“Yes, there’s no age for an actress,” she said smiling. Saburo received his first lesson in the effects of attitude on aging, and this “no age philosophy” afterwards was referenced in his classes.
He stayed a few months at her home, where stunning actresses and celebrities visited her salon, and where he often heard genuinely happy laughter. It was there that he realized the impact of laughter on health and mind-set. It would become one of his major teachings. (Years after, one of my teachers of Shin-shin-toitsu-do, Hirata Yoshihiko Sensei, sometimes started classes by leading us in three successive belly laughs, a procedure inherited from Nakamura Sensei.)
Bernhardt recommended a biography of Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher who had an incurable lung disease from childhood. Kant endured immense pain and relentlessly complained to his parents. But his doctor finally advised, “Your illness, I’m sorry to say, cannot be cured. Your body’s suffering, but your mind is healthy and needn’t suffer. If you don’t think about your body, your mind will do what you want it to do.”
Kant then realized how he’d live his life—he would follow the inclination of his mind to do what he most wanted. And that was to study philosophy.
Saburo was moved by this tale, and its message was subsequently reflected in his Shin-shin-toitsu-do, “The Way of Mind and Body Unification.” Nakamura Sensei mentioned that he often recalled the story of Kant when struggling with long periods of meditation in India, the final stop in his search for health and spiritual realization.
While in Paris, he visited Lyon University through an introduction from Bernhardt. He studied with a French psychologist, who taught a method of autosuggestion using a mirror. (Nakamura Sensei’s version of this important habit-altering tool can be found in Japanese Yoga: The Way of Dynamic Meditation.)
About this time, Saburo left France to meet Hans Adolf Eduard Driesch (1867–1941). Driesch was a German biologist, who turned into a philosopher. He discovered that a segment of an early sea urchin embryo could develop into an undiminished, though smaller than usual, living being. This challenged prevailing mechanistic outlooks and led to Driesch’s theory of “vitalism,” explaining organic systems in terms of an enigmatic self-determining law instead of in purely physical or chemical terms. He was the author of The History and Theory of Vitalism, Theory of Order, Logic as a Task, and Theory of Reality. He taught philosophy at the University of Heidelberg, and later at Cologne and Leipzig. In 1933, Nazi intervention caused him to “retire.”
Saburo asked him about the relationship between body and mind, and how to make his mind stronger. The philosopher replied, “This is an age-old mystery. I’ll think about it, and you’ll think about it. If either of us find the answer, it will be a vast contribution to humanity.” Driesch’s comments were honest but not encouraging. Nakamura Sensei years after told students, “I thought if I opened this door, there’d be a garden of beautiful flowers. I found an immense ravine of despair.”
Saburo lost all hope. In May of 1911, he decided to return to Japan to see his mother and die a disappointed man. At Marseilles, he boarded a cargo ship for China. He pondered, “I wonder if I’ll die on the way home, lying in bed like a sea louse.”
When the vessel neared the Suez Canal, there came a report that an Italian gunboat ran aground at the Canal, and that they’d have to wait in Egypt for several days. They dropped anchor in Alexandria at the mouth of the Nile River.
A boiler man onboard from the Philippines befriended Saburo. “You and I are the only Asians on this boat. Why don’t we become friends and go see the pyramids?” Saburo wasn’t in the mood, but he went with him to Cairo, where they stayed at a hotel. The following morning Saburo vomited a hefty quantity of blood into the washbasin. Feeling dizzy, he couldn’t stand, so he lay lifelessly in bed. His companion saw the pyramids alone.
A Mysterious Stranger
Eventually an African hotel worker noticed him and said, “If you continue to go without eating, you’ll die.” A huge man, he carried an emaciated Saburo in his arms to the hotel restaurant. Nakamura Sensei later wrote that he ordered soup, but in his condition it tasted like sand.
He then noticed a gentleman dressed in purple sitting five or six tables away. His skin was brown, and he looked to be about sixty years old. In truth, he was closer to 100. Two men were standing behind him and waving an immense feather fan.
