感情は構わないが、心持ちは如何かEmotion Is Fine; What of Your State of Mind?
There are many ways to counter vulnerability, but, as with health, one cannot build immunity overnight. The road to health cannot be completed in a day, and in the same way, raising our immunity to vulnerability so that we walk through life with a resilient vitality comes down in the end to one question: in what state of heart do we spend each passing moment?
Everyone stands at the same starting line, yet a decisive gap opens as the years pass, depending on the mindset one begins with. Whatever one's talent, what matters for everyone is how that mindset is built. Nor can it be built suddenly, today or tomorrow. Your mindset is the sum of your life up to this moment, an accumulation of results, the culmination of what you have thought and how you have lived in every instant. Life unfolds in the unbroken continuity of this culmination, here and now, and so it takes resolve and determination to build that mindset sincerely.
This is especially so in these uneasy times, as we enter a period of collapse in which instability, striking the whole world at once, has gone beyond mere uncertainty. To live through the century of upheaval that now begins in earnest, the one we can rely on to the very end is, in the end, ourselves. In an age that will ruthlessly weed out the many, the question is whether we can refuse to be tossed about by events in the outside world and hold to the end the conviction that is the anchor set within our own mindset. Precisely because this is the last stretch in which we can still spend our days in relative calm, each of us needs to prepare, now, the greatest weapon for this age of upheaval, and to nurture it through trial and error. The trial and error of this period will surely save you ten years from now.
When contemplating these matters, the critical inquiry becomes: Are we, in the first place, actually wounded by the events themselves? Modern society is full of stress in work and in relationships, and the net around us is so tight that avoiding it is nearly impossible. Add environmental pollution and the spread of poor food, and body and mind are under stress day and night as never before. Living from the start of the day to its end without stress has become extremely difficult. Above all, such events occur regardless of one’s own volition.
In fact, I myself recently faced an event that forced me into deep contemplation. I witnessed extremely hideous behavior: people close to me, in whom I had placed considerable trust in both work and life, betrayed me without a flicker of hesitation, told lies, and, worse still, tried to pretend the problems did not exist and to put them off. Because this was a matter that caused me substantial, real harm, the emotion that welled up was, inevitably, indignation, and simultaneously, sorrow. Why did they stoop to such deeds? Despite having spent the past year engaging in repeated dialogue and practice to avoid falling into these very risks, as we entered the end of the year, the problems they had concealed from me piled up until they could no longer handle them, and everything descended upon me as my problem to solve. Still, it is a common story in this world.
Naturally, facing such an event heightens one's emotions, but amidst that, I felt something. The thought arose: is the problem not that I take the event itself to be an enemy that disturbs my peace? And by doing so, am I not in fact wounding myself?
Generally, it has been said in many theories of life that when emotions run high, one should wait for the emotional storm to pass, and after time has elapsed, come to terms with it by telling oneself "everything happened for a reason," and so reinterpret the event. Indeed, if one looks back later, it is possible to accept that everything—from trivial occurrences to events powerful enough to completely transform one’s life—contained some lesson. And for those who see the essence of life in this kind of retrospective acceptance, it is surely appealing, and I believe it is one truth. Indeed, while it is unavoidable that humans cannot discard their pride when young, I have heard stories of people who, at a certain point, were able to discard that pride by convincing themselves to accept their life thus far.
Confucius also taught that at forty one reaches fuwaku (不惑), freedom from doubt. It is a declaration that by discarding the pride held until then, perplexity vanishes; one ceases to cling to the past, accepts the life lived so far, and finally reclaims the sovereignty of life through one’s own active resolution and decision. Therefore, as I am thirty-four, there is still some time left before I reach that state, so I could tell myself it is no wonder I still find such things difficult, given my age and immaturity. In fact, that is how I had been living, thinking that life is, in the end, a succession of such acceptances.
However, what I felt keenly when I faced this event was something strange.
It was the question: "Must we really look back later?"
