The Helpful Gardener
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Nothing At All

Mu.

It's an interesting wordthet turns up in a lot in art and religion. As Larry has pointed out elsewhere, it doesn't have a good English translation, but "nothing mind" or "nothing at all" might suffice. I would be interested to hear from Korn-san about the semantics in the title for this section; it is obviously a word he values and appreciates...

My friend Masanori taught me a word we have applied freely to ourselves and each other on occasion (but always in the best of humors). Baka. It has a better translation factor. It means fool. Time after time we find ourselves more then able to label ourselves, but perhaps the reason we do not permanently attach this to ourselves is merely hubris...
It is generally thought that there is nothing more splendid than human intelligence, that human beings are creatures of special value, and that their creations and accomplishments as mirrored in culture and history are wonderous to behold. That is the common belief anyway.
Sure it is, but still possibly just hubris, right? Especially when one begins to acknowledge their inner baka, to know full well you do not know, to grasp the truth of you collossal ignorance in the face of all there is to know in the universe. Look over the panoply of human experience and witness the folly of man as we bled ourselves to achieve health or "proved" the inferiority of race. Our historical record is littered with boundaries overstepped, and tragedies of foolish ideas made real.

Sensei has not one but two satoris in this section, the first in his rejection of the unnatural, and the second in his realilzation that this did not absolve him of foolishness. May we all be so lucky to accept our inner baka...
Despite the change, I remained at root an average, foolish man, and there has been no change in this from then to the present time.
Hai, Sensei. While I think thou doth protest too much, boy do I hear you...

HG

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rainbowgardener
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This is an outwardly simple, but very difficult little chapter. On the first page of it, he says:

Humanity knows nothing at all. There is no intrinsic value in anything, and everything is futile, meaningless effort.

To my western ears that sounds very depressed and depressing. Perhaps he threw over his life in the city, because he got depressed and tired of the rat race?

I am sure this reads differently in a Buddhist context.

Here's how I understand it for me:

Humanity knows nothing at all; we are part of a vast system from electrons to galaxies, where everything is part of everything else. We have no idea of all the complex interactions that weave the web together, and yet we blunder around ripping great pieces of it out, thinking we are in control and can do so with impunity.

there is no intrinsic value in any THING ... things have no worth in themselves, only functions and processes, relationships and interactions. Life is in the journey!

everything is futile, meaningless effort... this is the one I have the most trouble with, because I definitely value effort and have trouble seeing effort as meaningless. But here is where the Buddhist part comes in. There's a joke that goes "Don't just do something the Buddha said, stand there!" Or another Buddhist slogan: "If you sit, just sit. If you walk just walk. Whatever you do don't wobble!" where wobbling would be doing part of one and part of the other and not being fully present in any of it.

So in this context the meaning isn't in the effort, it's in the being. Just be there and be part of everything. It's the difference between thinking you control it all and just participating. There's a lovely little book Zen Gardening: A Down to Earth Philosophy by Veronica Ray. She talks about just walking mindfully through the garden, being part of it, being aware. As she does this, she may note a flower that needs deadheading or soil that is dry. But it is all just part of the being there. (She says it better than I do!)

But he does say that he was living badly - partying, not sleeping, "aimless busy-ness," exhausting himself to the point that he ended up with pneumonia, "could not pull myself out of the depression."

So part of this is about getting depressed with the life he was leading, which was not that different from the lives many Americans lead. So what he was working on creating was not just a better way of gardening, but a better way of living.

muland
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Wow! Two great posts on this deceivingly simple chapter. The Japanese word, "baka" is indeed usually translated as "fool." It is often used to discribe someone as a simpleton, but has a higher meaning that Scott alluded to, that of the wise fool. Something like Shakespeare's fools. He is, I think mocking himself to a large degree. "What, after all, do I know?" he seems to be saying. I am just a simple farmer with a tiny understanding of nature. That's all that is possible given human limitations. But it doesn't mean that people cannot live as within nature and appreciate the wonderous complexity that we can never fully know.

This would be almost humorous if it weren't so dangerous and distructive. We think we know nature and then act on that assumption trying to "improve" on nature. That, according to Fukuoka, is not possible. It will only lead to problems. Then we try to fix the problems and we create more problems with each problem being more serious than the last. "The usual way of creating a method is to say, how about trying this and how about trying that. My way was the opposite. How about not doing this, and not doing that...this was the course I followed.

When he went back to his family farm he set out to create a concrete example of how this way of thinking could be of value to humanity. He had no idea what the farming would look like. He peeled back one unnecessary technique after the other until he reached a very simple, yet sophisticated way of growing crops which were in line with his way of thinking. Each of the discarded techniques, like plowing, using chemicals, seeding in the spring and not the autumn when the seeds would naturally have fallen to the ground, flooding the rice fields and so forth, were all unnecessary agricultural techniques that developed over time as attempts to mitigate the problems caused by the last attempt at mitigation.

For example, farmers plow largely to get rid of weeds. By plowing, however, they put natural succession back to square one (bare soil) which is the condition where quick-sprouting opportunistic species (weeds) have an advantage. It also stirs up weed seeds that were deep in the soil and would never have sprouted without the plowing. So our misguided attempt to cover up one of the problems caused by plowing is actually causing the problem in the first place! :) This leads to work! Ugh. What had been given to us by nature without our having to do anything now needed to be maintained by human labor. So a guiding principle for Fukuoka-san was also trying to pare down the amount of work he needed to do.

