Top 　　Annotations　　Main text（　１　２　３　４　５　６　７　８　９　１０　）

---

　　The letter from TARANOME-ANN

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　                                                        Kunio Oki

１　TARANOME-ANN

  Taranome is a bud of Tara. Tara means a Japanese Angelica-tree. It is a plant fully thorny to the branch. We pick up young buds of the plant in the early spring and deep-fry them. They are very delicious.

  In a stock farm of a hill of Boso district, Chiba prefecture, Japan, there is a log cabin named ‘TARANOME-ANN’. ANN means a hermitage. Around TARANOME- ANN, Tara grows wild here and there.

  TARANOME-ANN (From now on, I will call it ‘Tara’.) has a workroom, a living room with a sunken hearth and also an attic room where about five people can sleep. When a weekend comes, I visit Tara taking about one hour by car from my house. I spend relaxed time there looking at a gentle ridgeline of mountains in Boso. At the time of twilight, the sky becomes darker and darker from evening glow and the ridge line becomes being seen only a little. I gaze at the mountain range as if time melted into this great space. In such time, I think nothing any more and I feel as if I also melted in this space-time.

 

  Tara is a log cabin which was combined with big logs. I can’t build it by myself. I received the cooperation of the land and the fund from Mr. Sato who was a president of a dairy cooperative in the stock farm at that time. So, about ten persons gathered as a membership of TARANOME-ANN and began to build this log cabin about 20 years ago. Since we worked only one or two days per week, we spent about five years on the construction of Tara. We gathered there with our families and enjoyed ourselves from the beginning when Tara was completed. We grew the upland rice plant in a meadow, made miso which is Japanese soybean paste and made various cooking. We did various activities here.

  However, it was gradually becoming impossible for us to gather all together. Many members spend more time than I to come here. As the children grew older, they couldn’t come with their family. Furthermore, members themselves were chased for work and housework, too. Thus, they were not able to find the time to come here easily. In addition, president Sato and his wife also passed away due to sickness. Dairy farmers of the association who run here now are few. So, this stock farm is deserted despite a dairy housing complex. Now, I have been almost only one who visit Tara and also repair the part that is about to decay. How fast time flies!

 

  But there is a big bullfrog below the floor of Tara. A cuckoo and a bush warbler are in the mountain behind. They all meet me even if the other people disappear. A hornet flies happily around Tara as if he knew its inhabitant. From the reverse side of a bookshelf in which members brought books, a cast-off skin of a snake comes out. There were also a large number of dogs and cats a decade ago. A very intelligent dog called Nachi lived there. However, all of them hid somewhere quietly and disappeared.

  Still, I do not feel lonely for some reason when I come here. I have a good sweat for the maintenance of Tara. The wind blows through from a far mountain range. The greens of trees dance in the wind. And small birds sing cheerfully. I feel very comfortable by them here.

 

 

 

２　Fighting of creatures, and the spirit

It was an event at the end of last year. When I visited Tara on the weekend as usual, I felt somewhat strange there. A corpse of a big pheasant lay on a balcony in front of the entrance. A window screen was ripped up. A windowpane was falling. And innumerable feathers were scattered in the surrounding. The bloodstain of a bitten bowel of the pheasant seemed to be still warm and reminded me that there had been a fierce fight here just a few moments before. Who attacked the pheasant? Would it have been a large hawk? Would the pheasant have been attacked by a weasel after it was damaged by something? When I entered a room, I found also the corpse of a sparrow in the ashes of a sunken hearth. Even the sparrow entered desperately from a gap of the windowpane which fell down. Would a bird of prey have attacked the pheasant after all? I remember having been attacked by fresh atmosphere as if a cry could still be heard from somewhere and blood spouted.

 

Ancient human beings would have encountered such a scene many times. What would they have watched in attacked animals, or in fierce animals and birds of prey to attack? They will die when they are attacked like other animals which were attacked. Attacking and being attacked are a part of the life. Moreover, they must ensure safety to manage the life. They would have felt such things. In this way, human beings have survived by securing the place of safety and food, like other animals did so.

On the other hand, human beings had the world of mind wider than other animals. When they had the world of mind, they thought that safety might be what was presented from the range where their power did not reach as well as death. Such their thought appears also in that human beings met something like the spirit which lay behind a thing or a phenomenon and came to worship it. Human beings have performed the festival in which they wore the mask of a bird of prey or a savage beast and calmed the spirit, from ancient times. They seem to have maintained their safety as a group through the spirit.

  Our ancestor thought that the spirit was power which also influenced human beings’ life and death in this way, and also thought that it might be good or evil. Barong drama, one of the traditional arts in Bali Island, expresses that the incessant fight of the spirit of good and the spirit of evil is this world including human beings, flora and fauna, and all lives. In Hinduism of Bali, the existence of evil is a big element of the teachings. It teaches as follows. It is the world of the creature that not only animals but also human beings fight in the world where good and evil live together, even if good wins victory at the end. It is somewhat a horrific thought, though.

 

Speaking of the creature, I am afflicted by termites and ants which consume logs. When I enter into Tara, fine wood waste is piled like a mountain in somewhere in the floor. A log will be eaten away as it is, even if I say, “Gee,Wait!” So, I cut down the corroding part with a chainsaw, and hammer there a log piece which I fully painted with coal tar. A chain saw, this convenience of civilization is the wonderful one. It is very difficult to build a log house only with an ax and a saw even if we call it a ‘woody life (natural life)’.

To tell the truth, while I didn’t notice, branches of a big tree of a hill at the back of Tara lengthened rapidly to a roof of Tara and were going to crush the roof creakily. Such natural fearful growth isn’t noticed easily because I am almost always staying here alone. If I climb a roof alone and cut the fat branches which are about 10cm diameter only with an ax and a saw, I would feel fear and think it very difficult. I was able to get rid of them in no time thanks to a chain saw.

 

  However, Tara which was constructed with logs 20 cm diameter is strong originally. Tara received the wind of a big typhoon directly sometimes, but it has remained unmoved.

  Plants crept, animals settled, animals fought, man visited and man fought with plants or animals. In the meantime, Tara has become mossy and has lived so far.

