“I wrote this book in the hope that readers will be able to save their own lives as well as those of the ones they love when an earthquake next strikes, so that the tragedy of March 11, 2011, would never be repeated.” ―Satoko Oki What our chatty planet teaches us Would you be surprised to hear that there are scientists who listen to the Earth? Yes, the Earth does talk in many different voices?the voice of the air, the voice of the sea, the voice of volcanoes, and the voice of the Earth. Seismologists listen to the voice of the Earth. We use high performance seismometers that do not miss the slightest muttering by the Earth that human ears cannot hear. That way, we can learn about what causes earthquakes and even what it is like inside the planet. Earthquakes occur because it is hot inside the planet?because the Earth is dynamic. We cannot escape earthquakes as long as we live on the Earth. But from listening to the planet, seismologists have discovered what causes earthquakes and how we can live with them to protect our lives.

It was the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, which had a particularly profound impact on my home prefecture of Fukushima, that made me painfully aware of the need to live life as it comes, without fixed goals, which tend to be imperfect and grounded in desire. This book consists of a selection of short essays penned by GEN’YU Sokyu, chief priest at a Zen temple in Fukushima Prefecture. Beginning in April 2012, he began writing a newspaper column that ran for seven and a half years. Embracing the ever-changing nature of the world, he took up a wide range of topics inspired by his daily activities and experiences, including events in post-disaster Fukushima, temple renovation and soil improvement, Japanese customs, observations about nature, and encounters with people from all walks of life. With a mindfulness sometimes accompanied by a wry sense of humor, he reflects upon the surprises those events and encounters brought and what they taught him. His insightful essays are sprinkled with wisdom on how we should cope with life and death, derived from Buddhist and Taoist teachings. He encourages each of us to follow our mind as it changes according to the circumstances of the moment; the result will be experiences far more valuable than the simple achievement of our initial plans.

Life is short and transient. The feeling that this evokes is called mujokan in Japanese. Rather than falling into the despair that is so prevalent in the present day, mujokan allows one to accept transience proactively as a sign of vibrant life. In this book Takeuchi Seiichi examines this view of life from the perspectives of philosophy, literature, art, and religion. He delves into the Japanese concepts of grief and pain, life and death, reaching to the very core of the Japanese spirit. This book presents a full record of Takeuchi’s valedictory lectures in commemoration of his retirement from the University of Tokyo.