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Sawing Seeds in the Desert Masanobu Fukuoka

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Mr. Fukuoka gathered us to­gether to dis­cuss his phi­los­o­phy. These ses­sions were dif­fi­cult for me. Al­though I could speak Ja­pa­nese flu­ently, I was more flu­ent in the ev­ery­day lan­guage we used around the farm. The philo­soph­i­cal and spir­i­tual ex­pres­sions he used dur­ing these dis­cus­sions were im­pos­si­ble for me to un­der­stand. What made this even more frus­trat­ing was that Mr. Fukuoka told us over and over that the phi­los­o­phy was ev­ery­thing, and the farm­ing was merely an ex­am­ple of the phi­los­o­phy. “If you do not un­der­stand the phi­los­o­phy,” he said, “the rest be­comes empty ac­tiv­ity. Larry Korn

I simply emptied my mind and tried to absorb what I could from nature.

I spent many years of my youth fool­ishly search­ing for some­thing I “should” have been do­ing. In­stead, I should have en­trusted ev­ery­thing to the flow­ers bloom­ing in the meadow. Even if peo­ple do noth­ing at all, the grasses and trees and the song­birds will live on.

I look for­ward to the day when there is no need for sa­cred scrip­tures or su­tras. The drag­on­fly will be the mes­siah.

No mat­ter how much hu­mans search for free­dom from the fear of not know­ing, in the end, they should just re­turn to the re­al­ity of na­ture and live their lives in peace.

The ul­ti­mate goal of the West­ern philoso­phers, who are ex­plor­ing the world of the in­di­vid­ual self, and the re­li­gious peo­ple of the East, who are seek­ing the tran­scen­dent self, is to elu­ci­date the orig­i­nal mind that mys­te­ri­ously oc­curs as part of ex­is­tence it­self. It is only through na­ture that we can see this orig­i­nal mind.
 Any­way, none of these ideas—life, death, spirit, the soul—es­capes the frame­work of rel­a­tive thought. They are noth­ing more than ab­stract no­tions built up of judg­ments and cir­cu­lar rea­son­ing based on hu­man think­ing. Peo­ple have cre­ated a world of ghosts called the here­after. But no mat­ter how much hu­mans search for free­dom from the fear of not know­ing, in the end, they should just re­turn to the re­al­ity of na­ture and live their lives in peace.

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Tran­scen­dent time, or time as it ex­ists in na­ture, is a con­tin­u­ous mo­ment of the present. When one sees and op­er­ates within that time and space, it is the unity of all things that is per­ceived.

If you un­der­stand the spirit of a sin­gle flower, you un­der­stand ev­ery­thing. You un­der­stand that re­li­gion, phi­los­o­phy, and sci­ence are one, and at the same time they are noth­ing at all.

Thoughts (Memories, Meditations) Marcus Aurelius

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Ri­cor­da­ti che non ci è dato da vi­ve­re se non il pre­sen­te, il re­sto è vita pas­sa­ta o che deve an­co­ra ve­ni­re, e quin­di in­cer­ta e im­pre­ve­di­bi­le.

Ri­cor­da che quand’an­che po­tes­si­mo vi­ve­re tre­mi­la anni e die­ci vol­te tan­to, nes­su­no per­de al­tra vita se non quel­la che sta vi­ven­do, né può vi­ve­re al­tra vita se non quel­la che va per­den­do. Tan­to vale, dun­que, la vita più lun­ga quan­to quel­la più bre­ve, per­ché quel­lo che con­ta è il pre­sen­te 1)↓, e il pre­sen­te è ugua­le per tut­ti, quin­di an­che ciò che pe­ri­sce è ugua­le, e ciò che si per­de non è che un istan­te, del tut­to pri­vo di si­gni­fi­ca­to 2)↓. Nes­su­no, in­fat­ti, può per­de­re il pas­sa­to né il fu­tu­ro, per il sem­pli­ce fat­to che non può es­ser­ci tol­to ciò che non pos­se­dia­mo. Due sono dun­que le cose che devi sem­pre te­ne­re a men­te: la pri­ma è che tut­te le cose fin dall’eter­ni­tà sono sem­pre ugua­li e ci­cli­ca­men­te ri­tor­na­no, né fa al­cu­na dif­fe­ren­za se si ve­do­no per la du­ra­ta di cen­to anni, di due­cen­to o per tut­ta l’eter­ni­tà; la se­con­da è che per­dia­mo tut­ti nel­la stes­sa mi­su­ra, sia chi muo­re vec­chis­si­mo sia chi vive lo spa­zio di un’ora, poi­ché l’uni­ca cosa di cui pos­sia­mo es­se­re pri­va­ti, in quan­to appun­to la pos­se­dia­mo, è il mo­men­to pre­sen­te, quel­lo in cui stia­mo vi­ven­do, vi­sto che non si per­de quel­lo che non si ha.

E la mor­te, cos’è? Se la guar­di in se stes­sa e l’ana­liz­zi ra­gio­ne­vol­men­te, tut­to ciò che vi co­strui­sce so­pra l’im­ma­gi­na­zio­ne si dis­sol­ve in un fiat e la mor­te appa­re nient’al­tro che un fat­to na­tu­ra­le, e chi teme ciò che è ope­ra del­la na­tu­ra ha l’ani­mo e la men­te di un bam­bi­no.

Qual è dun­que la no­stra di­fe­sa? Uni­ca e sola, la fi­lo­so­fia.

