The Pure Land Foundation joins forces with Kodo Nishimura, Buddhist monk, makeup artist, and LGBTQ+ advocate to spotlight powerful reflections on self-acceptance, challenging societal expectations, and celebrating authentic beauty.
Key Message
True beauty comes from kindness and how we make others feel – not from physical appearance. Kodo Nishimura shares that while he once struggled with self-image and comparison, his experience with a kind model who treated him with respect and gratitude helped him realise that making others feel seen and valued is what defines lasting beauty. Since then, he’s chosen to focus on inner beauty and encourages others to do the same: to be kind, to see beauty in others’ hearts, and to take pride in their own.
Transcript
Kodo Nishimura: My name is Kodo Nishumura. I am an artist and Buddhist monk. Today I would like to help you to feel beautiful of yourself. Do you ever feel that you’re not beautiful enough or attractive enough? I think this is a question that many of my friends are struggling with, including myself.
I used to compare myself with people on the Internet, on social media, models who look really handsome and muscular and felt really hopeless.
I tried to go to the gym almost every day, I tried to put nice clothes on me. I even went to see a cosmetic surgeon to see if I can look beautiful.
I didn’t do anything, but I felt that I could never be beautiful enough. This mentality was changed and I would like to share that story.
10 years ago, I was working in New York as a makeup artist and two beautiful, beautiful models came to the studio. One of them had a big attitude, like she knew she was beautiful and she didn’t treat other people really nice. She was kind of bossy and well, I feel like, oh, I could never be beautiful like you.
The other model was really, really kind. She remembered my name. And every time I helped her, she was like, oh, thank you, Kodo. At that time I was so nervous being a makeup artist in a big city. And I was like, oh, am I doing good enough? Am I good enough?
And when she remembered my name and she was gratifying my work, I felt like, oh, here is my place and I have the right to be here and I felt beautiful for myself.
Whatever happens to her, I always will see her as somebody beautiful because she made me feel beautiful.
So since that moment, I decided to make others feel beautiful. And this is something that we can all do, regardless of our age, how we look, wherever we are.
I decided to look for a good person with a good heart who makes me feel beautiful and I will do the same to make others feel beautiful. I started to look at the person’s heart and that will always stay.
Maybe physical beauty has some changes in the time, but kindness is timeless. And since I started to focus on that, I started to be proud of my beauty.
So whenever you start to compare yourself, maybe scrolling and then you feel like, oh this person is more beautiful or I’m not good enough, don’t be disguised.
Always make sure that what makes other people feel that you’re beautiful is your heart and how they make you feel.
Bruno Wang: If this message speaks to you, we would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. And if you know someone who could benefit from this, please share it with them.