Someone who believes that there is a world where you and the world are fused together beyond the ego
27 August 2024 07:00
Once upon a time, there was a young monk named Gudo who lived in a village deep in the mountains. Every day, Gudo would throw away his ego and devote himself to training in order to attain enlightenment. However, no matter how hard he tried, he was troubled by the fact that he could not escape his own greed and attachments.
One day, Gudo heard a mysterious voice in his dream: ‘You must be struck by a waterfall. There you will see the truth.’
When he woke up, he remembered a large waterfall on the outskirts of the village. Without hesitation, he headed for the waterfall and threw himself into the cold water.
As he was being hit by the waterfall, he suddenly felt his body becoming transparent. He was then enveloped by a strange sensation that made him feel as if he was becoming one with the surrounding nature. The rustling of the trees, the chirping of the birds, the babbling of the river — everything felt like a part of himself.
At that moment, Kyudo realised that he, who had been caught up in his ego, was actually one with the world. Beyond the ego, a beautiful world where he and the world were fused together lay before him.
When Kyudo came out of the waterfall, he had a completely peaceful expression on his face. When he returned to the village, he treated people kindly and preached about the importance of cherishing nature. He taught them that ‘you and the world are not separate. Everything is one.’
At first, the villagers did not understand the meaning of his words. However, as they came into contact with his gentle attitude and deep compassion, they gradually began to understand his true intentions.
Before long, the whole village had changed into a place where people lived in harmony with nature and cared for each other. People began to feel a sense of oneness with the world that transcended the ego.
Finally, the seeker said, ‘Once you transcend your ego, you and the world become one. That state of mind is true happiness.’
And so it was.
This was the 866th preface to the ‘Interview with a Nameless Person’ series, written at 2:21 on the 20th of August, 2024!
[Preface by Interviewer/Yasuhiro Kuribayashi (writer and host of the ‘Interview with a Nameless Person’ series)]
This time, we have Mr. Kouj Miki!
Age: late 50s
Gender: male
Occupation: Managing an innovation school
Commercial activities: Pursuing a sense of purpose in the AI era:
Profile
Table of Contents
Now: I’m doing things like drawing out new business ideas from the president of a company, based on a kind of Zen-based Q&A, and working together to create them.
Interviewer:
What kind of person are you now?
Kouji Miki:
What kind of person am I now… I’m a person who is running the non-profit Zen2.0 international conference on Zen and mindfulness, and also working to help small and medium-sized companies launch new businesses.
Interviewer:
What is the ratio of the two?
Kouji Miki:
The non-profit work is about 80%. The main business is about 20%. Yes.
Interviewer:
Which is the main business?
Kouji Miki:
The main business is the start-up of new businesses for small and medium-sized companies.
Interviewer:
Is that about 20%?
Kouji Miki:
That’s about 20%.
Interviewer:
So what do you mean by ‘main business’?
Kouji Miki:
The main business, well, in short, the money-making side is done in about 20% of the time, and the other 80% of the time is spent on things that don’t generate income.
Interviewer:
Is there anything special about setting up new businesses for small and medium-sized companies?
Kouji Miki:
There are a lot of things that are special, because we deal with a lot of company presidents, and until recently there were a lot of manufacturing companies, but recently there has been an increase in the number of service companies, IT companies, and consulting companies.
Interviewer:
Consulting for small and medium-sized companies in general?
Kouji Miki:
It’s not really consulting, but more like a school for innovation. It’s a bit like a Zen dialogue based on Zen, and we try to draw out what the president wants to do and create new businesses together.
Interviewer:
What is this Zen thing?
Kouji Miki:
Well, going back a little to the past, in 2008 or 2009, there was the Lehman Shock, and at the time I was working as an executive at a venture company, and my role was to help with the company’s listing, but due to the economic crisis, the company’s performance deteriorated significantly, so the higher-paid employees were asked to leave, and we ended up with a bit of restructuring.
