Alicia Bay Laurel and Takuji - "Imagine" and "Give Peace a Chance" at Hiroshima Nagarekawa Church, which stands on what was ground zero

Our friends, Alicia Bay Laurel and Takuji, performing "Imagine" and "Give Peace a Chance" in Hiroshima 08/08/2015. Author/artist/vocalist/songwriter Alicia Bay Laurel and jazz multi-instrumentalist Takuji perform John Lennon's anti-war classics "Imagine" and "Give Peace a Chance" at a peace concert that was part of the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, August 8, 2015, at Hiroshima Nagarekawa Church, which stands on what was ground zero in Hiroshima.

Keibo Oiwa addresses the psychological roots of world crisis in Nuclear Zen

In Berlin-based filmmaker Michael Saup's short documentary, Nuclear Zen, anthropologist, environmental activist (and contributor to Kyoto Journal) Keibo Oiwa, shares his holistic take on creating a life-sustaining Japan and world. His views echo those of many eco-activists, especially Sacred Stone, Okinawan and other indigenous water, rainforest, earth protectors:

Thank you is a recognition of the reality. We are living here. We are using [nuclear [and fossil]] electricity...We created the social system -- media, education, politics -- on top of the same system. We have to admit it. Yes, this is where we are. And we have to embrace it, whether it's ugly or not. This is us. And only after that, we can say what we want to do. But the problem is, many people refuse to recognize this reality.

Albert Einstein said you cannot solve the problem within the same mindset that created the problem in the first place. But that is exactly what we've been doing. As environmental activist, I've been fighting, in the movements against environmental destruction, pollution, climate change, nuclear power. And all these problems are too serious. We cannot solve any of these problems easily. Many people say it's too late. But I think it's very important that all these problems have the same root, not just environmental issues, but psychological problems.

What do we do with the very unhappy society we've created. you know, education, family situation, families are collapsing. We pit all the children against each other; they're supposed to be be competing and fighting against each other, forever. I think the roots are all entangled and maybe the same one. So what we have to do, is recognize the root. This is a great opportunity. This crisis is an opportunity...to understand this mindset, not just a society, but ourselves, our mindset...

The musician Ryuichi Sakamoto...said, "We are risking our lives, not only human lives, for the sake of what? Just electricity?"

But this is a mindset we have been captured in...

For what? Is it worth risking our lives, our future, our children's future?

The objective of this system is to make more, consume more, discard more. It's eternal growth: mass production, mass consumption, mass discarding. When you look around, this whole system is made up of excess. So I think excess is the nature of the present time. More. Bigger. Faster...This is a religion of efficiency.

...After March 11, we realized how hollow our democracy had become. Democracy had become a treasure box we were carrying but then after March 11, we opened it, after many years. It was empty. We have to rebuild democracy from scratch.

When you look at politics, at media, the situation seems so pessimistic. But at the same time, I witness so many good signs and I can see very clearly that what's happening in Japan all over the place has a strong resonance with what's happening outside of Japan; In Europe, in Africa, Latin America, everywhere, similar things are happening. They're coming out of the mindset that my generation is still trying to cling to. Young people are saying, 'Just forget it. They are not attracted anymore. They're not deceived. More and more, I can feel good things are happening...

The rest of the story we have to create...

Mayumi Oda: On Energy of Change, Feminization, and New Birth of Japan

"Earth Ship" by Mayumi Oda  (Image: Safe Energy Handbook) 

Longtime nuclear-free activist and visual artist Mayumi Oda shared her wisdom in "On Energy of Change, Feminization, and New Birth of Japan," a 2012 interview with Alice Miyagawa published at Kyoto Journal.  A few excerpts: 

You were interviewed previously for Kyoto Journal following the Tokaimura nuclear accident in the summer of 1999, when you lived in California. You said that you had come to Japan to help empower people, especially women, in response to the government’s negligence in handling the issue. Then, at the turn of the millennium, you moved from California to Hawai’i. That seems to have marked a turning point in your life...

Until 1999 I had really tried to focus my work to let people know the dangers of having nuclear [power plants] on earthquake faults. I couldn’t convince them. I already saw the possibilities of disaster. I thought it would be in Tokai, or Hamaoka, near Tokyo. I was terribly, terribly worried. I had worked nearly nine years in the antinuclear movement. I was very discouraged that Japan was not really responding to the danger.

