Great Construction

HEALTH IS ALL AND EVERYTHING

　　Being healthy means, of course, a human being who has no disease. However, as to this, there is one thing I wonder about: religion scholars and journalists insist that a religion which focuses on curing illness is not a high ranking one because it places great emphasis on the benefits gained in this world. But this view is absolutely wrong. Needless to say, while we were born as human beings and live our life in society, there is nothing that obstructs our activities so much and causes us such great pain as disease. When we look over this society and examine the causes by which unhappiness and tragedies occur, we find that the root causes are diseases without any exceptions. As the saying goes, "There is a woman behind a crime," so we can say that there is a disease behind a tragedy. Thus, it is absolutely certain that unhappy people decrease in direct proportion to the increase of healthy people. This description is about individuals, but in terms of a country and a society, the damage caused by illness is probably the maximum. After all, disease is the fundamental cause of unhappiness.

　　"The world with complete absence of disease, poverty and conflicts" is the motto of our religion; however, if only we can get rid of disease, food problems and conflicts will, as a matter of course, be solved. This is so evident that there is no need of explanation for it; however, disease does not mean only being physically ill-conditioned, but there are mental illnesses, which is the biggest problem confronting our present world. As to the war, it is evident that the one who launches a war is totally opposite in nature to the one who prevents it, and the prime mover of a war is quite different from the people who are pushed into the war, so in a nutshell a big shot who intends to start a war is the worst one. The real motive of such big shots will be this: their desire is so strong that they are not content with a moderate success with which ordinary people would satisfy; because of their great ability and confidence in themselves they become full of preposterous ambition. As you find when you take a look at the deeds of heroes or great persons in history, they were successful for a while, but they ended in failure without exception.

　　Thus, on the one hand they try to achieve their ambitions, but on the other they sacrifice a lot of people and produce countless unhappy people, so they seem to be likely to shiver with the gravity of their sins, to which, however, they are indifferent. This is because they, no matter how heroic they may be, have mental defects; they are kind of psychotic patients. A person can be loveless and merciless and persist in egoism of caring only about him- or herself and not caring what happens to others all the same because the person has some mental defect. Interestingly, those who have mental defects invariably have physical defects as well, which I learned from my longtime experiences. However, we find some heroes or villains physically very healthy; this is because they have a great deal of poisons but they have been solidified very firmly.

　　It follows from the above mentioned that if only we could get rid of diseases from human beings, it would be good enough whether the method is religion, science, philosophy or education; however, as to the power to really cure illnesses there is absolutely none other than the spiritual light of ○ヽ(Su) which I have in my body.

Eikoh, No.182, November 12, 1952 (27th year of Showa)

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“Kenkô wa Issai Nari” has previously appeared in translation. The citation is given below for reference.

“Health Is Everything,” True Health, 1987, page 14.