These works are protected by the Creative Commons license.
Creative Commons License Deed
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5
You are free to Share -- to copy, distribute, display, and perform this work, under the following conditions:
For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work.
Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the
copyright holder.
For my teachers, my colleagues, my students, and my family—Reality's representatives.
My work is supported, in part, by grants from the Mental Health Okamoto Memorial Foundation. My teachers and students in Japan and North America continue to offer me lessons. Some of those lessons I notice and incorporate into Constructive Living. Unfortunately, too much of their teaching goes unnoticed. My thanks to Jim Guswiler for pulling together his favorite quotes from the Water Books, edited and listed in the final chapter.
In the 1980's and 1990's a series of books about Constructive Living (CL) was published to introduce some fundamentally human ideas from Japan to an English-speaking readership. The titles of those books (for which I hold the copyrights) were:
I call them the "Water Books." Each of the books had some form of water in the title. The titles were borrowed and adapted from various Chinese and Japanese sources. Water is both ordinary and vital to our existence. A more detailed explanation of the water theme is offered in the chapter "Why Water?" below.
The Water Books were an early and important part of the growing literature on Constructive Living in the West. Recently translated into Japanese volumes from the Water Books series have sparked renewed interest within the very country from which they emerged. They represent the beginning repayment of a forty year debt I owe my Japanese teachers of Morita Therapy and Constructive Living reciprocity Therapy. For many years now I have spent about six months of each year in Japan lecturing to Japanese in Japanese about these Japanese ideas.
There are now more than 200 trained and certified Constructive Living instructors around the world--in the United States, Canada, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, England, Germany, the Philippines, Poland, and South Africa. Certification training currently takes place in the U.S., Canada, and Japan. Constructive Living books have been published in the U.S., England, Australia, Japan, China, and Germany. Well over 100,000 copies have been sold. It has taken twenty-five years to grow to this level of acceptance for a couple of reasons. The first has to do with quality control. Fewer than half the people who complete Constructive Living certification training are actually certified; the standards are that high.
The second reason for the measured growth of Constructive Living has to do with the difficulty of this lifestyle even for those who don't intend to become Constructive Living instructors. If Constructive Living promised the world freedom from neurotic misery, constant contentment and joy, spiritual highs, and an easy set of life principles it would be relatively easy to attract larger numbers of people. Instead Constructive Living offers a realistic means of handling life suffering and joy, a way to find meaning in everyday life, and a challenging perspective on what it is to be "ordinary." The most effective way to determine the effectiveness of Constructive Living is to give it a tentative try. In this book you will find not only ideas to arouse your thinking, but also exercises to put these ideas into practice. Although I was introduced to the main themes of Constructive Living in Japan, I now see that they are basically human themes that have appeared in Judaism, Christianity, Sufism, Taoism and other religious and secular systems of thought and action. My job has been to make the principles understandable to Westerners and, as Japan becomes more Westernized, to the modern Japanese themselves.
I have selected some of my favorite chapters from the Water Books, edited them to bring them up to date, and organized them into groups on the basis of their primary content. Thank you for joining me for these moments as you read The Fountain: The Best of the Water Books.
Water is a symbol of the natural. By just naturally doing its thing, by just going about its water business in a water-like way, it accomplishes all sorts of feats. Not the least of its accomplishments is its ability to provide us with analogies that help make sense of human psychology and provide advice for successful living.
Most of my recent books have water in the title: Playing Ball on Running Water;Even in Summer the Ice Doesn't Melt; Water Bears No Scars; Pools of Lodging for the Moon; A Thousand Waves; Rainbow Rising from a Stream; Flowing Bridges, Quiet Waters; and Plunging Through the Clouds among others. In order, they refer, in part, to action in ever-changing time, the chill stiffness of neurosis, the purposeful now-centeredness of water, the ability of the moon to find a resting place in a hundred bowls of water without making reservations or receiving invitations, the splash an emotion makes on our thinking, hope arising from wisdom, stepping forward within uncertainty, and the subjective nature of situational changes.
The Eastern approaches to mental health which form what we call in the West "Constructive Living" are Morita therapy and Constructive Living reciprocity therapy. They aim at helping us be natural. Some people believe that modern technology and other aspects of modern life have alienated us from Nature. What does it mean to become natural again?
Let's begin with a look at how water is natural. First, water accepts the reality of the situation it is in. It doesn't say "Now I'm in a glass, but I want to be in the ocean, so I'll sulk and daydream and not act like proper water." Only people do that. Water reflects whatever reality brings it.
"Tozan came to see Zen master Zenne of Kassan, and asked:
"'How are things?'
"'Just as they are.'" (Shibayama, 1970, p. 206)
In warm times water becomes warm, in cold times it becomes cold. It doesn't say, "I wish I were cool today. I shouldn't get this hot." It doesn't pretend it is warm when it is really cold. It simply accepts the reality of its temperature and goes about flowing toward the lowest place around.
People deny reality. They fight against real feelings caused by real circumstances. They build mental worlds of shoulds, oughts, and might-have-beens. Real changes begin with real appraisal and acceptance of what is. Then realistic action is possible.
Water flows around obstacles. It doesn't stop on its way down a riverbed to try to fight with the big rocks that oppose it. It just heads toward its goal and eventually wears down its opposition. Whether the obstacles wear down quickly or not, water manages to get where it aims to go without any long-term distraction. People tend to get distracted by feelings (for example, by anxiety before college exams) and shift away from their original purposes (for example, by trying to resolve the anxiety instead of continuing to study for the exams).
Water is wonderfully flexible. It fills the circumstances it is in. It takes the natural amount of time to get where it is going. It moves at a natural pace--now rushing quickly, now flowing slowly, depending on the circumstances. Some people seem to be rushing around all the time, trying to force time to fit their desires. Other people never seem to stir themselves to fast action.
What is so outstanding about these qualities? They are just the ordinary qualities of water. This chapter is about being ordinary and natural human beings in much the same way, and about the trouble we get ourselves into when we aren't realistic in the sense that water is realistic.
Constructive Living is a bringing together of two psychotherapies and their associated lifeways with origins in Japan. As noted above, the two systems for dealing with human suffering and human existence are usually called Morita therapy and Constructive Living reciprocity therapy. Both were developed in this century, but their roots extend back for hundreds of years into the history of East Asia. Masatake Morita was a professor of psychiatry at Jikei University School of Medicine in Tokyo. Ishin Yoshimoto was a successful businessman who retired to become a lay priest in Nara. Morita's method has its origins in Zen Buddhist psychology (not Zen Buddhist religion), and Yoshimoto's Constructive Living reciprocity has its origins in Jodo Shinshu Buddhist psychology. Neither of these systems requires that one believe in Buddhism or have faith in anything other than one's own experience. They work as well for Christians and Moslems and Jews as for Buddhists. Both are built on the naturalistic observations of humans and on careful introspection by their founders. I think that as you read about Constructive Living you will be thinking that it isn't so very mystical and Oriental, but rather practical and human and, well, "realistic."
Let us begin our consideration of Morita's ideas with the topic of feelings. Feelings are an important part of human life. There are feelings we like (feelings like confidence and love and happiness and satisfaction) and feelings we don't like (like loneliness and depression and fear and timidity). It isn't surprising that we try to generate some feelings and eliminate others. The problem with feelings, however, is that we cannot control them directly by our wills. We cannot sit down and concentrate and make our shyness go away or make ourselves stop feeling lonely on a Saturday night or make ourselves fall in love or out of love with someone. It just cannot be done. We cannot make ourselves stop feeling nervous before an exam, or anxious before asking someone out on a date, or tense before a job interview. Feelings are natural consequences of who we are and the situations we are in just like clouds are natural consequences of temperatures and pressures and humidity and so forth. Feelings are natural, and, naturally, they are just as uncontrollable as the weather.