 I was just very tired, and I felt like I had to rebuild a new life. So I chose Hawai’i to do sustainable living, making a farm, to show people that there’s another way to live. I felt like somebody had to be doing this — not just thinking about the possibility, but practicing it. Hawai’i taught me to live with aloha, within an island. In 2000 I bought the farm [Ginger Hill Farm and Retreat, in Kealakekua, meaning the Path of God], and for eleven years I have worked on it. I have probably educated about two hundred young people, just to live hopefully sustainably through farming, through eating the right things, making medicines, cleansing, healing oneself with herbs and the things that we grow.

I just finished painting a six-panel screen of mostly women marching towards Amaterasu the Sun Goddess — I painted about forty women, with a few men. They are all practitioners of my Goddess Academy, marching from the life they lived, to a more nature-based life, symbolized by Amaterasu — marching from an oil-based economy towards a solar-based economy...

...I painted a Sotatsu screen of the Gods of Wind and Thunder turned into females to bring more of the feminine into culture, especially Japanese culture, which really needs more feminine. Traditional culture has it, but somehow this modern culture in Japan became so Westernized that we gave up a lot of that stuff.

... I felt almost like the women in Fukushima all feel, and so it’s a lot of force and a strength — I felt that these Goddesses can somehow break through something that we are so up against. That’s how I painted those two Goddesses, to bring an energy of change that our country needs at this moment...

These are all yamato-e style paintings, the tradition is extremely old-fashioned. It’s been going on 1,300 years in Nara so I kept that tradition...So I decided that I will focus on this old beautiful tradition that our ancestors used, and with that how can I express who we are now in this time.

In 1993 I did some hand-scrolls called Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty [for] a story that was written by Anne Herbert and Margaret Pavel, right after I became an anti-nuclear activist, so my message was very anti-nuclear, anti-war and anti-violence, and how to live with the peace of others in the land. That was the story behind it. Now it’s a nine-meter scroll.

...So I did this work for the younger generations that we just deprived because of our own luxury, our own wantings, our own electricity, our rich food, we really just left such a legacy to these young people. It feels to me this is an apology — I’m sorry that we did so badly. I’m dedicating this to the younger generations. When I think about it, it just makes me so sad. Our generation was so bad, especially men in my generation, [they] could not think about anybody — they were so caught up in the Japanese becoming so wealthy, so luxurious, they were just awful, awful, so wrong...

...The people who can really make a choice will win, get out and start a new life somewhere in the country, or in other cities. Especially if they have parents in the countryside, they should go back, and start a new life...

Kyoto: The Forest Within the Gate - A transcendent journey in poems and photographs to Japan's ancient capital

A few years ago, when I received the chapbook incarnation of Edith Schiffert's and John Einarsen's Kyoto: The Forest Within the Gate, I felt like I had been surprised by a dream of the ancient capital in the mail.  A new incarnation of this luminous book has been launched; with an IndieGoGo campaign to finance publishing costs. They are asking Kyoto lovers to help support and be a part of this beautiful project (JD):

                                                  Resting on the earth

                                                  who needs satori or faith?

                                                  Embrace what holds you!


Imagine a book enfolding some of the best expat poetry and photography of the 1200-year-old city of Kyoto, cultural and spiritual heart of Japan. For five decades Edith Shiffert, now age 97, has written haiku and poems inspired by the ancient capital. John Einarsen has been making striking yet serene photographs of Kyoto for more than three decades.

Now Edith and John share their vision and love of this magical city with the book Kyoto: The Forest Within the Gate (144 pp, more than 100 duotone photographs and 30 poems). In addition, three renowned writers on Japanese culture, Marc P. Keane, Diane Durston and Takeda Yoshifumi, have contributed illuminating essays. Rona Conti's calligraphy is yet another treat for the eyes.

We plan to publish an edition of this singular book. Its design is complete to the last detail, but for this first edition to go to print we need your help.

Take this transcendent journey to Kyoto by contributing today. All donations are warmly appreciated. Those giving $60 or more will receive a signed edition of this remarkable book.

Ragukaki: Contemporary Music for Koto & Shakuhachi - "dedicated to the pursuit of Beauty and Life on this planet"

This gorgeous collection "dedicated to the pursuit of Beauty and Life on this planet" by Kim Oswalt and Helen Dryz is available for online listening.

