One day, when I was requested to talk about religious faith by an old woman, who looked relatively simple and unaffected. I simply started by asking her, "Do you know the Buddha?", because I wanted to emphasize that our faith is in Buddhism. She replied, "Yes, I know his name, but I never met him."

In a moment I was at a loss to hear such an unexpected reply from her, so I had to think over what I should talk to her next. After talking various kinds of tale, I finally managed to make her understand what the faith was and I rather felt even pleasant with her too genuine simplicity.
Nowadays, when it comes to Buddhism, even young people can call up an image of Shakamuni, i.e. the Buddha. There are certainly indications in Japan that young people are showing some interest in religion. In my experience, when I said to foreigners, "Oshaka-sama", which is the popular name of the Buddha in Japan, many of them responded to me with the word "Oh, Buddha!"

These days, many people over middle age in Japan are too practical and unsentimental, while many of them seem not to mind what faith they should have essentially, as long as it is called religion. So they are eventually liable to change their faith frequently.

Buddhism recently has been re-valued in the Western countries, where the study dealing with issues of mind is being recognized as one of the major fields of science. "Transpersonal", which is one of the studies of psychology, deeply investigating into the mind or dealing with issues beyond individuals, has already made a remarkable academic progress as a science studying of mental issues in the Western countries. On the contrary, the study in this field in Japan has been far behind regretfully.

Now just going away from the subject, the other day I happened to have a visit from one of the major scholars in the field of the Earth environmental studies in Japan, who is very busy with making a trip around the world so often to attend the related international conferences.

He is a gentleman aged almost fifty years and usually called "Doctor", but I always call him by his boyhood nickname since I have been in intimate terms with his parents so long and have brought him up just like one of my sons. It is not so often to see and have a heart to heart talk with him since he is very busy with his job. Once he visits my place, he always takes care of me as if I were his father. Every time we have talks, we are too much engrossed in our discussion to become aware of time going on. My wife usually sets the table in the evening and he drinks not moderately but too much I think.

We discuss anything with no reverse. I am really a man of religion and always talk to him expressing my great indignation against the current situation of religious circles in Japan being put in a serious crisis.

So I lately asked him, "I'd like to give a lecture for the public in Tokyo. What do you think of my idea? I think you alone at least will surely come and listen to my speech and I don't want to speak to vacant seats in the arena at all."

He replied to me, "Chief priest, I have a good idea for that. Why don't you use the internet, so you can not only get information from the world over but also inform many other people of your thoughts publicly."

Then he explained the mechanism of the www to the point as if he had been a good teacher. I was so impressed by his explanation with a great interest and thought that the theory of system was well applied to the mechanical science, because I had just started learning the theory of the organic universe at that time.
After that I started learning the internet from related books, but it was really tough for me seventy-two years. My only experience was in using the word-processor and it was hard to understand English technical terms for using computers as I was not good at English. However, with a great effort I managed to become a beginner of the net suffer.

To tell the truth, my son has been a good teacher for me, but my pride would not allow me to accept this situation, so I am acting as if I learned it by my self. In the long run I understood the mechanism, and now my work is writing itself. So I am now very eager to write and have just tried to check the home pages by search engines in order to learn how to write for the www and found a wide variety of them so amazing.

Honestly I wonder how many people will get access to our home page. I am now feeling more anxious about that in opening our home page than in making a speech at my lecture in Tokyo. I am sure the contents are so serious and sincere itself, but please do not regard my talks as too hard and formal. I will highly appreciate it if you read through enjoy our home page.