Now, no one tries to fight with rain or fog. You never see anyone going outside waving a sword or a karate blow at rain clouds. And no ordinary humans try by their wills to make fog go away. No one ignores the weather, but we have all learned to dim our headlights in the fog, stay inside during hurricanes, and so forth. And we do what we can reasonably do while waiting for bad weather to pass.
Feelings are just like that. The best way to handle unpleasant feelings is to recognize them (don't try to ignore them or pretend they aren't there), to accept them (you can't control them directly, why try to fight something you can't defeat anyway?), and to go on about doing what you need to do. Rain or fog may not stop you from going to school or to work, but you will take the weather into consideration while driving. In the same way, anxiety need not stop you from studying or asking for a raise in pay, though you'll take it into consideration while selecting a place and time to study or a proper moment to approach your boss. And, in time, unpleasant feelings pass, just like snowstorms. Grief, for example, never sustains its intensity forever. It fades little by little over time unless something comes along to restimulate it again, then it fades again. Just like changeable weather.
As you can see, I'm making a clear distinction between feelings and behavior. Feelings are natural phenomena, uncontrollable directly by our will; they come and go like weather. Behavior (preparing for an interview, for example, or dealing with a difficult client) is controllable. We can choose to dress properly for an interview (behavior) even though we cannot choose to get rid of our anxiety (feeling) about it. We can ask someone out on a date (behavior) while feeling shy. We can total up the check at a restaurant (behavior) even though we cannot choose to avoid our unpleasant feelings about making others wait while we do so. Just as we can decide to go on a picnic even though the day is windy. This distinction between directly controllable behavior and directly uncontrollable feelings is a key feature of Constructive Living action thought.
If we have no direct control over something, we cannot be held responsible for it. Who is responsible for an earthquake? We aren't responsible for having angry, spiteful, depressed, sexy, grumpy, greedy or any other kind of feelings. Again, feelings are natural. On the other hand, we are responsible for what we do, our behavior, no matter what we are feeling. Behavior (except for a few areas like stuttering and sexual impotence and trembling) is controllable by our will, so we are responsible for that aspect of our lives all the time. To be sure, we find it convenient to try to escape from our responsibility for our actions by blaming our feelings. "I was so angry I couldn't help hitting him," "I was too distraught to thank her," "I feel the need for drugs is so strong that I steal to get them." But these feeling-based excuses don't hold water. Similarly, blaming parents or society or spouses or children for our destructive behavior is to seek to avoid responsibility for what is rightfully our own responsibility, no matter what past experiences we may have suffered through.
One of the interesting things about humans is that what we do (our behavior) often influences how we feel. We never have direct control over our natural feelings, but sometimes we can affect our affect by our actions. If you don't feel like going on a job interview one morning it seems to me that it is a waste of time to try to make yourself want to do so. I think it is natural to feel some hesitation about laying your ego on the line for someone else to decide whether you are worthy of hiring or not. There is no need to make yourself enjoy job interviews. The solution? Simply to get out of bed, get dressed for the interview, and go. Sometimes, in the dressing and reading over your resume and driving over to the appointment a sort of excitement and interest in what will happen arises. Sometimes it doesn't. In either case, the interview gets done. Doing a few job interviews well, succeeding at them, having jobs offered to you as a result, may make job hunting even pleasurable. But lying in bed, putting off getting up, and failing to show up for the job interview never gives you a chance to succeed, never gives you a chance to feel anything but uncomfortable about job interviews. The more we allow feelings to govern our lives, the more they spread to govern even larger areas of life.
So we can use our behavior to give ourselves the chance to succeed at accomplishing our goals. And that success often produces confidence and other satisfying feelings.
Pleasant feelings fade over time just as unpleasant ones do, unless something happens to restimulate those feelings. Romantic love fades in a lot of marriages. Respect for individuals and school spirit and patriotic feelings toward one's country can be expected to fade unless restimulated somehow. That's what dates and rallies and national anthems are about. In the doing of these things certain feelings are likely to be stimulated or restimulated. If you want to keep love in your relationship you must keep doing kindness for your partner. As you behave in thoughtful, loving ways you are increasing the chances of sustaining feelings of love for him or her. Romance in a marriage is sustained by gifts and candle-lit dinners and kisses and dressing up for each other and so forth.
But even this focus on influencing feelings indirectly through behavior is a bit unnatural. Sometimes you seem to do everything right, you plan the proper behaviors to generate certain feelings, and the feelings don't turn out as expected. A better strategy for living is to be purpose-focused instead of being feeling-focused. Let the feelings take care of themselves while you go about accomplishing your goals through your behavior. As the emphasis in your life turns more and more toward using controllable behavior to achieve your goals life steadies down and becomes more satisfying. I am not talking here of the tunnel vision workaholic who focuses only on business and economic success. Purposes and goals are various. But, on the whole, being purpose-oriented will pay off more than being feeling-oriented simply because the latter isn't a game you can win with any consistency. You can't make good feelings last and last; you can't make bad feelings go away at will. (Technically, it isn't proper to use words like "good" and "bad" when referring to feelings; like seasons, they have no moral qualities.)
If feelings are natural phenomena doesn't it seem strange to you that there are psychotherapies which try to make fears or guilt or depression go away? There are psychotherapies and self growth methods which aim at producing happiness and confidence and good feelings about yourself all the time. I cannot see how such therapies can deliver on their promises. No one is happy or confident or feeling good about anything all the time. Feelings keep changing, like the sky keeps changing. A more suitable goal for therapy or for human life in general seems to be to notice and accept these changes in feelings while keeping steadily on about doing the things that will get us where we want to go. Like water does.
Morita therapy holds that all humans are oversensitive to their own faults and limits to some degree. Especially when we are ill or under stress we may become fixated on some mental/physical disturbance. We blow out of proportion the ringing in our ears or our stiff shoulders or our fear of flying or our discomfort about eating in restaurants or whatever. The proper course to alleviate these problem areas is not to ignore them or to fight them, but to accept them while getting on about proper, constructive behavior. In other words, whatever is troubling us, it is important to accept the troubled feelings and get on about living. Of course, if there is something practical and concrete we can do to alleviate the cause of the problem (such as seeing a physician to rule out organic illness), that is included in the category of proper, constructive behavior.
In general, the stronger we desire something, the more we want to succeed, the greater our anxiety about failure. Our worries and fears are reminders of the strength of our positive desires. They are also reminders of our needs to use caution, prepare materials to avoid the embarrassment of lack of preparation, work hard, practice perfecting our skills, develop our ability to persist and endure, deal with the environmental circumstances which caused them, and so forth. Our anxieties are indispensable for us in spite of the discomfort accompanying them. To try to do away with them would be foolish. Morita therapy is not really a psychotherapeutic method for getting rid of "symptoms." It is more an educational method for outgrowing our self-imposed limitations. Through Constructive Living we learn to accept the naturalness of ourselves.