 

 

 

３　The president of a dairy cooperative and his wife

  The construction of Tara started 20 years ago as I talked in the beginning. At that time, Mr. Sato, the president of a dairy cooperative in the stock farm, was in his prime in the middle of his 50’s. He used to engage in the construction work with us in spare moments between dairy farming management.

  Mr. Sato’s wife passed away in lung cancer. She seems to have been a young lady of some good family. She deeply impressed Mr. Sato of the handsome man and married him. However she devoted her time to heavy labor of dairy farming while she brought up three children. Still, she had a sunny and bright character. She used to carry a side dish for lunch to us who were working in Tara. Their children grew up and left the house. The work of dairy farming to keep 36 cows by only two, husband and wife, was as serious as ever. They had to take care of cows for 24 hours. They gave food, milked, cleaned the cow house diligently and assisted cow’s birth. Every day passed over them in such the case. One day she was crushed by a cow and was injured seriously. Although she had such every day, she who lived near Tara used to greet us with a smile whenever we visited Tara with our family. She was a really lovable lady whom we were able to call our aunt.

  It was the winter nine years ago. There was no one when I visited Tara as usual. There was not also Mr. Sato’s wife who had been fine with usual condition several days before. There was a letter left behind. So, I hurried to the nearby hospital where she was in. In the hospital, Mr. Sato and his daughter were escorting her. She was in critical condition. She attached an oxygen inhaler and was puffing and panting. Mr. Sato murmured close to her ears that I had come. Although she had seemingly already recognized nobody, she raised her head suddenly and looked at me. She said, “Ah-” and tried to speak something. Mr. Sato and his daughter said to me, “Oh, she found you!” It was a final farewell. Her lung was infringed by a severe disease. She sometimes said that she had a slight cold and took a rest. I was attacked by deep sadness when I thought that she had been enduring pain like that.

 

  Then, Mr. Sato quit dairy farming and came to live alone. He was bent because he stopped working suddenly, and his legs have also weakened. When I visited Tara, I usually presented him a lunch box and we talked about various topics. A cat settled down in the room and seemed to become a partner to talk with him usually. He told me that talking with the cat was keeping him from becoming senile. However when we talked about his wife, he occasionally shook his big body and burst into tears.

  He had a helper come twice a week, and was living such a life for a while. But in winter six years ago, he fell down in the garden in front of the house.

  Afterwards, he lived in his daughter’s house in Tokyo for a few years. In Tokyo, the old man welfare seemed to be more substantial than here and he went for rehabilitation and lived a life cheerfully. He seemed to have interacted with many youths there.

  However, he wanted to return to the stock farm by all means. So, he returned, but from the neglect of health in the single life, his legs became something wrong again.

 For a while, he was hospitalized. Still, he wanted to return to the stock farm and had a plan to live by using a wheelchair. He returned. However, he got out of shape soon and died. It was at the end of year two years ago. When we began to build Tara together, Mr. and Mrs. Sato still were in their 50’s, but they passed away one after another on the verge of reaching in their 80's.

  Thus, nobody already has lived in the house of the president of a dairy cooperative near Tara. Trees and plants have become free to lengthen. We who visit Tara and the eldest son family of Mr. Sato who lives in the neighborhood manage to maintain the place around Tara. Though we are trying to keep this wonderful environment, we also get old in no time.

 

  By the way, I think that I did a bad thing to Mr. Sato’s wife some day. It was when I heard her talk as follows. When she was stung by a long-legged wasp, she anointed her skin with ammonia which was stocked in Tara at once, and she was saved. At that time, I said to her, “Yes, that was good.” However as a matter of fact, ammonia seems not to work.
   Still, when we arrived at Tara, she flew immediately to us and said that she had been saved truly. I can never forget the brightness of her smile at that time.

 

 

 

４　Book of the Dead and Veda

  Looking at the great setting sun from Tara, I sometimes recall a novel, ‘Book of the Dead’ (Note1) which Shinobu Orikuchi, a poet and folklorist, wrote about 70 years ago.

The scene of the novel is Nara era in Japan about 1300 years ago when Fujiwara clan was seizing real power. The novel is a tale that a daughter of Fujiwara south house found Amitabha Buddha of the Pure Land in the setting sun which went down in Mt. Nijozan.

  Mt. Nijozan is a graceful mountain with two peaks. It is located in Taima road on the boundary between Osaka and Nara in Japan. Prince hero Otsu perished by political tactics has been buried there. Daughter of Fujiwara south house accepts the image that his soul overlaps with Amitabha Buddha in the setting sun which sinks between peaks in Mt. Nijozan. And she finally disappears toward the setting sun.

I recall this tale while looking at a mountain range from Tara. Meanwhile, I think about the Pure Land beyond the ridgeline of a mountain range that stagnates crimson and shines. Moreover, beyond the Pure Land, I think about Sarnath of India where Buddha preached his thought first. Furthermore, my thought goes down to South India and spreads through villages of Dravida that are hometown of Veda which might have influenced Buddha's idea.

At a great antiquity of B.C., Dravidians who lived in the Indus river valley were pushed by the Aryan invasion to India and went south. They arrived at current South India. They deepened the teachings of Veda and formed the unique world there.

 

I visited India in summer two years ago. I went south from Sarnath to villages of Dravida. I was able to get the chance to come in contact with the teachings of Veda there. At first I saw a famous Buddha sedentary statue of a young person at a museum in Sarnath. It was full of vigor and knowledge. It was also full of faith for human beings and of will for moral enlightenment, that is, faith to good. However I traveled to India in quest of the problem beyond such a neat figure of young Buddha. That is, I traveled to seek the thought which got into the dazzling world of the depth of the good and evil.

Veda might be the background of the thought which Buddha arrived to. And Veda probably was the thought that Buddha had deeply learned. That is why I visited India to seek the teachings of Veda. (Note2)

So, I went down from Sarnath to South India. The language of the village of Dravida which I visited is mainly Tamil. Mr. Susumu Ohno, a Japanese language scholar who passed away last year, studied the influence which Tamil had on Japanese. He said that Tamil has had big influence on the culture and the language of Japan, via a continent or the sea. I was able to meet Archarya who was the paramount leader at the educational facility of Veda in a village of Dravida. He talked in Tamil, but a guru who served him interpreted it into English for me. (Note3)

 

What I had learnt from Archarya was that the life of every human was connected with the great works of the human race who would walk from the past of eternity to the future. A noble man, a mean man, the strong, the weak, the man of character, the scoundrel, a good man, and a bad man are the works of the human race which the times at that time bring about.

