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Our meddling intellect Misshapes the beauteous forms of things— We murder to dissect.
He who binds to himself a joy Doth the winged life destroy; But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity’s sunrise.
“When it is understood that one loses joy and happiness in the effort to possess them, the essence of natural farming will be realized.”
“The ultimate goal of farming,” Mr. Fukuoka says, “is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.”
“Humanity knows nothing at all. There is no intrinsic value in anything, and every action is a futile, meaningless effort.”
The reason that man’s improved techniques seem to be necessary is that the natural balance has been so badly upset beforehand by those same techniques that the land has become dependent on them. This line of reasoning not only applies to agriculture, but to other aspects of human society as well. Doctors and medicine become necessary when people create a sickly environment. Formal schooling has no intrinsic value, but becomes necessary when humanity creates a condition in which one must become “educated” to get along.
To the extent that trees deviate from their natural form, pruning and insect extermination become necessary; to the extent that human society separates itself from a life close to nature, schooling becomes necessary. In nature, formal schooling has no function.
the world has become so specialized that it has become impossible for people to grasp anything in its entirety.
Why is it impossible to know nature? That which is conceived to be nature is only the idea of nature arising in each person’s mind. The ones who see true nature are infants. They see without thinking, straight and clear. If even the names of plants are known, a mandarin orange tree of the citrus family, a pine of the pine family, nature is not seen in its true form.
The irony is that science has served only to show how small human knowledge is.
The first is NO CULTIVATION, that is, no plowing or turning of the soil. For centuries, farmers have assumed that the plow is essential for growing crops. However, non-cultivation is fundamental to natural farming. The earth cultivates itself naturally by means of the penetration of plant roots and the activity of microorganisms, small animals, and earthworms. The second is NO CHEMICAL FERTILIZER OR PREPARED COMPOST.* People interfere with nature, and, try as they may, they cannot heal the resulting wounds. Their careless farming practices drain the soil of essential nutrients and the result
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To allow a fruit tree to follow its natural form from the beginning is best. The tree will bear fruit every year and there is no need to prune.
I also planted Japanese radish (daikon). The roots of this hearty vegetable penetrate deeply into the soil, adding organic matter and opening channels for air and water circulation. It reseeds itself easily and after one sowing you can almost forget about it.
As a result of this thick weed/clover cover, over the past twenty-five years, the surface layer of the orchard soil, which had been hard red clay, has become loose, dark colored, and rich with earthworms and organic matter.
Foods grown in soil balanced by the action of worms, microorganisms, and decomposing animal manure are the cleanest and most wholesome of all.
By looking at the variety and the size of the weeds in a certain area you can tell what kind of soil is there and whether or not a deficiency exists.
Before researchers become researchers they should become philosophers. They should consider what the human goal is, what it is that humanity should create. Doctors should first determine at the fundamental level what it is that human beings depend on for life.
You hear a lot of talk these days about the benefits of the “Good Rice Movement” and the “Green Revolution.” Because these methods depend on weak, “improved” seed varieties, it becomes necessary for the farmer to apply chemicals and insecticides eight or ten times during the growing season. In a short time the soil is burned clean of microorganisms and organic matter. The life of the soil is destroyed and crops come to be dependent on nutrients added from the outside in the form of chemical fertilizer.
It appears that things go better when the farmer applies “scientific” techniques, but this does not mean that science must come to the rescue because the natural fertility is inherently insufficient. It means that rescue is necessary because the natural fertility has been destroyed.
If crops were to be grown without agricultural chemicals, fertilizer, or machinery, the giant chemical companies would become unnecessary and the government’s Agricultural Co-op Agency would collapse.
To the extent that the consciousness of everyone is not fundamentally transformed, pollution will not cease.
The most commonly used chemical fertilizers, ammonium sulfate, urea, super phosphate and the like, are used in large amounts, only fractions of which are absorbed by the plants in the field. The rest leaches into streams and rivers, eventually flowing into the Inland Sea. These nitrogen compounds become food for algae and plankton which multiply in great numbers, causing the red tide to appear. Of course, industrial discharge of mercury and other contaminating wastes also contribute to the pollution, but for the most part water pollution in Japan comes from agricultural chemicals.
Consumers generally assume that they have nothing to do with causing agricultural pollution. Many of them ask for food that has not been chemically treated. But chemically treated food is marketed mainly in response to the preferences of the consumer. The consumer demands large, shiny, unblemished produce of regular shape. To satisfy these desires, agricultural chemicals which were not used five or six years ago have come rapidly into use.
It is a mistake to try to maintain the mere appearance of freshness, as when shopkeepers sprinkle water on their vegetables over and over again. Although the vegetables are kept looking fresh, their flavor and nutritional value soon deteriorate.
To say it in a word, until there is a reversal of the sense of values which cares more for size and appearance than for quality, there will be no solving the problem of food pollution.
After putting in a full day’s work in the orchard harvesting the mandarin oranges, loading them into boxes, and carrying them to the sorting shed, the farmer must work until eleven or twelve o’clock at night, picking over his fruit, one by one, keeping only those of perfect size and shape.*
If natural food is to become widely popular, it must be available locally at a reasonable price. If the consumer will only adjust to the idea that low prices do not mean that the food is not natural, then everyone will begin thinking in the right direction.