In their advanced stages Constructive Living students accept themselves as part of the natural situation in which they are embedded. I do not refer to some passive conformity, but to a dynamic recognition that we exist as situationally-embedded aspects of Reality. We take on our identities from the circumstances in which we find ourselves. We are rather like the cursor markers on the computer screen of Reality. The loss of self-centeredness, in more than one sense of the word, is an ultimate goal for some students of this method. However, relief from the obsessive pressure of phobias, anxieties, and psychosomatic difficulties is sufficient for many students.
What we have considered here so far has come from the thought of the Japanese psychiatrist, Shoma Morita (or Masatake Morita; Japanese kanji characters can be read in various ways. I have placed the family names last in this book to conform with our English custom ). Now let's turn briefly to the contribution to Constructive Living made by the lay priest, Ishin Yoshimoto, and his Constructive Living reciprocity.
One of the factors that seems to influence how we feel is our attitude toward the world. If we are constantly concerned with getting our share, with making sure we aren't left out, if we are extremely self-focused and self-conscious, then we are likely to have a lot of miserable feelings. The world just never seems to send us green lights and lottery prizes and kind words when we want them. And we want them nearly all the time.
Have you ever stopped to think about how much of you is truly yours? Your name was given to you by your parents. So was your body. The words you use were taught to you by parents and peers and teachers. Your body has grown and is sustained by food that people you don't even know produced and processed for you. The clothes you wear were created and sewn by others, bought with money given you by someone else. Even the ideas you have seem to bubble to the surface of your mind, coming out of nowhere and passing along to be replaced by other thoughts from nowhere. There's nothing that is truly yours; it is all borrowed. Of course, it is the same for all of us.
You may say, of course, that you bought your clothes with your own money. But who gave you the money? Who taught you to do the work you do which earned the money? Who hired you? Who gave you the basic educational skills to learn the trade you ply? The point is that when we trace back our achievements far enough we see the fruits of others' efforts in our behalf, inevitably. We have done nothing solely on our own.
Strange, then, that we should have the notion that we are "self-made." We believe that we got where we are by our own efforts. With just a little bit of reflection we can see that such notions of having come this far on our own are laughable. Deeper reflection allows us to see in even greater detail how we have been and continue to be supported on all sides in all sorts of ways by people and things and energies (such as electricity and the sun's heat and light).
One result of sorting out the specific, concrete ways in which the world supports us (just as you are supporting me now by loaning me your eyes to read this chapter) is a feeling of gratitude. I don't deserve all this help from you and this paper and the electricity that powers this word processor (and the people who worked to generate this electricity), and the editor and publisher of this book, and the manufacturers of this printer's ink, book designers, and the people who taught me these lifeways, and so forth. But, through Constructive Living reciprocity, we can come to notice and appreciate the surrounding nurturance from the world and to offer words of thanks. Before I underwent a week of Constructive Living reciprocity training in Japan, I thought all this was my due. I took it for granted, and drift back into that attitude sometimes still. But whether I recognize it or not, whether I accept it or not, whether I feel gratitude or not, whether I try to return the favors or not, Reality keeps on being what it is. It keeps on giving to me, not in some abstract sense, but concretely, through Jim and Frank and Lynn and this keyboard and so forth.
So the natural response to realizing what is really going on is the desire to repay and a sort of guilt when we see that we haven't been doing much repaying right along. Starting with our parents our attitude shifts from how little we have received from them and how much more they owe us to one of how much we have received from them and how important it is to start working on giving back something to them. I'm not suggesting that all parents are perfect and that they have done a perfect job in raising us. But I am asserting that there were some adults in our lives who fed and clothed us and nurtured us when we were small. They did it whether they were in the mood or not, over and over again, whether we felt appreciative or showed them gratitude or not--or we wouldn't have survived to be here today.
The gratitude and desire to repay apply to the people in your life today, as well, and to objects in your world. What have you done for your shoes lately, for your car, for electricity, for your toothbrush and stereo set? If you take a moment to consider what they have done for you, it seems not quite so odd to think of what you might do for them in return.
I've never met a suffering neurotic person who was filled with gratitude. Isn't that something? Gratitude and neurotic suffering seem to be antagonistic. If there is anything characteristic of neurosis it is a self-centeredness. Gratitude, on the other hand, is other-centered. It carries with it the desire to serve others in repayment, even if it causes some inconvenience to oneself.
The most joyful people I have known have all been people who gave themselves away to others. The most miserable people I have known have all been concerned with looking out for themselves. Check with your own experience, look around. Despite commercials to the contrary, looking out for number one is a sure path to torment.
When we say that the weather is terrible or that it is a pleasant day we are really talking about our convenience and our preference and not about some moral quality of the weather. The weather just is. It is cloudy or drizzly or foggy or clear or nippy or whatever. It is what nature presents to us at a particular time. We must take the weather into account when we dress to go out in it, when we plan a picnic, when we decide what tires to put on the car, when we decide whether to carry an umbrella to work. Nevertheless, the weather doesn't force us to make any particular decision about what we shall do. For example, we may choose to wear a swimsuit in the rain and wash our car in a drizzle, we may continue with our picnic plans even though it is windy, we may decide that snow tires are too expensive to buy, and we may prefer to run to the car rather than use an umbrella.
The weather is part of the natural reality that is presented to us for our consideration. So are feelings. Being afraid of heights is just as natural as a breezy autumn day; so is nervousness when we are about to meet new and important people in our lives. Anxiety before taking an examination, concern while waiting for medical laboratory reports on our physical condition, embarrassment when we have made a blunder in front of others, grief when a loved one (or a job) is lost--all these feelings are as natural as the weather.
When we try to single out some feelings as "terrible" or "unwarranted" or "intrusive" or "hindering" or "beneath us," we are likely to forget their proper naturalness. When we recognize their essential innocence we can go on about life, simply acknowledging their existence as we acknowledge a foggy morning. It is sensible to try to work our way around fog--we use dimmed headlights, drive slower, and so forth. Anyone who tries to attack the fog directly seems foolish to us. It does no good to slash away at fog with a sword or a fan. Why, then, do we try to get rid of our fears and anxieties? Why is the purpose of some psychotherapies to try to free the patients from worries and self-doubts and apprehensions? I suspect that some therapists try this impossible task not only because their patients are distressed by their feelings (some people are distressed by gloomy weather, too), but also because the therapists and patients have the mistaken notion that the feelings somehow interfere with the patients' doing what they need to do in life.
We commonly say, for example, that Mr. X won't fly on an airplane because he is afraid of flying. We may even believe that Mr. X's fear causes him to refrain from flying. It isn't so. It can't be so, because there are plenty of people who fear flying (I am one of them) and yet travel by plane all the time. Perhaps, you say, it is the degree of fear that distinguishes between people who fly and people who don't. I wonder. I used to be very, very frightened (much more than I am now) and still flew because there was no other reasonable way to get from Los Angeles to Japan and back in the time available.
In the psychology of suicide we often talk about persons who are too depressed to be suicidal. The danger of suicide comes when their depression begins to lift. While they are at the bottom of depression they have no energy to plan or act on their suicidal plan. So it is not the feeling of depression that causes people to kill themselves. Throughout human life, it is simply impossible to make a clear, simple causal connection between what we feel and what we do. When we look closely at feelings and behavior we see some correlation (like the correlation between the number of umbrellas we see on the street and rain clouds in the sky) but no simple causal relationship (just as we see some people without umbrellas even though it is raining).