“Maybe he’s a chieftain somewhere,” Saburo thought.
The stranger looked at Saburo and smiled. Saburo, strangely moved by the man’s gaze, grinned back weakly. The old man commanded, “Come here!”
In an instant, Saburo found himself standing before him. He felt as if he was pulled by a strong magnet. The gentleman watched him intently for several minutes and then spoke in English.
“You have a serious illness, and you’ve given up on life. But my eyes tell me you’re not destined to die yet. Come with me tomorrow.”
“Certainly,” Saburo answered without thinking. He was surprised by his own words.
He told the story to the Filipino boiler man, who replied, “He could be trading slaves, and you could be sold!” He tried to stop Saburo from going with this peculiar person. The situation looked serious, and his friend started crying in apprehension and frustration. But Saburo’s mind was made up.
The next morning he went to the river bank behind the hotel, where he saw a ship with three sails moored. Onboard was his new benefactor, who simply said, “You’re saved.”
Saburo didn’t ask who he was, where he was taking him, or even how he could save him. Nakamura Sensei later said, “My silence seemed to interest and delight the gentleman in purple.”
At the Foot of the Himalayas
After a three-month journey through India, they reached a village in Nepal called Gorkhe, which was at the foot of the third peak of Mt. Kanchengjunga in the Himalayas. At 28,146 feet, Kanchengjunga is the third highest mountain in the world. It belongs to a mountain chain crossing India, Nepal, and Bhutan. Between China and India, Gorkhe resides in the Ramam river valley. It’s just a few miles from the Indian towns of Mirik, Simana Basti, and Shiliguri; dense forests and mountains surround it. Rhododendrons and magnolias grow wild throughout this area.
Gorkhe was an old historical place, where yogis (2) came to practice under the guidance of their guru, or teacher. The mysterious man was this guru, a yoga expert named Kaliapa (a.k.a. Cariapa and Kariappa). He stated that the British Royal Family invited him annually to see the King, and Saburo met Kaliapa by chance in Cairo, when he was returning to India. This encounter was a pivotal moment in history and not merely because it saved Saburo’s life. Nakamura Saburo became Nakamura Tempu Sensei, founder of Shin-shin-toitsu-do. Often affectionately referred to as Tempu Sensei, he, in turn, rescued countless Japanese from illness, while helping numerous others spiritually.
In this yoga village, an elderly man was assigned to care for Saburo, who was given a simple hut. As Saburo was by Indian belief the lowest class (caste) and Kaliapa the highest, Saburo was told not to talk directly to him.
Every morning the guru gave an audience to his students. Saburo and others prostrated themselves on the ground and were forbidden to look up. Days passed in this way, but Kaliapa didn’t teach him anything.
Saburo assumed his guru would call him immediately for instruction, but more than a month passed with no training. Had Kaliapa forgotten his promise at the Cairo hotel? Saburo couldn’t wait any longer, and one day when the guru came his way, he stood up suddenly and blurted, “I have a question!”
Kaliapa smiled broadly. Saburo knew then that he hadn’t forgotten his pledge.
“You told me in Cairo that you’d teach me. When will you do it?”
“I’m prepared to start anytime, but you’re not ready yet.”
“I am ready! I’ve come here for no other reason.”
“You don’t look ready. Let me explain—bring me a pot of cold water.”
Earthen pots of water were lying here and there. Saburo brought one to his guru. Next, Kaliapa ordered him to bring a pot of hot water. “Pour this hot water into the cold pot,” the teacher said, even though the pot was already full.
“The water will overflow, if I do,” said Saburo.
“How do you know that?”
“Why, it’s an easy thing to see,” Saburo stated indignantly.
“The same can be said of you. Your mind is full of other things. You’re thinking, ‘I’ve studied medicine in America, I’m from a developed country, and I’ve read a lot of philosophy books.’ You’re filled with pride. If you’re not empty, whatever I say won’t enter your mind. Right?”
He understood immediately and was taken aback.
“You seem to understand me now. All right. I’ll teach you from tomorrow morning. Come to my room with a mind like a newborn baby’s.”