Includes "Gymnopédies" by late 19th-century French composer Erik Satie, two compositions by the late Katsutoshi Nagasawa, and three compositions by the late Minoru Miki, who believed music can serve as an elevating and bridging force for humanity:

In a world powered by military muscle and crass materialism, music and the fine arts may seem weak and ineffectual, but they provide a way to raise consciousness and reverse the march toward increasing violence and intolerance.

"With music," Miki said, "we hope to lead the way in place of leaders who cannot be trusted."

Artists bring message of harmony, spirit of earlier era to Tokyo event

Alicia Bay Laurel performs "Rinpoche", a song that she wrote for Tibetan Buddhist master Kyabje Dorje Chang Kalu Rinpoche, which includes an enlightenment mantra, at his request

This past Sunday, in a home that doubles as a café and event space overlooking the stunning vistas of the Hachioji Basin in western Tokyo, one might have thought they had traveled back in time.

Accompanied to the backdrop of a flashing multi-colored light show, artist and author Alicia Bay Laurel—whose 1970 best-seller “Living On the Earth” has inspired generations of hippies and permaculturists across the planet—strummed her acoustic guitar and told fascinating stories of her life as a traveling artist.

“Over and over again, I watched people come to Hawaii and heal their bodies and spirits simply by absorbing the energy from the sun and the ocean,” she said, speaking of Maui island, her home for some 25 years. Her stay there served as the inspiration for her second book, “Being of the Sun”—described by Amazon as a “cult classic among nature-worshippers to this day”.

Laurel has earned a devoted following in Japan, where she has traveled nearly every year since 2006 to play music, sign individual copies of her books and CDs in her trademark flowing script, and collaborate with numerous artists, musicians and designers. She illustrated a book for bestselling author Banana Yoshimoto in 2010, and her works have helped raise funds for environmental nonprofit Artist Power Bank, as well as its sister project Kurkku, a complex of environmentally sustainable businesses. Her designs also helped raise funds for survivors following the 2011 disaster in Tohoku.

This past Sunday’s event, held at the aptly named Holistic Earth Café, indeed featured a distinctly Beatnik vibe. Guests were invited to try on and purchase hemp-based clothing, and the lineup of kitchen offerings even included fresh hemp pasta. “I could easily imagine myself in northern California in the 1960s, but here we are in present-day Tokyo,” Laurel commented. “The popularity of Living On the Earth never diminished in Japan, in large part because of the absolutely phenomenal community of people here who are committed to the ideas represented in the book.”

Event attendee, who told Laurel that he and his wife utilized the advice from her book to home-birth all three of their children

Laurel was joined by actress-turned-environmentalist Ikue Masudo (who was also a featured speaker at Harukaze 2010, a peace and sustainability event held in Tokyo). Masudo left the metropolitan capital several years ago to build an organic café and event space along the gorgeous shores of the Boso peninsula in Chiba prefecture, later going on to the island of Ishigaki in Okinawa, where she is now in the midst of creating a retreat and healing center. “My hope is that more and more people will become connected with the natural world, which will have positive repercussions for society on the whole,” she said, sharing her own personal story of becoming deeply inspired to change her life after filming television documentaries that featured swimming with dolphins in Hawaii and aboriginal communities in Australia.

Ikue Masudo

Sunday’s event, while unmistakably holding a vision for a better world, was most certainly not exclusively idealistic. Kathie Inoue, vocalist and ukulele player for the Hawaiian/reggae band Inoue Ohana, utilized the time in-between the band’s upbeat set to urge attendees to take action by adding their voices to citizen movements to end nuclear power and advocate alternative energies—including a recent worldwide petition urging Japan not to restart its nuclear reactors.

“There are many tools, including social networking sites like Facebook, that we can use to share information with each other and encourage positive social change,” she said, also echoing Laurel and Masuda with her message of simple living.

Kathie and Keni Inoue performing a chilled-out acoustic version of their song "Touch the Sun"

Alicia Bay Laurel and the full Inoue Ohana band play Yokohama Thumbs Up on June 21^st, and Kunitachi Chikyuya on June 22^nd. Laurel’s complete Japan tour schedule may be found on her website. In addition, this article provides a lovely introduction to her work and her long-standing connection with Japan.

--Kimberly Hughes

Adrienne Rich: "Poetry can...remind us of kinship where all is represented as separation."

We may feel bitterly how little our poems can do in the face of seemingly out-of-control technological power and seemingly limitless corporate greed, yet it has always been true that poetry can break isolation, show us to ourselves when we are outlawed or made invisible, remind us of beauty where no beauty seems possible, remind us of kinship where all is represented as separation.