I do not know what causes us to do what we do. I really don't. I know that it isn't simply feelings. I suspect that no one else is certain about what causes us to act as we do, either, although some claim such awesome insight. It seems clear, however, that when we get to the point of accepting our feelings as we accept the inevitability of the weather, when we take into consideration the information about our feelings as we consider the information in a weather report, and then go ahead with what we have decided needs to be done, we end up in better shape than those who shake their fists at the clouds in the sky or scream at (or ignore) the weather reports.
You see, even the most unpleasant feelings are the natural result of our wanting to live and to live fully. The fear of meeting others grows from the desire to be liked and respected by them. The fear of heights is self-preserving, reflecting a reluctance to put ourselves in dangerous situations. Self-criticism and feelings of inferiority indicate a strong desire to improve ourselves. We compare ourselves with real or imagined others, noticing their apparent abilities and successes. Our skill at observation and our strong drive to succeed are reflected in our self-doubts. People who don't care about living successfully don't have worries about job interviews and examinations; they don't have inferiority feelings; they don't suffer from shyness or lack of confidence. Those who don't care are to be pitied. If we grow beyond the petty human feelings and concerns then we lose empathy and sympathy for other suffering humans. It is far better to continue to feel while developing better discipline in our behavior. In this way, we don't lose our membership in humanity, though we advance up the ranks of character.
The "natural" person, then, simply takes the feelings as they come, all intertwined and interacting, and goes about doing what reality brings that needs doing. The "natural" person wastes no time trying to struggle with feelings directly. The feelings are just "ordinary," unworthy of lots of attention over a long period of time. Feelings shouldn't be ignored--how could we ignore a snowstorm, anyway? But when you have to go out in a blizzard, you go out. That is the way it is to be human. The feelings are there, but we do what we have to do. Even in summer, when the ice hasn't melted, shivering, we do what we have to do.
I dislike being told how I must be feeling. Locked out of my office one day I remember feeling inconvenienced but not particularly angry. A colleague insisted that I must have been angry--after all, someone had forgotten to tell me about the change of locks. But I wasn't angry, I insisted. Sometimes I'm angry, to be sure, but not that time. He persisted: I must have been very angry to deny and repress it so strongly. I wonder.
Sometimes we feel pressured by psychological theory or by friends or therapists or spouses to own up to emotions that they insist must be there. When someone pulls out from the curb in front of my car without any signal and I am forced to brake suddenly, then sometimes I am upset and sometimes not. There seems to be no purpose in digging for anger that someone else believes must be hidden somewhere in my psyche. If I am denying and repressing the feeling, why do I recognize and affirm it sometimes? Why should I try to fit my experience to someone else's theoretical satisfaction?
It is the same with speaking before large audiences. Sometimes I am more tense than at other times. Sometimes I feel more courageous and less shy than at other times. Aren't you the same? When we reflect back on our childhood, weren't we sometimes angry at our parents and sometimes appreciative of them, sometimes satisfied with our lot and sometimes intensely dissatisfied, sometimes loving and sometimes hating? To talk about an unhappy childhood is to oversimplify the complexity of the past in order to fit some current need. We may want to consider ourselves deprived as children so that we can explain our current limitations. We may want to emphasize our feelings of abandonment as children in order to please some sort of counselor who, we hope, can ultimately make some organized sense of our lives. I wonder.
The simplified explanations of life built upon uncaring fathers and overprotective mothers and expectable feelings may have some value because they make us believe that we have a handle on why we are the way we are. But they aren't true. I'm really very sorry to put it so bluntly. They aren't true. They are simple fairy tales about who we were and are. The reality is so much richer and more complex than these caricatures that a little genuine reflection will show them to be imaginative scaffolds for reconstructing a safely understandable past. There may very well have been an overprotective mother in your past. But her existence is no single-variable explanation of your lack of self-confidence or your current difficulties with your office pals or your fights with the kids. What you felt then and what you feel now and what you will feel tomorrow are so complexly determined (as much by what you have done as by what others have done to you) that to buy into any simple psychodynamic explanatory system is rather childlike and naive.
It occurs to me that the news media have helped perpetuate these oversimplified views of ourselves and our world. When I am interviewed on television the newsperson or talk show host wants to know the single problem with mental hospitals. What is the cause of neurotic suffering? What are the three reasons why people kill themselves? Broadcast time and print space are limited. The complexities of reality aren't what people want to hear and read--or so many media people seem to think. Television, radio, and newspapers seem always to need something immediate, something unusual. News shows meet that need, as do sports events and call-in shows with topical themes. Such programming is ephemeral. It isn't expected to provide in-depth, lasting information. Instead, it will soon be replaced by spot reporting of other recent events. The long term view, the history, the panorama, are relegated to a brief background statement. The result is an oversimplification in our understanding and in our approach to understanding. But there is a different area in which simplification is not only possible, but desirable.
Consider the possibility of simply accepting the feelings and moods and emotional reactions to events as they are. No need to try to make rational sense of them. No need to fathom their historical roots. No need to pause to reflect on whether they are normal or not. No need to examine what you ought to be feeling according to someone else's expectation. It is strange to call this perspective radical. But in this day and age it is radical to consider feelings to be natural phenomena, like temperature changes or leaves falling from trees in autumn. We would prefer that feelings be more like traffic lights--predictable, controllable, and dependable if we pace our lives properly and rationally. But the experience of emotion isn't mechanical in any simple way, like a traffic light. To try to exert direct control over our feelings based on some psychological understanding is, in any exact sense, fruitless.
So where does that perspective leave us? Are we destined to be buffeted about by every emotional gust? Can we make no sense at all of why we feel as we do? Are we doomed to passive resignation in the area of feelings? Not at all. Whatever perspective we adopt intellectually, we all continue to make some rough sense of why we are grouchy this morning, why we are tense when greeting the mailman today, why the tears came to our eyes during that movie episode. Our attempts to understand give us ideas about what we need to do in our lives, what needs to be changed in order to reduce or increase the likelihood of certain feelings.
Nevertheless, there is a great deal of slippage between what we understand about our feelings and what actually causes the feelings. And there is slippage again between what we understand about our feelings and what we can and will do about the conditions that contribute to them. What I am arguing for here is, I suppose, a sort of humility about our feelings. With all our fine psychological theories we sometimes delude ourselves into believing that we really know a great deal about what is going on in our emotional lives. The emotional lives of not a few psychotherapists and counselors in my acquaintance belie this belief. We know very little.
What is certain is that I am sometimes this, sometimes that. Sometimes pleased, sometimes not; sometimes confident, sometimes not; sometimes compassionate, sometimes not. The ice doesn't melt at my whim. It doesn't melt no matter how well I understand its origins or believe I understand its origins. It may not melt despite my persistent efforts to change the circumstances that I believe to be maintaining it. In such cases what else is there to do but shiver and go on about living?
Given that the above perspective more accurately describes what is going on in our affective or emotional lives, why go to the trouble to consider feelings from this unusual point of view? First, we no longer need to waste effort and energy trying for some elaborate intellectual insight. Some people will opt to seek psychodynamic insight whether it is practically useful or not, simply because it is interesting. No problem there. Positive and creative results can come to those who play with the symbols of the psyche. But that is not an endeavor of "cure," it is exploration. Second, the energy once devoted to seeking deep understanding of the hidden self can be redirected toward the more workable and controllable aspect of life--what we do. It isn't nearly as much fun to dig in and clean up our behavioral act, but the results are gratifying and dependable.