  ‘The very times bring about these works.’ It means that we cannot but inherit the blood and meat from the past of eternity and shoulder them. Veda declares, “Our bodies are dirty fleshes which have been produced by the grime of our parents.”(Note4) Human beings cannot escape from the bondage of such past. Human beings are fascinated by the similar karma and repeat a similar fight. However, human beings advance to the future even so.

Human beings build the new past toward the future. Therefore we are the works. We are the works which dazzling samsara produce. Veda is the teachings which covered this earth from the start of this world in this way. It is the wisdom of human race.

 

By the way, ‘Book of the Dead’ of Shinobu Orikuchi starts from the scene that corpse of Prince Otsu lying in the grave begins to murmur. The corpse talks about the desire for the princess whom he met before he was made to kill himself and whom he can never erase in his mind. The desire was caused by her face that he had seen only once. It was the face of the princess of Kamatari Fujiwara, a founder of the Fujiwara clan. Corpse of Prince Otsu thinks that she thought tenderly of him at that time in the pond of Iware where he killed himself. His corpse recalls vividly her face, even though the corpse can’t recall who he is to begin with. It becomes ‘a bright will’, jumps out of his grave, and wanders about Mt.Nijozan.

Daughter of the Fujiwara south house hears the story of Prince Otsu who was buried in Mt.Nijozan, from the old woman of storyteller of Taima. This intelligent daughter of the Fujiwara clan which wielded power in those days, finishes writing no less than 1000 copies of Amitabha sutra by her hands, at Taima temple below Mt.Nijozan. And, when she looks up at Mt. Nijozan, bringing the full power of her body together in spite of her body becoming emaciated because of having made 1000 copies by hand, she vividly finds the figure of a solemn person there and feels rejoicing of supremacy.

In this tale, Shinobu Orikuchi expressed the continuity of the working of human beings’ soul which runs continuously through a certain outstanding character in spite of being apart in the times. Daughter of the Fujiwara south house hears the story from storyteller of Taima. The story is that the soul of Prince Otsu inherited a soul of the heroes of the ancient times who died a violent death in the sameway. Thus, she meets the soul of a great past character, and it will invite her together with the soul of Buddha in the further human beings’ future. And such her thought for the great character seems to range to our thoughts which aspire to something toward the future.

 

Like Prince Otsu was seized with a desire for Princess of Kamatari Fujiwara and Daughter of the Fujiwara south house was tied up by the soul of Prince Otsu, we who live in this real world, have the fact that we cannot help thinking why we met such a specific character and came to be tied up there. Veda explains that these thought are acts of Artman hiding in a human mind. Veda says, “Ah, even if a person asserts he loves his dear, all the dear are dear not because of that fact. Differently, all the dear are dear for a person because Artman loves the dear. ” (Note 5)

Artman loves it. Artman does it. It’s difficult way of speaking, but doesn’t that mean the following? That is, we, each one, keeps living shouldering the human beings’ wish and desire which follow continuously from primitive ages even if they are good or evil. However, it does not mean that we will be crushed by the past bondage. Our desire, hope, expectation, and yearning aim for something or somebody obviously toward the future and draw something or somebody to us. We know that such an action appears in just the daily life. However there is not conclusive assurance anywhere that we draw each other and accomplish something. Misunderstanding and passing each other will be the ways of the world.

Still, I think that through such an intention, we can understand other people, events and things and can relate each other. And a partner intends to aim and draw something similarly. While following such a route which becomes complicated, we, each one, is going to understand each route itself someday and understand something that should be accepted toward death.
  Even if each one's life is limited in this way, we can form our life even a little toward the future by the mystery of such an intention which each one holds. I think so.

 

 

 

５　About Kafka's castle and the law of the real world

　

Let me talk about another idea which I thought at Tara. It is about a thing called the real world or the world of the public. The real world is the secular world that we live definitely. I described as follows in the previous chapter. “But, there is not conclusive assurance anywhere that we draw each other and accomplish something. Misunderstanding and passing each other will be the ways of the world.” Indeed the real world is a place where we aim for something and express each other as ‘the ways of the world.’ The real world is a place where we understand a rumor, evaluation and criticism each other. To put it briefly, it is the world where we understand them plainly through mass communication such as a newspaper, a magazine or the television. We live a various life in the real world. That is, we fight triumphantly, or are defeated miserably there. We adhere to victory and defeat, or take an antisocial position there. We are admired or are scorned by people there. We are satisfied for fame, or are suppressed at the social bottom.

 

We generally deal with a thing called the real world from an objective view. We think that the real world is such a thing, the thing which in a sense is secular. Therefore, some people try not to go against the real world, and to be wandering well in the real world. On the other hand, some people try to sharpen the anti-world sense of values and to revolutionize such a society. However, no matter what world may be, as long as we human beings make a living as a social human being, we cannot escape the real world as fate. This is connected also with the teachings of Veda as I told you. That is, this real world appears directly as the works being called the human race following continuously from the past.

 

Even if the world is reformed and brings more freedom for us, power is born anywhere. A desire for evaluating oneself high and an expression desire are essential desires for an individual in the human society. A desire for honor, a desire for power, and a self-superiority complex never fade away no matter what time it is. A great achievement may arise there. On the other hand, a flattery, an intrigue, and a hypocritical strategy may be produced there.

The existence of human beings who express something and try to let another person recognize it, or human nature itself will allow us violence of a certain expression or power. We take some kind of viewpoints in the everyday life and usually use some kind of power without noticing it.

However, if we deny such power of expression, it becomes impossible for human beings to make cultural creation in any way for the future. For example, some people insist that we should grope for construction of new human society unrelated to the market economy or the state. They clarify imbalance of distribution of the wealth on the earth through the activity for which they don’t depend on the state, and insist that we should ask what kind of frame of the society replaces the state under these circumstances. Trying to make such an idea known to the world gives us a foresight of a new, cultural creation enough. In fact, the existence of the people engaged in such an expression activity lets us think that we may not be able to live a life of mere ease in this society.