During the nine years I had worked there, I had been working day and night as a venture company employee, so the sudden restructuring was a huge shock to me, and I became a bit depressed. In order to get my mind back in order, I started doing zazen at home, and my mental state began to calm down. During zazen, although it is actually not good in Buddhism, all sorts of distracting thoughts come to mind, but among those distracting thoughts, new business ideas are constantly coming up, so through meditation, through Zen and dialogue, I have been using a method to extract the things that the person really wants to do for the past 13 years, since 2011. That is the zenschool, a school for extracting innovation.
In that sense, I am creating new businesses using Zen.
Interviewer:
What exactly are you doing now?
Kouji Miki:
Specifically, we invite people to come to our studio here in Kamakura, and it’s a course that lasts about two days, but we can only take a maximum of three people, because there are some things that are difficult to talk about in a business context, so self-disclosure is like your own life story. We spend at least half a day doing this, and basically, what is said there is confidential, and we have a confidentiality agreement with each other, so the three of us shared information about each of the company presidents’ backgrounds, their current concerns, and what they wanted to do in the future, and after we had created an environment where we could say anything, I guided them through a short meditation session of about 30 minutes, and during that time we did some work to help them identify what they really wanted to do, and then we worked on turning that into a concrete business plan, andafter the two days were over, they had generally identified the business they wanted to do to a certain extent, so we follow up on that over the course of a month, and then after a month, they present the actual business plan they have created. The presentations are basically limited to graduates of Zenshool, and the premise is that the information will be kept confidential. After the presentations, for the next six months, the three people will get together online or in person on a regular basis to share the progress of their businesses and support each other until the business is launched.
Interviewer:
Are these three people people you met for the first time there?
Kouji Miki:
Yes, almost all of them were new to me. We had shared some basic background information with each other beforehand, but basically it was the first time we had met.
Interviewer:
How long has it been since you started using this style?
Kouji Miki:
Well, we started in the month of the earthquake in 2011, so I think we started using mindfulness meditation in 2012 or 2013. Something like that.
Interviewer:
So the method of starting with the three of you and doing self-disclosure was decided on in 2011 or 2012?
Kouji Miki:
It took about 13 years to gradually improve and settle on the current format, which was about five or six years ago.
Interviewer:
Five or six years. I see. What was it like when it had stabilised and the format was in place?
Kouji Miki:
What do you mean by ‘what it feels like’?
Interviewer:
How the people who have taken the course feel about it.
Kouji Miki:
I don’t know if I should mention the names of specific companies, but there is a person who made a flying car. He is from a major car manufacturer.
He had been working on such things within that company, but it was a bit of a taboo for a major manufacturer to be working on flying cars, and so the project was eventually scrapped. He left the company and came to our zenschool, and while we had a dialogue about whether he really wanted to do it, in the end he decided that he did.
After graduating, he set up his own company, and although we didn’t think he would get that far, he raised 14.7 billion yen, and is probably quite famous in the media now, and he has actually made two models, and there are people who are preparing various things for the car.
Another person had worked for a car manufacturer and a parts manufacturer for over 20 years, but came here when he was around 51 or 2 years old. He thought that having 3D design skills was nothing special, but when you look at it from a general perspective, he was a person with amazing abilities. Through meditation and dialogue, the keyword of what he really wanted to do was space development.
About a year and a half after graduating, he developed a robot for lunar exploration. It’s not that anyone can develop such a thing, but he was able to get as far as creating a prototype. He himself approached NASA and other relevant parties with videos and emails, and since the actual lunar exploration was outsourced to the private sector by NASA, he was able to make a contract with a reporter from a venture company that had been commissioned to do the lunar exploration, and he was able to get it published.
Interviewer:
Rather than the hardware side, I’m wondering what the people who have been selected feel, what their expressions are like, and what kind of experiences they have?
Kouji Miki:
Up until now, I’ve mostly felt like I’ve been suppressing what I really want to do, so when I’m told that I can finally do it, I feel incredibly refreshed and start to feel like I have a lot of energy.
Interviewer:
In a sense, I think that they are doing what they like because they are the company president, but I wonder why they are putting up with it.
Kouji Miki:
The first example is that one person was originally a salaried worker, and the other person was also a former salaried worker.