It is difficult to put into words, but it was a sensation close to a kind of enlightenment. Originally, I was prone to becoming emotional; I could not fit into Japanese society, where discipline with the surroundings is paramount. All my life, people around me saw me as a troublemaker who kept causing problems: quick to fight, quick to argue, mentally unstable, easily irritated, and so on. I had a strong tendency to react to any event at once, emotionally, and head toward destruction. When I look back on my hot-blooded twenties in Tokyo, at the center of one of the most stressful societies in the world, I spent my days completely beside myself, like a machine of runaway emotion. Faced with any event, I answered with a rage fiercer than anyone's, and so the me of the past would naturally have become emotional in the same way when facing this recent event.
But this question, close to a strange kind of enlightenment, came to me suddenly. The essence of life lies in the now, this very moment. When something joyful or sad happens, it is easy to say "after the fact" that there was a lesson in it. But I realized it is not so: the event itself is the lesson. Whatever the event, the lesson lies in the state of one's own mind at that very moment. Even when facing any irritation or sorrow, emotion is, after all, merely emotion. What we must sincerely face then is a single point: what state is my own mind in, within that event?
When an event occurs, it is easy for anyone to attribute the cause to others, to society, or to responsibilities such as parents or education. Moreover, in modern society, no matter how trivial the dissatisfaction, if one broadcasts it through social media, one can obtain a certain number of sympathizers. However, if one severs the event from oneself, that opportunity for learning will never come around again. Rather, I came to think that the act of separating the event from oneself is itself the essential problem. Looking back and accepting events later, as described above, is certainly possible and may work as a reasonable art of getting by, but it is merely social conduct and has nothing to do with life itself. The essence of life is to try to understand sincerely how one's own heart moves within the event, without separating the event from one's state of mind, and then to settle that state of mind by observing it patiently and coolly. This is the learning of life.
In the midst of an experience that is personally very unpleasant, I do not look back later to reinterpret it (to come to terms with it). I stay in the middle of it, and through the movements of my heart and emotions as they are now, I sincerely watch, settle, and nurture my own state of mind. Put another way, I am putting an end to handing the reins of my life to my surroundings or to others, rethinking the fact that a soul without sovereignty wanders as a matter of course, and taking sovereignty back for myself. It is a complete shift in the way I perceive. More than perception, it is a displacement of the ground from which thought itself is born. If this is true learning, if this is life, then it begins to seem that not only I but many people miss, through mistaken ways of thinking, the most important opportunity for learning that most of life offers.
We must consider how to distance ourselves from this endless friction and stress, and simultaneously, consider how to regain spiritual independence amidst these various occurrences. And why did I arrive at such a thought the very moment I faced that event? Put the other way: within a serious event that marked a major turning point for me, did the realization arise because I took my own state of mind to be the true learning and stood up to it? Thinking about this for oneself holds extremely important suggestions for life.
The majority of modern people consider that reading books, increasing insight, and expanding knowledge are the intellect essential for distancing oneself from mental friction and stress, and for regaining spiritual independence. That is certainly true. Personally, I believe the coming age will divide sharply in two: those who can gain knowledge only from videos, easily simplified and stripped of context, and those who gain knowledge by reading classical texts closely and actively, reaching beyond what is signified to the vast, boundless universe of thought (context) behind the text. Anyone can feel this wave over the last ten years. At first glance, the majority may think that the amplification of knowledge based on video media will continue to rise, but the reality is not so simple; the bubble of video media has already collapsed, and we are now in a period of reorganization. Therefore, a phenomenon will occur where those who can read and write text become increasingly advantageous. This corresponds to the twenty-first century being the era of religion and philosophy. That is to say, the rise of AI was certainly something that brought innovation to all media, and indeed, 2025 saw a tremendous rise from the perspective of video generation. Yet behind the essence of AI lies the revival of text media.
But here lies a fatal rupture. However skilled one is at reading text closely, the question is what it means to "read" it. Here too there is an extreme polarization, and this fissure serves as a sorting mechanism to distinguish the leaders of the next era. In other words, no matter how much text one reads, if it is merely a repetition of the modern method of understanding "what is signified" as knowledge, one cannot even survive in the next era. This is because the essence of AI's capability, which has surpassed the processing power of the human brain, is to interpret this "signified thing" as knowledge. Knowledge in this sense, which interprets only what is signified and justifies it as knowledge, has no future. The future belongs instead to the ability to read that looks through the text into what signifies, not what is signified, and, facing it sincerely, reads the universe from its context. The reason true knowledge lies here is that this knowledge is not shown by existing references or links; it is drawn from the archive where the wisdom of humanity is kept as knowledge of past, present, and future.