One of the ways Fukuoka discribed his way of farming and gardening is "do-nothing agriculture." It's not because he was lazy. He saw that almost everything we do in modern agriculture, including traditional organic farming, is unnecessary. It only seems to be necessary because of the poor actions that preceeded them.

Oh, yes, the thought that humanity knows nothing and that all human effort is useless. At first I thought this was one of those tests where he was saying something so extreme he couldn't possibly be serious. After thinking about it for the past 35 years I believe he was being literal. Many people have trouble with this statement. Many find it depressing, as you did, Rainbow. Others point to all sorts of human activity that seems to have been great accomplishments. What about medical advances, for example? Again, we cannot know what the ultimate side effects of our actions will be. We created antibiotics and have succeeded in creating "super infections." We create great art and music, but can they match the beauty of the outline of a tree against the sky and clouds or the sound of the wind rustling through leaves or the babbling of a mountain stream?

Fukuoka-san is not opposed to work, or to writing poetry. It is unnecessary work that gets him riled. Humanity needs to do work to live and writing poetry is an appropriate way of expressing appreciation for creation. I think what he is saying is that if the effort is done in a boastful way (look at this great thing people have done) or in an attempt to improve upon nature and use nature strictly for human benefit it will be worthless in the end.

One of the reasons, I think, people find Fukuoka's statement about the uselessness of human effort depressing, and some are even angered by it, is that people largely define themselves and find their own self-worth on that basis. They think it is human nature to try to understand nature and make "progress" in every area. The more grand human accomplishments become, and the more grand their personal accomplishments, the more important they feel. Fukuoka-san was not big on the idea that trying to understand the world and constantly expand our horizons is inherently part of human nature. It is the product of a the human intellect which sets itself apart from nature and then has the audacity to think it is more clever and more important than nature including other forms of life. The world was made for human use, right? Better to sit and do-nothing (after the chores are done, of course). Ideally, the farmer or gardner comes to feel like they are doing nothing even as they are working in the fields. That's where "mu" comes in. 8)

The Helpful Gardener
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Wow, make that three great posts...

I brinig it all back to hubris; we continually operate under the assumption of "Good for humans is good, period, end of sentence, end of thought." We have elevated ourselves to the dominant species in a fashion never before seen, and as such we are having impacts never before seen outside of geological or astronomical effects. The Gulf disaster serves as a poignant reminder of how we fool ourselves into thinking our stomping on rooftiles is both necessary and good; don't worry folks; the oil has all dissappeared! Humans win again! Woo hoo! :roll:

Perhaps we need to find out how foolish we really are; I have been following some of F-san's vegetable advice to mixed results. Some things it has been famously successful, some not. Emilia Hazelip had much the same experience; France is not Japan. America is not France. Some things work better than others. I look foolish this year to many people with my crazy, wild garden, but that is fine.

I am embracing my inner fool. :wink:

HG

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applestar
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I think it's easier for hobby gardeners like you and me to experiment :D
For all my complaints about how small my garden is, right now, I go out there every day and bring in a heaping colander full or front of my T-shirt lifted up into and apron full of produce. I get enough to put up some as preserves -- pickles, jams/jellies, fruit syrups, dehydrated, etc. -- and give some to my parents. I could easily give more away, but at that point, it becomes a trade off of "giving away" or another few jars for the pantry. But, harvest is stepping up... and all from crammed full mixed and interplanted beds.

I posted these examples in another thread:
[img]https://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll272/applesbucket/Image7789-1.jpg[/img]
[img]https://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll272/applesbucket/Image7787.jpg[/img]

I say I'm not in it for production, but the garden IS producing and feeding my family.

The rice is starting to send up -- OK I forgot what it's called again -- the "flower stalks," right on schedule. I'm growing them drier this year, and this time, I'm ready with the clover and rye seeds for overseeding in late September/early October. I have most of my planting schedules ready with similar winter covercrop rotation for my other beds (just need to tweak a few more).

Our family's annual Summer Monarch Butterfly Project has started -- collecting eggs and young caterpillars to raise indoors, safe from predators. I haven't counted this morning, but I estimate about 30 babies at least. (I decided that this year, I'll be "less precise" about their numbers until it's time to tag and release them.) This is the price I pay -- gladly -- for encouraging natural caterpillar predatory wasps, flies, as well as spiders, praying mantises, etc. etc. outside in my garden.

Hmm... I'm doing it again. Because here, I was going to say: It's hardly a "do nothing garden." ...I don't know if my meandering thoughts belongs in this particular thread. I have a hard time sitting down and reading this book. My mind keeps wandering off to think about my own garden. It's TOO inspiring....

It's windy today, and the lettuce seeds are starting to blow around. :D

muland
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Thanks for sending the pix of your garden Applestar. It looks wonderful. I love the way you have so many different vegetables and flowers growing next to each other in what appears to be a fun polyculture. I'll bet that having the beds so full of plants helps with the watering as well.

Do you have summer rain there in New Jersey? I seem to remember a lot of thunderstorms.



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