Interviewer:
Ah, so it’s about the timing of starting a business?
Kouji Miki:
Even though I am the company president, I am a one-man company.
Interviewer:
I see, I see. You yourself have been doing this for over 10 years, so how do you feel about what you are doing?
Kouji Miki:
There are lots of general innovation schools and graduate schools in Japan, but according to what I heard from a professor at a university that is famous for its innovation education, it seems that around 600 graduates come out of the school in two years.
Of those, there is only one or two people who can produce innovations that can have an impact on the world, so it’s 1 in 600 or 2 in 600.
Interviewer:
Is that such a high probability?
Kouji Miki:
That’s what the graduate school of a certain famous university said.
Interviewer:
Yes. We’ve only graduated 220 people, but if you take the 2 out of 220 that I just mentioned, or if you take into account the fact that there are actually many other people, I think that we’ve produced around 10 to 15 out of 220 people who are innovative.
So, I think that kind of thing is generally not trusted, or people think it’s a lie, so I didn’t understand the logic behind it myself, but I was able to produce that kind of impact, so I did some joint research with various university professors and got some data. I still don’t really understand the mechanism behind it. So, to be honest, I don’t really understand it yet.
But since Zen in Japan is something that was transmitted from China, I thought that if we could clarify the mechanisms of such innovation based on that kind of thinking, it would have a huge impact, both academically and in other ways, so I’m currently working with a Swedish national research institute called RISE (Swedish research creating sustainable growth)https://www.ri.se/en to try to clarify this.
Interviewer:
What are your hobbies, Mr Miki?
Kouji Miki:
My hobbies are zazen (seated Zen meditation), trail running, and I’ve also recently started surfing.
Interviewer:
Trail running?
Kouji Miki:
Trail running is running in the mountains.
Interviewer:
Oh, yes, yes, yes.
Kouji Miki:
I live in Kamakura, so there are lots of mountains and also lots of sea.
Interviewer:
How often do you exercise?
Kouji Miki:
I do trail running about once a week, and I think it’s that energy from the mountains. It has a really positive impact, both physically and mentally.
Interviewer:
Is it okay if I ask you where you run?
Kouji Miki:
It’s a mountain behind Kamakura, and there’s a place called Kamakura-gu Shrine, and at the end of the road there’s a mountain path that goes off to the left, and if you go up that a bit, I don’t know the name of the mountain, but if you go up to the top, there’s a path that goes from Kamakura to Yokohama, so you go down that and it’s about 12 or 13km. That’s my routine course.
Interviewer:
Thank you. What do people around you say about your personality?
Kouji Miki:
My personality… I’m pretty laid back.
Interviewer:
Do the people around you say you’re laid back?
Kouji Miki:
Yeah, I think they probably think I’m pretty laid back. (lol)
Interviewer:
What about yourself?
Kouji Miki:
I think I’m pretty laid back myself.
Interviewer:
Is there a particular personality trait that the people close to you, your family, your partner, your best friends, the people you’re close to, say you have?
Kouji Miki:
I think even the people close to me say I’m just about right… (lol)
Interviewer:
What do you mean by ‘just about right’?
Kouji Miki:
I often talk about things that sound a bit like a dream, so people say things like ‘can you really do that?
’ (lol) That’s the kind of thing.
Interviewer:
Is there anything else? When you say ‘just about right’, it also gives the impression of being a bit sloppy, but is that not the case?
Kouji Miki:
I don’t think I’m sloppy.
I haven’t been diagnosed myself, but I think I have a strong Asperger’s tendency, so I have a bit of a handicap in terms of ability. For example, I can’t remember people’s names or faces, and my memory is very bad.
However, when I concentrate on something, I seem to be able to concentrate very well, and I’m told that I show great ability when I’m concentrating, but I don’t really understand that myself.
Interviewer:
So you say you’re sloppy when you’re not concentrating?
Kouji Miki:
When I’m not concentrating, I think I have interpersonal problems.
Interviewer:
I see.