- Adrienne Rich

"The history we carry is not just our own...what worries us is all ours...as the soul's call to human compassion."

After certain events, then—including The Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011— a new energy from the universe churns what is collective into what is individual to produce the mix Jung called “collective unconscious” which we all share.

The history we carry is not just our own. What worries and gnaws at us, like a dog a bone, is all of ours, as shown by the soul’s call to human compassion.

- Alan Botsford, freedom in harmony

Robert Thurman @ Occupy Wall Steet: "This planet is in jeopardy because of the military-industrial machine that is beyond East & West."

Via filmmaker Velcrow Ripper, chronicler of nonviolent faith-based social movements, at his latest blog—Occupy Love: Robert Thurman, engaged Buddhist scholar and friend of the Dalai Lama, calling for a "cool revolution", compassion, meditation (to create psychological strength & focus) to challenge the organized greed and high-tech violence of the less than 1%.)

Robert Thurman shares wisdom at Occupy Wall Street: "We need a cool revolution!":

By "cool" I mean...without getting angry, without indulging in hatred...

Here we are at Liberty Plaza and we're trying to keep liberty keep growing on this planet. Actually this planet is in dire jeopardy because of the military-industrial machine that is beyond East and West.

The industrial part has to do with organized greed. It combines individuals' limitless greed with high-tech power and it's transcending the capacity of the planet. Pollution, global warming, over-population all comes from this technological expansion of greed.

On the other side you have hatred which necessarily goes along with greed because a greedy person hates the other greedy person whom he feels is trying to take away whatever he wants.

So we need to control both of these problems. Therefore, in order to do this, every person has to control the inside of their own mind.

No one should be protesting the nasty bankers if they truly hate them. They are not worthy of being hated. They are just like us. They are just luckier at the moment and unluckier in the long run because they are taking away too much from too many. This makes them paranoid. They never can have any fun because they think we're going to pick their pockets. And one billion is not enough. Even ten...twenty...one hundred billion...By that time, they're reduced to a pile of shivering paranoia...Therefore we have to be sympathetic to them. We don't hate them. We feel sorry for them...

However the corporatocracy has taken over the mass media and the electoral process and so they are defeating your will. Every poll says 70% of us wants social security without problems; want a single-payer medical system; want to have bankers and insurers know they work for us. They are service industries: they serve us, we don't serve them.

The corporatocracy are a bunch of wimpy guys with a couple of token girls who don't actually know how to make anything. But they know how to sign checks and push papers which my pathetic university taught them, without properly teaching them ethics...But one thing they're good at is not wanting to pay people to make things. An honest wage, a decent job. So they support dictatorships like China to keep slaves on tap for them for a dollar a day so they can bust the unions here and export all our jobs and even get tax breaks for it. This has to stop.

You have to vote the congresspeople who are corrupt out of office so that 70% of the wishes of the American people will be honored by them. They should serve their constituents and not their [campaign] contributors like the people up there in those buildings [pointing at Wall Street buildings], who are the 1% or less...

Don't be brainwashed by political propaganda like Fox News...who lull us into complacence, which now you all are not doing...

Let's all meditate everyday. But not just "Duh...I didn't think anything. Oh that felt so good, I didn't think anything." That can be nice, like Prozac or something...But it can be a little addictive. It doesn't really bring you insight.

And, indulge your compassion. Indulge your intelligence: what you really need. So when you meditate, think about compassion. Here we are free to take our time, envisioning a happier world...a world with gross national happiness...

Erric Solomon posted the entire talk (with good sound) at whatmeditationreallyis.com. Solomon also posted on the group of about 100 meditators at Occupy, with a link to organizer Anthony Whitehurst.

Filmmaker Velcrow Ripper spotlights compassionate activists & sources of hope in the "context of a global crisis, which I think is undeniable"

Velcrow Ripper's 2009 documentary film Fierce Light: Where Spirit Meets Action begins with the Canadian director sharing his personal story about the assassination of his friend, journalist Brad Will, killed by paramilitary gunmen in Oaxaca, Mexico, while filming a strike. Ripper then asks, "Why do I keep working to change the world when we're up against impossible odds and how can I even think about spirituality when they're killing my friends?"

He answers this question by following several other stories showing how grassroots activists have responded to the devastation of the Vietnam war; class and race-based oppression; commercial destruction of an urban community garden in Los Angeles; and commercial destruction of an ancient old-growth forest.