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Chi è do­ta­to di una mag­gio­re sen­si­bi­li­tà e ha del­le cose una vi­sio­ne più pro­fon­da, an­che fra i più pic­co­li det­ta­gli con­se­guen­ti ai fe­no­me­ni stes­si tro­ve­rà sem­pre qual­co­sa di at­traen­te 3)↓…
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1. ↑ Eckhart Tolle
2. ↑ Epicurus
3. ↑ Artur Schopenhauer

La farmacia di Epicuro di Diego Fusaro

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È vano il ragionamento di quel filosofo, dal quale non venga curata
nessuna sofferenza umana: infatti, come la medicina non ha nessuna
utilità se non espelle le malattie dal corpo, così non l’ha nemmeno la
filosofia, se non espelle il turbamento dall’anima.
(Usener, fr. 221)

La «rivoluzione copernicana» compiuta da Epicuro sta appunto nel mutare il punto di vista del pensiero greco, ponendo al centro dell’indagine filosofica non già la verità, bensì la libertà e la felicità, rispetto alle quali la filosofia stessa viene intesa come uno strumento. L’oggetto cede il passo al soggetto, il mondo all’uomo, la verità alla felicità. […] Ciò a cui deve mirare la filosofia non è decifrare il mondo in via definitiva, ma, più modestamente, conseguire la felicità per il singolo individuo.

Tetrafarmacon
Secondo la precisa formulazione che del «quadrifarmaco» dà Filodemo di Gadara, «il dio non incute timore, né turbamento la morte, il bene è facilmente ottenibile, il male facilmente sopportabile»

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A Universe from Nothing Lawrence Krauss

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“One of the most poetic facts I know about the universe is that essentially every atom in your body was once inside a star that exploded. Moreover, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than did those in your right. We are all, literally, star children, and our bodies made of stardust. […] Over the course of the history of our galaxy, about 200 million stars have exploded. These myriad stars sacrificed themselves, if you wish, so that one day you could be born.”
Lawrence Krauss “A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing”.

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The Flight of the Eagle Jiddu Krishnamurti

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The beauty of freedom is that you do not leave a mark. The eagle in its flight does not leave a mark…

…to seek for wider, deeper, transcendental experience, is a form of escape from the actual reality of `what is,’ which is ourselves, our own conditioned mind. A mind that is extraordinarily awake, intelligent, free, why should it need, why should it have, any `experience’ at all? Light is light, it does not ask for more light. The desire for more `experience’ is escape from the actual, the `what is’.

Life is a movement, a constant movement in relationship; and thought, trying to capture that movement in terms of the past, as memory, is afraid of life.

Questioner: Sir what do you want us people here on this world to do?
Krishnamurti: Very simple sir: I don’t want anything. That’s first. Second: live, live in this world. This world is so marvellously beautiful. It is our world, our earth to live upon, but we do not live, we are frightened, we are narrow, we are separate, we are anxious, we are frightened human beings, and therefore we do not live, we have no relationship, we are isolated despairing human beings, and therefore we do not know what it means to live in that ecstatic, blissful sense.

If one does completely put aside every form of belief, then there is no fear whatsoever 1)↓.

Sir,it’s one of the most difficult things to be sane in this abnormal, insane world. Sanity implies having no illusion, no image at all about oneself or about another.

There is no time if there is no thought. Thinking about that which happened yesterday, being afraid that it may happen again tomorrow – this is what brings about time as well as fear.

The idea of tomorrow, the future is – is it not? – the cause of not seeing things very clearly as they are now – `I hope to see them more clearly tomorrow’.

Meditation is the way of life, every day – only then, that which is imperishable, which has no time, can come into being.

If you have not actually laid the foundation, you can play with meditation but that has no meaning – it is like those people who go out to the East, go to some master who will tell them how to sit, how to breathe, what to do, this or that, and who come back and write a book, which is all sheer nonsense 2)↓. One has to be a teacher to oneself and a disciple of oneself, there is no authority, there is only understanding.

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1. ↑ Epicurus – przyp. Amin
2. ↑ about Ram Dass? – przyp. Amin

The Only Revolution Jiddu Krishnamurti

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MEDITATION IS NOT an escape from the world; it is not an isolating self-enclosing activity, but rather the comprehension of the world and its ways. The world has little to offer apart from food, clothes and shelter, and pleasure with its great sorrows.
 Meditation is wandering away from this world; one has to be a total outsider. Then the world has a meaning, and the beauty of the heavens and the earth is constant. Then love is not pleasure. From this all action begins that is not the outcome of tension, contradiction, the search for self-fulfilment or the conceit of power.

 The room overlooked a garden, and thirty or forty feet below was the wide, expansive river, sacred to some, but to others a beautiful stretch of water open to the skies and to the glory of the morning. You could always see the other bank with its village and spreading trees, and the newly planted winter wheat. From this room you could see the morning star, and the sun rising gently over the trees; and the river became the golden path for the sun.
 At night the room was very dark and the wide window showed the whole southern sky, and into this room one night came – with a great deal of fluttering – a bird. Turning on the light and getting out of bed one saw it under the bed. It was an owl.the_only_revolution It was about a foot-and-a-half high with extremely wide big eyes and a fearsome beak. We gazed at each other quite close, a few feet apart. It was frightened by the light and the closeness of a human being. We looked at each other without blinking for quite a while, and it never lost its height and its fierce dignity. You could see the cruel claws the light feathers and the wings tightly held against the body. One would have liked to touch it, stroke it, but it would not have allowed that. So presently the light was turned out and for some time there was quietness in the room. Soon there was a fluttering of the wings – you could feel the air against your face – and the owl had gone out of the window. It never came again.
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