Great Construction

Global Old-fashionedness

     Individuals today enjoy so many of the blessings of contemporary civilization that they have no idea how in every respect each is able to lead lives of such peace and convenience. That being said, troubling it is that still not perceived are the sources of anxiety and unrest that lurk in unimaginable places. If all peoples developed awareness of the true situation, great astonishment would arise, eyes would be opened, and at that stage, the true civilization would be born with humanity able to bathe in unlimited happiness.
     The unrest, instability if you will, of which I speak are aspects that concern hygiene and medical science, the fact that nations throughout the world nowadays are plagued by varieties of infectious disease, not to speak of tuberculosis. In response to this situation, conspicuous even in daily life, are the exhortations to follow complicated measures. Is your food nutritious? Eat this because it has vitamins. That is not easily digestible so it will harm your stomach. Eating too much is bad for you! This really disgusting item is good medicine for you so eat it! This is healthy because it contains iron. And so on. These measures are all unavoidable for anyone who believes blindly in medical science. Limited not only to members of the general public, governments too are blinded, so they continually urge their citizens to follow these prescriptions. To us, the whole situation is simply intolerable foolishness.
     As I always teach, if you eat foods rich in vitamins, the vitamin-producing functions within your body will deteriorate. Consuming overly nutritious food produces a reverse reaction that weakens the entire body. Thoroughly masticating easily digestible foods dulls the function of the stomach, thus leading to stomach-related diseases. In all situations we are urged to do the opposite of what should be done. The list goes on. Recommendations to wash your hands and gargle when you return home and such are bothersome tasks that add to anxiety. They are all nonsensical, and rather, become the basis on which people develop preoccupations with whether or not they have performed a so-called necessary act. Their resulting worry further weakens their health. People are warned that they may come down with influenza when they feel cold and are constantly anxious that they will be somehow suffer an ailment if they become chilled. For us, the common cold is a way to avoid disease. The truth we teach that the common cold is the first line of protecting human health is not a fantasy to us. Even as we declare so, there are few who believe. Those who place their trust in medical science are just like the woman who puts many layers of silk articles around her stomach and waist, even when it is uncomfortable, unappealing, or interferes with movement, and still thinks she looks good. Children are raised with great caution as if breakable items. They are taken to a doctor at the slightest hint of sickness and pumped full of medicinal poisons. Astonishing in recent days are the weakened conditions of newly born infants who have needlessly been injected with medicinal poisons.
     Intolerable it is that in the name of prevention, all sorts of injections are made, filling infants from the inside with medicinal toxins. In due course, purifying activity activates to discharge these poisons, naturally resulting in the increase of diseases such as children’s tuberculosis, children’s asthma, and infantile paralysis that testifies to the fact that the use of medicinal poisons leads naturally to disease. Raising children has come to be more worrisome than pleasurable. What a pitiful world!
     The cause of this pitiful world is that the addiction to scientific culture from which human beings suffer has come to the point where what is true has become beyond understanding. Such circumstances stem in part because science, holding that artificial measures are progressive, ignores nature. Science is blind to the distinction between matters that science can solve and matters only nature can solve. Frankly speaking, to refer to the present as an age of civilized barbarism should be no exaggeration.
     Through printed word and speech, I continue to endeavor to awaken all to this cultural ignorance, but the superstitious faith in science is global, having become strongly rooted over a great while, so mine is not an easy task. Just as those in Japan during the Meiji Restoration who would not give up their topknots had to be helped to understand their new world, now too must salvation be extended to old-fashioned individuals throughout the entire world. Indeed it is a difficult task.

Eikô, Issue 155, May 7, 1952
 translated by cynndd