Compassionate activists featured: American civil rights activist John Lewis, Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, Archibishop Desmond Tutu, environmentalists Daryl Hannah, Julia Butterfly Hill, Van Jones, and Joanna Macy.

In this interview excerpt, the filmmaker describes the film's purpose:

I would say that one of the things that the film tries to do is offer us a source of hope. And all my films now are in the context of a global crisis, which I think is undeniable.

One of the roles of this compassionate activism or this shift in the way we create change is also to give us strategies for maintaining hope in the face of crisis. In fact that's what Scared Sacred was all about. In that film I went to the ground zeros of the world, the place where you'd least expect to find hope, searching for it, because I actually think that the worst thing that could happen right now is that humanity gives up. You've seen it in some tribes in the Amazon where their numbers have been reduced, their land has disappeared and they just stop procreating. Turning crisis into compassion is really the root of it....

The other big focus of this compassionate activism that Fierce Light focuses on is a shift in activism to focusing more on what we're for than just on what we're against. So it's solution based. So much of what's happening, and so much of the way change happens in the world today is through the media. We live in a mediated culture and wars are fought as much in the public arena as they are on the battleground...The message of Gandhi and the message of Martin Luther King was that the most effective tool you have is your ethical integrity. And when you react with violence, you've lost that in the public eyes...

And for me, I see spirituality as coming from a depth perspective. More than anything, what the film comes back to is the idea of what Archbishop Desmond Tutu calls 'ubuntu', and in Buddhism what they refer to as ‘inter-being'. And so, almost a definition of spirituality for me is that we are all interconnected. That in turn is also reflected in science in systems theory.

I hope to help and be part of the movement that I think is the biggest project that's taking place on the planet right now: the movement from an industrial growth society — a life-destroying society — to a sustainable society, sustainable on multiple levels. A society of mutually enhancing relationships between each other and the planet, which I think is where we're going.

That's the next step in our evolution is to get to that. Moving from the egocentric point of view to the world-centric point of view. And that's my activism.

I consider myself a media activist and that's the root of where I'm pointing people. I guess many, many people are working on this project but it's a shift we need to make right now. And it's why it's an exciting time to be alive because the stakes are really, really high and we get to choose to be part of the solution if we so desire.

I'm hopeful. I'm very hopeful. I think we are waking up. Change is happening really fast. There are two graphs: there's the graph of destruction and there is the graph of transformation. It's anybody's guess which one is going to peak out first but I choose hope.

Read the entire interview at Cinema Spy.

John Einarsen: In the Realm of the Bicycle

John Einarsen says this about his new book of photographs:

Each encounter I had with a member of this vast race revealed an individual with a personality all its own, the result of a history at once common and mysterious. Inevitably, I came to see them as they really were: creatures who populated the niches and nooks and corners and alleys of neighborhoods and streets and lives....

Most of the images in the book were taken in Kyoto over the years.

Cycle Kyoto adds this note:

Each photo in In the Realm of the Bicycle is a haiku, a brief fleeting moment that contains a larger truth.

To view a sample some of the pages, go to: blurb.com.

John Einarsen is the founding editor & art director of Kyoto Journal, an iconic English-language quarterly that emerged from Kyoto during the 1980's, about to embark a new incarnation online.

The cover is by Tiery Le.

Kai Keane's Heart Sutra

Fucha cuisine: Zen Buddhist tradition offers lessons in nonviolent simplicity through food

Periods of war and political turmoil in ancient and medieval China and Japan were also times of deep cultural development, including cuisine. Not only as a means of sustenance or expression, but also as a form of personal renewal.

Great inspiration may be found in small, everyday examples of positive human connection.

Bon, a charming restaurant in Tokyo’s shitamachi (old downtown) district features fucha ryouri (fucha cuisine). Their English-language menu describes the tradition best:

Fucha ryouri is a distinctive tradition within shojin ryouri, the vegetarian cuisine of Zen Buddhist monks in China and Japan. About 300 years ago, it was introduced to Japan by cooks who came from China with the monk Ingen, the founder of the Chinese style temple Mapukuji, at Uji near Kyoto. This was the first temple of the Obakushu Zen sect in Japan, and since its establishment, the authentic tradition of Fucha has been handed down by devotees of the sect.

