Origin & Values

You should be a great tree, carefully nurtured from a small sapling and gradually growing into a towering tree that reaches the clouds, unafraid of wind, rain, or calamity. Putting down deep roots is extremely important and necessary, so you must hold steady in solitude and endure loneliness. Do not envy those who grow crops and reap a harvest every year, yet depend on the weather for their livelihood: when conditions change, all the wheat seedlings die, leaving not a grain to harvest.

—Grandmother’s advice

Begin by establishing, return to goodness, set right and put into practice

“Establish”: ambition, action, virtue, achievement, lasting words;

“Good”: thoughts, heart, causes, conditions, fruits;

“Right”: integrity, decency, justice, the right path, right livelihood;

Begin by establishing

Without action

There is neither establishment nor goodness

Everyone has a starting point, often arising from firm will and determination. “Establishing” has five levels:

● Establish ambition: choose a direction

○ Establishing ambition is the first step of life’s journey, setting a clear direction and goal. As the Great Learning says: “Know where to stop, then you can be settled; settled, you can be still; still, you can be at ease; at ease, you can deliberate; deliberating, you can attain.” Ambition is a kind of “settledness,” and settledness gives rise to insight.

○ It looks toward the future, persists in dreams, and explores life’s meaning. In personal growth, firm ambition enables us to navigate life’s storms and face challenges and difficulties better.

● Establish action: put intentions into practice

○ After ambition comes turning it into practical steps. Establishing action emphasizes doing, putting promises to oneself into practice rather than remaining with theory and dreams. Through practice in cultivation and realization, we can truly understand life’s meaning and the principles by which the world works.

● Establish virtue: develop character through action

○ Like the story of “Mencius’s Mother Moving Three Times,” establishing virtue means character and qualities accumulated through action. It represents moral ideas, values, and attitudes toward life. In personal growth, cultivation, and realization, virtue is the core, determining a person’s value and influence.

○ Throughout life, continually pursue noble moral character and cultivation, striving to become pure in character and upright in conduct. Whatever difficulties or temptations arise, persist in moral principles, letting conscience and morality guide conduct.

○ Virtue is established not only for oneself, but to benefit society. A person of high morality can become a social example, influence others, and bring positive energy to all society.

● Establish achievement: extending influence

○ Like the story of “The Foolish Old Man Removing the Mountains,” after virtue is established, personal values and character influence conduct and decisions, producing profound effects in society, family, and teams.

○ Achievement embodies this influence, affirming and recognizing personal value. Continually strive to create value in different fields and at different levels, bringing positive change to society, family, and organizations. Achievement means not only ideals but practice, advancing the world through actual action.

○ Do not settle for momentary success or results; contribute to society continuously and tirelessly, creating lasting value.

● Establish lasting words: transmitting wisdom

○ Like the story of “The Hundred Schools Contending,” lasting words are the final fruit of personal growth, cultivation, realization, and development.

○ They share experience, wisdom, and insight with others, helping them grow and progress.

○ Lasting words are not merely oral transmission, but examples of conduct, attitudes, and values. Share insights, experience, and wisdom in life through words as well as conduct. Establishing lasting words means taking responsibility for passing on knowledge and ideas, inspiring others and guiding them upward.

○ Lasting words also contribute to later generations. Good words and ideas are seeds that can take root and sprout in others’ hearts, becoming treasures passed through generations.

Return to goodness

Act

Without goodness, there is no basis for establishment

In all pursuits and practices, accumulating goodness is ultimately the highest standard and destination. “Goodness” has five dimensions:

● Good thoughts: the origin of thought

○ Every action and feeling begins with a thought. Good thoughts are our initial positive thinking and intentions, a yearning for kindness and uprightness. They begin all positive conduct, setting the first step’s direction on life’s road.

● A good heart: inner motivation

○ Sustained, accumulated good thoughts form a good heart: sincere feelings toward goodness and its continual pursuit deep within. This is our inner motivation and belief for continuing to do what is right.

