What Oshosama Does not Say…
Without a Master, I Come To Enlightenment. "Dharma couldn't have been the zen originator by himself." I was listening to a zen...
Grandpa Lost His Horse.
This is an old story from China: There was an old man living in a fort. One day his horse ran off to another country, so his...
Oshosama, I’m Fighting With My Ego Every Day.
Me Too. I have written more than a few Wisdom Blogs under the tag Oshosama Says. Oshosama is a way to address an abbot of...
I Want to See What You’re Seeing.
Takahiro Yagi at work
Tea Is the Hardware.
And We Do Not Want to Die Without Knowing the Hardware… Do We? Have you been invited to a Tea gathering? If yes, you may have noticed the wet surface of stoned pavement leading up to the entrance. Uchimizu is the act of sprinkling water outside. In a Tea setting, it...
Do Samu
When None of Your Tools Work Yoga, jogging, walking, meditating, or breath working; when none of that works, Do samu. Samu can be anything to maintain the household... or templehold. When I used to live in a zen temple of a Rinzai sect, most of the day was dedicated...
Introducing the Concept on the Other Side Of Wabi-Sabi
Tips for Grounding and Growing Thick Bones It doesn’t take tea or Zen master to showcase a seamless flow of sophisticated movements. I’ve seen it in almost all of the craftsmen I’ve met, in the way they use their hands and bodies at work. These movements are...
Use Good Tools, My Mother Said.
Where to Place Money and Heart “Use good tools,” she said, in a frustrated manner. It was a pair of scissors, with one handle missing. I’d been using it ever since I was in elementary school. My family went on a trip to see our uncle and aunt for a summer holiday in...
What Leads to Bettering Work
Tapping Into Your Resourcefulness I hear about “being resourceful” all the time, but honestly, I never knew what that meant for me until I was really pushed. It was when I decided to venture into this Wisdom Toolkit project. I decided to spend all that I had in my...
The World Changes the Moment You Say Yes.
I hate to be pushed. I hate to feel small and inadequate. I have to gather my courage to face criticism or even neutral feedback. As a writer, I used to dread opening any emails with feedback: I would visualise “NO”, red lines crossed all over the page, and every...
1 Out of 100 Is the Reality.
And It’s a Good One. Shortly after releasing Wisdom Toolkit to the world, I was already in my head, stuck in my endless cluttering chatter. “Even my friends are not responding to my writing, who’s going to read these?” “My writing is not good. That’s why it’s...
The last TOTEI
Spatula 7 years, Brush 3 years Senro Sato went to learn urushi lacquerware, also known as the japanning technique, at the age of 22. He had one year left to finish college, but his mentor Gonroku Matsuda (Living National Treasure) strongly advised him to go learn...