There are really overseas volunteers who are helping revival of a life of a farm village colony in Asia or Africa without depending on the state. As long as they participate in such activity, they should be aware of heavy responsibility, the restraint of limited life and the friction of human relations. Even so, they can learn a lot from there. And by announcing the studied result to an academic society or mass communications, they also teach a lot to us. Such a spread becomes the driving force of the further activity. However, at the same time, they will be exposed to temptation and danger that they are given one-sided praise and misunderstanding by the real world.

 

On the other hand, in the real world, there are many silent people who are unrelated to the world of such an announcement and the knowledge. In a lot of farm villages in Japan in the age without the television yet, unhurried repose in an interval of the daily labor still was keeping. From an earthen floor of the opened gloomy house, farmers used to gaze at far away such as a rice field or a bank-side of river. They usually spent such time. And they were thinking about the work such as planting and harvesting rice in the future with their silent eyes in the same way every year there.

The labor and the daily living of such silent people have supported many people all through the ages. At ‘The castle’, Franz Kafka’s novel, he described the ruin of a fireman’s family excluded by the village because of a groundless crime. The reason of the crime was only because a daughter called Amalia had not replied to the desire of an upper government official. The main character K who arrived at the village from the exterior thinks about that with sense of superiority in the beginning. Why don’t they appeal their innocence logically against the upper levels of a public office? Why don’t they use such freedom? However, he comes to face an extraordinary law of the human society lying hidden in the people who keep protecting everyday life, before long. That is, he comes to face law which cannot be settled only by his own knowledge and his sense of superiority soon. The main character K is made to hear the sterile fight of the silent parents from Olga, older sister of Amalia.

 

  She says,“There is nothing around besides gray snow and fog as far as I can see, and for days, even one human being and one car will not pass. My parents go there every day , wear a thin blanket which hardly conceals their body and wait for the government official who may go along there in order to ask them to allow an innocent crime. What a miserable spectacle! K, What a miserable spectacle! ” (Note 6)

There are people who cannot deny power supporting a life itself even if they receive the unjust treatment from power. Moreover, there are people who cannot but beg to power in order to protect their life. And, there is a figure of Amalia who is firmly enduring even if she refuses to beg to power.   Through the figure of such people, K feels unspeakable power which forms the human society or the world and which supports people who live there. So, he is stunned.

  Olga says more, “Amalia did not only shoulder a lot of heavy loads but also had an ability to recognize them. Though we watched only a result, she was seeing through even the cause. Though we expected a tiny means, she knew that all had been already decided. She stood facing the truth, lived and was bearing such a life in those days in the same way as now.”(Note7)

While K listens to a story from Olga, “because the almost unbelievable world has spread in front of him, he cannot throw away a feeling that he wants to touch the world by his small experience and to confirm the relation between the world and his existence still more clearly.” (Note 8)

Thus, the main character K who tries to fight against power and who feels sure that independence and freedom of his will is maintained, comes to consider that he looks small in this real world on the contrary.

 

It seems that people owe various burdens, exist in this world, and are supporting the abyss of the human society each other. I feel that a thing which is like supporting even our freedom but cannot be told, exists in our society or the real world itself. Such the thing is the power which forms the place where we feel at home, bloom the desire of rich expression and glorify freedom. On the other hand, it seems to be also the merciless power to push us into nothingness of an extraordinary abyss.

As I stated previously, though we are shouldering past bonds respectively, we are existences which go to the future. There is our life surrounded by the real world. At the same time, there is also indescribable nothingness which appears if such things called the real world were lost suddenly. However, if we do not understand both the real world and nothingness properly, I feel like we cannot do something true to the future.

 

 

６　About an encounter with a mystery 　　　　　　　　　　　

When the sun sets in the Boso mountain at which I look from Tara at nightfall, a ridge line dyes red and becomes dark gradually. After the curtain of night gets down, a ridge line begins to shine vacantly shortly. It may be that the light from Tokyo Bay arrives.

I lay my body tired with work in a balcony and spend the time merely looking at a series of such changes. Time passes calmly, while hearing the sound of an insect and the motor which flows occasionally from cowsheds. I think about nothing. I am going to do nothing. I am merely only absentminded and time passes over me pleasantly.

 

In my boyhood, I grew up in the remote countryside in Kyushu , west of Japan. My family borrowed a room in the single house in the middle of rice field and lived there. Fireflies were flying in the footpath between rice fields where I walked with my mother at the night of summer. When I caught several fireflies and put them in the inside of a large tissue which I blew up, it became like a paper lantern.

When I returned to the house through a dark path looking at the shining paper lantern, I lay on the futon spread in the wooden floor of the second floor. What has become of a paper lantern? Did mom let fireflies go anywhere? I fell asleep thinking about such a thing.

It was the midnight. The room where light did not shine anywhere was pitch-black. Despite that, the shadow which seemed to be three people was greatly reflected in the sliding shutter. Three people turned round and round like a revolving lantern. “Mom, what is that?” I woke up my mother. She turned on a desk lamp. Then the shadow disappeared. “Now, sleep!” My mother said so and she turned off the lamp. After a short time, three persons’ shadow appeared again. This was repeated several times. Whenever the lamp was turned off, three persons' shadow came out. It is a mere talk of only that. However, I clearly remember it as a fact. And, this experience is still related to a faint hope for me.

That hope is related to the following thought. That is, although we, human beings, stand alone and become conflict with each other in the society called the real world, we might connect with each other somewhere in the depth of the heart by the invisible bond like soul or the spirit. And, such thought is connected with the thought that I may be related even just a little to the creation of the works of human beings who will be advancing toward the future too.

 

In ‘Critique of Practical Reason’, Immanuel Kant, the philosopher in Germany, stated that ‘Great space being outside me and a great moral code being inside me’ were the great mystery. But if such a mystery is a mere theoretical conclusion, we will be only stupefied in the face of great samsara, chaos and emptiness of the human society.(Note 9)

It is not so. Will not we be the existence which comes across the fact that is nothing less than a mystery probably sometime? No matter how much we are far from wealth, social position, honor, acquisition of love and wealthy life, we can make a living toward the future. Isn’t it because we have the encounter with such a mystery and soul? I think that human beings are the existence to live in the mystery too.