Put plainly: "There is no reaching intellect by leaving things behind." An intellect separated from things and events does not essentially exist. If such a separated intellect is mistaken, then almost all scholarship since the modern era comes within range of being weeded out. This is because "modern knowledge" has multiplied without limit, in disguise, precisely through the view that intellect exists apart from things. This thought therefore holds the power to question the very foundation of modernity and shake it hard.
It is here that practice comes in. This practice is not turning what one has thought in the head into purposeful action; that would be looking back later at the meaning of the event. The truth lies instead in a practice of non-separation: placing the heart within the event and setting one's own state of mind right. This "event" refers not only to physical objects but to everything: the phenomena that befall you, human relationships, sudden troubles, and the fluctuations of emotion caused by them.
In this context, the true value of learning surfaces slightly. It is a shift in perception: learning is not withdrawing and shutting oneself off from the world, but recognizing that the moment we face an absurd reality, the moment the heart is torn in a thousand directions, is the greatest place of learning. For example, suppose you receive an unreasonable reprimand and anger wells up from the bottom of your gut. Modern ways of getting by may hold that the right answer is to let the anger out with a deep breath, pretend it never happened, and put on a smile. Then one might pour the suppressed anger out on someone else instead, or relieve the stress through shopping, or try to survive society through mindfulness. Until now this has been taken as the right answer, and forcing a meaning onto it afterward, saying "that was a good experience too," has been commonplace. What matters is that this forced meaning never comes from one's own heart; it comes from social norms. At that point the event, or the thing, is already separated from one's heart. This is one major reason people cannot reach true learning.
What matters is that trying to control emotion, or to stop feeling anger, is mistaken in the first place. Emotions are like the weather; they cannot be stopped. The raging of emotions is not proof of immaturity. The crucial point lies in watching where your state of mind is, in the midst of that vortex of emotion. This is learning. Since emotion and state of mind are not on the same plane, the problem is that the heart itself is swayed and tossed about by emotion. This lowers the quality of life.
Is it not, then, the most important learning in life to accept emotions from the start, and precisely while they arise, to gaze at the heart, set the state of mind right, and keep it in one's own way? This learning is something that can only be done in this moment, now; it is not something to be looked back upon later.
To be swallowed by emotion and lose oneself is to lose this state of mind. Nor does it mean crushing the emotion and doing nothing. It means staying with the anger or the sorrow, that is, with the event that brings the fluctuation, remaining within it and staring at the movement of one's own heart. That makes possible a truly practical intellectual act: perfecting knowledge by being directly in the thing without being separated from it. It is this point that the prevailing way of knowing decisively fails to grasp, more than it simply gets it wrong. Neither this viewpoint nor this kind of life enters into it. That is why its speech and arguments turn hollow.
One does not learn because something happy happened, nor does one learn after something sad has happened. In the very vortex of the event, one observes how one's heart reacts and wavers, and keeps setting it right. The phrase "do not be swept away by emotion" has meaning only from the standpoint of watching the heart. And that itself becomes an irreplaceable "discipline of knowing," the only path to true intellect.
If you, like the recent me, encountered a very unpleasant event and merely reacted emotionally to get through the moment, or closed your heart wishing it would end quickly, you have missed the opportunity for life's most important discipline. Events do not come to torment you. They appear before you as a mirror reflecting the shape of your heart, its distortions and rigidities.
"Emotion is fine; but what of your state of mind?"
When various events occur daily, ask yourself this question once. This thoroughness becomes the foundation of the practice that raises the quality of life and heightens your own intellect. And the density of this accumulation of discipline and trial and error will become your absolute weapon, allowing you to push forward into the future without wavering, even in the turbulent era that begins now.