The One-Straw Revolution_ An Introduction to Natural Farming - Masanobu Fukuoka [64]
People choose to attack or to defend. In the ensuing struggle they accuse one another of instigating conflict. It is like clapping your hands and then arguing about which is making the sound, the right hand or the left. In all contentions there is neither right nor wrong, neither good nor bad. All conscious distinctions arise at the same time and all are mistaken.
To build a fortress is wrong from the start. Even though he gives the excuse that it is for the city's defense, the castle is the outcome of the ruling lord's personality, and exerts a coercive force on the surrounding area. Saying he is afraid of attack and that fortification is for the town's protection, the bully stocks up weapons and puts the key in the door.
The act of defense is already an attack. Weapons for self-defense always give a pretext to those who instigate wars. The calamity of war comes from the strengthening and magnifying of empty distinctions of self/other, strong/weak, attack/defense.
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.
The farmers of long ago were a peaceful people, but now they are arguing with Australia about meat, quarreling with Russia over fish, and dependent on America for wheat and soybeans.
I feel as if we in Japan are living in the shadow of a big tree, and there is no place more dangerous to be during a thunderstorm than under a big tree. And there could be nothing more foolish than taking shelter under a "nuclear umbrella" which will be the first target in the next war. Now we are tilling the earth beneath that dark umbrella. I feel as though a crisis is approaching from both inside and out.
Get rid of the aspects of inside and outside. Farmers everywhere in the world are at root the same farmers. Let us say that the key to peace lies close to the earth.
The One-Straw Revolution
Among the young people who come to these mountain huts, there are those, poor in body and spirit, who have given up all hope. I am only an old farmer who grieves that he cannot even provide them with a pair of sandals—but there is still one thing I can give them.
One straw.
I picked up some straw from in front of the hut and said, "From just this one straw a revolution could begin."
"With the destruction of mankind at hand, you can still hope to cling to a straw?" one youth asked, with a touch of bitterness in his voice.
This straw appears small and light, and most people do not know how really weighty it is. If people knew the true value of this straw a human revolution could occur which would become powerful enough to move the country and the world.
When I was a child there was a man who lived near Inuyose Pass. All he seemed to do was to pack charcoal on horseback two miles or so along the road from the top of the mountain to the port of Gunchu. And yet he became rich. If you ask how, people will tell you that on his trip homeward from the port he gathered the discarded straw horseshoes and the manure by the side of the road and put them onto his field. His motto was: "Treat one strand of straw as important and never take a useless step." It made him a wealthy man.
"Even if you burned the straw, I don't think it could kindle a spark to start a revolution."
A gentle breeze rustled through the orchard trees, sunlight flickering among the green leaves. I began to talk about using straw in growing rice.
It has been nearly forty years since I realized how important straw could be in growing rice and barley. At that time, passing an old rice field in Kochi Prefecture which had been left unused and uncultivated for many years, I saw healthy young rice sprouting up through a tangle