The two characters used to write “fucha” mean “drinking tea together with all people”, but the word is also used to mean a meal eaten in Chinese style (each dish is served from a single large bowl) which begins and ends with tea, aiming to create friendship and peace among those eating together.

At Bon, we have tried to develop a style of Fucha ryouri which, while suggesting aspects of Zen, the basis of this tradition also provides for the tastes of the general public. In particular, we aim to provide the fine dishes from the best obtainable seasonal ingredients.

The name of our restaurant, Bon, means “Buddhist believer” and was chosen as a sign of our respect for the origins of Fucha as a way of Buddhist practice.

Entering the restaurant and absorbing its deep, still sense of calm, I found myself strongly wishing that the military powers of subsequent centuries—the present-day United States in particular—would draw lessons from its peaceful simplicity and example for positive cultural exchange.


First course, served with a tea of orchid flowers in plum vinegar (left) Shun kan, described by the menu as a decorative presentation of cooked seasonal vegetables (above)

Lovely descriptions of additional aspects of fucha’s origins may be read here via Akasa Media, and an earlier Ten Thousand Things post by Jean Downey. The New York Times also ran a review of Bon almost 25 years ago, available in its archives here.



Un pen, a rich 17th century Chinese soup traditionally made with leftovers and eaten in a spirit of gratitude for the vegetable bounty (left)

Yu ji, mixed tempura in a classical basket, and plum wine (above)

Is it me, or does this piece of tempura resemble the number 9? Perhaps a deliberate statement of peace for Japan’s Constitutional Article 9?




--Text and photos posted by Kimberly Hughes

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire: "Around the world there are billions of people who say, 'WE WANT PEACE!'"

This partial transcript of a  2008 talk by Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire (with the thousands of people outside the May 4-5, 2008 "Global Article 9 Conference for the Abolition of War" who were unable to join the 30,000 already inside of the conference hall)—reminds us of the vast support in Japan for its Peace Constitution.

"Everyone, I am very happy to be here with you all.

"The Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution — we have to all get together to protect this. It's important for the whole world today.

"Article 9 says very clearly, 'We want no war, no nuclear weapons.'

"Yes, we have hurt each other in the past. But we can reconcile and we can solve our problems by talking to the other.

"I am not surprised that today everyone couldn't get into the conference hall and that the place is overflowing with people, because around our world, there are billions of people who are saying, 'We want peace!"

"There are people who will try to make us afraid of each other. They will try to say we are different. We say, 'We are not afraid. We are the human family. Yes, we have differences, but we are all human beings. We want to act in a dignified, civilized way by refusing to kill each other...

"Forgiveness is so important. We have all hurt the Other. We have all been hurt. But we must forgive one another.

"Here in Japan, you have hurt through your wars of aggression many people, in Korea and China. Please remember to say you're sorry and ask their forgiveness. Only when you forgive can you find genuine happiness in yourself and can you find real peace."

"By upholding your Article 9, and reaching out your hand to your Korean, your Chinese, your Russian, your immediate neighbors and friends, you will serving peace in Japan, and setting an example to the world.

"You need to say to the American government, their occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and their setting aside of the United Nations human rights and international law is not acceptable to the human family.

"You need to say to our friends in the Israeli government, lead the movement in the Middle East for a nuclear-free Middle East and end the occupation of Palestine where the people are suffering so much."

"We need our American friends – we need our Israeli friends – to adopt the Charter for a World Without Violence and Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution."

(Originally posted at the Kyoto Journal website on May 20, 2008)

"If we look deeply into the weapons, we see our own minds--our prejudices, fears, and ignorance."

If we look deeply into the weapons, we see our own minds — our prejudices, fears, and ignorance.

Even if we transported all the bombs to the moon, the roots of war and the reasons for bombs would still be here, in our hearts and minds, and sooner or later we would make new bombs.

Seek to become more aware of what causes anger and separation, and what overcomes them.

Root out the violence in your life, and learn to live compassionately and mindfully.

Seek peace. When you have peace within, real peace with others will be possible.

--Thich Nhat Hanh

Kai Keane's Heart Sutra

Shodo Harada Roshi: Rooting out the Egoistic Sources of Societal Dysfunction & Tapping into Liberated, Universal Mind

Martin Frid has posted an illuminating clip at Kurashi: "Zen: Shodo Harada Roshi in America" in which the Zen Buddhist master tells us that the outer problems of the world mirror the toxicity of the individual minds that make up our world's societies.