I remember such a thing and continue looking at the ridge line of the mountain range which still shines slightly.

 

 

 

７　 The woman pushing a dog car

One more, I have an unforgettable memory in my boyhood. It was when I was the fifth or sixth grade of an elementary school. On account of my father’s work, my family moved to the narrow row house in a town. When I was walking along the nearby road at early afternoon, I met a woman pushing a dog car. If there is an expression called a dog car, a dog was pulling a thing surely like a cart. I have seen a horse sometimes pulling a big cart in those days. However, it was the beginning and also the end that I saw a dog pulling it. With a pale look, the woman pushed the side of the dog car and occasionally beat the dog with a thing like a stick. The dog also looked pale and tried to advance forward gasping for breath. However the woman with a pale look shouted at the dog and was going to advance the dog car on which something heavy rode, wiping the sweat of her face with a towel around her neck. Although the dog was a big German shepherd, the load was too heavy for the dog to carry forward. The woman was still striking the dog, with a grievous shout. The dog tried to go forward little by little panting again and again.

I remember that I just left the place, only looking at such a strange scene. The problem developed from it. I left there without doing anything. It weighed on my mind heavily. “Aunt! A dog is pitiful! It will die! I also help! Please, stop beating a dog!” Why wasn’t I able to say such a thing? Why was I only looking and why wasn’t I able to talk boldly? It tormented me as if I had already carried out a serious crime. I suffered from the pity not only to the dog but also to the woman who had to extract even the power of a dog. Although I did not want to remember it, it was the pain which I had no choice but to remember. It was also the pain from which I couldn’t evade.

Such pains continued for several years. After I came to calm down, I thought as follows. Will happiness and unhappiness of human beings become equal, by the time of their death? Or are there various people such as those who finish a lifetime happily or those who finish it in continuation of unhappiness? I thought that the unhappy woman who couldn’t but make that dog carry the load didn’t seem to come across happiness after that.

 

In those days, there was a pupil who was a son of a president of an oil company, in my class. The pupil lived in a big residence surrounded by high stone walls. Most pupils in my class were invited to his birthday party, but I was not invited without knowing why. I remember they said that the house had been gorgeous and the banquet had been amazing. In this way, there are those who are happily alive really in excess, too. However are they really happy forever? Or would that classmate really have felt that he was happy?

Is there happiness because there is unhappiness? Or, is there unhappiness because there is happiness? However, both the woman who beat that dog and the dog were really unhappy. What a terrible! If we cannot but really think that distribution of happiness and unhappiness is unequal for an individual, it is really hard that I live in this society. How will adults think about that? I remember that I thought about such a thing seriously.

 

Then, I continued thinking. Human beings encounter much pain and bear it. What does it mean? According to the United Nations, it is said that one person in five person in the world such as Africa, Asia, and South America etc., that is, over one billion people, will live by one dollar or less a day. And each day 35,000 children under the age of five die of starvation or preventable infectious disease. The hardship of many refugees continues. Many people suffer from much war and natural disaster. “I want to take a rest warmly. I want to be freed from a pain. I want to take full meal. I want to regain a lost thing. I want to impeach an assailant. I want to get love. I want to have a peaceful family. I want to play with friends happily. I want to listen to music alone in a relaxed way. I want to study the unknown thing fully. I want to realize a fair demand of myself.” Aren’t these the wishes of common people?

There are people who can achieve these wishes and people who cannot achieve them in the real world. There are people attacked by sudden misfortunes, such as a crime, an accident and a natural disaster. There are people who cannot but lead an unhappy life from physical circumstances by nature. Moreover, there are people who use up money saved at last out of the poor life and go out for a severe pilgrimage even if their happiness can’t be realized in this real world. They say that they wish for their happiness after death. Where is the origin of this faith that they can have paradise after death even if they bear distress while they live? What are this globally universal idea and phenomenon telling? I have thought about such a thing.

 

The predecessor of Archarya whom I was able to meet in south India was a person who had talked with Gandhi. There is a story when an Occidental woman visited his dwelling. An Occidental woman asked Maharcharia ( Great Archarya ), “Where are the grounds of Samsara transmigration and of the rebirth of human being who was succeeded from the previous life?” He answered, “Go to the nearby hospital right now and look at the baby of just the birth.” The woman went to the hospital instantly and looked at babies.

　After that, she reported to him, “I found one child lovely and another ungainly, one plump and another skinny. One seemed to have been born in the rich family and another seemed to have been born in the poor family.”

So, Maharcharya answered, “Our present lives are
determined by the good and evil which we played in a previous life. If we don’t accept
that doctrine, why are we allowed to accept such variety or such a difference among babies?”

A human is each by nature. He or she has a born nature and a born duty. There is a moral human being. There is the criminal, too. Good and evil is connected with each other, and there are various human beings. There are those who have strong self. There are those who can suppress themselves and can bear it to some extent. The society where such various people coexist and make a living in their own way is a human society. What is the cause of our birth? The crime and wrong that we violated are causes of the birth. Our blood and meat plunge us into pains at the same time.

In this way, he preached happiness and unhappiness of people as an eternal chain of the works called ‘the human race’, based on Veda.

 

 

 

８　Let’s listen to Schubert

I work in Tara while sometimes listening to music with a MD headphone. The music to which I often listen these days is that of Schubert. In my elementary school days, I used to listen to his famous songs such as, A Linden Tree, A Wild Rose and A Trout.

“Suffering brushes up reason, and makes the mind strong. On the other hand, pleasure is easy to ignore reason. And pleasure indulges the mind or makes the mind frivolous. I hate a narrow-mindedness man from the bottom of my heart. Because he tries to convince a lot of people who have miserable time as follows. That is, what he is doing is best and everything besides that is nothing. ” (Note 10)

“Everyone confronts this world by belief. It is far superior to reason and knowledge. Because we must believe first of all in order to understand what it is. ” (Note 11)

 

These are Schubert’s words. These are words of the musician who died at the youth of 31 years old while being risked by the illness. I consider the whole life of the musician who told such a thing though he was young. His whole life was the life devoted to the song. Schubert was a cheerful man who was loved by many people. He rolled into anywhere in the friend’s house, made music there, and sat in a happy circle with friends. At the same time, Schubert was invaded by immeasurable loneliness and incurable illness, and kept suffering. Such the life of his joy and sadness is condensed to the art called a song.