Kouji Miki:
I make a lot of mistakes in typing, I can’t remember people’s faces, I can’t remember names, and so on.
Interviewer:
Please tell us about your favourite food.
Kouji Miki:
My favourite food… Oh, but recently I’ve been into a combination of brown rice and glutinous millet, and I also like simple Japanese food like miso soup and things like that, and I like making my own pickles.
Interviewer:
Do you eat out?
Miki Koji:
There’s a good curry restaurant nearby, so I go there to eat curry. I go there to eat curry, but the owner of the restaurant is interesting. It’s a famous curry restaurant that also does Buddhist paintings, and I go there quite often to talk to the owner.
Past: During that period, I would go to a venture company in Tokyo in the morning, work there, and then come back to my graduate school in Shonan in the evening to write my thesis, but after about three months I had lost so much weight that I thought I was going to die.
Interviewer:
I’d like to ask you about your past. What kind of child were you when you were little?
Kouji Miki:
I think I had Asperger’s Syndrome, so I went to a private boys’ school from junior high school, but I ended up in a school that was supposed to be a cram school by mistake. So, for six years I was always in the bottom two in terms of grades, and I was almost expelled in the middle of that time because my grades were so bad.
My grades were so bad that I have a black history, or rather, my memory is so bad that I can’t remember things like my junior high school exams.
I can’t write kanji, and I can’t remember anything from those six years of black history. It’s too painful.
And it was a boys’ school, so I don’t have many good memories of my adolescence.
Interviewer:
Yeah. Actually, when I was little, I remember kindergarten and the earliest memories I have.
Kouji Miki:
My earliest memories are of making things, like Lego.
Anyway, even when my friends said ‘Let’s play!’, I’d say ‘No, I’ve got something to do today’. I’d go home early and enjoy myself making things like that in the damp, six tatami mat Japanese-style room.
Interviewer:
Do you remember what you made?
Kouji Miki:
Things like buildings, spaceships, and cars. I loved doing things by myself more than being with other people, so I was almost autistic.
I don’t know if that’s the reason, but I was always really good at art at elementary school, and even after class I’d just keep making things in silence. I’d just keep making all sorts of things.
Interviewer:
I’d like to know what the scenery was like where you were born and raised.
Kouji Miki:
I was born and raised in a residential area in the centre of Tokyo, and yes, it was a relatively nice area, with a lot of wealthy people, so the friends I went home with from public elementary school were also the sons of wealthy people, and my grandfather was the founder and president of a listed company, so every morning when I went to his house, a car would be waiting to pick me up.
I think it was called the ‘company president’s car’. It was a Toyota Century or something like that, and I liked to go round to the back of the Century and smell the exhaust fumes. (lol)
Interviewer:
Is that still there?
Kouji Miki:
No, it’s not there any more. (lol)
Interviewer:
It’s a rather quiet exhaust sound.
Interviewer:
I see.
MIKI Koji:
It was kind of old-fashioned, and I liked the smell of the exhaust fumes. The white exhaust fumes that came out early in the morning in winter were really impressive.
Interviewer:
How old were you then?
MIKI Koji:
I was in kindergarten or elementary school.
Interviewer:
So what was it like in your youth, at university?
Kouji Miki:
I’d already passed through that dark period of my youth, and as it was an all-boys school, I was very unfamiliar with women. I went to a nearby university with a large female student population, which was probably a Christian university, and I spent another year there feeling awkward and out of my depth. I didn’t know how to deal with women.
Interviewer:
I’m guessing that dark period of your life wasn’t very enjoyable, but were you enjoying yourself at university?
Kouji Miki
I didn’t enjoy that either. (laughs)
I went against the grain and didn’t enjoy it. Yes.
Interviewer:
What was your major?
Kouji Miki:
Something like international relations. There were returnee students who were good at English, and there were also a lot of women.
I was in a depressed state, and even if I liked someone I couldn’t speak to them well. But the campus was rather glamorous, and I spent four years there not really fitting in.
Interviewer:
By the way, what kind of girl was your type?
Kouji Miki:
What kind of girl? Someone who looked like a geek.