As a consequence of adopting this perspective on feelings we begin to accept them rather than trying to control, create, or dissolve them. We begin to see them as natural consequences of events sometimes recognized and sometimes not, but always natural. Natural means not good or bad, just natural. When a lion kills and devours its prey it may not be a pretty sight, but the lion isn't bad for doing what it is natural for lions to do. Lions haven't the rational, thoughtful control over behavior that we humans can choose to assert over our own acts. A depression may be painful to endure and hurtful to watch in someone else, but the hopeless and sorrow-filled feelings aren't bad. They are natural. We may use medication to ease the suffering (just as we may feed a caged lion), but there remains a degree of suffering that must be lived with while one gets on about shoveling away the snow on one's doorstep. And remarkably often, when we get involved in the shoveling, we lose sight of the sorrow and hopelessness.
This new point of view allows a freedom and self-acceptance of great depth. My feelings are an aspect of me. I don't need to understand them fully or to "solve" or to "dissolve" them somehow in order to get on with my life. I am the way I am, naturally. While working to improve my behavior there is no need to struggle with the doubts and obsessions and despair. They are all natural, just as they are. They aren't my responsibility; they are just passing through. I am not substandard or abnormal for having these thoughts and feelings. They are all right as they are. I am all right as I am. Now to get on with shoveling the walk.
What are the absolutely essential elements of Constructive Living? What defines it as a unique lifeway or therapeutic method? How does one know whether a technique fits within the framework of Constructive Living?
Let me say a few words about what is not essential to Constructive Living. As far as I can see there are some characteristic techniques but no specific techniques that are essential. We can do Constructive Living without doing absolute bedrest as in Japan's inpatient Morita therapy and without seated meditation as in Japan's Constructive Living reciprocity. We can do Constructive Living without diary guidance or reading assignments.
There is nothing particularly Japanese about Constructive Living. It isn't necessary to use foreign words like shinkeishitsu or toraware or even Morita or Yoshimoto. There is no requirement that our students be interested in Zen or things Japanese.
So what is left? As far as I can see there are a few essential principles,
orientations, and a small class of techniques that constitute the core of
Constructive Living.
Other teachers of Constructive Living might emphasize different aspects of the practice, but I submit that we would agree on these core concepts and methods. It is reassuring that in order to teach this lifeway to others we need not be perfect provided we are Realistic.
Constructive Living is overtly a teaching practice. As a guide, I have something to teach my students: namely, a way to live that will relieve unnecessary suffering. It is important to listen to the students' problems and perspectives so that the teaching can be tailored to their needs and explained so that they will be able to understand and be able to try out principles in real experience. There is much to learn in a session. There is no time for the time filler "How do you feel about that?" unless the student is specifically having trouble recognizing and accepting feelings. Complaints and rambling descriptions of emotional ups and downs are discouraged. The goal of Constructive Living is not understanding the distant historical source of our troubling emotions.
Some people believe that when they have some understanding of the childhood origins of their feelings they will have control over them. That impression isn't realistic. We have no control over them unless that knowledge leads to changes of attention and behavior. Insight alone is, for many, a way of avoiding making the effortful, sometimes painful, changes in behavior that are necessary to produce changed feelings and an improved concept of one's self.
Thus it seems reasonable to accept one's feelings as they are (rather than using energy and attention trying to analyze them) and get right to work on attention and behavior. However, such acceptance is not passive; we still work to change our circumstances for the better. We still make efforts to improve the lot of those around us. But the inner turmoil is gone. The conflict within is no more. It is no longer me opposing this condition. It becomes me here doing this. That is all. That is sufficient.
The doing is what is important, not the result. From the Constructive Living action point of view, no act is merely instrumental. Every act is an end in itself. The quality of our attention in action is crucial. Sometimes I work hard and nothing seems to come of the results of the work. I may put in a lot of time weeding, for example, only to find a new crop of weeds springing up within a week. Or a raging forest fire might destroy the cabin that took years to build. However, nothing can take away the changes in my character that resulted from my full attention to that weeding or the building of that cabin. With every fully attended activity I am working not only on the project at hand but on myself as well. Behavior is what counts. Not emotion. Not even the results of behavior. What I do is the only thing in life that I can control. No one can guarantee a life of good feelings. No one can guarantee that our efforts will bring the results that we hope for. We must be clear on what is doable and what is not.
It seems that most folks most of the time simply get through life. Their days are spent merely passing time until the weekends or until their vacations. They mark a few outstanding events--graduation day, the trip to Hawaii, the day they got married, the birth of a child--but the rest of life is unremarkable and without particular meaning for them. How much richer, it seems to me, to be able to think of every day as important, every act as rich with meaning. Such an attitude allows one to live life instead of merely enduring it.
In the Constructive Living action context, every act provides the opportunity for purposeful accomplishment and personal growth. Every act can involve moments of directed attention. Pouring a cup of coffee, scrubbing the bathtub, writing a thank-you note, arranging the pages of a photo album, signaling a left turn, setting an alarm, kissing a loved one--all these activities can be, should be, carried out with the clear focus and scrupulous care they deserve. All we have is that flow of attention. If we do not use it with awareness, if we do not recognize its pervasive nature, then we misuse the only treasure we have, we lose life.
To be sure, it is easier to put out the effort when you come to understand something about yourself, when you have an emotional high, when you enjoy the meal your life partner cooked, when you choose life rather than self-destruction. But no one else causes these choices and experiences for you. No one else controls them. No one else controls you. Your responsibility, your control, lies only in the sphere of your own behavior. What results is up to you and reality. Being in charge of yourself is a full-time job.
Responsibility is an important topic for consideration here. It is critical to distinguish between understanding and condoning. The former has nothing to do with responsibility; the latter assigns it elsewhere. Western psychotherapy, in its attempt to understand disturbed behavior, bends over backward and ends up condoning or excusing hurtful, destructive acts. Look at all the extenuating psychological circumstances that affect our criminal justice system's decisions. In Constructive Living we are quite clear on the boundary between understanding and condoning. We seek to understand and condone any feeling, any feeling at all. The desire to kill or steal, fear, shyness, panic, sexual attraction, disgust, pride, joy, reverence, and so forth are all equally acceptable, that is, to be accepted as they are. There is nothing wrong with any of these feelings. They are not acts. They may cause us discomfort, but they don't directly affect anyone else.
On the other hand, we seek to understand, but refuse to condone, any harmful behavior, no matter what the confused and powerful feelings that lie behind them. Behavior is the only way we directly affect other people. To feel like killing another human is natural in some circumstances; to actually kill another human is wrong. I may want to understand what is going through the mind of a murderer before the crime, but, whatever he is thinking or feeling, the murder cannot be condoned. It is quite a relief, actually, when we realize that we have no responsibility for our feelings. They are uncontrollable; they are natural; they need only be accepted as they are. Still, we must take clear responsibility for what we do, and we must hold others responsible for what they do. If we fail to do so, we run the risk of just the sorts of injustices that appear in the name of justice in our courts every day.
When the courts punish parents for a crime committed by their children, the reason for the punishment should not be that they are responsible for their children's behavior. They are not. Each of us is responsible for his or her own behavior, even children. The punishment is justified because of the parents' improper parenting. Their behavior was at fault and not their lack of control over their children's behavior. Can you see how important the difference is? To hold one of us responsible for another's behavior is meaningless for the one and demeaning for the other. I simply cannot control what you do. You cannot be absolved of responsibility for what you do. It is as simple as that.
