February 10, 2019, Okinawa Spring Gathering (Okinawa Convention Center)

Greetings everyone. How is the new year turning out for you? We appear to be having an influenza epidemic throughout Japan, in almost every school and in many households. Perhaps some of you here today have been ill recently too.

We are very sensitive of our own physical condition. Many people are very careful about their physical health. For example, if you feel feverish, you are likely to pull out a thermometer to see if you really have a fever. And when you see that you have a fever, you will probably take some cold medicine. If the fever does not subside, you will probably go to a hospital.

This is a part of how we spend our daily life. But what about your mind? Even though we are so careful about our physical health, we can be quite careless about our mental health.

For example, imagine that you feel listless today. You just don’t feel like doing anything. Or perhaps, you are feeling restless and irritable. Or yet again, you may feel excited, but not know why. I am sure everyone has had these kinds of feelings at one time or another.

These feelings may be symptoms, just like the symptoms of a cold. If you think you are catching cold, you immediately act to do something about it. And yet, if your mind is unsettled, in most cases, you do nothing about it. You ignore the symptoms and just keep moving ahead.

Why do we treat our bodies and our minds differently? With our bodies, we see actual physical consequences: a fever, a failing internal organ, for example, are substantially real.

But what about the inside of our mind? We often say we are “imagining things.” “Oh, it’s just your imagination,” we say. But we are referring to something that has no substance, a simple figment of our imagination. In other words, what goes on in our mind has no reality. What goes on in our mind is unreal, rather like a fog. What do you think, everyone? Have you not felt this at one time or another?

What I ask you now, however, is to stop and think, “Can that be true?”

February 10, 2019, Okinawa Spring Gathering, Okinawa Convention Center