Interviewer:
The girl you were talking to?
Kouji Miki:
Yes, that’s right.
Interviewer:
I think there are lots of different kinds of geekiness.
Kouji Miki:
Someone who couldn’t communicate as well as me.
Interviewer:
Yes, yes, yes. Not someone who was a different type to you, but someone who was similar to you.
Kouji Miki:
I can’t talk to people who are different from me. (laughs) I can’t talk to showy people. Yes.
Interviewer:
Is there any one particularly memorable episode from your time at university?
Kouji Miki:
When I was at university, I joined a drama club to get rid of my gloomy mood.
Interviewer:
On campus?
Kouji Miki:
It was an inter-college drama club, and we put on plays in English.
I was on the staff there for the first year, and then I joined the cast in my second year or something, and I really enjoyed it. It was like the real thrill of creating something together with students from other universities. I got really into that side of things.
So our organisation is like this inter-university club, and I think the International Conference on Zen and Mindfulness is probably also being run in a similar way.
Interviewer:
How long have you been holding the conference itself?
Kouji Miki:
The project started in 2015, and after two years of preparation, we held the first conference in 2017.
Interviewer:
So this is the seventh time?
Kouji Miki:
This is the eighth time this year.
Interviewer:
This is the eighth time this year. Congratulations.
Kouji Miki:
I slipped into a major computer manufacturer after graduating from university, and I worked there properly for about three years. I was also sent to graduate school for two more years.
Interviewer:
While still enrolled?
MIKI Koji:
Yes, I was enrolled.
Interviewer:
What did you study at graduate school?
MIKI Koji:
I studied management using the internet and other things at a regular domestic graduate school. I paid for it myself and enrolled there.
Interviewer:
I see. And when you graduated?
Kouji Miki:
I was supposed to graduate and go back, but since my master’s research went quite well and I received a good social evaluation, I was enrolled in the doctoral course, and although it was good that I entered the doctoral course, it seems that I wasn’t suited to being a researcher. I didn’t produce any research results, and in the end I was enrolled for about 9 years, including the master’s course.
Interviewer:
In the graduate school?
Kouji Miki:
I was in the master’s course for two years, and then I had to stay on for another six months. I ended up staying in the doctoral course for six years. I got busy with my work part-way through, because I joined a venture company.
Interviewer:
How old were you?
Kouji Miki:
I think I was 28 or 29.
Interviewer:
Oh, so you worked for three years after you started working.
Kouji Miki:
I worked for three years after I started working, and I think I was 28 when I joined the company.
Interviewer:
So, that’s 9 years from then?
Kouji Miki:
I entered graduate school in 1995. I was there for 9 years in all, but I think I took a 2 year break in the middle. My work got busy and so on.
Interviewer:
Oh, you were working?
Kouji Miki:
Of course. I joined a venture company while I was in the doctoral programme.
Interviewer:
Oh, I see. Is that what happened?
Kouji Miki:
It was like I was doing both the venture and the doctorate.
Interviewer:
So that was in your late 20s?
Kouji Miki:
Yes, in my late 20s.
Interviewer:
So you were doing the venture and school at the same time.
Kouji Miki:
Yes, around 30 or 31. But the professor I was following was doing some work for the government, so he wasn’t able to look after me as much as he used to. As a PhD student, I was lost in the research outcrops, I couldn’t write my thesis, and I felt like I was being left alone.
Then, I was approached by a venture company and asked if I would like to go there, so I took up employment with that company while also remaining enrolled at the university.
Interviewer:
Was that in 2000?
Kouji Miki:
Yes, it was around 2000.
Interviewer:
That was the heyday of internet companies.
Kouji Miki:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Interviewer:
Like Horiemon?
Kouji Miki:
I think Horiemon was already around in the venture world. That was around 2000.
Interviewer:
I see. What was it like during that period? I’m going to have to rush through this, but…
Kouji Miki:
During that time, I was going to a venture company in Tokyo from morning to evening, and then returning to my university in Shonan at night to write papers, but after about three months I had lost so much weight that I thought I was going to die. I took a leave of absence from my studies. Oh, I also took a leave of absence from my studies.
