Life With Warm Harmony
Esho-Funi is a term in Buddhism, which denotes the oneness of life with its environment.
Life within us, both physical and spiritual beings, is inextricably interconnected to the environment, so they are essentially one. So are our mind and expression. What we feel and what we express (or do not express) are mutually influential.
The evidence has been found in scientific field. The unit of neuron called "mirror neuron" that help us empathize. When we watch football, a last penalty kicker is about to make his shot, viewers feel as if they themselves are about to kick the ball, so be often said that as nervous as the kicker. Although it is difficult to measure the nervousness between the kicker and the viewer to check its comparability, it makes sense that we can neurologically communicate without actually doing the same thing. That's involved in how we've grown up. When babies are born, they do not know anything about external world at first place, but their neurons and synapses are being extremely busy to formulate the best connections for survival, it's called Neuron Darwinism, since weak neurological connections be lost, and strong ones remain. Babies imitate adults. They could do it because of mirror neuron. As they perceive adults' movement, their mirror neuron instantly copy the move and connect it to actual action.
"In real world there is no nature versus nurture argument, only an infinitely complex and moment-by-moment interaction between genetic and environmental effects."
"Why, then are narrow genetic assumptions so widely accepted and, in particular, so enthusiastically embraced by the media? The neglect of developmental science is one factor. Our performance for a simple and quickly understood explanation is another, as is our tendency to look for one-to-one causations for almost everything. Life in its wondrous complexity does not conform to such easy reductions." - both from Gabor Mate
Both nature and human are relentless, and inseparable. As the earth polluted, so are humans.
"The lesson he learned on Mount Iwaki was the surprising complexity of nature. It had been a fundamental mistake to simply try and reach a compromise with something so complex. In nature there are neither harmful nor beneficial insects. For that very reason, even the boundary between inanimate and animate is vague. Earth, water, air, sunlight, and wind. Nature is the intermingling of all creatures great and small, from the non-living to bacteria and other minute organisms, insects, weeds, trees and animals. Kimura realized he would have to partner the whole of nature. He concluded that his job was to harmoniously integrate his apple trees into the fabric of the natural ecosystem." - Ishikawa Takuji
Kimura Akinori, a apple farmer in Aomori, Japan, he has succeeded to grow perfectly pesticide-free apples for the first time since the industrial farming had begun (before then pesticides didn't exist). After years of arduous trials, and all ended up errors, he realized his powerlessness and decided to commit suicide, in the Mt Iwaki where he chose to end his life, he found an unbelievable oak. The oak was blossoming in wild, of course with no pesticides, he rushed toward the tree, and discovered the soil of the mountain was completely different from his orchards'. The soil was slightly warm, and no matter how deep he dug, the temperature was the same while the temperature of the soil in Kimura's orchards varied by each ten centimeter. The difference was because of plants, including plants usually regarded as weeds in orchard, insects and microorganism which create whole complexity of the soil with abundant nutrition. The reason why Kimura had been repeatedly failing was because of the soil, he overlooked the most fundamental part of the environment for apples, if the foundations are weak, so are rest of the parts.
Buddhists say there are three pillars (faith, study and action) that are essential to happily live. Lacking any one of them means unbalanced life. In Kimura's case, what he had lacked was probably faith. He habitually studied variety of topics, when he was in his adolescence, he dissembled all machines around, and often get scolded by adults. Beside his bed, there are always books. In terms of action, he apparently has been a hard worker. He had usually spent his time in his orchards from the early morning to late night, he has continued this work years, then what he needed to realize for succeeding to grow apples was naturally faith. I do not have substantial knowledge of any other religion but Buddhism, but I'm sure that many other religion gives direct or indirect answers and hints for us to be aware of invisible circumstances. We need to have faith to believe something invisible, like believing that I will not have heart attack today, some earthquake will not happen, the sun still at the same distance as it has been, and all sorts of things. We need faith, otherwise the life would be miserable with excessive doubt (doubt itself is healthy habit) and anxiety (again just amount of anxiety is fine source of health).
To finish this post, let me quote from the book of miracle apples:
"The same thing happens. And it isn’t just the apple trees. People using pesticides become more vulnerable to disease and insects. They begin to understand less about diseases and insects. All you’ve got to do is spray pesticides, so you don’t need to watch disease and insects properly any more. I include myself now. I explained that the eggs of pests are a camouflage. They’re small, and go the colour of the branches, leaves, or whatever they’re born on. You really can’t see them. But because I had no idea which insects were going to emerge from which eggs, I’d end up taking the eggs of the ladybirds which were next to the pests’ eggs. The eggs of the ladybird are orange, so they’re a little easier to distinguish, but as I was totally absorbed in catching the harmful insects, my sworn enemies, I didn’t even notice myself doing it. Once I looked more calmly at the insects, I eventually learned all sorts of things."
Can't we see something in common between what Kimura says and Mate says?
Reference
In the realm of hungry ghost by Gabor Mate
Akinori Kimura's Miracle Apples by Ishikawa Takuji translated by Ono Yoko