If we do have a food crisis it will not be caused by the insufficiency of nature’s productive power, but by the extravagance of human desire.
If the Ministry’s staff were to go to the mountains and meadows, gather the seven herbs of spring, and the seven herbs of autumn,* and taste them, they would learn what the source of human nourishment is. If they would investigate further they would see that you can live quite well on traditional domestic crops such as rice, barley, rye, buckwheat, and vegetables, and they could decide simply that this is all Japanese agriculture needs to grow. If that is all the farmers have to grow, farming becomes very easy.
“Whether autumn will bring wind or rain, I cannot know, but today I will be working in the fields.” Those are the words of an old country song. They express the truth of farming as a way of life. No matter how the harvest will turn out, whether or not there will be enough food to eat, in simply sowing seed and caring tenderly for plants under nature’s guidance there is joy.
I do not particularly like the word “work.” Human beings are the only animals who have to work, and I think this is the most ridiculous thing in the world. Other animals make their livings by living, but people work like crazy, thinking that they have to in order to stay alive.
Modern industrial farming desires heaven’s wisdom, without grasping its meaning, and at the same time wants to make use of nature. Restlessly searching, it is unable to find anyone to propose to.
When it is understood that one loses joy and happiness in the attempt to possess them, the essence of natural farming will be realized. The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.***
Nature as grasped by scientific knowledge is a nature which has been destroyed; it is a ghost possessing a skeleton, but no soul. Nature as grasped by philosophical knowledge is a theory created out of human speculation, a ghost with a soul, but no structure.
If you expect a bright world on the other side of the tunnel, the darkness of the tunnel lasts all the longer. When you no longer want to eat something tasty, you can taste the real flavor of whatever you are eating. It is easy to lay out the simple foods of a natural diet on the dining table, but those who can truly enjoy such a feast are few.
Just playing or doing nothing at all, children are happy. A discriminating adult, on the other hand, decides what will make him happy, and when these conditions are met he feels satisfied. Foods taste good to him not necessarily because they have nature’s subtle flavors and are nourishing to the body, but because his taste has been conditioned to the idea that they taste good.
Something born from human pride and the quest for pleasure cannot be considered true culture. True culture is born within nature, and is simple, humble, and pure. Lacking true culture, humanity will perish.
Food is life, and life must not step away from nature.
Nature is in constant transition, changing from moment to moment. People cannot grasp nature’s true appearance. The face of nature is unknowable. Trying to capture the unknowable in theories and formalized doctrines is like trying to catch the wind in a butterfly net. If you hit the mark on the wrong target, you have missed. Humanity is like a blind man who does not know where he is heading. He gropes around with the cane of scientific knowledge, depending on yin and yang to set his course.
“Right Food, Right Action, Right Awareness”*
People think that when they turn their eyes from the earth to the sky they see the heavens. They set the orange fruit apart from the green leaves and say they know the green of the leaves and the orange of the fruit. But from the instant one makes a distinction between green and orange, the true colors vanish.
People think they understand things because they become familiar with them. This is only superficial knowledge. It is the knowledge of the astronomer who knows the names of the stars, the botanist who knows the classification of the leaves and flowers, the artist who knows the aesthetics of green and red. This is not to know nature itself—the earth and sky, green and red. Astronomer, botanist, and artist have done no more than grasp impressions and interpret them, each within the vault of his own mind. The more involved they become with the activity of the intellect, the more they set
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All someone has to do to know nature is to realize that he does not really know anything, that he is unable to know anything.
Human beings usually see life and death in a rather short perspective. What meaning can the birth of spring and the death of autumn have for this grass? People think that life is joy and death is sadness, but the rice seed, lying within the earth and sending out shoots in spring, its leaves and stems withering in the fall, still holds within its tiny core the full joy of life. The joy of life does not depart in death. Death is no more than a momentary passing. Wouldn’t you say that this rice, because it possesses the full joyousness of life, does not know the sorrow of death?
But most people are not able to enjoy life as it passes and changes from day to day. They cling to life as they have already experienced it, and this habitual attachment brings fear of death. Paying attention only to the past, which has already gone, or to the future, which has yet to come, they forget that they are living on the earth here and now. Struggling in confusion, they watch their lives pass as in a dream.
The forms of the material world, concepts of life and death, health and disease, joy and sorrow, all originate in the human mind. In the sutra, when Buddha said that all is void, he was not only denying intrinsic reality to anything which is constructed by human intellect, but he was also declaring that human emotions are illusions.
In nature there is life and death, and nature is joyful. In human society there is life and death, and people live in sorrow.
“You might be wondering why I have this habit of picking on the scientists all the time,” I said, pausing to take a sip of tea. The youths looked up smiling, faces glowing and flickering in the firelight. “It’s because the role of the scientist in society is analogous to the role of discrimination in your own minds.”
There is no other road to peace than for all people to depart from the castle gate of relative perception, go down into the meadow, and return to the heart of non-active nature. That is, sharpening the sickle instead of the sword.
When I go to the fields or the orchard I say to myself: make no promises, forget about yesterday, do not think about tomorrow, put sincere effort into each day’s work and leave no footprints here on earth.
