Dear Zen friend
1) April Sesshin from 04/07 to 04/11
2) Spring Cleaning: April; 29th (Sat.) from 10 am to 3 pm.
Activities: Zafu and Zabuton beating, Stove pipe cleaning, Firewood stacking, Inside and outside house cleaning.
If interested, please email back.
3) After last article released, some sent me useful advice. Thank you.
When you visit Japan in spring and summer, you would see rice growing in paddy fields everywhere. Middle sized birds are flying on the fields and fish swim in ponds. You may not see shell-fish. I was surrounded with such scenes and worked for farming. Walking around in muddy fields was not so uncomfortable. Kids like mud.
Paddy fields are artificial water pools. In spring every year farmers make millions of pools laying earth on the ground and maintain them to the end of summer. Water is led into the each pool from ponds or rivers. Whole process requires physical work and constant care.
Chemical spray and fertilizer were added into water when I was a child. This modern method looked temporarily. Many farmers have developed organic rice growing methods since then. Birds and fish you are seeing add natural fertilizer in the fields. Natural water contains nutritious ingredients. People have been using the rich ingredients, the power of nature in other words for growing rice for thousands of years.
I was learned at school that rice growing method came from East Asian continent about 3000 years ago. Rice is a plant found in tropical areas. It is logical to think its origin is a hot area. It was a change of civilization, so new term Yayoi was given. I was also told that the new method was brought by new people, too.
Recently relics of paddy fields were found in Japan. They were made about 7000 years ago. Archaeologists say climate in Japan at that time was cooling from semitropical to temperate. So people began to make tropical conditions artificially in the paddy fields to keep growing rice. Origin of rice was in tropical land, but origin of rice growing method was in peoples’ hands. Did Yayoi people come? Unlikely. Not necessarily in other words.
Rice is a product of technology as well as a gift of nature.
Regards.
Eishin Ikeda
Valley Zendo
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