The One-Straw Revolution_ An Introduction to Natural Farming - Masanobu Fukuoka [62]
*A famous Japanese haiku poet (1644ñ1694).
**In Japanese the character for leftovers—pronounced kasu—is composed of radicals meaning "white" and "rice;" the character for bran—nuka—is made up of "rice" and "health."
***At the present time much of the world is faced with a shortage of firewood. Implicit in Mr. Fukuoka's argument is the need to plant trees.
More broadly, Mr. Fukuoka is suggesting modest, direct answers to the needs of daily life.
The Theory of Relativity
Looking out into the bright sunlight of the autumn sky, scanning the surrounding fields, I was amazed. In every field but mine there was a rice harvesting machine or combine running around. In the last three years, this village has changed beyond recognition.
As one might expect, the youths on the mountain do not envy the changeover to mechanization. They enjoy the quiet, peaceful harvest with the old hand sickle.
Sharpening a long-handled scythe.
That night as we were finishing the evening meal, I recalled over tea how, long ago in this village, in the days when the farmers were turning the fields by hand, one man began to use a cow. He was very proud of the ease and speed with which he could finish the laborious job of plowing. Twenty years ago when the first mechanical cultivator made its appearance, the villagers all got together and debated seriously which was better, the cow or the machine. In two or three years it became clear that plowing by machine was faster, and without looking beyond considerations of time and convenience, the farmers abandoned their draft animals. The inducement was simply to finish the job more quickly than the farmer in the next field.
The farmer does not realize that he has merely become a factor in modern agriculture's equation of increasing speed and efficiency. He lets the farm equipment salesman do all the figuring for him.
Originally people would look into a starry night sky and feel awe at the vastness of the universe. Now questions of time and space are left entirely to the consideration of scientists.
It is said that Einstein was given the Nobel Prize in physics in deference to the incomprehensibility of his theory of relativity. If his theory had explained clearly the phenomenon of relativity in the world and thus released humanity from the confines of time and space, bringing about a more pleasant and peaceful world, it would have been commendable. His explanation is bewildering, however, and it caused people to think that the world is complex beyond all possible understanding. A citation for "disturbing the peace of the human spirit" should have been awarded instead.
In nature, the world of relativity does not exist. The idea of relative phenomena is a structure given to experience by the human intellect. Other animals live in a world of undivided reality. To the extent that one lives in the relative world of the intellect, one loses sight of time that is beyond time and of space that is beyond space.
"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."
A Village Without War and Peace
A snake seizes a frog in its mouth and slips away into the grass. A girl screams. A brave lad bares his feelings of loathing and flings a rock at the snake. The others laugh. I turn to the boy who threw the stone: "What do you think that's going to accomplish?"
The hawk hunts the snake. The wolf attacks the hawk. A human kills the wolf, and later succumbs to a tuberculosis virus. Bacteria breed in the remains of the human, and other animals, grasses, and trees thrive on the nutrients made available by the bacteria's activity. Insects attack the