Capra at Fukuoka’s hut from "Sawing Seeds in the Desert"

It’s true that I have writ­ten sev­eral books,” I re­sponded, “but you seem to have writ­ten your books be­liev­ing they would be use­ful to other peo­ple. I’ve writ­ten mine with the idea that books are not use­ful at all.

Some years ago, Fritjof Capra, a pro­fes­sor of the­o­ret­i­cal physics at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia who also lec­tures on sci­ence as a holis­tic dis­ci­pline, vis­ited my hill­side hut. He was trou­bled that the cur­rent the­o­ries of sub­atomic par­ti­cles ap­peared to be in­com­plete. There ought to be some fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple, Capra said, and he wanted to ex­press it math­e­mat­i­cally.
 In search­ing for this elu­sive fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple, he had found a hint in the Taoist con­cept of yin and yang. He called it the sci­ence of the Tao, but he added that this alone did not solve the puz­zle.
 He had likened the lively dance of sub­atomic par­ti­cles to the dance of the In­dian god Shiva 1)↓, but it was dif­fi­cult to know what the steps of the dance were, or the melody of the flute. I had learned about the con­cept of sub­atomic par­ti­cles from him, so of course I had no words that could di­rectly dis­pel his frus­tra­tion.
 It is one thing to think that within the con­stant changes of all things and phe­nom­ena there must be some cor­re­spond­ing fixed laws, but hu­mans can­not seem to be sat­is­fied un­til they have ex­pressed these laws math­e­mat­i­cally. I be­lieve there is a limit to our abil­ity to know na­ture with hu­man knowl­edge. When I men­tioned this might be the source of his prob­lem, Capra coun­tered, say­ing, “I’ve writ­ten more than ten books, but haven’t you writ­ten books, too, think­ing knowl­edge was use­ful?”
 “It’s true that I have writ­ten sev­eral books,” I re­sponded, “but you seem to have writ­ten your books be­liev­ing they would be use­ful to other peo­ple. I’ve writ­ten mine with the idea that books are not use­ful at all. It ap­pears that both of us, from the West and the East, are in­ves­ti­gat­ing na­ture and yearn­ing for a re­turn to na­ture, so we are able to sit to­gether and have a meet­ing of the minds. But on the point of af­firm­ing or negat­ing hu­man knowl­edge, we seem to be mov­ing in op­po­site di­rec­tions, so we prob­a­bly will not ar­rive at the same place in the end.”
 In the end, it will re­quire some courage and per­haps a leap of faith for peo­ple to aban­don what they think they know.
Masanobu Fukuoka, „Sawing Seeds in the Desert”

fuku_cave

This draw­ing shows the “cave of the in­tel­lect,” which is de­scribed below.

Sci­en­tists have his­tor­i­cally as­sumed that it is ac­cept­able to con­trol na­ture us­ing hu­man will. Na­ture is seen as the “out­side world” in op­po­si­tion to hu­man­ity, and this idea forms the ba­sis of mod­ern sci­en­tific civ­i­liza­tion. But this fic­ti­tious “I” of Descartes can never fully com­pre­hend the true state of re­al­ity.
 Just as hu­man be­ings do not know them­selves, they can­not know the other. Hu­man be­ings may be the chil­dren of “Mother Na­ture,” but they are no longer able to see the true form of their mother. Look­ing for the whole, they only see the parts. See­ing their mother’s breast, they mis­take it for the mother her­self. If some­one does not know his mother, he is a child who does not know whose child he is. He is like a mon­key, raised in a zoo by hu­mans, who is con­vinced that the zookeeper is his mother.
 Sim­i­larly, the dis­crim­i­nat­ing and an­a­lyt­i­cal knowl­edge of sci­en­tists may be use­ful for tak­ing na­ture apart and look­ing at its parts, but it is of no use for grasp­ing the re­al­ity of pure na­ture. One day sci­en­tists will re­al­ize how lim­it­ing and mis­guided it is to hack na­ture to pieces like that.
 I some­times make a brush-and-ink draw­ing to il­lus­trate this point. I call it “the cave of the in­tel­lect.” It shows two men toil­ing in a pit or a cave swing­ing their pick­axes to loosen the hard earth. The picks rep­re­sent the hu­man in­tel­lect. The more these work­ers swing their tools, the deeper the pit gets and the more dif­fi­cult it is for them to es­cape. Out­side the cave, I draw a per­son who is re­lax­ing in the sun­light. While still work­ing to pro­vide ev­ery­day ne­ces­si­ties through nat­u­ral farm­ing, that per­son is free from the drudgery of try­ing to un­der­stand na­ture, and is sim­ply en­joy­ing life.

fuku_cave2

On the right, peo­ple are en­joy­ing them­selves in na­ture. On the left they toil in the “cave of the in­tel­lect.” The con­trast is in­ten­tional and strik­ing.

The hearth is the uni­verse.
Peo­ple do not cul­ti­vate the soil
they cul­ti­vate knowl­edge of the cave.

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1. A ma­jor Hindu de­ity, Shiva is of­ten de­picted as danc­ing on Apas­mara, the de­mon of ig­no­rance.

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