Martin said that the roshi "has a website in English, mostly translated by Priscilla Storandt, an American Zen Buddhist priest who also studied with Mumon roshi, the teacher of Harada. Mumon roshi was an interesting character and led Hanazono University for a while in Kyoto, as well as being head abbot at Myoshinji, and other temples too before that. In addition he also travelled in East Asia, meeting Buddhists and people from all faiths helping to heal wounds from the Japanese Imperial era and Pacific War atrocities."

In his lecture, Shodo Harada concludes that the only way out is for individuals to purify themselves of their narrow egos and tap into a liberated mindset that sees the interconnections between every person with each other, our planet, and the universe:

This is something that everyone understands very easily. Everyone is capable of sensing the situation in the world today. There's no one who cannot sense that very deep despair that everyone feels.

But it's not a question of only fixing what is external. It's a question of also going within and taking care of the egoistic source of these external problems.

Today there are a lot of things that are being taken care of on the outside. There's a lot of healthy food being eaten. There's a lot of care to preserve our health. There's beginning to be care to preserve our planet. People are coming to consciousness that is needed to address these external social problems.

And that's good. But even if those go to greater lengths that we're going to now, if we don't take care of the problems that's within ourselves, it's not going to work. No matter how much external work is done, if what's happening inside is not being repaired, it's not going to help. It's not going to help the inner problem. The inner problem is something each person has to do for themselves...

...When we feel we are too self-aware and self-conscious and living on our own small energy instead of a greater, larger picture, we don't know what to do about that...

...And for that reason, we have za-zen, we have this practice that is designed to dig in and dig out that ego, to find that place where it isn't happening, to get rid of that filter, to cut away, shave away, dig into the deepest possible roots and find that place where the water of clear mind is flowing freely...and return to that base where that huge, clear, liberated mind comes from...

...And when we do that, when we return to this place where we can feel our center free from having to be told what to do by that ego, free from having to be controlled by that ego, then we can take that mind back out into our life, into the outside world and we can start dealing with the external problems from the inside out, rather than the outside in.

And that's the only way we are really going to be able to get rid of this egoistic heaviness in the world...

"It's You" - a poem by Misato Hamamura

The following poem was written by Misato Hamamura, a freshman in Tokyo Keizai University's 21st Century Liberal Education Program who is in my English Presentation course. She was inspired to write this piece after visiting Nepal as part of her university’s off-campus international program this summer.

While stark in imagery, her poem gives great hope regarding the power of individuals to reach into their own hearts and create a better world. She presented the poem in class earlier this month, which happened to be her 19th birthday.

It’s You

Humans are ugly.
Money, cheating, lying, greed, absolute power, violence…
Too many weaknesses.
Humans are ugly.

The earth is a factory.
This factory manufactures a great number of guns.
He pointed his gun at me.
She pointed her gun at me.
Someone cried, “Call the police!”
Someone said, “This is like a play with really great dialogue.”
Someone cried, “KILL!”

No one was putting their theories into action.

Humans are beautiful.
Hope, dreams, fathers, mothers, love, peace…
A lot of children.
A lot of smiles.
Humans are beautiful.

The earth is a factory.
This factory manufactures a great number of futures.
Someone said, “This is the birthday of our good fortune.”
Someone said, “Stars are twinkling in the sky.”
Someone cried, “Happiness!”

My hope is humans.
My hope is tomorrow.
My hope is children.

My hope is you.
It’s you.
Following the reading of her poem, Misato facilitated an engaged discussion among class members on the connections between materialism and a loss of soul, and how people in Japan might learn from those in more spiritual-based countries such as Nepal.

Misato (who is pictured below to the far right, at a World March for Peace and Nonviolence event recently held in Tokyo) is presently studying how the issue of poverty serves as the underlying cause of other social problems. She would like to visit the United States, where she hopes to see anti-poverty initiatives in action. She is also studying Korean, and plans to visit Korea in order to promote positive ties between Korean and Japanese youth.

She is one hope-inspiring example of the many young people around the world who are engaged in positive social change, and her poem is a thoughtful call to action for each one of us.- Kimberly Hughes

Secret Lantern Society Winter Solstice Lantern Festival tonight in Vancouver

Vancouver's Secret Lantern Society's annual Winter Solstice Lantern Festival has to be the most beautiful, inclusive communal solstice celebration in the world:

One festival, five neighbourhoods

The dance of the sun and earth has inspired celebrations of the human spirit, expressed through art and music, throughout the ages. Honouring many cultural traditions, the annual Winter Solstice Lantern Festival illuminates the longest night of the year with lanterns, fire, singing, drumming, music, and dancing.