First Steps on the Path
At last Saburo began yoga training. He studied various methods, with an emphasis on meditation and breathing exercises. But more than this, Kaliapa produced an atmosphere in which Saburo stopped searching for revelations in books, ideologies, or the beliefs of others. Kaliapa, using psychological approaches that Nakamura Sensei remembered as severe, energized him to seek firsthand awareness, which wasn’t reliant on any master or method.
Kaliapa taught him that the universe and human beings are one. We’re thus endowed with the energy of the universe (ki in Japanese, prana in Sanskrit). Consequently Kaliapa felt that we can learn from nature itself.
He informed Saburo that he relied too much on the knowledge of others, and that his illness was a blessing in disguise, because it compelled him to contemplate the nature of his being. Nonetheless, to progress further in life, it was time to forget about dying. Kaliapa noted that as it was impossible to predict when he’d be no more, Saburo should cease agonizing about death and live every day fully.
Kaliapa also noted that the body mirrors the brain and feelings. Figuratively, the mind is the origin of a stream, and the body is like the downstream flow. Kaliapa stressed that if the body falls sick, the mind must stay positive or our bodily state further weakens. He even indicated the condition of specific organs was a sign of associated emotional difficulties.
He taught Saburo that an important step for maintaining a positive condition in the mind, body, and organs was understanding kumbhaka, a psychophysical state he said was akin to a spiritual body, which could endure hardships in the harsh Himalayan Mountains. His teacher only gave hints about how to accomplish this: “Keep your body like a bottle full of water with even pressure around it. This is kumbhaka.”
Yogis entered a shallow stream and sat in the water in meditation to grasp kumbhaka. Gorkhe’s elevation is 4094 feet, and the water was icy, coming from melted Himalayan snow. With the lower body in the torrent, they attempted to adopt a posture utilizing kumbhaka, which let them endure extreme cold, and which is fully detailed in Japanese Yoga: the Way of Dynamic Meditation. Once a day, Saburo practiced this with the other yogis. His guru told him an old man, then nearly 90, had been doing it for years, but he still couldn’t remain composed in the frigid conditions. Saburo, however, after some weeks could tolerate the ice-cold stream.
“Now you’re getting it,” Kaliapa shouted as Saburo sat in the water. But once he left the brook, his guru cried, “No, not yet!”
Saburo wondered what wasn’t yet good enough for his mentor. He continued practicing in the waterway, and a few days later, after he stepped out of the stream, Kaliapa said happily, “Now you have it. You’re the fastest to master kumbhaka.”
Although Saburo was happy about his progress, he wasn’t too excited about what he was eating. He felt meals were meager at the yoga village—sometimes just millet (a grain) or barnyard grass dipped in water and served on fig leaves. One day he complained to his teacher, “I’m suffering from tuberculosis. When I was in Europe, I ate nutritious food like meat and eggs every day. Meals are poor here. Can they sustain my body?”
Kaliapa indicated that a vegetarian diet was more than acceptable for maintaining health. Saburo in time realized how important this statement was.
After some months, he stopped vomiting blood. His chronic fever dropped, and he gained weight. At first he thought, “This clean, fresh air must be good for me.” But years after he decided the vegetarian food improved his health. Throughout his life, he encouraged his students to follow a vegetarian, or at least semi-vegetarian, diet.
Once he understood kumbhaka, his guru began taking him to a waterfall deep in the mountain to meditate. Kaliapa riding a donkey and Saburo on foot went up the mountain daily. There was a flat rock near the basin of the waterfall. On their first visit, Kaliapa pointed at the rock and said, “Sit there and think about why you were born.” Once he was in the lotus position, his guru’s favored seated meditation posture, Kaliapa left.
Saburo sat and thought for hours. In the evening, his teacher abruptly appeared and asked for an answer to the question. His answer was wrong. Kaliapa suddenly struck him!