When you awaken at four A.M. and can't go back to sleep, what do you do? When you are angered and frustrated by injustices committed by powerful people in your life, what do you do? Notice that even if you understand the reasons for the sleeplessness or for the anger, the conditions don't go away. Even if you make every effort to will yourself to be sleepy or to be calm, you cannot.
When you awaken at four A.M. and can't go back to sleep, what do you do? When you are angered and frustrated by injustices committed by powerful people in your life, what do you do? Notice that even if you understand the reasons for the sleeplessness or for the anger, the conditions don't go away. Even if you make every effort to will yourself to be sleepy or to be calm, you cannot.
The other day I was working with my personal computer, trying to get it to print something stored in its memory. I made some entries from the keyboard, but nothing happened. I tried another set of entries; still it didn't work. I tried repeating the process, pushing the keys again and again. How annoying! It ought to work! I found myself pushing harder on the keys in an attempt to exert my will on the computer. But it wasn't programmed to function in that way. The computer didn't care that I was angry and trying to impose my will on it.
Realizing my foolishness, I tried yet another way to get around the obstacle, and this time everything ran smoothly. Fascinating! It was necessary to discover the proper action, then all proceeded in an orderly fashion. No matter how intent and determined I was, no matter how much I desired the result, no matter how emotional or how cool I tried to become, the computer responded only to my actions. Until I did what needed to be done, the results were unsatisfactory.
Like the computer, the world about me responds to my behavior. It can't feel my feelings. Reality doesn't respond to my will or my wishes or my emotions. To believe that positive thinking changes the world directly is childlike naivete. To be sure, my thoughts and feelings may influence what I do (my behavior), and that action, in turn, may influence reality. But it is what I do that affects my world. And it is the same for you.
It follows that if you want to make changes in your marriage or in your job or in your grades at school or in your character, you must change what you are doing. You don't need to change how you feel about something to affect it. For example, if you want closer ties with your spouse, you don't need to begin by loving him or her more. If you want to have more friends, you don't have to begin by feeling less shy or more self-confident. Changes begin with action.
You won't see me cry in public. It's not that I'm cold and insensitive. It's not that I'm suppressing feelings or ignoring them or pretending I'm not feeling what I am. I have a choice whether to let others in on what I'm feeling. Mostly I choose not to do so. When I cry, I'd prefer to be alone.
Some men these days are being criticized by factions of women and other men for not being expressive of their emotions. Those criticisms are based on unrealistic assumptions. Here are a few of them:
Critics assume that the only two possibilities for handling feelings is to express them or suppress them. The third alternative--recognizing them, acknowledging them without external expression, and getting on with doing what needs doing-- isn't considered, even though that third alternative is the one we all utilize most of the time.
Critics don't seem to realize that both sexes hold back expression of feelings most of the time. We cannot be bothered with expressing every feeling which pops up in our psyches, nor do others wish to be bothered with an ongoing report of our fluctuating mood state. It would be a burden on others to have to put up with a stream of messages about our feelings. We all hide our feelings, if you will. If you look closely at the complaints about non-expression of feelings by males you will see that the critics call for the increased expression of only certain kinds of feelings in certain circumstances. Anger, sorrow, vulnerability, and the like are primarily targeted. I have never understood why these particular feelings should be displayed for others on demand. I suspect that the attempt to coerce males into expressing these feelings in social contexts is an attempt at some sort of social leveling, a distorted effort by the critics to get some social confirmation of their own feelings. But feeling any feeling is all right. We don't need to be reassured that others have these feelings, too. They do.
I continue to be intrigued that people believe they have secret feelings known only to mental health professionals who are capable of putting their clients in touch with those feelings. That belief is not so different from believing that anyone could be unwittingly possessed by devils which can be exorcised by some religious professionals. Interestingly, the feelings which we are supposed to have lurking in our psyches are uniformly unpleasant ones. Why can't we get in touch with our hidden joy? Why can't we discover we've been happy all these years without knowing it? Sounds sort of foolish doesn't it? If such a psychotherapy doesn't exist already, it is probably on its way.
With rare exceptions Western psychotherapy doesn't value individual experience while claiming that it does. What it values is interpreted individual experience. The interpretation must be provided by or at least validated by a mental health professional. Rather than acknowledging the full implications of feelings, for example, much of Western psychological counseling seems to trivialize and discount feelings. When feelings are considered to be merely markers of past parental mistakes or signs of current psychological diagnostic categories or indications of the working of the unconscious (or other mystical, untestable constructions) then the feelings themselves are primarily tokens of "more important" phenomena. It is important to recognize the value of the experienced feeling itself and the information it brings. When one is engaged in fighting a feeling or "curing" its cause the focus remains on escape. In order to derive full benefit from a feeling it must be accepted, incorporated into momentary life experience, not resisted.
It increasingly appears that much of Western psychological counseling (both psychodynamic and behavioral) aims at little more than distraction from genuine and natural emotions through specialized cognitive maneuvering. It is time that we stopped trying to "fix" feelings and got on with the more important and practical objective of feeling feelings and learning from them while engaging in purposeful behavior.
Some day we'll learn that feelings, any and all feelings, are for feeling.
In the Western world we went from emotional illiteracy to an obsessive concern of emotions over the period of a hundred years or so, especially as a result of Freud's influence. The feeling focus of modern culture covers laziness, sloppy thinking, rationalization, and self indulgence. Maybe there was a time when many people didn't recognize what they were feeling much of the time, but now there is an overemphasis on feelings as the most important element of human life. Some people seem to be attending primarily to their own feelings, building their lives around them. What we need these days is not to get in touch with feelings, but to go beyond the reality of feelings alone, and to get in touch with the larger reality of circumstances.
Consider how the word "feeling" has spilled over its natural boundaries into other areas of human existence. Some speakers say, "I feel like a hamburger for lunch." Others say, "I feel that she did commit the crime." In Japan a major advertising campaign centered on the phrase "I feel Coke." Psychotherapists use the very convenient time-filler query, "And how do you feel about that?" How lazy we have become! How undisciplined in thought and behavior!
Constructive Living doesn't ask anyone to give up feeling. But we must beware of overindulging the feeling side of our lives. When we focus on emotions exclusively other important aspects of living are neglected. We must balance our awareness of feelings with attentive, purposeful action in the world. "Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action," wrote James Russell Lowell.
Constructive Living recommends that we attend to even the smallest tasks of daily life with mindful attention. Some see a danger that Constructive Living might turn attention to trivial, insignificant acts allowing an escape from important human tasks. I doubt it. There may be short-term escape from some of life's unpleasantness by focusing on doing daily life well, but we eventually tire of escaping into other life tasks. There is something in us humans that calls us to more than triviality.
Until recently we seemed to have the two alternatives of (1)individual freedom with all the concomitant social ills--teen age suicides, violence, crime, unwanted pregnancies, social unrest-- or (2)social control with increasing restrictions to protect and control. Now, through Constructive Living, we are offered a third possibility of freedom in the areas that are genuinely free and self control in the areas that require personal and social responsibility. Constructive Living doesn't make it easy to give up smoking; it doesn't produce laws that make it difficult to smoke. It merely tells you that the desire to smoke is uncontrollable and that, regardless of that desire, you smoke or you don't. Notice that there is no talk here of deciding to give up smoking or making a commitment to quit smoking or getting motivated to stop smoking. You stop or you don't. That is reality. The rest is just smoke-talk.