● Good causes: the beginning of action

○ A good heart prompts concrete actions. Such positive conduct is a good cause, embodying good thoughts and heart, and directly causing future good outcomes.

● Good conditions: the environment’s response

○ Good causes trigger chain reactions in the external world, creating good conditions. These are positive external circumstances and factors arising from our positive conduct, as well as destined good opportunities and conditions.

● Good fruits: results manifest

○ All good thoughts, hearts, causes, and conditions ultimately lead to a result: good fruits. These complete and reward all previous steps, representing positive outcomes and returns.

Set right and put into practice

Do it

Without rightness, all is empty

In every practice, always maintain uprightness, uphold correct ways of doing things, and ensure conduct accords with moral standards. “Rightness” has five levels:

● Integrity: act honestly and fairly

○ Integrity is every entrepreneur’s inner principle and moral coordinate. It upholds truth, sincerity, and fairness, requiring truthfulness without falsity, concealment, or favoritism at every moment. In business, integrity means fair dealings, honesty and trustworthiness, and authentic self-presentation.

● Decency: treat the team fairly

○ Decency embodies integrity’s principles in teams and organizations. It requires preserving a fair team culture, treating every member equitably, and ensuring the undertaking’s direction aligns with team values.

● Justice: balance in business

○ Justice represents fairness and balance in the external market. In an undertaking, it requires fair and proper dealings with all partners, customers, and competitors, without harming others’ rights and interests, preserving normal market order.

● The right path: the course of development

○ The right path identifies an undertaking’s correct direction and course. It represents long-term, sustained, harmonious development, ensuring that pursuing profit also preserves social and environmental harmony and balance.

● Right livelihood: apply these principles in business

○ Integrity, decency, justice, and the right path ultimately appear in an undertaking’s results: right livelihood. It embodies all positive principles and values in actual business, completes and rewards the previous steps, and is the ultimate sign of success.

Chinese people’s ultimate goals in this world are basically eating well, drinking well, living well, using good things, and mating well!

Achieving these goals requires a strong economic foundation. Thus Chinese people’s actual motivation for existence is one word—money.

Ideals, faith, personal value, social responsibility, and the like, which humans as higher animals should possess, are worth not a penny in Chinese people’s eyes!

So Chinese people mock those with aspirations, saying: “Pretentious bullshit.”

Begin by establishing, return to goodness

Establishing: establish ambition, virtue, achievement, and lasting words

Goodness: be good to others and yourself, benefit others, love broadly

Use “Begin by establishing, return to goodness” as the life creed I pursue by every possible means throughout my life.

Great virtue bears all things

What is great virtue?

Pure intention.

What does bearing all things mean?

How great an undertaking you accomplish.

The greatness of your pure intention determines the greatness of what you can do.

As much responsibility for an undertaking as you can bear, that much you can accomplish;

As much money as you can bear, that much you can command;

As many people as you can bear, that many you can lead.

Cultivating the heart is cultivating virtue! Cultivating conduct is cultivating fate

Vast learning is not for conquering others, but for seeing your own smallness; abundant wealth is not for flaunting luxury, but for increasing your responsibility to promote goodness; eminent position is not for admiring yourself in isolation, but for leading others forward; formidable strength is not for bullying the weak, but for breathing freely;

When a person has energy, it is not to satisfy selfish desires, but to shoulder a greater mission!

1. A bed can be bought, but sleep cannot. 2. A house can be bought, but a family cannot. 3. A body can be bought, but love cannot. 4. Food can be bought, but appetite cannot. 5. Obedience can be bought, but respect cannot. 6. Entertainment can be bought, but happiness cannot. 7. Flattery can be bought, but loyalty cannot. 8. A clock can be bought, but time cannot.

Establish values first, then choose methods; without boundaries set by values, the more effective the method, the greater the deviation.

