The One-Straw Revolution - Multiworld India

no east or west/ Ten infinite directions.” Now, holding the hat in myhands, I asked the youth again where he had come from, and he said thathe was the son of a temple priest in Kanazawa, and since it was justfoolishness to read scriptures to the dead all day, he wanted to become afarmer.There is no east or west. The sun comes up in the east, sets in thewest, but this is merely an astronomical observation. Knowing that youdo not understand either east or west is closer to the truth. The fact is, noone knows where the sun comes from.Among the tens of thousands of scriptures, the one to be mostgrateful for, the one where all the important points are made, is the HeartSutra. According to this sutra, “The Lord Buddha declared, ‘Form isemptiness, emptiness is form. Matter and the spirit are one, but all isvoid. Man is not alive, is not dead, is unborn and undying, without oldage and disease, without increase and without decrease.”’The other day while we were cutting the rice, I said to the youthswho were resting against a big pile of straw, “I was thinking that whenrice is planted in the spring, the seed sends out living shoots, and now, aswe are reaping, it appears to die. The fact that this ritual is repeated yearafter year means that life continues in this field and the yearly death isitself yearly birth. You could say that the rice we are cutting now livescontinuously.”Human beings usually see life and death in a rather short perspective.What meaning can the birth of spring and the death of autumn have forthis grass? People think that life is joy and death is sadness, but the riceseed, lying within the earth and sending out shoots in spring, its leavesand stems withering in the fall, still holds within its tiny core the full joyof life: The joy of life does not depart in death. Death is no more than amomentary passing. Wouldn’t you say161