. The Study of the Present gives us the wisdom to know how we should live right now.

The Study of the Present shows us how we can escape in our daily lives from the Cave of Karmic Destiny. And within the Study of the Present, an especially important factor is that we perceive the reality, the circumstances before us as Chaos.

Chaos has no shape, nor do we know what its outcome will be. Chaos is a chaotic mix of both possibilities and constraints. The Method for Engaging Chaos is what we call this understanding of what is before us as chaos.

Now then, everyone, we see before us all kinds of circumstances and situations. As I have just explained, we need to perceive these circumstances as Chaos.

This holds true for all the circumstances before you right now that you find troubling. For those who work, it includes the business matters you must deal with. Likewise, this is also true for our relationships with other people. These all appear to us as Chaos. A mother, for example, will always worry about her children.

How then, do you here today perceive each of the realities before you. How do you think they relate to you? I’d like you to think about that a little bit. What I suspect is that you perceive the relationship between you and the problem before you in the following way.

Before you is a major situation, a big problem, but you are so small. The problem and you are unrelated, cut off from each other. You wonder: How am I to touch upon this problem, what should I do about it, how can I influence this situation. But we cannot get a handle on the problem and are left wringing our hands in frustration.

Now, Chaos-perception does not look at the matter that way. This is how Chaos-perception works. We and the circumstance we are dealing with are linked. We are not cut off from the situation before us. In fact, we are connected. I and the reality before me are one and we cannot be sundered. I am within that reality, a part of that reality. That reality has come to be precisely because I am. Without me that reality and the form it takes would not be what it is.

When we perceive ourselves to be cut off from the reality before us, we don’t know how to deal with that reality. In this situation, feel the reality before us as an inner stress. We think: “This is difficult,” “I don’t know what to do,” This is not going to be an easy problem to solve.” What we have these kinds of thoughts, how do you think it affects us? If we were to rate it as good or bad, it would be bad.

With Chaos-perception, however, the outcome is very different. Instead of a “bad” situation, you simply have an unresolved situation. In other words, a situation is Chaos that encompasses both possibilities and constraints. This is how such a situation is perceived.

January 27, 2019, Tokyo New Year Gathering, Pacifico Yokohama National Convention Hall