Every goal must pass three tests: goodness, integrity, and the long term.

In 2016, through Mr. Yu Shiwei, I worked with Seiwajyuku in China to review its business and operating models. Working with its members introduced me to Kazuo Inamori’s idea of “revering heaven and loving people.” I also began to reconsider my own goals and values.

As we reviewed the operating model, I saw how these ideas shaped decisions, strategy, and everyday work. They concerned how to run a business, how to live, how to treat people, and how to contribute to society.

That work influenced my career and how I understand value. Beyond material wealth, relationships, our treatment of nature, and our contribution to society matter too. Since then, I have taken “revering heaven and loving people” as a principle for my life.

Revering heaven means following nature’s principles and humanity’s right path—that is, Heaven’s Way—and treating people with kindness. In other words, it means upholding the correct way of being human. Loving people means abandoning selfish desires, showing consideration for others, and keeping an altruistic heart.

Revere heaven:

“Revering heaven” means acting according to the nature of things. “Heaven” here refers to objective laws, the nature of things. He upheld carrying the right things through to the end in the right way, proposing twelve management principles: ① Clarify the purpose and meaning of the undertaking; ② Set concrete goals; ③ Hold a strong desire in your heart; ④ Make an effort second to none; ⑤ Seek to maximize sales and minimize expenses; ⑥ Pricing is the foundation of management; ⑦ Management depends on a strong will; ⑧ Kindle a fighting spirit; ⑨ Act with courage; ⑩ Continually engage in creative work; ⑪ Treat people with care and candor; ⑫ Always maintain an optimistic, forward-looking mindset, holding dreams and hope, and engage with the world sincerely. These twelve principles are all requirements of the nature of things. Act according to those requirements, and you will succeed wherever you go.

Love people:

“Loving people” means being human according to human nature. Here, “loving people” means “benefiting others,” the fundamental starting point for being human. Those who benefit others benefit themselves. Shift from being “self-centered” to “other-centered,” making “others” the focus and yourself their servant and helper. For businesses, this means “altruistic management.” These “others” are customers. Customers in the broad sense include buyers, employees, society, and stakeholders. Shift from being “enterprise-centered” to “customer-centered,” serving customers wholeheartedly. Naturally, first serve buyers, considering everything from their perspective and meeting their requirements. So long as a business creates value for customers, it can share in that value.

Revering heaven and loving people includes reverence, gratitude, and altruism!

Heaven gives birth to all things through yang and brings them to completion through yin. Giving birth is benevolence; completion is righteousness. Thus the sage in a position of authority nurtures all things with benevolence and sets all people right with righteousness. When Heaven’s Way operates, all things follow it; when sagely virtue is cultivated, all people are transformed. Such great harmony and transformation, whose traces cannot be seen and whose workings no one knows, are called divine. Thus the multitudes under heaven have their root in one person. Can the Way be far away? Can its methods be numerous?

Tongshu, Chapter 11, “Following and Transformation”—Zhou Dunyi

Wind

Direction

The first stirring of intention

Your original intention

Water

A carrier

The origin of all things

Can carry or overturn

Wind: favorable wind

Rain: timely rain

When the first intention is good

Feng shui is naturally good

Revere the patterns of things and respect people’s circumstances, putting altruism into concrete relationships.

First understand the nature of things, then decide how to intervene.

The essence of life is creating karma in ignorance and passively receiving its consequences. Karma brings embodiment; the body creates more karma, in an endless cycle. Cultivation means transforming this confused, deluded life into a life of vows and practice.

Only those who have fallen into the abyss can truly share others’ pain

“It makes sense,” “the only answer,” “correct”—these are all appearances. Ordinary people pursue right and wrong; great achievers pursue winning and losing. The underlying core:

Do not be trapped by emotions and desires, or by fame, gain, and public opinion;

Do not be trapped by culture and morality, or by past knowledge;

Speech that helps people and society progress is truth.