 

By the way, as I stated before, the sunset that sinks in Mt.Nijozan in the prefectural border between Nara and Osaka became the great locale in ‘Book of the Dead’ of Shinobu Orikuchi.

When I climbed Mt.Nijozan 20 years ago, my eyes caught in the blackboard which protruded from the gate of the Buddhist temple in the path at the foot of mountain. The following verse was written there.

 

“We find out the joy that we have been born as a human into the fact of sadness that we have been born as a human.”

 

May I interpret this text as follows? That is, the wisdom acquired in the midst of sadness is just true joy of human. However, on the other hand, I thought then what on earth the life of human beings who can know true joy only through sadness was.

I have revived a similar thought which I had when I had seen the woman who pushed the dog car. And I thought that this verse might have described also the fate of prince Otsu who had been made to shoulder a groundless crime. He had been made to kill himself at a young age and had been buried in Mt. Nijozan. Moreover, I thought that some people might have found out the meaning that they make a living, on the sacrifice of such heroic character. That might be the thought which is connected with us as general human beings too.

Even if Schubert was not a hero, he was the genius who survived too short life. Even only regarding that, I find great sacrificial mind in his life.

Please listen to the music which was put into Jacoby's poetry named the litany by Schubert. The litany is said to be a prayer that the priest and the believer alternately recite for the dead.

 

It is sung. “Rest peacefully! All souls! Those who left the world!”(Note12) “ Rest peacefully! All souls! Those who experienced a fearful pain, those who were able to indulge in a sweet dream, those who were contented for life, and those who left this world as soon as they received life! All souls! Rest peacefully!”（Note 13）

 

  What a generous-hearted song! There is a human who knows the joy of living, longing and expectation, and at the same time, knows strain of deep nothingness that can support an expression of such joyful sentiment and knows emptiness of life which is opposite to the joy. Only such a human can express such a generosity. It is Schubert that lived for the creation of art as if he prayed while looking at the polar region of such nothingness.

 He sings in the work called ‘To the music’.

“You, beautiful art! In the secular horror of this world, you flared my dispirited heart with warm love and invited me to the better world. Oh, you, art! ” (Note 14)

  For Schubert, prayer was the prayer for what we should create, the prayer for the possibility of our art, and the prayer for believing that it is to live.

 

Now, please listen to the song of Schubert quietly when you are dispirited and cannot find the meaning of the life.
  Listen, when you are not rewarded even if you love hard. And listen, when you feel turned off this real world where people pursue the status and honor beyond capability and pursue only property. We can find out an excellent piece of music not only in his songs but also in his orchestral works, chamber music, Mass, etc.
  These are the inheritances of human race. Just the prayer for creation of art gave them to us.

 

 

 

９　 To children

In this way, my life has passed through age centering on the affair of family, office and Tara. And now, I have already got over the age of Mr. Sato who was in his 50’s when the construction of Tara started. Children who were elementary school pupils at that time helped the construction of Tara here, played with a cow, made a rice cake at the New Year and have grown. These children also have already become adult and are all working somewhere.

 

【Together with us adults】

 

People are making noise saying that population has decreased due to the low birth rate and the aging has progressed. It is important that the place of work environment should be prepared in order to do child-rearing. However, if adults do not want to give birth to a lot of children, we cannot help saying that is because they do not want to do so.

In the good old days, despite being mutually poor, adults used to call “Hey, Sonny!” to a child of another person and to pat the child on the head. It may also be another reason of the low birth rate if we can say that such a generous community in the old days disappeared. It may be so if it is said that an atmosphere of the world where adults encourage any kind of child by saying, “Hey, Sonny! Do your best!” has grown dim. It kind of seems that only agility and efficiency of mind are pursued increasingly in this present world. So, the world may have become a little tight for a good-for-nothing child who does not harm, who is not useful remarkably and who is absentminded at a corner.

 

  Still, as I thought previously of “the real world”, the world is such a thing a little. And the real world is also the world where clever guys or a human who conducts himself well monopolize honor, property and power. However, even if children learn such a thing from no one, children understand it with their own bodies. Children can find out their own place to stay, by themselves. The clever boy finds out his place by making full use of a clever way. And the boy who is not so finds out his place by making use of another way. Adults may be sick. It may only be that adults are losing their confidence to bear and bring up children.

Therefore, children! Without depending on adults, let’s think that the life is a great journey to discover what you want to do really. It is not necessary to think that you must do something by all means. As for books of adults, a great portion of them are of no importance even if you intend to study something with these books. If you grow up, you may be making or reading the great portion of books too. However, if your desire or aim fit nicely for yourselves, a new extension of the human society will be produced from there again. Let’s make a living together with us adults, accepting pain as pain and accepting pleasure as pleasure, without getting tired or impatient.

 

 

【Facing the great, rich and incomparable phenomenon】

 

Although my story may be trivial like most books of adults, if you live together with us adults, please listen a little more. That is what kind of society we should aim at toward the future. Then, I return to the world of India again and I wish to tell you what I studied by my travel to India. It was what I learned from the teachings of Veda and Gandhi.

 The teachings of Vedas which Gandhi learned say as follows. A human being is given a duty each, and is born in this world. A human being shoulders the thing that has been succeeded from previous life. Probably, grudge, arrogance and weakness will have been taken over also to the inside of me from the previous life. Vedas say that human society is the society where we live through each social duty in this world shouldering cause and effect of such various good and evil.

Gandhi said in response to such an instruction. “Your truth should be born from the deep well of sympathy of yourself. Therefore, you must be flexible and you must avoid severe words, when telling truth. To sympathize with others is to sympathize with yourself. When using violence on the others, you are using violence also on yourself. When you slander and insult the others, you slander and insult yourself. The anger disturbs the angry person himself more than the person who receives it. ” (Note15)   He said that we should live while being considerate of others according to each nature given in the past of the eternity.