At that shocking instant, Saburo realized that we’re born with a great mission to work in unison with the universe. He later remembered feeling one with the universe and receiving its wisdom. Nakamura Sensei’s realization ultimately led him to declare that people are “lords of creation,” since only humankind is conscious of being born and the certainty that we’ll pass away. Even more, while plants and animals are one with the universe, just like human beings, only humanity can consciously recognize this and act upon it. Within the human race are reflexive attributes shared with plants, and an emotional nature similar to animals. But divergent from plants and beasts, humanity has an aptitude for logic seldom duplicated by animals. This capacity for rational thought can usher people away from their natural condition. But it also gives us the ability to consciously grasp our intrinsic harmony with the universe, a faculty which Nakamura Sensei called uchu-rei, the “universal mind,” or reiseishin, the “spiritual mind,” of a genuine human being.
He told this, in essence, to Kaliapa. And this time, his teacher replied, “Well done.”
The Voice of Heaven
Despite his realization, Saburo and Kaliapa continued visiting the waterfall for meditation. At first, Saburo was annoyed by the thundering cascade, complaining to his teacher, “That sound’s terrible and deafening; it drives me crazy. Can I sit somewhere more peaceful?”
Kaliapa replied, “I’ve thought deeply about this, and I’ve chosen that flat rock for your meditation.”
“Why?”
“To help you hear the Voice of Heaven.”
“The Voice of Heaven?”
“Yes.”
“The heavens have a voice?”
Saburo respected his guru, but he had doubts about this “Voice of Heaven” idea. Coming from a more urbane, educated society, he thought he was in a less sophisticated country. He asked cynically, “Have you ever heard the Voice of Heaven?”
“Yes, all the time. I’m hearing it even as we speak.”
This made no sense to Saburo. Kaliapa elaborated, “If you’re disturbed by the waterfall, you can’t hear it. Nor can you hear the Voices of the Earth.”
“You mean there are Voices of the Earth, too?”
Kaliapa explained, “Beasts howling, insects chirping, birds singing, the sound of the wind—these are all Voices of the Earth.”
“I already hear them.”
“Can you hear them by the waterfall’s basin?”
Saburo blurted, “No, it’s impossible! Near that overpowering sound, you can’t hear anything.”
“Think negatively and you really can’t hear them. Try to hear the Voices of the Earth today. Actually try first, and then see whether you hear them or not.”
He tried, but the roar thundered over him, and he couldn’t listen to a thing. But a few hours later, as he was closing his eyes and sitting calmly on his rock, he faintly heard chirping, “Twee, twee, twee.” He opened his eyes to see petite colorful birds flying from one stone to another. At first, it seemed like a hallucination, but suddenly he clearly heard a bird singing in unison with the movement of its hooked beak. After that, he noticed whenever he strained to listen to them, he couldn’t hear the birds. But when he did nothing, his mind grew unruffled and empty, and he could eavesdrop on their twittering. It was a key realization, one you’ll also find valuable when you study meditation in upcoming chapters. In short, the more we try to calm the mind, the more we unsettle it.
After days of sitting alone, motionless by the Himalayan cascade, Saburo perceived cicadas chirping, the wind rustling foliage, and even the howls of panthers and wolves deep in the woods. He happily reported this to Kaliapa.
“That’s wonderful. Now also listen for the Voice of Heaven.”
Saburo tried hard to perceive this Voice. However, he couldn’t hear anything. He didn’t have a single clue to go on, so he eventually asked Kaliapa, “What does the Voice sound like?”
“Did you also hear the Voices of the Earth, when you tried to hear the Voice of the Heaven?”
“What?”
Kaliapa clarified, “You can naturally hear the Voice of Heaven if you’re not attached to the Voices of the Earth that enter your ears.”
Saburo was puzzled, but kept struggling to notice the Voice of Heaven. “I’ll really ignore the Voices of the Earth,” he thought. But the more he tried, the more the natural sounds stuck in his mind. Saburo then understood if we strain to not think about something, we are thinking about it. Real meditation involves doing nothing and resting in complete naturalness.
Day after day he listened for the Voice of Heaven to no avail. He was irritated, but his ego wouldn’t let him ask Kaliapa another question. Frustration mounting, he began grinding his teeth.
