True Happiness and Renewal of Practice at Year's End

Summary

The talk presents a Buddhist and Zen perspective on happiness, suffering, and the nature of reality. It begins by questioning ordinary happiness, describing it as brief and unstable because it is usually followed by sorrow. From this starting point, the speaker connects the human search for lasting happiness to the Buddha’s own life: the Buddha left his castle and luxurious life after recognizing the evanescence, or impermanence, of existence. This realization led him to begin the religious path that became Buddhism. A central theme is the Four Noble Truths, especially the teaching that the world is a world of suffering because it is a world of transiency. People suffer because they want pleasant things to remain permanent, even though everything changes. The speaker emphasizes that this desire for permanence is the root of dissatisfaction. In this framework, the ordinary pursuit of happiness is flawed when it assumes that something can remain fixed in a changing world. The talk therefore challenges the audience to reconsider whether the kind of happiness they seek is actually possible. The speaker then turns to the problem of perception and philosophical understanding. He contrasts the ordinary way of seeing things with seeing things “as it is.” In everyday life, people tend to perceive objects as if they have a stable, enduring existence. Using examples such as incense, fire, and electric light, he explains that what appears constant is actually a process of continuous change. Fire is not a fixed object but repeated combustion; electric light is not a static thing but a flow of current. This leads to a distinction between the “view of being,” which assumes fixed existence, and the “view of non-being,” which recognizes impermanence and change. However, the speaker argues that neither view alone is sufficient. If one clings only to being, one seeks permanence where none exists. If one clings only to non-being, life becomes empty and meaningless. A true Buddhist view must somehow include both, even though this is paradoxical and difficult to grasp intellectually. For that reason, the speaker says that Buddhism cannot be reduced to philosophy or abstract teaching. It must be lived through practice, beyond intellectual analysis. He encourages the audience to give up reliance on conceptual understanding and to accept paradox through direct practice. The talk also stresses the importance of sincere practice without a “gaining idea,” meaning without practicing in order to obtain some external reward or result. The speaker warns that if people are too concerned with whether their understanding is correct or whether their goals are attainable, they may not be able to devote themselves fully to practice. He distinguishes shallow intellectual study from deep lived experience, arguing that real transformation comes through embodied practice rather than theory. To illustrate how experience shapes character, the speaker tells a personal story about liking potatoes in America. He explains that he enjoys potatoes not because of any nutritional analysis, but because of childhood habits in his hometown, where potatoes were common. This example is used to show how repeated experience forms one’s preferences and character. In the same way, zazen and Buddhist practice shape a person over time, even if the practitioner does not immediately notice progress. The Lotus Sutra is then cited, especially the passage in which the Buddha tells Sariputra that he may not remember his past practices, but that he has been practicing for a very long time and therefore has attained enlightenment. The speaker uses this to suggest that people may not understand why they came to practice Buddhism, but there is nevertheless a deep reason rooted in buddha nature. He describes this as “buddha seeking buddha,” a mystical but necessary way of expressing the idea that practice arises from one’s own true nature. The talk concludes by emphasizing that Buddhism is not merely for Japanese, Chinese, or Indian people, but for everyone. Zen practice is defined not by sitting in a cross-legged posture alone, but by freeing the mind from judgments of right and wrong, good and bad, and by tasting reality through direct experience. The speaker expresses responsibility as a teacher and warns that misunderstanding the practice will prevent it from working. The final message is that Zen practice is not a means to an external result; it is itself the way of living with right understanding, sincerity, and direct experience in the midst of a changing world.