Interviewer:
I see, you took a leave of absence from your studies. So, did you close down the venture company?
Kouji Miki:
I didn’t start up that venture myself, so I worked hard for about nine years and created a system that increased sales considerably.
Interviewer:
Yes. Can I ask what it was?
Kouji Miki:
It was something like an IT package for small and medium-sized companies.
At one point, it was half of the company’s sales, or two-thirds, and it felt like we could go public with it, and we had VCs on board, so we were going strong, and we made too much sales.
I don’t know if you know about venture businesses, but you have to increase sales by 30% each year for two years in a row to meet the listing criteria. We increased sales too much in the first year, by 30%, 40% or 50%, so the next year was tough.
Then, the Lehman Shock happened at the right time, and we couldn’t get listed.
Interviewer:
There are so-called consulting services, right? IPO consulting, I think.
Was it something like that, or did you get on that route with the idea that you could go for it with momentum, or was it something you had already in mind?
Kouji Miki:
I got on with the momentum, and I started selling products, so suddenly. I teamed up with a company.
Interviewer:
So, at the start of the business, you didn’t have that kind of image? That scenario?
Kouji Miki:
I don’t know. I don’t think we had that scenario in mind when we first started up. That company.
Interviewer:
Thank you.
Yes, I’d like to hear about how you got to that point, and how you ended up in that depression.
Kouji Miki:
About a year and a half after the initial listing failed, I was called in by the president and told that I could either take a pay cut or go independent, although he didn’t actually say I should quit. I felt that this was effectively a dismissal, so I decided to go independent.
I went home and thought about what I should do, and as I was struggling with this, I thought about how I had worked so hard for the past nine years, and I couldn’t get up in the morning.
Interviewer:
How old were you then?
Kouji Miki:
I was about 39. I was 38 or 39.
Interviewer:
At that time, weren’t you a member of an organisation?
Kouji Miki:
Oh, I was a member of that venture.
Interviewer:
Yes, so it was like they were saying they would give me some time. I felt a bit down and couldn’t get up, and I was wondering what to do.
I did some online searches and found websites like ‘If you’re worried about your mind, click here’ and pages that said things like ‘You should read this book’, and at that time I don’t know if you know this or not, but Mr. Shiro Tengan, a former Sony executive who developed products like AIBO and created Sony Computer Science Laboratories, had published a book on meditation, so I picked up his book and realised the potential of meditation.
I didn’t really understand from the book alone, so I did a keyword search for meditation and zazen on YouTube, which had only just been invented at the time. I found videos of Japanese monks doing zazen, but the videos of Japanese monks doing zazen were just about the form, like this and this, and how to cross your legs like this, and there was no explanation at all about what happens in your mind.
It was really hard to understand, so I happened to find a video on YouTube of a young American explaining zazen, so I started training in zazen while watching that. It was really easy to understand, and there were explanations of what happens in your mind when you’re doing zazen.
After sitting for about three months, I started to feel better, I could get out of bed, and I started to get more and more ideas for my business. I wrote down all the ideas that came to me while I was sitting in zazen in a notebook.
At that time, there was a lot of talk about 3D printers and laser cutters, and I thought that there would be a lot of people who wanted to make things on their own. So I decided to start a company to help these people, called Makers.
So, I had about six months to prepare, and I started the company six months later.
Interviewer:
What was your mood like at the time?
Kouji Miki:
I was in a rush. That’s why I didn’t have any sales at all. So, although the reason I started the company was like that, I didn’t have any sales.
So, while I was going back and forth to places like Ota Ward, I met the leaders of a number of small and medium-sized companies, and there were about seven of them. These people all wanted to develop new products. So, I set up a course to support them, and I received a grant from Ota Ward to start it up.
Interviewer:
I see.
Kouji Miki:
Although I provided the course, the business ideas that came out of it were not very interesting, and there were a lot of them like that, so the course continued for a few more times, but in the end, there were no new products or goods that came out.
