Every morning Den Fujita would wake up and wander outside. He would sit down on a park bench overlooking a brook that flowed through his property. In his right hand he would hold a long string of smooth beads, which he rubbed one at a time while he visualized each item on the McDonald’s menu.
During this meditation one morning, he began to concentrate on the word death, fingering each bead as he focused on the word. He remembered that 800,000 people died in Japan every year, but that 1.5 million were also born.
The 800,000 going to the cemetery are scrap iron, he thought to himself with a smile, They won’t eat burgers. But the 1.5 million will.
An excerpt from Fortune Magazine, 1986
