Farmers have been working for centuries to try to increase the production of compost. The Ministry of Agriculture used to give incentive pay to encourage compost production, and competitive compost exhibitions were held as annual events. Farmers came to believe in compost as though it were the protective deity of the soil. Now again there is a movement to make more compost, "better" compost, with earthworms and "compost-starter."
There is no reason to expect an easy acceptance of my suggestion that prepared compost is unnecessary, that all you have to do is scatter fresh unshredded straw across the field.
After years of experimentation, even technical experts have now confirmed my theory that spreading fresh straw on the field six months before seeding is completely safe. This overturned all previous ideas on the subject. But it is going to be a long while before the farmers become receptive to using straw in this manner.
Grow a soft, fat rice plant in a flooded field and you get a plant easily attacked by insects and disease. If "improved" seed varieties are used one must rely on the help of chemical insecticides and fertilizer.
On the other hand, if you grow a small, sturdy plant in a healthy environment, these chemicals are unnecessary.
Cultivate a flooded rice field with a plow or tractor and the soil becomes deficient in oxygen, the soil structure is broken down, earthworms and other small animals are destroyed, and the earth becomes hard and lifeless. Once this happens, the field must be turned every year.
How do you think this advanced machinery works for the benefit of human beings? In order to grind rice into flour, it is first polished-that is, made into white rice. This means husking the grain, removing the germ and the bran, which are the basis of good health, and keeping the leftovers. And so the result of this technology is the breaking down of the whole grain into incomplete by-products. If the too easily digestible white rice becomes the daily staple, the diet lacks nutrients, and dietary supplements become necessary. The water wheel and the milling factory are doing the work of the stomach and intestines, and their consequence is to make these organs lazy.
The fact is that people who think a drop of water is simple or that a rock is fixed and inert are happy, ignorant fools, and the scientists who know that the drop of water is a great universe and the rock is an active world of elementary particles streaming about like rockets, are clever fools. Looked at simply, this world is real and at hand. Seen as complex, the world becomes frighteningly abstract and distant.
In trying to gain a clear understanding of what it is that fills him with wonder, what it is that astonishes him, he has two possible paths.
The first is to look deeply into himself, at him who asks the question, "What is nature?"
The second is to examine nature apart from man.
The first path leads to the realm of philosophy and religion. Gazing vacantly, it is not unnatural to see the water as flowing from above to below, but there is no inconsistency in seeing the water as standing still and the bridge as flowing by.
If, on the other hand, following the second path, the scene is divided into a variety of natural phenomena, the water, the speed of the current, the waves, the wind and white clouds, all of these separately become objects of investigation, leading to further questions, which spread out endlessly in all directions. This is the path of science.
You would do well to ask the children whether or not a life without purpose is meaningless.
From the time they enter nursery school, people's sorrows begin. The human being was a happy creature, but he created a hard world and now struggles trying to break out of it.
In nature there is life and death, and nature is joyful.
In human society there is life and death, and people live in sorrow.
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?
The same thing that happens to rice and barley goes on continuously within the human body. Day by day hair and nails grow, tens of thousands of cells die, tens of thousands more are born; the blood in the body a month ago is not the same blood today. When you think that your own characteristics will be propagated in the bodies of your children and grandchildren, you could say that you are dying and being...
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. It can then be expected that he will lose interest in discriminating knowledge. When he abandons discriminating knowledge, non-discriminating knowledge of itself arises within him.
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 Typical Sick Person's Diet
Sickness comes when people draw apart from nature.
The severity of the disease is directly proportional to the degree of separation. If a sick person returns to a healthy environment often the disease will disappear. When alienation from nature becomes extreme, the number of sick people increases. Then the desire to return to nature becomes stronger. But in seeking to return to nature, there is no clear understanding of what nature is, and so the attempt proves futile.
Even if one lives a primitive life back in the mountains, he may still fail to grasp the true objective. If you try to do something, your efforts will never achieve the desired result.
People living in the cities face tremendous difficulty in trying to attain a natural diet. Natural food is simply not available, because farmers have stopped growing it. Even if they could buy natural food, people's bodies would need to be fit to digest such hearty fare.
In this sort of situation, if...
It is impossible to prescribe rules and proportions for a natural diet.* This diet defines itself according to the local environment, and the various needs and the bodily constitution of each person.
*A definite code or system by which one can consciously decide these questions is impossible. Nature, or the body itself, serves as a capable guide. But this subtle guidance goes unheard by most people because of the clamor caused by desire and by the activity of the discriminating mind.
In this world there exist four main classifications of
diet:
(1) A lax diet conforming to habitual desires and taste preferences. People following this diet sway back and forth erratically in response to whims and fancies. This diet could be called self-indulgent, empty eating.
