YOKO ONO'S CLEANING PIECES

CLEANING PIECE I

Write down a sad memory.
Put it in a box.
Burn the box and sprinkle the ashes in the field.
You may give some ashes to a friend who shared the sadness.

CLEANING PIECE II

Make a numbered list of sadness in your life.
Pile up stones corresponding to those numbers.
Add a stone, each time there is sadness.
Burn the list, and appreciate the mount of stones for its beauty.
Make a numbered list of happiness in your life.
Pile up stones corresponding to those numbers.
Add a stone, each time there is happiness.
Compare the mount of stones to the one of sadness.

CLEANING PIECE III

Try to say nothing negative about anybody.

a) For three days
b) For forty-five days
c) For three months

See what happens to your life.

CLEANING PIECE IV

Write down everything you fear in life.
Burn it.
Pour herbal oil with a sweet scent on the ashes.

CLEANING PIECE V

Let a list of arbitrary names come into your mind as you go to sleep.
Say “bless you” after each name.
Do this with speed, by keeping a constant rhythm, so, in no way, you would hesitate to bless them.

"It has been said that time heals all wounds. I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue, and the pain lessens, but it is never gone."

- Rose Kennedy

"Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one who inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it."

- Mark Twain

"Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of overcoming it."

- Helen Keller

"Nothing is permanent in this wicked world. Not even our troubles."

- Charles Chaplin

"He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still."

- Philosopher Lao Tzu

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"...within the core of each of us is the child we once were. This child constitutes the foundation of what we have become, who we are, and what we will be."

- Neuroscientist, Dr. R. Joseph

"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves. We must die to one life before we can enter another."

- Anatole France

猿も木から落ちる。

Even monkeys fall from trees.

きをうえるのにいちばんよかったじきはにじゅうねんまえだった。にばんめにいいじきはいまだ。