After ten years, Arigatō, which had gone out of print, is now being reborn. I feel grateful for this opportunity to revisit the time of its first edition (2006), and even a little before that—around the year 2000—with fond nostalgia.
As I prepared to release this reprint of Arigatō, I picked up the first edition to read it again. There's a passage that goes:
"I can now confidently declare, 'My life is happy.' I can say that to myself. Therefore, I believe I am happy. It's not because of anyone else or anything in particular—I truly, from the bottom of my heart, feel joy in my very existence."
I have cherished that sentiment and nurtured it within my heart to this day. Over twenty years ago, when I first began learning to look into my own heart, Mr. Ryūkich Taike said to me, "You don't have much joy." Indeed—I had lived always taking everything for granted: "It's there, so it's normal"; "They do things for me, so it's natural." Hearing someone speak so directly to me, a complete stranger, was truly shocking.
In retrospect, I realize that Mr. Taike, with endless kindness and warmth, was sincerely conveying, "You're mistaken."
— (Original:「あなた、間違っていますよ」と限りない優しさと温もりで伝えてくれていたのでした。)
More than twenty years have passed since that transformative encounter with Mr. Taike. As the saying goes, learning is life—and Mr. Taike poured his heart and soul into those seminars. He passed away in December 2015, at the age of 90. From April 1993, I had participated in residential seminars where I learned about the truth of the vibrational world. I now feel more than ever that the real journey begins now. I want to carry forward, with renewed determination, Mr. Taike's message: that "humankind is not made of the physical body, but is consciousness that exists eternally."
I feel deeply the truth of that vibrational world I learned alongside Mr. Taike. Though his physical body is no longer with us, I feel his presence as consciousness, vibration, and energy.
Re‐reading Arigatō after so long, I was reminded again that it is the source of all my learning. My foolish, physical-body-bound self had long been waiting for the "real me" within—to awaken to my existence.
Because I didn't know how to turn inward and look at my own heart, the real me within was trying to reach that oblivious, physical-body-bound me—through the person of Mr. Taike. For over two decades, I felt his message: "Properly turn your heart in the direction he points." That span of time has made me realize how extraordinary this moment truly is—a once-in-a-thousand-year opportunity to encounter the world of truth. From Mr. Taike's plane of consciousness, I feel the vibration of "walk straight along this path," and I simply need to keep stepping forward steadily.
As I said earlier, Arigatō, written in 2006, is the origin of my learning. With the reprint of Arigatō as my starting point, I aspire to take another step forward.
And now, let us turn the clock back ten years.