The One-Straw Revolution_ An Introduction to Natural Farming - Masanobu Fukuoka [56]
On the ridgetop of the orchard, overlooking Matsuyama Bay and the broad Dogo Plain, are several small, mudwalled huts. There, a handful of people have gathered and are living a simple life together. There are no modern conveniences. Spending peaceful evenings beneath candle and lamplight, they live a life of simple necessities: brown rice, vegetables, a robe and a bowl. They come from somewhere, stay for a while, and then move on.
Among the guests are agricultural researchers, students, scholars, farmers, hippies, poets and wanderers, young and old, men and women of various types and nationalities. Most of those who stay for a long time are young people in need of a period of introspection.
My function is to act as caretaker of this wayside inn, serving tea to the travellers who come and go. And while they are helping out in the fields, I enjoy listening to how things are going in the world.
This sounds fine, but actually it is not such a soft and easy life. I advocate "do-nothing" farming, and so many people come, thinking they will find a utopia where one can live without ever having to get out of bed. These people are in for a big surprise. Hauling water from the spring in the early morning fog, splitting firewood until their hands are red and stinging with blisters, working ankle-deep in mud—there are many who quickly call it quits.
The orchard and huts from the mountain above.
Today, as I watched a group of young people work on a tiny hut, a young woman from Funabashi came walking up.
When I asked why she had come, she said, "I just came, that's all. I don't know anything anymore."
Bright young lady, nonchalant, has her wits about her.
I then asked, "If you know you are unenlightened, there is nothing to say, right? In coming to understand the world through the power of discrimination, people lose sight of its meaning. Isn't that why the world is in such a fix?"
She answered softly, "Yes, if you say so."
"Maybe you don't have a really clear idea of what enlightenment is. What kind of books did you read before coming here?"
She shook her head in rejection of reading.
People study because they think they do not understand, but studying is not going to help one to understand. They study hard only to find out in the end that people cannot know anything, that understanding lies beyond human reach.
Usually people think that the word "non-understanding" applies when you say, for example, that you understand nine things, but there is one thing you do not understand. But intending to understand ten things, you actually do not understand even one. If you know a hundred flowers you do not "know" a single one. People struggle hard to understand, convince themselves that they understand, and die knowing nothing.
The young people took a break from their carpentry, sat down on the grass near a big mandarin orange tree, and looked up at the wispy clouds in the southern sky.
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 themselves apart and the more difficult it becomes to live naturally.
The tragedy