Since the publication of A Gateway to Daily Life Yoga in October 2024, I have been working on the translation of another of Masahiro Oki’s books—the Japanese edition published in 1978. Its forthcoming English title will be Discovering the Joy of Living through Yoga. As I have been steadily advancing with this translation, I have been unable to post any blog articles over the past year. In this post, I would like to share a subsection of the book, titled ‘Breaking Free from the Monotony of Daily Life’ (Between the two lines of *****).

*******************
My dōjō brings together people from many different occupations and social positions. Some are company employees; others work in agriculture. There are members of parliament and doctors, as well as shopkeepers, among many others.

By observing how they go about their daily lives at the dōjō, or by speaking directly with them, I can gain a fair understanding of the nature of their worries and frustrations, and of how they spend their days. In other words, simply being at the dōjō, I can grasp—as clearly as if I were holding it in my hands—the various problems that cling to today’s working and family life. Because everyone bares their mind-heart and speaks candidly before me, I am able to see the truth plainly.

The phrase ‘monotonous life’ is one that office workers almost invariably use when voicing their complaints. How many thousands of times have I heard people say things like “I can’t stand the monotony of life” or “I’m utterly fed up with this monotonous daily repetition”? And each time, I have given the same answer.

The word ‘monotonous’ immediately calls to mind the idea of ‘repetition’; waking at the same time every morning, boarding the same train to work, and, upon arrival, finding the same routine tasks waiting—work that is, quite literally, identical to yesterday’s, the day before’s, or even a year ago. Their complaints can be generally considered like this. And, to make matters worse, most of them envy other people’s jobs deep down.

But in reality, is there a single job in this world that is not repetitive? Those engaged in agriculture also tend their crops each day in much the same way, taking whatever measures are needed, and sending grain and vegetables to market in much the same manner day after day. And what about those who run shops? How different are they, really, from these farmers or company employees? Their lives, too, consist of repeating the same process of buying goods and selling them. In this sense, it can be said that the fundamental nature of daily life—as ‘repetition’ and ‘accumulation’—does not change in the least according to one’s occupation.

Human life, in the end, is a matter of repetition. Yet this does not mean that becoming completely accustomed to that repetition, or allowing one’s daily life to become mechanical, is the right course. On the contrary, I place positive value on the experience of ‘monotony’. A person who feels daily life to be monotonous but makes no effort to break through that monotony can never make any real progress.

Here, we must consider what it means to perceive something as monotonous. Put it simply, it corresponds to a state where one can no longer perceive stimuli as stimuli. I mentioned earlier how unhealthy a body becomes when it can no longer receive stimuli as such. In the same way, once one grows accustomed to one’s work, it ceases to function as work. In essence, just as an unhealthy digestive system, without resistance, digests and absorbs even harmful foodstuffs, one’s work is treated as a single, undifferentiated mass. Tasks requiring ingenuity and tasks requiring nothing more than routine administrative handling are indiscriminately lumped together. When one approaches work mechanically—deciding, without any examination of the content, that ‘this is simply how it is done’—it is hardly surprising that each day becomes monotonous.

For example, even when performing the same clerical tasks, one’s mental approach must differ entirely between calculating costs and calculating sales. This is only natural if one’s work is not merely the preparation of accounts but the contribution to the company’s prosperity. Likewise, one must bear in mind that sales work does not begin and end solely with sales; it is inseparably connected to the company’s commercial activity as a whole, including the planning and development of new products. When one approaches work in this way, the stimulus truly comes alive as a stimulus. If one fails to perceive stimuli as stimuli, one inevitably follows a downward path: becoming addicted, gradually numbing, ceasing to function, and ultimately regressing. For both the human body and mind, creating a state in which one can consistently receive stimuli as such is the path to health. In this sense, the effort to find stimulation within monotonous repetition—or rather, the effort to create stimulation—becomes a crucial key to breaking free from the monotony of daily life. Therefore, before envying other people’s work, might we not need to re-examine our own?

If one wishes to enrich one’s life, one must make full use of the wisdom that has been bestowed. Here, it is important to recognise that wisdom and knowledge are entirely different things: the wisdom granted to human beings is, above all, creative ability. Quite literally, knowledge is a collection of what one knows—may be regarded as the gathering of other people’s inventions through their wisdom, a kind of borrowed property. In other words, it is in drawing on our own unique wisdom, in striving to create something truly our own and not borrowed, that we find ingenuity, thought, and work as genuine stimulation. In a life spent each day seeking out opportunities for ingenuity and applying creative ability to them, how could life possibly become monotonous?

We must regard our daily lives as a training ground for exercising this creative ability, and conduct ourselves accordingly. By evolving day by day, we must seek out change within our everyday lives and actively bring about change. In the daily ascent, step by step, if we view the task before us from the standpoint gained by that step—even if it lies on the same trajectory as a year ago—it should appear at least somewhat different. Seeking change within repetition and continuing to evolve is precisely this reality. ‘Ingenuity calls forth further ingenuity, and effort invites further effort’—this phrase refers to exactly what has just been described.

I often teach that there is no end to ways of thinking and acting, and I wish everyone would take these words to heart. Those who grumble that they ‘cannot endure the monotony of daily life’ and constantly complain that they ‘are fed up with the monotonous repetition of each day’—do they not truly understand these words in their bones? Consider, for example, the master painter Morikazu Kumagai, who lived to the ripe old age of ninety-seven, saying, “Only recently have I begun to understand painting.” Or Nagashima—a remarkable baseball player—saying two years after his retirement, “Only recently do I feel I’ve begun to grasp baseball a little.” These are words well worth pondering. In any case, the moment a person thinks, “I’ve got it,” it is already over. Clerks who believe they have mastered bookkeeping, teachers who decide their teaching methods suffice as they are, salesmen who hastily conclude there is no alternative sales tactic—for them, the workplace will impose nothing but a dry, monotonous life—beyond question. It is hardly surprising that such people seek stimulation in directions entirely unrelated to work, whether leisure activities or the pursuit of advancement in position or salary. Indeed, it strikes me as perfectly logical.

I believe that human beings are creatures who build stability within instability. Standing upon that stability, we seek further instability and change, transforming what is unbalanced into something balanced. For this reason, we are the only beings on earth endowed with creative ability. By becoming fully aware of this, and by expanding and deepening ourselves, we expand and deepen our work, and ultimately our entire lives. In a way of living such as this, no day can ever be monotonous or merely repetitive.

********************
Here are my thoughts: Yoga is not something to be understood only in theory or through listening to a teacher’s grand vision. Masahiro Oki often said, ‘Do not believe, do not doubt —experience it yourself’, meaning that yoga’s teachings are realised through the integration of one’s own knowledge and action. In everyday life, I find countless situations that could be transformed into more constructive and beneficial outcomes if I test the hints he gives. In this sense, I find Masahiro Oki’s yoga philosophy genuinely encouraging.