The person I was working with was my current business partner and another designer, but in the end, I ended up falling out with that designer. The business that person was in charge of, the product planning, had a bit of spare time. About two days.
Interviewer:
Oh, that lecture.
Kouji Miki:
Yes. When I thought about what to do, I remembered that I had come up with various ideas through zazen, so Iincorporated a programme into the lecture where we would do zazen and try to come up with business ideas, and all sorts of interesting product ideas started coming out, and people thought that was pretty interesting.
The product plans that came out were mostly from small and medium-sized companies, so they were able to quickly get to the prototype stage. Then, they put these on the then-newly-launched crowdfunding site.
I think we were probably the first small and medium-sized company to use crowdfunding, and we were able to raise nearly 4 million yen. After half a year or a year, we set up our own crowdfunding site, and the people who had taken the course started to put up projects there.
Interviewer:
Yes, I see. So Zen wasn’t the starting point.
Kouji Miki:
Well, Zen was there, but we were using that kind of system.
Interviewer:
Oh, I’m sorry. At the point when the designer and you fell out and there was a hole in the course, Zen wasn’t in the table of contents, was it?
Kouji Miki:
No, it wasn’t.
Interviewer:
So it was just a coincidence?
Kouji Miki:
It was a complete coincidence.
Interviewer:
So you weren’t thinking of using Zen for business? Even though you were helping people to recover.
MIKI Koji:
I wasn’t thinking about it.
Interviewer:
I see. What do you think about that now, looking back?
MIKI Koji:
Well, it was just a coincidence, but I feel like I was led there.
Interviewer:
Do you remember how long it was before you decided to do it, or how many days you had before you decided to do it?
Kouji Miki:
I don’t remember. (laughs)
Interviewer:
I have two more questions about the past. How were you brought up by your parents?
Kouji Miki:
I was brought up quite pampered.
Interviewer:
Yes.
Kouji Miki:
I had an older brother, and he was expected to do a lot, but I was never expected to do anything, so I was just told to do whatever I wanted. I was brought up in the typical way that second sons are brought up.
I think I received a lot of love. I think I was given a lot of love. Yes.
Interviewer:
Now, just picking things up, looking back on your life, where do you think the turning point was?
Kouji Miki:
I think the turning point was the restructuring.
Interviewer:
Yes, yes. You can put as many turning points as you like.
Kouji Miki:
The timing of that restructuring and the subsequent launch of the International Conference on Zen and Mindfulness, which started in 2015, was in 2009 when I was laid off. The restructuring in 2009 and the launch of the International Conference on Zen and Mindfulness in 2015.
We had a lot of trouble getting the international mindfulness conference off the ground, but now we have a lot of great people who are helping out. The volunteer members. The community has become very rich, and we really talk online every day, and we also meet up in person quite often, and we all work together and go out for meals, so it’s a bit like an extended family.
Miki: At the beginning, the vision was installed in my head with such clarity that I could actually see it with my own eyes, and I’m working backwards from that, so to speak.
Interviewer:
When you think about the future, what kind of future do you imagine for yourself, 5 years, 10 years, 30 years from now, until the point where you die?
Kouji Miki:
For now, the international conference we’ve just launched, Zen2.0, has become somewhat well-known in Japan, but recently we’ve started to receive quite a few inquiries from Europe, with people asking us if we’re going to hold it in Europe.
So, from next year onwards, I’d like to try holding a small Zen2.0 in Europe international conference in Europe, and if that takes off, I’d like to expand it to other regions.
At the moment, it’s being held in Kamakura, Japan, but it could be held in a town in Switzerland, or in Berlin, Germany, or in San Francisco, or in Bangkok, depending on the circumstances. International conferences are being held to convey to the world just how important the mind is, and people from all over the world are gathering there, so I think that by connecting the networks of people from around the world, including Japanese scientists, business scholars, priests, and researchers, we will be able to gather a variety of wisdom.