Before, it seemed that we had the alternative of expressing feelings or suppressing them. The alternatives were couched in terms of open honest portrayal of emotions or dishonest unhealthy censoring of them. As noted above, the third alternative presented by Constructive Living is honest recognition and acceptance of feelings without the requirement of behavioral expression of them.
Over the past twenty-five years reality has demonstrated that Constructive Living is not only an effective method for coping with the suffering of existing neuroses, but it can be used to prevent neurosis and minimize the negative effects of stress. The reasons for Constructive Living's effectiveness are clear. Constructive Living is realistic and practical. No one is asserting that it is easy.
As Richard Restak, a neurologist, wrote in the Washington Post "we are what we do rather than what we think, fantasize or otherwise inwardly experience about ourselves...We are truly ourselves only when we act." He bases his assertion on recent brain research by Benjamin Libet at UCSF which indicates that subjects' brains show activity milliseconds before they become conscious of "choosing" to flex their forefingers. Moreover, the subjects can choose not to flex during the milliseconds between their awareness of their intention to move and the actual flexing. The ability to veto the brain's decision may be the locus of free will, according to Libet.
The theoretical implications for Constructive Living are worth considering. For decades Constructive Living action theory held that thoughts, feelings, and other mental events are natural phenomena, not completely under our conscious control. They are natural and spontaneous responses arising from our environments, histories, and so forth. Now we begin to see some neurophysiological evidence for the Constructive Living action assertion. The natural environment of our minds includes our brain activity. The brain responds naturally and spontaneously to the Reality that presents itself. Then the brain generates impulses that we interpret as thoughts, feelings, decisions, and the like.
Constructive Living theory holds that the locus of control in our lives lies in behavior. We define who we are by what we do. Accepting thoughts, feelings, moods, and other mental events is our only recourse; they aren't completely within our control; what else can we do but accept them? To struggle with the undefeatable is to play a losing game of life. Now there is scientific evidence supporting the theory generated from human experience. The control and freedom in our lives does come through what we do.
It is satisfying to find scientific support for Constructive Living principles. But scientific theory changes. Experimental refutations of Libet's procedures may appear in future reports. Our experience provides solid support for our understandings that mental events aren't totally controllable by our will and that within the domain of behavior lies personal freedom and control of our lives.
By now you are familiar with the notion that feelings are natural aspects of Reality. If we take the trouble to search, we can find a natural, understandable source for any feeling. One source of any anxious feeling, for example, is a strong desire. Anxiety about failing comes from a strong desire to succeed. Anxiety about meeting people comes from a strong desire to be liked and respected. The stronger the positive desire, the greater is the anxiety associated with it. The late Dr. Takehisa Kora, a Morita therapist in Tokyo, wrote on this subject in great detail. In Constructive Living we sometimes ask our students to look for the positive desire underlying their specific fears and worries. When they discover the underlying constructive desires they are better able to accept the naturalness of the anxieties, too.
But the search for the deep, hidden origins of our unpleasant feelings isn't always so important. Whether we discover the source or not, all feelings are natural results of our life situations. Recognize it or not, accept it or not, emotions are no more than another natural aspect of our life reality. We may survey our feelings, however, to discern whether they are pointing toward some necessary action.
The attitude of acceptance of feelings is much more important than the search for their deep origins. Acceptance puts emotions in proper perspective. They occur, we recognize them, and we go on about doing what it is necessary to do in our lives. In fact, the search for the deep sources of our feelings can falsely validate an importance they need not carry in our lives. The search can distract us from the constructive behaviors that lie right before our eyes. Haven't you met people who are so caught up in discovering the hidden sources of their distressing feelings that their lives appear to be at a standstill? They are so involved in introspection that their houses aren't clean and their offices are cluttered with work undone.
Creative artists, however, may find it useful to explore their feelings in detail in order to discover novelties worth expressing in their work. Lay people, too, may wish to explore their feelings for the sheer fascination of the intricacy to be found there, the connections with the rest of reality. Nevertheless, such a hobby must be kept in perspective and balanced with constructive, purposeful action. Failure to do so will inevitably lead to aimless wandering in the labyrinths of the mind, a selfish and ultimately unsatisfying preoccupation.
For most of us it is sufficient to accept the emotions that surface, check to see whether they suggest some necessary action (pain, for example, may tell us to get our hands off the hot stove), act appropriately to the circumstances, and get on about noticing and responding to other aspects of reality.
It seems to me that people keep burying their thoughts under a deluge of information input. Many people turn on the radio in their car or at home or at work and leave it on as a sort of defense against listening to their own thoughts. What their own minds might churn up is for them frightening or uninteresting, without value. Television and novels serve the same purpose of distraction for some.
One of the privileges of being a writer is that long periods are spent quietly with one's own mind. A kind of intimacy develops in the silence. One learns the mind's foibles and strengths. One cannot develop such an intimacy with one's mind while watching television or conversing or playing football. Isolation and silence are necessary. Meditation offers such benefits; so do long private walks in the woods.
Getting to know ourselves in secluded surroundings in silence is a worthwhile endeavor. We discover facets that never turn up by the light of a video screen.
In our extended association with television, film, and radio we suffer from a distortion of time. We live vicariously through the characters of dramas and comedies. We suffer their pain and adopt their solutions to their adversities. We are exposed to a wide span of life problems and remedies, more than any other people at any other time. But these media-housed difficulties emerge and their resolutions take place within hours. We may come to expect rapid relief of our own life predicaments, too. The pace of our lives cannot accelerate to equal that of the media.
The fog softens the view from my Coos Bay window this morning. The greens gradually shift to grays and browns and white. By afternoon the fog bank will soundlessly recede over the ocean again, and damp leaves will glisten silver green. Just notice and appreciate what is there, and wait for the inevitable change. Dip into timelessness.
There are many ways to tie shoelaces--bow knots, double bow knots, square knots, granny knots, and so forth. The tying of the knot is a spiritual practice whatever knot is used. Whether the knot is tied mindfully or not, whether the knot is tied with recognition that the act is spiritual or not, the act is, nevertheless, spiritual. Every act is so. Nothing need be added to an act or incorporated into an act to make it spiritual. All acts are spiritual just as they are.
Reality cannot be divided conceptually into spiritual and non-spiritual categories to any useful end. It is all sacred. It is all holy. Reality is what it is. Recognize it or not. The cricket is chirping, the cars roar past the window.
Why, then, in Constructive Living do we encourage mindful, attentive action? If it isn't the mindfulness which makes an act holy, if any method of shoelace tying is a sacred act, why go to the trouble to tie shoes well, with full attention? The answer is simple: holy activities deserve to be recognized as such. We can ignore the pain that our births caused our mothers, but the pain existed nevertheless. We can thoughtlessly slam the car into gear or ease it gently into gear with grateful attention, but the car continues to serve us.
So if you walk inside an edifice and voices become hushed and faces show awe and reverence, those voices and faces show how carelessly their owners view the reality outside that edifice. Nowhere is holier than anywhere else. It is all holy--the shoelaces, the temples, the cricket, the cars--all of it.
Someone will surely say, "That's an admirable ideal, but humans aren't capable of seeing everything as holy. So we select some representative objects for veneration." It is true that we humans can't see the holiness in everything all the time. Yet we may have moments of seeing shoes and toilet seats and keys and cups as holy if they aren't excluded from that category by designated temples and crosses and altars.
