• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

In my opinion, if 100% of the people were farming it would be ideal. There is just a quarter-acre of arable land for each person in Japan. If each single person were given one quarter-acre, that is 1_ acres to a family of five, that would be more than enough land to support the family for the whole year. If natural farming were practiced, a farmer would also have plenty of time for leisure and social activities within the village community. I think this is the most direct path toward making this country a happy, pleasant land.

* Chinese bell flower, arrowroot (kudzu), thoroughwort (a boneset), valerianacea, bush clover, wild fringed pink, and Japanese pampas grass.

Simply Serve Nature and All Is Well

Extravagance of desire is the fundamental cause which has led the world into its present predicament.

Fast rather than slow, more rather than less—this flashy "development" is linked directly to society's impending collapse. It has only served to separate man from nature. Humanity must stop indulging the desire for material possessions and personal gain and move instead toward spiritual awareness.

Agriculture must change from large mechanical operations to small farms attached only to life itself. Material life and diet should be given a simple place. If this is done, work becomes pleasant, and spiritual breathing space becomes plentiful.

The more the farmer increases the scale of his operation, the more his body and spirit are dissipated and the further he falls away from a spiritually satisfying life. A life of small-scale farming may appear to be primitive, but in living such a life, it becomes possible to contemplate the Great Way.* I believe that if one fathoms deeply one's own neighborhood and the everyday world in which he lives, the greatest of worlds will be revealed.

At the end of the year the one-acre farmer of long ago spent January, February, and March hunting rabbits in the hills. Though he was called a poor peasant, he still had this kind of freedom. The New Year's holiday lasted about three months. Gradually this vacation came to be shortened to two months, one month, and now New Year's has come to be a three-day holiday.

The dwindling of the New Year's holiday indicates how busy the farmer has become and how he has lost his easy-going physical and spiritual well-being. There is no time in modern agriculture for a farmer to write a poem or compose a song.

The other day I was surprised to notice, while I was cleaning the little village shrine, that there were some plaques hanging on the wall. Brushing off the dust and looking at the dim and faded letters, I could make out dozens of haiku poems. Even in a little village such as this, twenty or thirty people had composed haiku and presented them as offerings. That is how much open space people had in their lives in the old days. Some of the verses must have been several centuries old. Since it was that long ago they were probably poor farmers, but they still had leisure to write haiku.

Now there is no one in this village with enough time to write poetry. During the cold winter months, only a few villagers can find the time to sneak out for a day or two to go after rabbits. For leisure, now, the television is the center of attention, and there is no time at all for the simple pastimes which brought richness to the farmer's daily life. This is what I mean when I say that agriculture has become poor and weak spiritually; it is concerning itself only with material development.

Lao Tzu, the Taoist sage, says that a whole and decent life can be lived in a small village. Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen, spent nine years living in a cave without bustling about. To be worried about making money, expanding, developing, growing cash crops and shipping them out is not the way of the farmer. To be here, caring for a small field, in full possession of the freedom and plentitude of each day, every day—this must have been the original way of agriculture.

To break experience in half and call one side physical