 

Then why are nonviolence and consideration to the others necessary? He said, “Human beings do not have the absolute rights to deprive, manage or govern the lives of other forms. Moreover, human beings are charged with the special duty that they should practice non-violence and be modest facing the great, rich and incomparable phenomenon which is filled with the mystery in the life world.” (Note 16)

A feeling to “be modest facing the great, rich and incomparable phenomenon which is filled with the mystery in the life world”, these words are important. This is just the world of Veda which induced wisdom of human beings. Gandhi understood it well. The various incomparable human beings world filled with the mystery does not allow violence.

What does it mean? I met many people in India. I met a lot of facial expressions. To put it briefly, this facial expression does not allow violence.
  I had a certain dream about ten years ago. A man was going to get over a wall to escape from the place such as prison. The man turned around towards me. It was a big face full of the dark brown wrinkles. I was helplessly overwhelmed to the expression of the man. It didn’t matter at all that he might be a criminal. I did not understand what it was, but I was greatly impressed by his facial expression into which everything was condensed. That was the unspeakable expression which included all the distress and all the joy truly. That was the expression with which I felt even reverence. And also, that was the expression which permitted diversity and could never be erased. That was the expression that I had thought that human beings themselves would be ruined if we erased it.

I came across a similar facial expression sometimes also in India. Who is this man in front of me whom I came across? India is a place to ask it. It is in India that we meet not a person as the public who is brought together as a large number of people in the peace and democratic liberalism society, but a person who is definitely irreplaceable himself. That is the place where Gandhi was born and fought. Then, what is the place? What is the place where human beings should originally live?

 

【The human relations and mutual aid in a proper scale】

 

What we often look at with a photograph of Gandhi is the figure in which he was pulling a hand spinning-wheel nakedly. “Handwork is nonviolent culture and is the economy of peace truly. Handwork embodies in ecology and sustain-ability. The tradition of the handwork of villages in India is the most suitable form of a life in the future. So India will also be ruined if villages are ruined,” Gandhi said.

India will also be ruined if villages are ruined. This sentence is important. As you know, in the world of the market economy globalized now, the regional economy and the life of village are falling all over the world. Gandhi emitted warning to that. In villages lived a farmer, a blacksmith, a carpenter, a shoemaker, a small vender and also such a person as Rabbi, the priest and the teacher from whom people accepted the wisdom directly. Thus, the overall community had a sacred center as the human society and held a self-contained system and consistency to some extent. Such a world is a village. He said so.

On the other hand, the rational and humane world of the West concentrated on a city worshipped the machine without a life, and has driven people to endless labor from early in the morning till late at night. And it has driven people to the standardized thinking too. Gandhi even said that Western rationalism or humanitarianism in itself retained mental violence. (Note17)

 

Globalization of the market economy destroys the independent regional economy by the transportation and the information network spread around all over the world. Some people concentrate on avarice and waste increasingly. At the same time, a lot of people are driven away to hopeless poverty. The human relations and mutual aid in a proper scale indispensable for human being's life are lost there. And many people’s living activities come down to the value of money of the market economy. (Note18)

And, miserably, the more informatization becomes precise by globalization and technical development, the more we are swallowed to the huge waves which go away from us and cannot be controlled. This current simultaneous world financial crisis was exactly a remarkable outcome of such a fact. I can think Gandhi would have already gazed at the big subject also for us in this current world, from those days.

Gandhi said, “There are sufficient things satisfying the necessity for all people in the world, but there is nothing to fill avarice of everyone enough in the world.” He also said, “If people in the world are going to enjoy a life like the advanced nations of capitalism, it is insufficient even if there are no less than four or five earths.” Avarice and extravagance have caused a crisis of the earth now. People have forgotten something like ‘the rich poverty’ which had existed in the villages all over the world before.

 

【Let’s go out and learn】

 

“However, even if we say such a thing, it might be useless.” I hear the voice from somewhere. “Human beings are also going toward the ruin in quest of sufficiency of an endless desire. Don't the works of human beings make it do so? As for the teachings of Veda, you said that the world was the place where good and evil were developing entangled and evil was never extinct as long as the world continued. You said that a useless, endless fight was the ways of the world, and that we were bound by a past extraordinary stupid act, too.”

That is right. Thinking that we can get rid of past stupidity easily or thinking that we can easily come back to the village of an old good time which is not globalized are both the idea to become too widely different from the real situation.

It is a great problem to the future for us to regain the regional economy and the community of a scale which we can control ourselves and can evaluate. However, of course, there is also the question whether the community which we can control and can evaluate will be really possible. We won’t say that we should abandon the technical result of modern civilization and should return to the great past. We should say as follows. It is important in what kind of form we can inherit human beings’ wisdom which has been accumulated from the past. And it is important how we can give such a message to the future generation, too.

 

The problem cannot necessarily be solved by the arrangement of easy words. I feel that if we try to move people only by the political speech and behavior patched up superficially, it is likely to become the dead end. Even if we may spend much time, we need the true analysis of present situation and a true common wish by which more than one person can stand up on their own from the bottom of their heart. We need the present data analysis and a common wish which give courage to people to whom the exit is closed truly. For example, we can do such tasks by a form like a fable. “There was such an ideal group or village. It was ruined in this way.” If such a fable profoundly moves us, we can feel so meaningful with that only.

Therefore it may be fake if the ideal human society seems to have come out even in a part immediately. What is not fake may have to be ruined once at least with the mind of sacrifice like Prince Otsu of ‘Book of the Dead’ who was buried in Mt.Nijozan by politicians of those days. Please keep this in mind firmly. We, each one, are related to such a sacrificial mind. So, in fact, we, each one, are the existence more than the individual. We, each one, are progressing to the future as the existence over an individual.

 

Therefore, Children! Let’s go out of Japan once at least, and see a life of foreign friends who go with you toward the future. Japanese people are now being bewildered by a sense of stagnation without the exit in the cities and also villages. Let’s go out to the outside which has the accumulation of the culture for several thousand years, and learn a lot from overseas friends.

After you come back to Japan, please think about the goodness and problem of Japan by different eyes. Moreover, please think about repaying the kindness to overseas friends and also think of our earth’s future.

Of course, most world areas are being ruled by the state and the mass communication in the wave of the globalization. However, there is also a region where inheritance from ancient times has been still carefully succeeded like villages in South India. There are no busy time and space which pursue personal profits there. And there live people who consider earnestly about unity of a village and about everybody’s future who lives there.

