Get hints on how to live from “An Inquiry Into The Good”

“What do I live for?” How do I live? What am I?” There might be many people today who are struggling with these questions. The ultimate answer is “It depends on you,” but there may be a clue hidden in Dr. Nishida’s philosophy.

“An Inquiry Into The Good” is the principal work of Dr. Kitaro Nishida (1870-1945), one of the leading Japanese philosophers of the 20th century.

However, it was written nearly 100 years ago, and the language is used in a different sense than it is today, making it difficult to read the original text and understand what Dr. Nishida was trying to say.

Fortunately, “100 minutes de Meicho, Dr. Kitaro Nishida’s “An Inquiry Into The Good” gives us the gist of Dr. Nishida’s philosophy, and here I would like to summarize it in terms of guidelines for how to live.

The points are as follows.

• The search for truth requires not only the use of the mind, but also practice using the body (in Dr. Nishida’s case, Zen)
• Philosophy requires nurturing the mind as well as the brain.
• Love is the recognition that the object has life.
• Goodness is the state in which the greater self (= the self that exists with others) has blossomed.
• “Kami” is something that exists in our minds while transcending human beings.
• The meaning of our lives is to practice the experiment of living our greater self.
• To know what we are, we must look deeply into the inside (=self), not the outside.

Philosophy for Dr. Nishida

For Dr. Nishida, philosophy was not a study for specialists, but something for ordinary people to deeply interact with their daily lives.

His attempt is to clarify “what we exist for” and to pave the way for as many people as possible.

I think it can be called a search for truth. However, he explains that it is necessary to “practice” by moving one’s body, not just using one’s “brain”. For this reason, Dr. Nishida practiced zazen (= Zen meditation) to deeply reflect on the self.

In the same way, he says that to begin philosophy, it is necessary to nurture the mind as well as the brain.

In his “An Inquiry Into The Good,” Dr. Nishida addressed the issues of “knowledge and love,” “The Good,” “Religion,” “Existence,” and “Pure experience.”

Knowledge and Love

Knowledge and love are really philosophy derived from “philosophia,” which means “to love knowledge”.

“Knowing” and “loving” may sound completely different, but they are mental actions that occur together when one tries to unite oneself and a person or a thing. What is this “love”? Dr. Nishida’s definition of “love” is the recognition of feeling life in an object.

Whether it is a flower on the side of the road or a glass of water, when we feel life in the object we recognize, we feel love for it, and at the same time, we truly “know” the object.

As in “laughing together and crying together,” this is an image of two things that are originally different resonating together. This is what Dr. Nishida calls “unity.”

In this world of “unity,” there is no profit and loss, no interest, and the joys, anger, sorrows, and happiness of others simply become one’s own affair. It is a world where parents feel their children’s pain as if it were their own. It can be said that the “I” is no longer the subject.

When “I” becomes the subject, the world becomes very small. It can be said that the world without “I” does not exist. However, when the “unity” with something other than “I” deepens, the true self, the “Great Self,” which is not the “I” of the surface consciousness, appears.

This state is what Dr. Nishida calls the world of “The Good.”

The Good

In modern times, the “individual” is respected, but when we become accustomed to living as an “individual,” we tend to forget our connection with others.

What Dr. Nishida calls “The Good” is the state in which people’s greater self (i.e., the self that exists with others) has blossomed.

In other words, “The Good” originally lies dormant within us as a seed. However, since it is covered and invisible, we need to find it through “action” and acquire it.

The act of feeling the “life” in oneself and others and deepening the “unity” with others leads to “The Good.”

Interestingly, Dr. Nishida writes that the opposite of “egoism” is not “altruism” but “individualism.”

For Dr. Nishida, the “individual” is a being that is always with the other. That is why its flowering leads to the supreme “The Good.”

Religion（宗教）

According to Dr. Nishida, philosophy is the result of talking about religion. The word “religion” may give some people a dubious image, but the character for “宗” means something greater than human beings.

It is safe to say that “something great = Kami = the root of the universe = our root.” Therefore, “Kami” is beyond human beings, but at the same time, it is in our minds.

The act of searching for “Kami” within ourselves, while feeling “Kami” in the distance, is nothing other than the “Zen” practiced by Dr. Nishida.

Seeking for something great is the demand to encounter the true self (the greater self), not the lesser self. Furthermore, it is an inner demand to feel again the “life” that keeps us alive.

According to Dr. Nishida, the meaning of our life is not to cultivate what we feel to be our “self,” but to practice the experiment of living the Great Self.

Existence

Existence is the true form of the world (= the way it is) and is another name for truth.

Dr. Nishida says that to master the Existence is to deepen one’s awareness of “Kami.” However, it is not enough to just understand Kami with our brains; we need to feel Kami with our bodies.

We are often preoccupied with how we should live our lives, but what if we look back on our lives so far, not in the active but sometimes in the passive voice?

Some of us may recall bitter experiences such as being forced by our parents to learn a lesson, but we may also recall the feeling of being “kept alive” by something great, even though we do not know what it is.

That thing that we don’t know what it is is Kami, and experiencing it is what Dr. Nishida refers to as the experience of existence.

Pure experience

Pure experience is to experience the “Existence”. It is to look deep into the object and perceive it directly.

However, it is not easy to experience the world as it is. The thoughts, discernment, and judgments that we have developed over the course of our lives get in the way. To be free from these three things is the beginning of pure experience.

When we try to know “what we are,” we tend to gather a lot of information from the outside, but Dr. Nishida proposes a way to look at ourselves vertically and deeply. This practice is the “Zen” of which he writes repeatedly.

“Pure experience” in our daily lives, to look at what is already present in ourselves, without losing sight of the future and the world we have yet to see, is the basis and the ultimate point of Dr. Nishida’s philosophy.

At the End

Dr. Nishida’s “An Inquiry Into The Good” is a profound examination of fundamental philosophical questions such as love, good, religion, and existence.

Dr. Nishida emphasizes the necessity of thinking with the mind as well as doing something with the body, which he does by practicing Zen.

It could also be an experience of immersing oneself in the great outdoors and feeling the breath of life with the body and the five senses.

Dr. Nishida’s philosophy still has much to offer us today, and its insights can be an important guide for us to “live better” in harmony with others and with nature.