Some reading notes on zenteki motanai ikikata (roughly “Zen way of living with less”) by Kanetake Soushin ¹.

The main message of the book is “fulfillment is actively hindered by clinging to more stuff, so try having less”. In fact “stuff” is taken quite broadly: “things”, “relationships” and “emotions”.

The book is structured into five chapters

1. A description of how few things Zen monks possess
2. Hints on how to reduce the stuff you currently own
3. Advice on how to not buy things in the first place
4. How to reduce negative emotions
5. How to reduce unnecessary relationships

As far as I understood the main framework of the book is as follows:

Thus if you reduce the stuff you own, you reduce the number of attachments you have thus reducing your dissatisfaction. Also the later chapters describe how to feel less dissatisfied with fewer things and thus reducing dissatisfaction in the first place.

Personally I found it interesting that the book first focused on throwing away things before dealing with the “root cause” of dissatisfaction. However when considering that reducing stuff in itself might cause a reduction in dissatisfaction this makes sense.

Actually when I purchased the book I expected more philosophy of Zen but the actual contents were more practical tips on how to reduce dissatisfaction by reducing stuff with reasons from Zen Buddhism. Also what surprised me, was that many of the strategies given are quite similar to those given in the course ‘The Science of Wellbeing’ by Laurie Santos.

Especially the “knowledge of things causing attachments” is quite similar to “Awesome stuff doesn’t fulfil you” - one of the first things that are thought in the course.

Also the “skill of enoughness” can be nicely mapped onto “savoring”, “gratitude” and “negative visualization” in the course!

The main thing that I took away from the book was that instead of increasing the amount of stuff in your life, you can also just increase the satisfaction (gratitude) you get from what you have and might end up even more satisfied in the process.

Sources and Annotations

Footnotes

1. 金嶽宗信. (2018). [禅的] 持たない生き方. ディスカヴァー・トゥエンティワン. ↩