I do not agree that there is nothing good in the society, or there is much more negative than positive; But most probably we are more attracted to something that is very “upheaval” or very tragic, very drastic, so the newspapers would like to report these things to us. This is all right, but then in the long term, it will affect our attitude and our spirit and our outlook on life.
The other day, I was interviewed by a newspaper journalist – and I am often interviewed by journalists of different newspapers and different countries. And most of the time I have noticed that the majority of them have a kind of not very positive tone, not very positive kind of questioning or attitude. Not necessarily because of me. It’s just their job. It’s just they’re used to this kind of talk, not because they are negative towards me. No. As if they have no fun in their job, or nothing that makes them happy in this world.
So I asked them, I said, "You always ask me questions, now I want to ask you one question." I said, "Why do the journalist people have often the very negative outlook on life? Or when they go to question someone, it seems like they have a kind of negative feeling or a tendency towards some negative questions, and also why most of the time the news is more negative than positive?” So, I was answered that because they find nothing good to report, nothing good in the society, only negative things, so they have to report what it is.
But I do not agree that there is nothing good in the society, or there is much more negative than positive; I do not think it is so bad. But most probably we are more attracted to something that is very “upheaval” or very tragic, very drastic, so the newspapers would like to report these things to us. This is all right, but then in the long term, it will affect our attitude and our spirit and our outlook on life.
And then everywhere, sometimes, we go, we see similar people, similar type of situation, and immediately we expect something negative. And this is how our brain picks up information in this world, mostly, largely due to television, due to newspapers, books, etc. I have heard that sometimes, because the young people see some criminal scenes reported on television, and some time later, they imitate and then it breeds more crimes.
Sometimes, I was in America and I went through the bookshops to look for some spiritual books to see what people print and what people read today. And I was very disappointed to look the whole day and (find) very little valuable spiritual guidance, but low-level books are plenty. Sometimes the whole, very thick, book only reported some very bad, very, very terrible action of some kind of group, of some kind of a cult, or something like that. And even described in detail the terrible things they do.
Now, probably there is only one person who did these things or a group of a few people, but when it's printed into books, millions of people will know about all these negative things. And if our brain is always overloaded by this kind of bad information, then this information will, in turn, feed out to the societies or to our environment. That's how we see our society become kind of, in some part of the world, very degraded in morality and in spirit. Because the brain-computer continues to pick up information, regardless if good or bad, and there's much more bad information than good, therefore, our spirit is very tired, very degraded, very discouraged, very frustrated, very weak.
That's why sometimes, if somebody, some person, is truly good, truly pure, comes to us and wants to help us, we sometimes have doubt and suspicion, thinking, “How could it be, so good a thing? I’ve never heard of it! We didn’t have this before.” And then, a very few truly good persons finally also give up because they couldn't convince us that they are truly good, and that we also don't give them time, don't give them a chance to prove their goodness.
Most of the journalists would be more interested in the way I look or the way I wear my clothes, more than what I offer in spirit. I don't say all of them, I would say the majority. And also, they have the feeling, not only the journalists, but many people, many other people, they have the feeling as if to wear makeup or to wear nice clothes, it's something not good, something not good for the people with wisdom, yes, or with enlightenment.
I do not blame them for their attitude. I just feel sorry for our society that breeds such kind of thinking. I just feel sorry that our people have lost the sense of dignity, sense of beauty, sense of appreciation of something…beauty, truth… and gracefulness, and worse still, even feel proud of it! In the old times, our traditional dress was beautiful; women were truly women, men were truly men, very beautiful, very dignified. Nowadays, we do not see much of these signs of beauty on the street because if some woman appears to be beautiful, then she attracts many criticisms.
When I first came here today, I saw only one or two people wearing kimonos on the street, and I always look at these things and I like it so much. And a Japanese woman who wears a kimono is much more beautiful than wearing other clothes. I saw two women walking together, one wearing different clothes and another one wearing a kimono. Even though both of them looked beautiful, but the one with the kimono was extremely, extremely and distinguishedly beautiful. But in this society today, maybe we do not have so much time to be beautiful, and everybody just learns from each other and we are all rushing around and forget to keep ourselves in the way we used to be or the way we want to be, and then finally, everyone accepts that it's OK to not be beautiful, it's OK to wear just casual clothes, or any kind of clothes.