(2) The standard nutritional diet of most people, proceeding from biological conclusions. Nutritious foods are eaten for the purpose of maintaining the life of the body. It could be called materialist, scientific eating.
(3) The diet based on spiritual principles and idealistic philosophy. Limiting foods, aiming toward compression, most "natural" diets fall into this category. This could be called the diet of principle.
(4) The natural diet, following the will of heaven.
Discarding all human knowledge, this diet could be called the diet of non-discrimination.
People first draw away from the empty diet which is the source of countless diseases. Next, becoming disenchanted with the scientific diet, which...
If the Western scientific diet were put into practice on a wide scale, what sort of practical problems do you suppose would occur? High quality beef, eggs, milk, vegetables, bread, and other foods would have to be readily available all year around. Large scale production and long-term storage would become necessary. Already in Japan, adoption of this diet has caused farmers to produce summer vegetables such as lettuce, cucumbers, eggplants, and tomatoes in the winter. It will not be long before farmers are asked to harvest persimmons in spring and peaches in the autumn.
It is unreasonable to expect that a wholesome, balanced diet can be achieved simply by supplying a great variety of foods regardless of the season. Compared with plants which ripen naturally, vegetables and fruits grown out-of-season under necessarily unnatural conditions contain few vitamins and minerals. It is not surprising that summer vegetables grown in the autumn or winter have none of the flavor and fragrance...
The traditional brown rice-and-vegetable diet of the East is very different from that of most Western societies.
Western nutritional science believes that unless certain amounts of starch, fat, protein, minerals, and vitamins are eaten each day, a well-balanced diet and good health cannot be preserved. This belief produced the mother who stuffs "nutritious" food into her youngster's mouth.
One might suppose that Western dietetics, with its elaborate theories and calculations, could leave no doubts about proper diet. The fact is, it creates far more problems than it resolves.
One problem is that in Western nutritional science there is no effort to adjust the diet to the natural cycle. The diet that results serves to isolate human beings from nature.
A fear of nature and a general sense of insecurity are often the unfortunate results.
Another problem is that spiritual and emotional values are entirely forgotten, even though foods are directly connected with human spirit and...
There is nothing better than eating delicious food, but for most people eating is just a way to nourish the body, to have energy to work and to live to an old age. Mothers often tell their children to eat their food even if they do not like the taste—because it is "good" for them.
But nutrition cannot be separated from the sense of taste. Nutritious foods, good for the human body, whet the appetite and are delicious on their own account. Proper nourishment is inseparable from good flavor.
The art of cooking begins with sea salt and a crackling fire. When food is prepared by someone sensitive to the fundamentals of cookery, it maintains its natural flavor. If, by being cooked, food takes on some strange and exotic flavor, and if the purpose of this change is merely to delight the palate, this is false cooking.
If you do not try to make food delicious, you will find that nature has made it so.
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.
In this world there are many natural substances that are suitable for human food. These foods are distinguished by the mind and are thought to have good and bad qualities. People then consciously select what they think they must have. This process of selection impedes the recognition of the basis of human nourishment, which is what heaven prescribes for the place and season.
Nature's colors, like hydrangea blossoms, change easily. The body of nature is perpetual transformation. For the same reason that it is called infinite motion, it may also be considered non-moving motion. When reason is applied to selecting foods, one's understanding of nature becomes fixed and nature's transformations, such as the seasonal changes, are ignored.
The purpose of a natural diet is not to create knowledgeable people who can give sound explanations and skillfully select among the various foods, but to create unknowing people who take food without consciously making distinctions. This does not go...
Beneath the bright midsummer sun, eating melons and licking honey in the shade of a big tree is a favorite pastime. The many summer vegetables such as carrot, spinach, radish, and cucumber become ripe and ready for harvesting. The body also needs vegetable or sesame oil to hold off summer sloth.
My thinking on natural food is the same as it is on natural farming. Just as natural farming complies with nature as it is, that is, nature as apprehended by the non-discriminating mind, so natural diet is a way of eating in which foods gathered in the wild or crops grown through natural farming, and fish caught by natural methods, are acquired without intentional action through the non-discriminating mind.
Even though I speak of non-intentional action and non-method, wisdom acquired over time in the course of daily life is, of course, acknowledged. The use of salt and fire in cooking could be criticized as the first step in the separation of man from nature, but it is simply natural wisdom as apprehended by primitive people, and should be sanctioned as wisdom bestowed by heaven.
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.
I deny the empty image of nature as created by the
human intellect, and clearly distinguish it from nature itself
as experienced by non-discriminating understanding. If we
eradicate the false conception of nature, I believe the root
of the world's disorder will disappear.