Heart Sutra -

The Protective Filter: News and Detachment in a Second Language
I woke up to the news that the Japanese parliament just elected its first female prime minister, Sanae Takaichi (高市早苗). This is a laudable event, one I couldn’t have foreseen when I was a student of Japanese literature and culture in the early 2000s.

Earlier this year, I stopped consuming current events in my strongest languages, Mandarin and English, choosing to eliminate inputs that did not clearly add value or personal growth. As Nassim Taleb states (I believe in Antifragile, though I can’t recall the exact quote)¹, what one chooses not to do is often as crucial as what one chooses to do when managing one’s well-being.

However, I do watch news clips in German and Japanese. Since my Japanese is much stronger than my German, I tend to focus more heavily on the German news. There is something profoundly cool and contradictory about processing news in a second language.

Things that might easily rile me up in my dominant languages seem to lose their sharp emotional edge when expressed in German. I feel almost like a child learning about complex adult issues, trying to figure out why the world is so upset. Conversely, if I am upset about something, trying to express that negative feeling in German immediately makes the emotion feel distant and easier to manage.

This distancing effect brings to mind lines from the Heart Sutra:

不生不滅。不垢不淨。不增不減

是故空中無色。無受想行識

(Roughly: Not created, not destroyed. Not tainted, not pure. Neither increasing nor decreasing. Therefore, in emptiness, there is no form, no feeling, perception, mental formation, or consciousness.)

See Thich Nhat Hanh’s new translation of the Heart Sutra here

While I’m not sure if the concepts are logically related in a Buddhist sense, acquiring information through a non-dominant language allows me to process it without being so tainted by worldly constructs and intense emotion.

I know the news of a female Japanese prime minister would have stirred strong hopeful emotions in me back when I was a student in Japan. But today, processed through the lens of a second language, it feels strangely neutral—a significant event observed, but one that does not claim my emotional energy.
1. This concept is discussed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, where he argues for the heuristic of avoiding harm (negative inputs, stress, excess information) as the key to well-being, often citing the wisdom of via negativa. See pages 126-127 and pages 360-361. ↩︎
October 21, 2025

Detachment, Heart Sutra, Language Filter, Mindfulness
From Heart Sutra to “How to Sit”: The Tools We Pass Down

I almost always have a digital copy of Thich Nhat Hanh’s How to Sit open on my laptop. It’s part of the Mindfulness Essentials Series—easy to read, with each page presenting a single concept in an accessible manner. I often read a passage at work or during quick breaks to recenter myself.

My child recently saw the title and, missing the metaphor entirely, said, “But you already know how to sit.” I found this adorable. To get a reaction, I looked up another title, How to Smile, and showed it to them with a contorted, fake smile, asking if I should borrow it. The “WTF” look on their face was priceless.

The humor reminded me of my own journey into Buddhist philosophy. At my child’s age, my own father was deeply immersed in Buddhist texts. His way of introducing me to the Dharma was through the Heart Sutra. I had to use a calligraphy brush to copy out the Sutra daily during summer break. This was meant to cultivate mindfulness, but I resented the long, dry process of writing complex traditional Chinese characters.

Eventually, my father took the time to explain the Sutra’s meaning on weekends. The Heart Sutra is a text of immense depth, and while I only glimpsed its full meaning, the core concepts of impermanence and emptiness took root, allowing me to appreciate life’s ephemeral nature—a theme that runs through many of the Japanese literary works I love.

In retrospect, I can’t say I enjoyed my introduction to philosophical Buddhism. Yet, it did fundamentally shape me, giving me the philosophical tools to cope with adversity. I realize I am the most mindful precisely when things are not going right.

My child is being raised in a secular environment, and I won’t force them to copy Buddhist texts. However, I want them to have access to these philosophical tools for the inevitable adversities of life.

Perhaps the simple solution is to have the physical copies of Thich Nhat Hanh’s accessible “How to” books lying around. If not for the philosophical wisdom, perhaps they can at least learn to appreciate the poetic device of the titles.

October 17, 2025

Heart Sutra, Impermanence, Mindfulness, Thich Nhat Hanh

The Protective Filter: News and Detachment in a Second Language

From Heart Sutra to “How to Sit”: The Tools We Pass Down