He sat statue-like for long hours, absolutely motionless in meditation, beside the falls. And each day he experienced immense pain in his legs and back, to say little of his psychological torment. Once, he contemplated throwing himself into the basin of water at the bottom of the cataract. “How many days have passed like this?” he wondered.
One day, sitting with his eyes closed, he felt something lick his knee. He opened his eyes and saw an animal the size of a large dog. Saburo quickly realized this was no oversized puppy. It was a black panther.
Saburo stared at the panther. The panther stared at Saburo.
Looking into its glaring eyes, his mind emptied itself just as when he first heard the Voices of the Earth during meditation. He did nothing, and the big cat leisurely wandered down to a stream. After it departed, Kaliapa appeared and rushed to him, “Did you see the panther?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes I am, sir.”
Saburo was told Himalayan black panthers are the world’s most fierce and dangerous. On the way back home that evening, his guru asked, “Did you feel fear when you met the panther?”
“No, not at all.”
“Then you’ll hear the Voice of Heaven soon. When your eyes and the panther’s met, you did and thought nothing. That natural, unforced, innocent feeling is extremely important. Don’t forget that feeling!”
Three more months passed, but Heaven wasn’t talking. He told Kaliapa, “It’s really hard to hear this Voice.”
“If you think negatively, it is hard. Right now birds and cicadas are singing. But when you listen to me, your mind perceives them, yet it isn’t attached to them or distracted by them. You can only truly hear me when you aren’t mentally stuck on the other sounds in your environment. That’s why you can listen to me, right? That’s it. It’s the same thing. It’s simple.”
Saburo tried again and again to hear the Voice of Heaven, and it nearly drove him insane. Humiliated, his burden was nearing its limit.
“No more! I’m done. I give up.”
He stood up shouting, “What’s the use? I’ve lived my whole life without hearing that Voice. The hell with it!”
He threw himself face up on the grass. Opening his eyes halfway, he gently looked at the sky.
Flecks of clouds floated by, and he was slowly attracted to the changing form of each cloud. Although he still heard the sounds around him, unconsciously he found himself, once again, doing and thinking nothing.
Instantly, he experienced a state beyond thought, beyond personal ego, beyond suffering. He later wrote at that split second, in a moment outside of time, he penetrated deeply into the ultimate nature of life.
Kaliapa ambled up to the waterfall aboard his faithful donkey. However this particular sunset he found a transformed student. Saburo said to him as they left the mountain, “I was watching the clouds, and suddenly my thoughts about myself disappeared . . . just a vast void, brimming with energy. It’s indescribable, but I didn’t hear any Voice.”
“You’ve heard it at last!”
“What do you mean?”
“The Voice of Heaven is the Voice of the Universe. It’s a voiceless voice, a soundless sound—absolute stillness.”
“I see . . . well, I have another question. What will happen, now that I’ve heard the Voice?”
Kaliapa answered, “From this moment, your life will be guided by, and filled with, the immeasurable energy of the universe.”
“Energy of the universe?”
“Soon the signs of its presence will be clearly evident to you.”
Tears welled up in Saburo’s eyes. He thought, “I studied medicine at Columbia, but I couldn’t see this truth. Now the universe, trying to save a fool like me, whispers its secrets through this old man.” He cried in joy.
It was 1912. At 36 years old he experienced satori, or spiritual realization. And his illness was long gone. It never returned.
About the Author: H. E. Davey Sensei is the Director of the Sennin Foundation Center for Japanese Cultural Arts, located in the San Francisco Bay Area (
http://www.senninfoundation.com/). In 2001, he wrote the first and only book in English about Nakamura Tempu Sensei and his system of Japanese yoga and meditation. The book is out of print, but autographed BRAND NEW copies can be purchased exclusively from the Sennin Foundation Center. Supplies are limited, and if you’d like to read more about how Japanese yoga can help you improve your health and realize your full potential, order a copy of Japanese
Yoga: The Way of Dynamic Meditation here:
