Tao Te Ching

The Power of Goodness, the Wisdom Beyond Words
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Masanobu Fukuoka 福岡 正信

1913 – 2008 CE

Farmer and philosopher, giant in the development of organic farming, sustainable development, guerrilla gardening and permaculture; Fukuoka founded “No-Till Natural Farming.” Trained as a microbiologist and agricultural scientist, he challenged Western agricultural practices both on his farms, in worldwide lectures, and in his books applying Taoist approaches like non-intervention and “Do-Nothing farming.” He worked with the UN to combat desertification, helped the Green Gulch Zen Center and Lundberg Family Farms, did projects in Africa, India, the Far East, Europe and South America. A deep observer of nature, he went beyond farming techniques to inspiring the natural food and natural lifestyle movements.

Eras

Sources

One Straw Revolution

Road Back to Nature

Unlisted Sources

Kami no Kakumei

Quotes by Masanobu Fukuoka (80 quotes)

“The simple hearth of the small farm is the true center of our universe.”

from One Straw Revolution

Chapters: 59. The Gardening of Spirit

Themes: Simplicity

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“Ignorance, hatred and greed are killing nature.”

from One Straw Revolution

Chapters: 68. Joining Heaven & Earth

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“The person who can most easily take up natural agriculture… has the mind and heart of a child. One must simply know nature . . . real nature, not the one we think we know!”

from One Straw Revolution

Chapters: 55. Forever Young

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“The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.”

from One Straw Revolution

Chapters: 52. Cultivating the Changeless

Themes: Integrity

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“If we throw mother nature out the window, she comes back in the door with a pitchfork.”

from One Straw Revolution

Chapters: 50. Claws and Swords

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“There is no one so great as the one who does not try to accomplish anything more”

from One Straw Revolution

Chapters: 9. Know When to Stop

Themes: Victory Success

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“There is no one so great as the one who does not try to accomplish anything.”

from One Straw Revolution

Chapters: 2. The Wordless Teachings

Themes: Wu Wei

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“My ultimate dream is to sow seeds in the desert. To revegetate the deserts is to sow seed in people's hearts.”

from One Straw Revolution

Chapters: 54. Planting Well

Themes: Dream

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“A problem cannot be solved by people who are concerned with only one or another of its parts.”

from One Straw Revolution

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“A scientific testing method that takes all relevant factors into account is an impossibility... each researcher seeing just one part of the infinite array of natural factors... Before researchers become researchers, they should become philosophers.”

from One Straw Revolution

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“Ultimately, it is not the growing technique which is the most important factor, but rather the state of mind of the farmer.”

from One Straw Revolution

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“Some weeding, composting or pruning may be necessary at first, but these measures should be gradually reduced each year.”

from One Straw Revolution

Themes: Gardening

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“young people—when they think they are beginning to understand nature—they can be sure that they are on the wrong track.”

from One Straw Revolution

Chapters: 56. One with the Dust

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“there is no need to plow, no need to apply fertilizer, no need to make compost, no need to use insecticide... there are few agricultural practices that are really necessary.”

from One Straw Revolution

Chapters: 60. Less is More

Themes: Agriculture

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“I felt that I understood nothing... In an instant all my doubts and the gloomy mist of my confusion vanished. Everything I had held in firm conviction, everything upon which I had ordinarily relied was swept away with the wind.”

from One Straw Revolution

Themes: Doubt Non-Thought

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“To be here, caring for a small field, in full possession of the freedom and plentitude of each day, every day—this must have been the original way of agriculture.”

from One Straw Revolution

Themes: Agriculture

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“When it is understood that one loses joy and happiness in the effort to possess them, the essence of natural farming will be realized.”

from One Straw Revolution

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“Nature as grasped by scientific knowledge is a nature which has been destroyed, it is a ghost possessing a skeleton, but no soul.”

from One Straw Revolution

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“as medicine becomes more advanced and the number of hospitals increases, the human body becomes frailer. The advance of the hospital is merely a barometer of the collapse of the human body... but for some reason everyone is celebrating progress in medicine”

from Road Back to Nature

Themes: Medicine

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“The next age must reverse and become an era of spiritual culture that returns inward... an age of consolidation in which, taking the road of non-action and non-knowing, we elucidate the true nature of man.”

from Road Back to Nature

Themes: Wu Wei

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“At long last it has become clear that the growth of materialistic civilization does not bring happiness to man. We see now that it both destroys nature and blights the heart of man... Today we are seeing a period of disintegration and destruction.”

from Road Back to Nature

Themes: Materialism

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“The liberties taken with the life sciences are leading to the robotization and debasement of mankind, and pushing humanity closer to its day of reckoning... What is regarded as 'high technology' is really only peripheral. Life scientists in particular must awaken from this foolishness that has them toying with natural life and causes them to gallop after euphoric illusions that are nothing but mere shadows of life.”

from Road Back to Nature

Themes: Technology

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“We must convert religion to religion that transcends religion, return philosophy to its original purity, and replace science with a science that rejects modern science.”

from Road Back to Nature

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“Let us begin by removing national boundaries with the trees and grasses. The liberation of peoples everywhere shall begin from this point... grasses and trees have no national boundaries. Let us scatter the seeds of various drought-hardy grasses, trees, and food crops by airplane all at once over those areas on earth that have turned to desert.”

from Road Back to Nature

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“the first principle of my system of thought is that we do not understand; it is not possible to know and understand”

from Road Back to Nature

Themes: Emptiness

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“I asked whether the fields really need to be plowed and turned, whether the rice farmer really has to transplant his seedlings, whether it is necessary in fact to spread fertilizer on the fields... I learned that it isn't necessary to do anything... constant activity kills the microbes and drives the air from the earth... Man kills and destroys the soil.”

from Road Back to Nature

Themes: Less is More

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“the goal of a college should be to create people who are not lost, to create sages—people without doubts or illusions... But colleges today are different... the more one studies, the less one comes to know the world at large... They don't understand what it means to understand”

from Road Back to Nature

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“I have had a good teacher... my teacher is nature itself. Nature is always perfect in every case. Other people have broken nature down and looked at it only as small fragments, so what they learn is incomplete.”

from Road Back to Nature

Themes: Teachers

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“Natural farming is a method that actually goes a step beyond science... Science never does any more than mimic a virtual image of nature that exists only in the human mind, what it grasps is only an incomplete and inferior imitation of the real thing”

from Road Back to Nature

Themes: Science

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“The moment that we become humble before nature and renounce the self, the self shall become assimilated into nature and nature shall allow it to live... It is enough merely to know this road and walk it every day.”

from Road Back to Nature

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“The agriculture here arose to produce meat and wine... an agriculture for the royalty and clergy. That is why the earth is poor and barren today. When agriculture takes a wrong turn, culture also goes away.”

Themes: Culture

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“This mistake began with Descartes. Such destruction is the penalty for the crime of thinking that nature exists because man exists and of sacrificing nature for man.”

from Road Back to Nature

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“The key to changing everything lies in philosophy... If one thing changes, everything changes. Unless all things change, nothing changes... In order to change the farming practices of a single farmer, the entire social fabric must first change.”

from Road Back to Nature

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“Because they use modern machinery, pesticides, and airplanes; what they practice may appear to be modern agriculture, but it is in fact extremely crude, primitive agriculture. On top of it all, they rely almost entirely on monoculture.”

from Road Back to Nature

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“Livestock farming for meat consumption... has totally unbalanced American land. America has established an agriculture that does not grow the stuff of human life, but caters instead to the hogs and cattle.”

from Road Back to Nature

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“The purpose of life is to nurture our souls.”

from Road Back to Nature

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“Although the Japanese are familiar with Eastern philosophy and Buddhism, these have become merely a body of concepts to them, they have forgotten the soul of those teachings.”

from Road Back to Nature

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“Compelled to speak, God says nothing.
Unable to say anything, man speaks.”

from Kami no Kakumei

Themes: Anonymity

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“Thinking that he must climb a mountain to know it, the mountain climber climbs the mountain... Unable to grasp the mountain in its full aspect, he is content with having seen only one small portion and climbs back down... to know the true mountain, one must see it from a point of remove that transcends the mountain.”

from Road Back to Nature

Themes: Travel

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“The accumulation of discriminating knowledge only deepens confusion... Consciously or unconsciously, man cannot comprehend nature... although we may try explaining nature, all we can do is to explain that nature is something that cannot be expounded upon.”

from Road Back to Nature

Themes: Reason

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“true happiness does not arise from things... economists should hurry and set up an economy of happiness... a field of economic theory which throws out current economic notions that things have value, and is founded instead on the principle that things do not have value.”

from Road Back to Nature

Themes: Economics

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“Meditation has become quite popular lately, but where it involves mental concentration, I consider this a form of brainwashing that is, if anything, a dangerous road. Zen, I believe is oriented toward escape from the world of ideas. It is foolish to be tied down to things such as the soul and malevolent apparitions that don't exist at all.”

from Road Back to Nature

Themes: Meditation

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“Malady always arises from what is unnatural. Mental disharmony with nature hardens the mind, while unnatural physical care stiffens the body. To recover, one must lighten the heart and live easily—without strain... do nothing and simply return to the natural body of an infant, then your health will improve.”

from Road Back to Nature

Themes: Health

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“The land may appear beautiful on the surface, but because the earth is hard and depleted, farmers have no alternative other than to rely on chemical fertilizers. In fact, the energy poured into the land is sometimes greater than the energy recovered in the crops... American farmers must farm 100--200 times the acreage of Japanese farmers just to make ends meet.”

from Road Back to Nature

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“nature may appear to move from simple to complex; it may appear to progress and advance from imperfection toward perfection. This, at any rate, is what Darwin's theory of evolution implies. But of course, such is not the true state of nature... Nature is fundamentally perfect. Both spiritually and materially, nature is replete with the greatest possible wealth. It is a paradise where joy and contentment reign.”

from Road Back to Nature

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“When no poem or song remains, nature has died, leaving man to live in material and spiritual destitution.”

from Road Back to Nature

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“Nature is an astounding reality. One must constantly keep in mind that coming into contact with true nature can be an overwhelming experience. This is, after all, a world of inspiration that can justly be called the 'Great Spirit.'”

from Road Back to Nature

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“One must live fully in the present, not being swept off by the current, but directing all one's energy to this instant in time, like the cormorant fishing for ayu. That is a life of true wealth.”

from Road Back to Nature

Themes: No Trace

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“Since there is no way to measure greed, there is no halting such desires, which serve only to push the world into disarray. Far preferable would be the establishment of a free and fluid environment that satisfies the desire to cultivate rather than to own.”

from Road Back to Nature

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“Man is born and dies on the earth. When he parts from the land, he is no longer able to maintain the stability of the heart.”

from Road Back to Nature

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“[in America] They plow fields 100 times larger but live a more meager and deprived existence than the Japanese farmer on two or 3 acres... the ultimate cause for this is the meat-based diet of Americans... this has totally unbalanced American land

from Road Back to Nature

Themes: Skillful Means

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“water—often piped in from hundreds of miles away—is sprayed over the fields with sprinklers. When it evaporates, it draws salt up from within the soil and this continuous deposition of salt in the topsoil eventually turns the irrigated land into a salt field.”

from Road Back to Nature

Themes: Water

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“Because the Great Wall of China and the ancient cities in the Middle East and along the Silk Road were all made of bricks, trees disappeared from these areas and the soil died—a great deal of firewood is needed to make bricks. This destruction of nature brought about the decline of human civilization.”

from Road Back to Nature

Themes: Civilization

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“As human knowledge deepens, things do not become clearer; this only deepens the mysteries and increases the level of confusion.”

from Road Back to Nature

Themes: Confusion

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“There are no grounds anywhere, anytime for justifying war... War exists only in man's world and is alien to the rest of the biological kingdom; it does not belong to the natural world. War is an absurdity that arose from the human intellect.”

from Road Back to Nature

Themes: War

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“spontaneous knowledge that existed before scientific knowledge and serves only as a crude imitation or explanation of what nature does naturally. One does not need to learn knowledge from science; it is enough to learn (that is imitate) nature.”

from Road Back to Nature

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“one could say that the only way of approaching nature is to notice that man understands nothing—neither nature nor anti-nature”

from Road Back to Nature

Themes: Humility

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“Mountain climbing, going to the beach, listening to birds singing—all these seem to be ways of capturing a bit of nature. But no matter how many such recreations one gathers together, they do not add up to a true understanding of nature.”

from Road Back to Nature

Themes: Entertainment

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“When we tie a child down with petty, microcosmic scientific knowledge, he loses the freedom to acquire with his own hands macrocosmic wisdom. If children are allowed to play freely in a world that transcends science, they will develop natural methods of farming by themselves.”

from Road Back to Nature

Themes: Non-Thought

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“nothing—no matter what it is—has meaning in and of itself.”

from Road Back to Nature

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“The only option open to us now is to live by the wisdom of Buddha which transcends human intelligence and by the great love of Christ which transcends human love and hate. Never has this been more true that it is today.”

from Road Back to Nature

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“Look at today's scientists who have become the palanquin bearers of rampaging science. They dance about wildly, drunk on the sound of the words, 'high technology.'”

from Road Back to Nature

Themes: Science

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“Look at the dangerous politicians who rush ahead madly along the road to the military-industrial merchants of death while hoisting high the flag of peace. And look at the public which supports this.”

from Road Back to Nature

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“the decline of European civilization arises from the Western philosophy of placing onesef first; that in trying to protect one's person with a stone castle Europeans have ended by enclosing the self within a prison.”

from Road Back to Nature

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“founded on a pluralistic value system, that circumstances must be appropriately weighed... wasn't it the mission of the philosopher to ask what pluralism is, and to unify the discordant value systems of our world? There can be only one absolute value system, and it should have been up to philosophy to show this.”

from Road Back to Nature

Themes: Pluralism

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“The Japanese are a good people who love chrysanthemums. But depending on the leadership, they can be transformed with great ease into barbaric warriors.”

from Road Back to Nature

Themes: Warriors

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“Human knowledge prevents one from knowing the essence of things; it serves only to cloud and cause us to lose sight of the spirit of things.”

from Road Back to Nature

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“although I could reject everything about the Western philosophers from Descartes on down, I was unable to find the slightest thing wrong with anything that Socrates had said.”

from Road Back to Nature

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“if the individual temporarily abandons human will and so allows himself to be guided by nature, nature responds by providing everything.”

from One Straw Revolution

Themes: Free Will

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“Lao Tzu spoke of non-active nature, and I think that if he were a farmer he would certainly practice natural farming.”

from One Straw Revolution

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“I think that Gandhi's way, a methodless method, acting with a non-winning, non-opposing state of mind, is akin to natural farming.”

from One Straw Revolution

Themes: Competition

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“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.”

from One Straw Revolution

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“Sickness comes when people draw apart from nature. The severity of the disease is directly proportional to the degree of separation.”

from One Straw Revolution

Themes: Health

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“Doctors take care of sick people; healthy people are cared for by nature... The prime consideration is for a person to develop the sensitivity to allow the body to choose food by itself.”

from One Straw Revolution

Themes: Health

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“People complacently view the world as a place where 'progress' grows out of turmoil and confusion. But purposeless and destructive development invites confusion of thought, invites nothing less than the degeneration and collapse of humankind.”

from One Straw Revolution

Themes: Progress

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“to succeed at natural farming, you have to get rid of your expectations. Such 'products' of the mind are often incorrect or unrealistic . . . and can lead you to think you've made a mistake if they're not met.”

from Road Back to Nature

Themes: Letting Go

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“There is no time in modern agriculture for a farmer to write a poem or compose a song.”

from Road Back to Nature

Themes: Poetry

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“Only one law would suffice—a law stating that houses not be clustered together, but built at least 100 yards from each other.”

from Road Back to Nature

Themes: Law and Order

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“no matter how highly developed modern civilized life is, it can never compare with the perfection of a life in harmony with nature.”

from Road Back to Nature

Themes: Middle Way

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“If one were to build a home in the wild away from such concerns, and restore about one a rish natural area, this would surely become the paradise of natural people of non-action.”

from Road Back to Nature

Themes: Shambhala

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Quotes about Masanobu Fukuoka (2 quotes)

“Mr. Fukuoka is a scientist who is suspicious of science—or of what too often passes for science. This does not mean that he is either impractical or contemptuous of knowledge. His suspicion, indeed, comes from his practicality and from what he knows... a science that begins and ends in reverence”

Wendell Berry 1934 CE –

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“Fukuoka has been developing a method of natural farming which could help to reverse the degenerative momentum of modern agriculture... His great contribution is to demonstrate that the daily process of establishing spiritual health can bring about a practical and beneficial transformation of the world.”

Larry Korn 1943 CE –

Themes: Agriculture

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