Get Eight Million Ways to Happiness

Eight Million Ways to Happiness: Finding Inner Peace Through Japan’s Living Spiritual Traditions by Hiroko Yoda is a memoir and spiritual guide that reveals how Japan’s ancient traditions — Shinto, Buddhism, and mountain mysticism — offer practical wisdom for healing and reconnection in modern life.

Core Principles

1. There Is No Single Path

The title refers to the Japanese belief in eight million kami—spiritual presences that inhabit everything from mountains to rice paddies. This isn’t polytheism so much as a recognition that the sacred shows up everywhere, in countless forms. There’s no single path to meaning or spiritual health. The practice is finding the ways that work for you.

2. Spirituality Can Be Seamlessly Practical

Japan’s spiritual traditions aren’t abstract philosophies locked in temples. They integrate so naturally with daily secular life that even natives sometimes forget they’re there — a charm on a backpack, a seasonal ritual, a moment of gratitude before eating. These small practices accumulate into something larger without requiring dramatic conversion or belief.

3. You Are Part of a Bigger Natural System

We are all subject to forces beyond our control. But we are also part of a larger natural system that can strengthen us — if we learn to reconnect with it. The Japanese approach isn’t about conquering nature or transcending it, but about recognizing our place within it and drawing support from that relationship.

4. Grief Opens Doors

Yoda began her decade-long spiritual journey in the wake of her mother’s death. Rather than rushing through grief, she let it lead her deeper into Japan’s healing traditions. Loss can be a doorway. The search for comfort and meaning, when followed honestly, often reveals wisdom we wouldn’t have found any other way.

Try It Now

1. Notice one natural thing today — a tree, the sky, rain on a window — and acknowledge it silently. Not worship, just recognition that it exists alongside you.
2. Create one small daily ritual: a moment of stillness before your first sip of coffee, a breath before opening your laptop. Let it become automatic.
3. The next time you feel overwhelmed, step outside. Feel yourself as part of a larger system that has existed long before you and will continue after you. Let that perspective adjust your sense of scale.
4. If you’re grieving something, don’t rush. Ask what the grief might be trying to teach you or where it might be trying to lead you.

Quote

“When you visit a shrine, you don’t have to believe or disbelieve. You don’t have to swear any kind of loyalty, or refuse any affiliations.”