 

【Beyond the fight between states】

 

It is said that the earth has passed about 4.6 billion years since it was born, and that its longevity after this is less than five billion years. On the other hand, it is said that the human race evolved from the monkey about four million years ago. Homo sapiens who is said to be our ancestor was born only 200,000 years ago. It is about 4,000 years ago that the ancient civilization prospered in Indus Valley. From about 3,000 years ago, their descendants went down to South India, and began to hand down the teachings of Veda. However, it is only about 200 years ago that our machine civilization after the Industrial Revolution appeared in full scale. These 200 years are only about three generations of the life of each, us.

For these 200 years, how have we been able to make use of wisdom which has been built for several thousand years of the human race? Will we face a situation that we cannot master this wisdom and that we go to the extinction before 1000 years passes from now on? Or will we continue living till the earth becomes extinct? It is 5.0 billion years more. What an extraordinary number! And will human beings extend a sphere of human habitation to the universe by the technical power, even if they cannot live in the earth anymore before it becomes extinct?

In the cosmic space, it will become urgent problem about what an original life scale for human beings is. Just because we have been protected definitely by the earth and have lived, we exactly have not seriously worried that we expanded the social scale and made it overcrowded rapidly.

However, the present earth is not in such a leisurely situation any longer. Children! Also in order to save this earth and to save human beings, let’s consider the human society in the future with us together. We must stop the repetition of the ridiculous acts between the states. For instance, some of the states have the nucleus each other and have increased a lot of victims by endless fight. Such acts are ridiculous. Let’s cool the head for a while and consider a better thing together. (Note19)

 

 

 

１０　Spring in Tara

 

It has become the last chapter at last. I had a dream after a long absence recently. I am wandering alone at a place like some far-off Asia. I arrive at the place such as a certain lively market by bus or something. The front of a dusty road is uphill a little. On the left side, the awful huge white wall towers. The extraordinary height of the wall is impressive as if it reached even the heaven. On the right side, a market like in Vietnam or Indonesia is crowded. Now, what should I do? I feel that someone is grinning at me who cannot shift to the next action. But, there is a solemn atmosphere as if the opportunity has ripened.

 

  However, in the real life, I can do nothing special. I visit Tara two or three times a month as usual and spend the day relaxing. Especially in spring, haze drifts to the mountain side. Flowers of plum trees, Japanese radish and Chinese milk vetch bloom around Tara. Trees such as Cinnamomum, Castanopsis and Tara (a Japanese angelica tree) send out buds before long, and in early summer, sweet mulberries become ripe.

  I have a lot of work to do while being absentminded. The hinge of a heavy door at the entrance has broken down. The balcony starts collapsing. If the log of the front damaged by the ant which consumes a tree isn’t treated early, Tara itself seems to incline.

What with one thing and another, Tara and I have lived full of patchy handling. Also my own words are surely full of patches. Therefore, I may have lived postponing what I should have really done. I also have passed 60 years old. How many years more can I live? Another 20 years? How short the life is! How merciless time is! Still, something hurries me saying that I should live firmly at the time which still remains for me.

 

Asia which I saw in the dream leads me to the noise of the town in India which I visited two years ago. One was an event in Kolkata. At the entrance of a subway, I repeated an empty question and answer with a police officer who doubted of me. After he released me, I went down underground and got on a packed train. A young man who was sitting down two or three meters far from me in the train stood up suddenly, pushed aside the crowd, and yielded me the seat. He was standing in the place distant from me through to the terminal. I thanked him at the terminal. However, he went away laughing including a slight shame. Would he have felt compassion for the traveler of the foreign country who was exhausted and was wandering?

And, the other was the event with a driver of auto-rickshaw whom I met in Delhi. Most of students whom I met on the street in India said that Gandhi’s idea such as sticking to nonviolence and the handwork tradition was nonsense. As if it united with such voice, India is advancing rapidly economically. In such Delhi, driving auto-rickshaw, the driver showed me a memorial sculpture which was erected on the road and said, “That is Gandhi!” And when I said to him that Gandhi was great, he looked back toward me and nodded indeed solemnly. Like the smile of the young man of Kolkata, I thought that the impressive facial expression of this aged driver was a small revelation presented to me who was wandering about India. I became glad only by that thought while wandering in the city filled with noise and smog.

 

When I went back to my country, I sent a letter to Mr. Ohno who was a Japanese scholar of national language. I told him the following things by the letter. One is that I was mistaken for Tamils in South India. The other is that the archaeologist of the Chennai government office said to me that it remained in record that Dr. Ohno had visited the stone circle of South India to compare the culture of ancient Japan with that of South India about twenty years ago, and so on. Mr. Ohno was very pleased to read that. He said to me by telephone, “South India is different. In all Indian areas, South India is special.” And he taught me various reference books too. (Note 20) I said to him, “Please take care. Keep working well.” He answered, “Although I have already been this old, you still have a bright future.” Those words of a teacher who had learned Tamil for the first time after he had become 60 years old returned to me. However, the teacher also passed away at the age of 88 last year.

 

What would I be able to do in the short remaining life given to me? I have no self-conceit that I can do something special. I cannot do a great thing. However, if there is something which I can do and which I should share to everyone together, I would like to tell it to people even if it is small.

“I cannot do a great thing , but can do an only thing given to me.” I feel like the life which was left for one human being is being gathered in such a place. Freedom may be such a thing surely. A person cannot do all kind of things by oneself, but he or she can do only this. I think that finally a human being’s life will reach to such point.

 

Veda teaches,

“A person wanting to get the great world should always get to know. The day is his own aspect. That is, the whole world is also his own aspect. All roots, all bodies get old. Only the will doesn’t get old. It is always quick like a vigorous person.” (Note 21)

 

It will be such thing. Spring comes, summer passes and autumn comes. And when winter comes, we will wait for spring again. We come back in soil sometime by such a repetition. Tara also comes back in soil sometime. The bud of a Tara, Japanese angelica tree, comes out from the ground again. Spring comes, summer passes, little birds fly between trees, and life revives again at the place where here we have lived.

 

                                                                                          (March 25th in 2009)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                                      To the head

 

                                                                                                                                                      To the head