STRONG WOMEN BEAUTIFUL MEN w/SHOUKEI MATSUMOTO

Strong Women Beautiful Men
'A Conversation with Shoukei Matsumoto'
Featured in 'Strong Women Beautiful Men'
Hosted by Celestine Raven

Celestine Raven and her team continue their journey across the world to meet inspiring and colorful people whose voices resonate far beyond borders. In Tokyo, they sat down with Shoukei Matsumoto — a Buddhist priest, writer, entrepreneur, and philosopher who has dedicated his life to translating timeless wisdom into everyday practice.

​Known internationally for his book ‘A Monk’s Guide to a Clean House and a Quiet Mind’, Matsumoto shows how ordinary tasks like cleaning can become acts of mindfulness. But his vision reaches far beyond household routines. In this intimate conversation, he reflects on imperfection, grounding, giving, and the unease many feel in the temporary times we face in 2025.

With clarity and gentleness, Matsumoto invites us to reimagine the way we live, offering perspectives that bridge ancient Buddhist teachings with the challenges of our modern world.

​CELESTINE: Thank you for seeing me here. This is a special temple, isn’t it?

SHOUKEI: Yes.

CELESTINE: Could you explain why?

SHOUKEI: Welcome to Kōmyō-ji Temple. This is my home temple. More than 20 years ago, I became a Buddhist priest here.

CELESTINE: So this is where it started—where you decided to become a priest. Before that, you weren’t one?

SHOUKEI: Before that, I was a college student.

CELESTINE: What did you study?

SHOUKEI: Western philosophy.

CELESTINE: Western philosophy—interesting. And then you became a Buddhist monk?

SHOUKEI: Yes, Eastern philosophy. When I studied Western philosophy, I found it very interesting, but I also found that most Western philosophers did not necessarily live happy lives. So I thought, as my life path, Buddhism—Eastern philosophy—might be better.

CELESTINE: So why did you become a Buddhist?

SHOUKEI: The message I want to deliver to people is a philosophy for a happier life. Buddhism must be that. I wanted to become a messenger of Buddhist philosophy, which is why I became a Buddhist priest.

CELESTINE: That’s also how I came to know you. You are an author bringing Buddhism to the world through your books. I have one in Dutch about cleaning—cleaning your house, your life, your environment. It brings practical Buddhism to people like me.

SHOUKEI: Yes. The learning from this experience is not about perfection but about appreciating imperfection. There is no end to the practice of cleaning—no 100% clean state. Once you clean your garden, the leaves fall again. It’s a never-ending process.

Today, many people who come to the temple are annoyed by obsessive perfectionism. They say, “I need to get things done 100%. I need to be perfect.” But perfection is just a concept we humans create in our minds—an illusion.

CELESTINE: That ties to your other book, A Quiet Mind. It helps people understand their concepts and perspectives.

SHOUKEI: We are easily captured by concepts and fly into the sky of abstraction. Meditation practices, like cleaning, help ground us.

CELESTINE: How would you define grounding?

SHOUKEI: It’s a way to keep your sanity—to stay aware of what you feel with your body.

CELESTINE: Your feet on the ground.

SHOUKEI: Exactly. You don’t exist only in your thinking mind. Less thinking, more feeling—with your senses, with your body. You are not a concept. As a philosopher who loves concepts, I know I can easily be captured by conceptual illusions. So the things I write are reminders to myself—things I need to remember.

​CELESTINE: In Japan, it’s allowed for a Buddhist priest to have a family.

SHOUKEI: Yes.

CELESTINE: So you have a family. Who does the cleaning?

SHOUKEI: It’s a collaborative practice—my wife, my children, and I. Cooking, I depend on my wife, but cleaning we share. For me, it’s contemplative—a meditative practice, not just a household task. It’s meditation, something I want to do myself. You can’t outsource your own meditation.

CELESTINE: You also have your own company, Interbeing.

SHOUKEI: Yes. Many people in companies suffer from stress. So I bring ancient Buddhist wisdom into the corporate world, translating it for business people today.

CELESTINE: Is much of this stress rooted in perfectionism?

SHOUKEI: Yes. People face high pressure and stress. It helps to understand the mechanisms of the mind and how to ground themselves.

CELESTINE: And you bring this into dialogues with world leaders as well.

SHOUKEI: Yes. I attend the World Economic Forum in Davos each year. It’s a place where influential leaders gather to discuss global issues—war, climate crisis, AI. Many are afraid of losing what they have: power, money, status. Those are full of fear.

In Buddhism, there are three types of giving. The first is giving Dharma—teaching and sharing the Buddhist way of life. The second is property giving—reducing attachment to material things. The third is fearlessness giving—reducing fear in each other.

The third one is the most important today, in a world full of fear.

CELESTINE: Is that the fear of letting go—of not being in control?

SHOUKEI: Yes. Many think grounding means being stable or static, but I see grounding as flow—like being on a river. Grounding is surfing on that flow.

CELESTINE: Flowing with the river, letting go.

SHOUKEI: Naturally.

CELESTINE: So there’s no perfection, no imperfection.

SHOUKEI: Everything is moving.

CELESTINE: If we bring this to world leaders today—especially in the U.S.—it seems they’ve lost the idea of taking care of people.

SHOUKEI: From a Buddhist perspective, we don’t judge outcomes. The outcome is the reality from which we start. We can’t go back or forward—we begin here, now. Every moment is a beginning. The question is: how can we make this direction better? I often ask, How can we become good ancestors for future generations?

CELESTINE: So there are no good humans or bad humans?

​SHOUKEI: Exactly. A human being is not perfect. We can be good or bad depending on conditions. The founder of my denomination, Shinran, wanted to become Buddha—one who transcends humanness. But he realized he could never stop being human.

CELESTINE: Becoming Buddha means letting things be—no forcing, no concepts.

SHOUKEI: Yes. There’s no goal—it’s a way of life. For example, when Trump said, “Let’s prioritize our habitat first,” that message appealed to many who felt left behind. I don’t judge it as good or bad—it just happened.

CELESTINE: Because he used people’s fear.

SHOUKEI: All leaders do. The world is full of fear. How can we reduce it? By understanding that everything is changing. The idea that we can control anything is an illusion.

CELESTINE: In the Netherlands, many people have lost faith in politics. They feel they have no influence.

SHOUKEI: Yes—indifference is growing. That’s why inspiration is important.

CELESTINE: Like Roman Krznaric, who wrote The Good Ancestor and Empathy.

SHOUKEI: Yes, his work inspires me. We try to control everything, but we can’t. The idea of control is elusive. Yet that doesn’t mean we’re powerless. I translated The Good Ancestor because I love that question: How can we become good ancestors for future generations? It’s not about bloodlines—everyone before us influences us. Every small act changes the world. Even this interview wouldn’t exist without countless actions before it.

We are tiny particles of existence, yet connected with everything. In this sense, I am the universe.

CELESTINE: Beautiful. What is your goal in life?

SHOUKEI: I have no goal. Life is a process—like cleaning, a never-ending process.

CELESTINE: Then what drives you to write books and translate works like The Good Ancestor?

SHOUKEI: Writing is also like cleaning—an endless process. I am a decomposer of human concepts. I love philosophy, but my mind gets cluttered with ideas. So I keep cleaning—decomposing my own concepts.

CELESTINE: That’s beautiful.

SHOUKEI: Yes. Let’s clean together. ∎

Find & follow Shoukei on Instagram:
​@shoukeimatsumoto