Our eyes don't make reality holy, our actions don't make reality holy, it simply is that way. How reassuring! Because sometimes we forget.
Once I bought a hair dryer as a birthday gift for a friend on the very day her old hair dryer broke. The next day as I was riding a train I had a premonition that a nearby passenger would spill something on my slacks and she did. The Japanese call such occurrences "fushigi." That word can be translated as 'marvelous' or 'wondrous.' Our everyday lives are filled with marvelous events, but we take them for granted. Where do the fresh moments we experience come from? Where do our thoughts come from? Where do the words we speak come from? Where does the rich variety of reality come from? How is it that reality provides this particular chair for my comfort, this air conditioner, this word processor, these slippers? The vast efforts of others in our behalf are readily discovered with a little reflection, but they are nonetheless marvelous. It is this sense of wonder about ordinary life which characterizes the student of Constructive Living. As we have seen, there is no religious separation of life into the holy and mundane--sabbath and weekday, priest and layperson, worship and work, prayer and conversation, temple and house. It is all holy, if you wish to use such a term.
I want to put the mystery and transcendence back into our perception of everyday reality where it belongs. We can only see reality as "ordinary" by ignoring its magnificence. And so I resist making Constructive Living into a form of therapy, like Morita therapy and Naikan therapy. I want these Constructive Living ideas to be natural, normal parts of everyday life--not set apart as special techniques applicable only to neurotic, suffering people.
Religion, also, has too much become the domain of the "set apart." For the most part the institutionalized religions of our day have become talk shows with ministers and priests in hierarchies of talk show hosts. Religious practitioners talk too much about talking. Too little do they talk about experiencing their faith; too little do they ground their beliefs in everyday reality.
My second fundamental quarrel with organized religion has to do with its divisiveness. In the first place religion tends to divide the world into that which is holy or sacred and that which is ordinary, secular, mundane. Even in some Zen centers (center is a much preferable term to temple) where people should know better, there is an attitude of reverence and awe as members enter the zendo where zazen meditation takes place. That same attitude isn't exhibited when entering the dining room or cars or the toilet. That's a fundamental mistake fostered by religion. All of reality is worthy of our deep respect.
A similar divisiveness separates humans themselves into sacred and secular categories and into hierarchies within those categories. Certain roles are created that are set apart and (however it may be denied) set above other roles. These roles are signified by special titles (pope, bishop, D.Min., and dress--often the colors of robes have hierarchical significance. Some religious leaders are served as though they alone were representatives of superior beings (God, Buddha, etc.).
Such religious pigeonholing promotes the notion that the sacred is to be approached in certain places at certain times through the good offices of certain chosen people. But the sacred is around you, is you, all the time, is time.
"Once, the Church understood this; there must be a perpetual mysticism, perpetual experience...'Pray without ceasing' means pray now, in the present moment." (p. 76, quoted from the journal of Father Sylvan in Needleman, 1980)
"What then is the Constructive Living attitude toward 'higher truths?'" you may ask. Unfortunately, should you present such a query I have no idea what you are asking. Which truths are higher than others? If you are talking about truths which cannot be tested by experience in ordinary reality then I suspect that you have no idea what you are asking. Robert Heinlein wrote similar views in To Sail Beyond the Sunset. Watch out for people who talk about untestable spiritual truths, he warned, they are after your money. And, "'Eventually I learned that the Church is run solely for the benefit of the priesthood, not for the good of our people.'" (p. 334) And, again, "'But you must respect another man's religious beliefs!' For Heaven's sake, why? Stupid is stupid--faith doesn't make it smart." (p. 373)
Having read all the above criticism, don't get the idea that I am against religion altogether. I simply oppose the thoughtless, automatic, self-serving religion which interferes with the genuine needs of humans to see beyond themselves. Both Morita and Yoshimoto recognized that their approaches brought serious students to the doorway of true religious experience, whatever form it might take for the individual. They were right. Constructive Living, based on their insights, offers the same opportunity.
Appearance isn't everything, but it is something. Have you ever thought there was no need to shave or put on make-up one morning because no one was going to see you that day anyway? Have you ever failed to comb or brush your hair because you felt so miserable? Have you ever lounged around in robe and slippers well into the afternoon? I want to present here two different perspectives on why such practices are wrong; the perspectives come from the action and reciprocity aspects of Constructive Living.
You may have read the Constructive Living action maxim "Behavior wags the tail of feelings." In Constructive Living we point out that our actions influence how we think and feel. Because what we do is the most controllable aspect of our lives (even more controllable than thinking) we use our actions to provide the steady groundwork for building our lives. Although we may not feel like keeping ourselves well-groomed we can do it (within the limits of any physical handicaps we might have, of course). From this perspective, keeping ourselves spruced up is simply something that needs doing. It will have an effect on other features of our lives.
The issue of hypocrisy may arise here. Aren't we lying to others when we put on a good face even when feeling miserable or lazy? Isn't it better to be true to ourselves? Underlying these questions is the issue of untruth for personal gain at the expense of others. That sort of hypocrisy isn't what concerns us here. Grooming is just doing the best we can in a given situation. The fact of the matter is that we may find our feelings changing to fit our new face. Conversely, sloppy attire and an unwashed face may provoke more gloom.
Here is another perspective on maintaining a pleasant appearance--whatever the personal effect of keeping ourselves well groomed might be, the world deserves to see us looking our best. What you are about to read may appear strange, but I ask you to consider it with an open mind. Let's start with the most acceptable argument. Maybe your family members have seen you looking terrible before, and they love you anyway. But your family deserves to see you looking clean and unrumpled. Consider your appearance a sort of gift, an initial payment on a social loan from your loved ones, a loan you need to work at paying off. Taken a step further, there is chance that someone else might see you or telephone you--a delivery person, perhaps, or a neighbor. And your voice on the phone might be influenced by your attire and personal grooming. They went to the trouble to contact you; the least you can do is put your best face forward.
Again, this line of thought has nothing to do with the effects of a neat appearance on you, but it is about the effects of how you look on the world around you. Now comes the step that might seem odd. Even if no one has any direct contact with you at all that day the furniture and walls and magazines and dishes and washbasin and wastebasket and all those objects around you deserve to see you looking at your best. But they have no eyes! Right. And they are just things; they haven't earned any special treatment! Partly right; they are things. Whether they deserve special treatment depends on your point of view. It would be hard to argue that your washbasin and wastebasket haven't been useful to you in the past. It might be convenient to ignore their service just because they don't move around on their own and talk. It might be convenient to classify a large part of reality as "objects" which don't merit thoughtful recognition for service and so don't merit any return from us. Our debts are reduced quite simply that way, rather like the imaginative notion of doing away with the national debt by legally abolishing it. Think about it. Whether you notice it or not, acknowledge it or not you are served daily by numerous people and things.
So we've considered this issue of grooming from a couple of angles. One way to check out the value of these suggestions is to verify them through experience. The investment is likely to be worth your while.
I never met a mind that didn't judge. That's what minds do--they discriminate, evaluate. Everybody's mind does that. What makes some humans stand out from others is that they don't let their judging minds push their behavior around.
Rather than making efforts to eliminate mental judgments--another of those useless struggles which focus needless attention on natural functions of the mind--simply note the judgments and get on with whatever is more important to be doing. By living constructively we outgrow such narrow-mindedness. Getting caught up in an obsession with perfecting the mind is itself a sort of narrow-mindedness. Such pursuits restrict one's openness to the
