Kukai's Wisdom of Tears: Esoteric Healing for Adults Who Can No Longer Cry

Wanting to Cry and Being Unable To: The Modern Habit of Holding Back

The older we get, the less we cry. If I show tears at work, will they think I am too emotional? If I cry in front of my family, will I only make them worry? Little by little, we develop the habit of pushing whatever rises back down into the throat. Before long, many people cannot remember the last time they truly cried.

But not crying does not mean the sadness has gone. The feeling we push back loses its outlet and sinks deep into the body, remaining as heavy shoulders, a tightness in the chest, a tiredness with no clear cause. The stronger a person is at holding tears in, the more some part of the heart quietly hardens. That is the real nature of the low-grade unwellness so many people carry through their busy days.

Twelve hundred years ago, Kukai, who founded Shingon esoteric Buddhism, placed purification at the very center of practice. In esoteric Buddhism, purifying does not mean throwing something dirty away. It means letting water wash off whatever is covering the clarity that was there all along, so that its light can appear again. In this article, we look at tears, a purifying power everyone is born with, through Kukai's teaching.

Tears as Water in Kukai's Six-Element Teaching

Kukai taught that everything in this world is composed of six elements: earth, water, fire, wind, space, and consciousness. Earth is solidity and support, water is flow and moisture, fire is heat and change, wind is movement, space is unobstructed openness, and consciousness is the working of awareness. Body and mind alike are understood as these six resonating together.

Seen this way, a tear is proof that the water element within the body has moved. Water stays clear as long as it flows, and grows cloudy when it stagnates. Feelings behave exactly the same. Dam up sadness or frustration that wants to move, and the water of the heart turns murky and heavy. Let it run out as tears, and the heart begins to recover its original transparency.

In esoteric ritual, water has always carried an important role. There is the offering water placed before the Buddha, and the sprinkling of water that cleanses body and space before a rite. Water is called upon to bring purity back from the outside. In that light, tears are the most intimate purification of all: not poured over us from outside, but welling up from within to rinse the heart. Without anyone teaching it, the body has known from the beginning how to cleanse itself.

The Science Behind the Healing Power of Tears

There are reflex tears, the kind that come from cutting an onion, and emotional tears, the kind that come when feeling moves. The two are known to differ in composition, and emotional tears have been reported to carry substances related to stress. When sorrow shakes us, the body is attempting, in the form of tears, to carry outward what has accumulated within.

The other thing worth noticing is the shift in the autonomic nervous system. While tension and anxiety persist, we remain in a sympathetic-dominant state, a kind of combat readiness. Yet a while after crying, the body moves toward a parasympathetic-dominant state, the one that governs rest. That is why the shoulders drop and drowsiness arrives after tears. The plain experience of feeling lighter after a cry has a real bodily reason behind it.

There is, however, an order to it. While you are crying, it usually hurts. The healing arrives not in the middle of the tears but in the quiet that follows once they subside. So if you cut yourself off the moment they begin, telling yourself this is pointless, you miss the most valuable part. Wait until it has run its course. That is the first knack of living well with tears.

The Night I Swallowed What Rose Up, on the Train Home

Let me share something personal. There was a night when work had gone badly and all I could see was my own inadequacy. On the train home, the moment I caught my own face dimly reflected in the dark window, my throat suddenly went hot. There were people around me. I drew a deep breath and swallowed what had risen up.

When I got home and took off my shoes in the entryway, the tension snapped like a thread, my shoulders let go, and at last a few tears came. They were quiet ones, nothing loud. Even so, after I washed my face at the sink, I clearly remember how completely different the expression in the mirror looked from the one in the train window.

What surprised me the next morning was how oddly quiet my head felt. Nothing about the situation had changed, yet the voice that had been berating me so relentlessly the night before had grown much smaller. What I thought then was this: those tears had not solved the problem. They had rinsed out the vessel that was carrying the problem.

Five Esoteric Practices for Befriending Your Tears

Here are five practices for loosening the habit of holding back and recovering what tears are for.

First, decide in advance on a place and a time where you are allowed to cry. Esoteric Buddhism has the idea of a boundary that marks off and protects the space of practice. Holding tears in front of others is a natural courtesy of living among people. That is exactly why you need your own boundary, a space where feeling may come out: in the bath after work, or the ten minutes before sleep. Simply knowing there is somewhere to release it makes holding back astonishingly lighter.

Second, keep breathing precisely when tears are about to come. People unconsciously hold their breath when pushing feeling back down. Stopping the breath does stop the feeling, but it stiffens the body at the same time. When something rises, exhale thin and long, longer than the inhale. Keep the breath open and feeling will not thrash about; it will flow slowly through.

Third, add a gesture involving water. Wash your face after crying, wash your hands carefully, drink a cup of warm water. This small movement, akin to the esoteric rite of sprinkling water, tells your body that a chapter has closed. Rather than trying to switch over with the mind alone, call the quiet back from the side of the body.

Fourth, offer a short phrase to yourself after crying. Kukai honored the power dwelling in words and taught the practice of mantra. You need nothing elaborate. You endured that well. You have come this far. A single line spoken aloud and delivered to yourself becomes the mantra that settles the heart after tears.

Fifth, do not stop other people's tears. When someone starts to cry, we tend to say please do not cry. But that is also an act of damming water that had begun to flow. Say nothing, and sit beside them. The spirit of walking together that runs through esoteric pilgrimage never meant taking over someone else's road; it meant simply being there with them.

Tears Are Not Weakness but Proof That the Heart Still Moves

Becoming unable to cry is not the same as becoming strong. It is a sign that the water of the heart has quietly begun to stagnate. In the light of Kukai's six-element wisdom, the water within us grows clear only by flowing. To keep holding tears back is to keep a lid, gently and endlessly, on the softest part of yourself.

Tears come not because the sadness is deep, but because the heart is still moving. A heart that moves can be wounded, but it can receive just as much joy. Recovering the self that can cry means the very same thing as recovering the self that can feel.

If something rises into your throat today, please do not rush to swallow it. Exhale deeply and let it flow. That single drop is not your weakness spilling out. It is the clarity within you, pushing aside its covering and coming up to show its face.