I don’t know whether we’ll create a real place for this in the future, but I think it would be good to have a university-like place where people from all over the world can come to learn about the possibilities of how to update the ‘heart’ using technology, and how to connect people online and in real life. I think it would be good to create something like a university or educational institution based on meditation and mindfulness, where people could come to learn online, for example, and then gather in a temple in Kamakura, or meet in person afterwards, or gather in a church somewhere in Europe and have a dialogue, and so on.
Interviewer:
In terms of the concept, when did you start to develop this idea? The introduction of Zen wasn’t a coincidence, was it? You said that you first gathered a few friends together to hold a conference. How did you come up with the scenario and plan?
Kouji Miki:
About two months before the start of the 2015 conference, I was walking along the beach in Kamakura when I saw a huge dragon cloud.
This is going to sound a bit spiritual, but it was clearly the shape of a dragon. It had eyes, and there were also things that looked like pupils, and it felt like it was glaring at me, so I took a photo of it. It was like it was saying, ‘Do something. Like, ’Get on with it.
I didn’t understand what I should do, but there was something that moved me. So I think that was the trigger for me to start up a conference with my friends to send out the wisdom of Zen from Kamakura to the world.
Interviewer:
If it hadn’t happened, would the conference have been born?
Kouji Miki:
Probably not.
Interviewer:
What made it into a conference?
I think the grand image of it was probably inspired by the dragon cloud, but what kind of driver was needed for it to become a conference?
Kouji Miki:
I have a photo of the whiteboard from the first meeting, with bullet points of things we wanted to do, and now we’re holding the conference at Kencho-ji temple, the most important temple in Kamakura, but the only thing we wrote down was ‘we want to borrow Kencho-ji temple’, but we had no network or connections. But now, after eight or nine years, almost everything that was written on that whiteboard has come true.
So the vision had already come down to me, and I had the vision in my head as a visual, so I was working backwards to figure out what kind of people I needed to meet, what kind of requests I needed to make, what kind of temples I needed to visit, and what kind of approach I needed to take in order to make that vision a reality. I think that’s what triggered the movement to some extent.
The vision was installed in my head with such clarity that I could actually see it and touch it, so I was working backwards from that point.
Interviewer:
How long have you been using Kencho-ji as a venue?
Kouji Miki:
Since 2017.
Interviewer:
In 2015, I had a vision, and at the time it was almost impossible for an ordinary person like me to be able to use Kencho-ji, the most prestigious and largest temple in Kamakura, but I was able to get permission through various people’s connections.
Interviewer:
What kind of feelings do you have now when you are doing this project?
Kouji Miki:
Well, there are wars, financial instability, earthquakes, and environmental problems, but in my opinion, I think that all of these things are caused by people’s consciousness, so I think it would be good if we could provide a place where people could come to this conference, gain some kind of awareness for themselves, and then go back to their own real world and act on that awareness.
It may be a very small thing for society, the world, and the earth, but if one person changes, I think the ten or twenty people in front of them will also change, so I want to create that kind of seed. I think that’s the feeling behind holding this conference.
Interviewer:
We were asking about a hypothetical future, and if you were to go back to zero again, what would you do? You haven’t lost your Zen, but the conference is gone, you have nothing concrete to do, and you’re back to being alone again.
Kouji Miki:
I think I would gather together the same group of people again. I would talk passionately about that vision and do the same thing again.
Interviewer:
So you would start again.
Kouji Miki:
I would start again, as many times as it takes.
Interviewer:
Thank you very much. Our final question is: Is there anything you would like to say before we finish? It could be a last will and testament, a message for our readers, or just your own thoughts on the interview, but we would like to hear anything you would like to say before we finish.
Kouji Miki:
Yes, I think that there is a world where you and your world are fused together, beyond your own ego. I think that there is a world where you and your world are fused together, beyond your own ego.
It’s inevitable that people move around in the real world because of their egos, but if you can think of yourself as being part of that world, then I think that doing things for the sake of society will ultimately benefit yourself, so if you do things like various projects and social activities with that kind of mindset, even if it’s just a small thing, I think the world will start to change, so I think it would be good if you could realise that.
Interviewer:
Thank you.
Afterword
Zen is strong!