On December 21st come celebrate the return of the sun with a glowing constellation of lanterns shining in five Vancouver neighbourhoods. These five little festivals are community-based and reflect the unique nature of each neighbourhood. Intimate and accessible, each invites participation and each holds special attractions.

People carry colorful, handmade lanterns visible across Falls Creek from different venues--including Dr. Sun Yat Sen Classical Chinese Gardens (perfect yin & yang)--to the rhythms of street bands. Honoring Vancouver's multicultural heritage, performers and musicians of First Nations, Chinese, Persian, Ukrainian, Japanese, African, English, African, and Muslim heritage entertain solstice-goers.

Combined with its attunement to the natural rhythm of the seasons--the celebration of the return of the sun, the source of light and energy that makes life possible on earth, on the darkest night of the year--and all that amazing creativity, this celebration brings together the manifestation of so much that is beautiful in life. Many Vancouverites work at community and peace building: healing the city's traumatic history that includes the head tax discrimination against Chinese immigrants; the removal and incarceration of Japanese Canadians in the 1940's; redressing Pacific War history; and supporting the Global Article 9 Movement that aims to end ongoing and prevent future war trauma.

(Labyrinth of Light--The labyrinth has long been used for meditation, prayer and sites of ritual in various cultures around the world. The winter solstice labyrinth invites you to warm yourself in a self-guided ceremony intended to help release old attachments and envision new possibilities as the darkest night of the year births a new season. Image: Secret Lantern Society)

Aaron Huey: "The Most Beautiful Thing I've Seen in Kabul"

In "The Most Beautiful Thing I've Seen in Kabul" by American photojournalist Aaron Huey, published in 2008 in the Shambala Sun—with photographs of orphaned boys practicing yoga with a young American woman—reminds us that the innocent are always hurt in war:

In the spring of last year I drove through Kabul, Afghanistan, past rows of mortar-scarred buildings, down the Darulaman Road, a former front line in the mujahedeen war, toward the Allahoddin Orphanage. Next to me in the car was the reason for my journey: a young yoga teacher named Molly Howitt. What Molly showed me that day was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in Afghanistan. From the top tier of a bunk bed, in one of the largest and most corrupt government orphanages in Kabul, I saw a scene through the viewfinder of my camera unlike any other in that war-torn country.

Below me was a floor covered with bodies. Not dead, or dying, or starving, but perfectly at peace, calm, and present. A dozen young boys between the ages of eight and twelve were lying on their backs, arms at their sides, with palms facing upward. Some were smiling; others just lay still, their minds turned inward. Before that day, through that same viewfinder, I had seen a very different set of images.

I lived in Kabul for five months of 2007, photographing the opium and heroin trade, AIDS, prisons, mercenaries, the aftermath of a massacre of civilians by U.S. Marines, a Taliban ambush with a high number of fatalities (which nearly included myself), and several other subjects that involved terrible loss or suffering. In Molly’s yoga class I saw something different. I saw healing, I saw compassion, and I saw hope—hope that is desperately needed in a country that is increasingly unstable and violent...

The country, which has been in a continual state of conflict for twenty-nine years, is still very much at war. And as is always the case in war, women and children bear the greatest burden.

Most of the children in the Allahoddin Orphanage have lost a father or mother to war or illness. When children enter an orphanage in Afghanistan, they find themselves in a world that is cold and violent, neglectful and punishing—a world in which they are used as props to lure in foreign donations, then literally locked up again once the money is guaranteed...

Today, the remnants of Afghanistan’s ancient Buddhist history are almost all gone, but the yoga of compassion can still be found in the shadows of this war-torn country. It survives in a way more powerful than the physical beauty of the grand facades destroyed at Bamiyan, and more valuable than any Buddhist statue destroyed in the Kabul museum. Compassion is alive and well in a cold, crowded, forgotten orphanage in Kabul. It is alive in the hearts and minds of a dozen children who lay still with eyes closed, palms outstretched, and smiles creeping across their faces.

Huey's moving photos and text have been republished at the Utne Reader.

(The name of the NGO working directly with the disadvantaged people of Afghanistan that Molly Howitt was working with is PARSA.)

-JD