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“I could say ‘everyone should be happy, happiness is good’, but the truth is happiness also has side effects.
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His nuanced approach makes him less media-friendly because he is unwilling to make bold claims that get attention if he knows those claims aren’t totally true. Taka told me about comparisons he makes with other people. Sometimes even Buddhist monks don’t know what they’re doing with their life. I asked Taka whether he’s had moments of doubt about his direction and he told me directly: “I still don’t know. Sometimes, even Buddhist monks don’t know Travel, experiences, meditation and all kinds of soul-searching might change your viewpoint, but at the core, you’ll still be the same person. In the process, we hope that somehow these experiences will change us, that they will improve us. So many of us go hunting for experiences that change our perspective. But the challenge is reconciling our revelations with our imperfect lives, as Jack Kornfield's writes in After the Ecstasy, the Laundry. He says some people expect everything to become clear after they reach some measure of enlightenment. From his perspective, it's an interesting phenomenon. He notices that lots of people from tech companies and startups leave their jobs to go exploring, but then, inevitably, go back to the valley. Even if you find enlightenment, you will still be youĪs I was telling Taka that I was flying back to San Francisco after Japan, he started laughing. In the midst of this, it’s easy to miss the difference you could make on your doorstep the small change that could be the most profound. I wanted something that would hit me dead on and change my course. One of the reasons I’ve struggled with the idea of purpose is that I’ve been waiting for something big, something I couldn't ignore. It’s only now while writing about our conversation that the meaning is starting to stick. But what Taka said was so simple that at first I was disappointed. I was hoping for something epic that would shift the way I saw the world. I admit that I came expecting profound truths. If you keep doing that you’ll probably start seeing what society needs.” Even find one person in a day, (and ask) how can I make this person happy? Even just 5 minutes. Taka’s approach is to search for a purpose that’s not self-centered, that reaches others: “Look outside. In that sense actually, there’s no right answer about your purpose in a way.” Some people say the meaning of life is adding purpose to your life. “In that sense, you can actually make up any purpose. There is no right answer, or potentially, lots of right answers: How do you even follow that? Purpose had just become a non-question.īut his response was also liberating: the purpose in our lives is what we create for ourselves. Originally.”Īnd just like that, Taka Kawakami wiped the slate. For individual human beings, there is no purpose.
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Like dominos you knock one and they keep falling that way. The Buddhist approach is: you’re born - you’re born, you die - you die. “In a way, there’s no purpose in your life. I was curious to know what he would say about purpose. He is the Buddhist monk with the singing bowl and the shiny iPhone. His traditional robes belie his modern approach he travels to the US frequently, has taught at IDEO and works with several startups. He embraces Buddhism as ritual, as his heritage and as an intellectual practice, but without any slant of dogma. He comes from a long line of Buddhist priests but studied in the US before returning to Japan. Takafumi Kawakami turns out to be an extremely modern Buddhist monk. I found Shunkō-in Temple, which teaches Zen meditation in English and became intrigued by the monk behind it all. I wanted to learn more about meditation but without the hype and the marketing that surrounds it in the UK and US. At the start of this year, I took a trip to Japan.