A clean soul

Impurity leads into “agitation,” attracting heaps of petty people and layers of bad fortune;

Purity leads into “you are so good,” attracting heaps of helpful people and layers of flourishing energy!

“Uprightness” is good, certainly, but if it goes “too far,” does it not become crooked?

“Goodness” is good, certainly, but if it goes “too far,” does it not become monstrous?

“Cleverness” is good, certainly, but if it goes “too far,” does it not become slippery?

“Sincerity” is good, certainly, but if it goes “too far,” does it not become foolish?

See through without disenchantment; to save the world, first enter it. Excessive uprightness becomes odd; excessive goodness becomes monstrous.

What is truth?

“It makes sense,” “the only answer,” “correct”—these are all appearances. Ordinary people pursue right and wrong; great achievers pursue winning and losing. The underlying core

Do not be trapped by emotions and desires, or by fame, gain, and public opinion;

Do not be trapped by culture and morality, or by past knowledge;

Speech that helps people and society progress is truth.

What I pursue is my family’s happiness

Not my own selfish desires

Every day is a new starting point

There must be progress, gains, and achievements

For my parents’ kindness in raising me, my partner’s kindness in recognizing me, and the support of those around me

So I must treat every day as a starting point

And make my family’s happiness my pursuit

Each of our lives is a river. We always have too many choices and attend to too many things, making our lives seem very broad. You know everything happening in the world, missing nothing. **Everyone is talking about Trump, Musk, and Bob Dylan, but many have forgotten “Who am I?”** Our lives grow increasingly shallow and lack depth.

Yet what a person pursues in life is neither length nor breadth, but precisely depth—what we actually do within our limited time, and what we bring to ourselves, our families, and this world.

First distinguish facts, explanations, and beliefs, then decide on action.

Only judgments that help people and society continually progress have practical value.

I can choose my path firmly without first judging others’ paths as lower.

I value interest, responsibility, and long-term accumulation, and choose companions by these standards. But one person values stability more, another exploration, each with conditions I have not experienced. Not understanding a choice does not prove shallowness; more complex experience does not automatically qualify me to arrange another’s life.

Working together naturally needs boundaries: agreed duties, truthful information, and acceptable methods must be clear. If conditions do not fit, we may decline cooperation. But rejecting an arrangement and judging an entire person should be separate. Principles help my decisions without becoming tools to judge everyone.

I am willing to explain why I live this way while leaving others different reasons. A conviction sustained only by looking down on others needs further testing. Accommodating different lives lets my choice stand without continually borrowing others’ supposed inferiority.

There is no fate decreed by heaven, only the “heart’s fate”: where the heart is, there lies fate!

My heart is everything; everything is my heart!

Everything that goes against your wishes is the return of your own conduct. Virtue is the root: strong roots make abundant flowers and fruit!

A bitter fate comes from what one brings upon oneself, unrelated to the outside world;

A smooth fate comes from what self-cultivation attracts, unrelated to luck.

Do not seek karmic rewards in the next life; cultivate only cause and effect in this life.

Lesser teachers teach rewards in the next life, entering “self-seeking and self-attachment,” greed, anger, delusion, and arrogance…

If this life is not lived well, how could the next be good?

Great teachers teach cause and effect in the present life, entering “growth without shame” and living in the present…

If this life is lived well, how could the next not be good?

A bitter fate comes from what one brings upon oneself, unrelated to the outside world;

A smooth fate comes from what cultivation attracts, unrelated to luck.

Everything that goes against your wishes is the return of your own conduct. Cultivating the heart is cultivating fate. I decide whether my heart moves; the outside world does not control it.

There is no fate decreed by heaven, only the heart’s fate: where the heart is, there lies fate! My heart is everything; everything is my heart!

See results as the return of long-standing choices and actions.

Within a finite life, leave value that can be remembered, used, and passed on.