Masanobu Fukuoka, Farmer/Philosopher

Nature is in constant transition, changing from moment to moment. People cannot grasp nature’s true appearance. The face of nature is unknowable. Trying to capture the unknowable in theories and formalized doctrines is like trying to catch the wind in a butterfly net. If you hit the mark on the wrong target, you have missed. 

Humanity is like a blind man who does not know where he is heading. He gropes around with the cane of scientific knowledge, depending on yin and yang to set his course.  

What I want to say is, don’t eat food with your head, and that is to say get rid of the discriminating mind. I hoped that the food mandala I drew earlier would serve as a guide to show at a glance the relationship of various foods to each other and to human beings. But you can throw that away too after you have seen it once.

The prime consideration is for a person to develop the sensitivity to allow the body to choose food by itself. Thinking only about the foods themselves and leaving the spirit aside, is like making visits to the temple, reading the sutras, and leaving Buddha on the outside. Rather than studying philosophical theory to reach an understanding of food, it is better to arrive at a theory from within one’s daily diet.  

Doctors take care of sick people, healthy people are cared for by nature. Instead of getting sick and then becoming absorbed in a natural diet to get well, one should live in a natural environment so that sickness does not appear. 

The young people who come to stay in the huts on the mountain and live a primitive life, eating natural foods and practicing natural farming, are aware of man’s ultimate purpose, and they have set out to live in accordance with it in the most direct way.  

* From the beautiful book One-Straw Revolution by Japanese farmer and philosopher Masanobu Fukuoka.

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