Thoughts & Reflections |

Tetsunori Koizumi, Director

“Since the time heaven and earth parted, stands in Suruga the divine and lofty peak of Fuji, soaring high into the sky,” goes the opening line of a poem by Yamabe no Akahito (700?-736), which is included in Manyoshu (Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves), compiled in the eighth century during the Nara period. The poem exemplifies the sense of awe and reverence the Japanese have expressed throughout history towards the highest peak in the land. Indeed, Mt. Fuji has been a source of inspiration for generations of poets, including Saigyo (1118-1190), a Buddhist monk known for his waka expressing mujo, or the sense of impermanence, and Basho (1644-1694), the author of The Narrow Road to Oku, known for his haiku of subtle sensibilities. As for works of visual art, many people are now familiar with the striking representations of the beauty and majesty of Mt. Fuji captured in woodblock prints by such masters as Hokusai (c. 1760-1849) and Hiroshige (1797-1858). It comes as no surprise, then, that in 2013, the World Heritage Committee of UNESCO decided to designate Mt. Fuji as a cultural heritage site and register it under the title, “Mt. Fuji: Object of Worship, Wellspring of Art,” in recognition of its enduring role as a source of inspiration for the Japanese. Mt. Fuji continues to stand as the most representative symbol of the Japanese love of nature and aesthetic sensibilities.

Given such background, it was quite a coup on the part of the organizing committee for the Thich Nhat Hanh 2015 Japan Tour to secure a holiday park at the foot of Mt. Fuji as the venue for the May 2-6 retreat during Golden Week, the peak tourist season in Japan. From the ground around the holiday park, participants were able to look up at the divine and lofty peak of Fuji in Kai, present-day Yamanashi Prefecture. The five-day retreat was a highlight event of the Japan Tour, which included a Dharma talk for the general public attended by 1,100 people, a Day of Mindfulness for 270 business people, another Day of Mindfulness for 460 medical professionals, a Wake Up event for 90 young people, and a dialogue between Plum Village monastics and 90 Japanese Buddhist priests, all held in Tokyo. For the members of the organizing committee, it was a culmination of the hard work they had started a year earlier when they decided to take on the challenge of inviting Thay back to Japan, twenty years after his last visit. It was a memorable event for all 480 participants, including 115 participants from abroad representing 18 countries, for we could not imagine a better setting for the retreat themed “Peace Is Every Step.”

One person who was conspicuous by his absence was our beloved teacher, Thay, who was unable to come to Japan because he was recovering from the serious illness he had suffered in 2014. But like the 2009 retreat in Colorado, which Thay could not conduct due to his sudden illness, the 2015 retreat in Yamanashi turned out to be a resounding success, for his monastic and lay disciples from Plum Village and other practice centers did an outstanding job of conveying their master’s teachings to the participants, as evidenced by close to two hundred Japanese participants taking the vow to embark on the Five Mindfulness Trainings at the transmission ceremony held on the final day. As we did walking meditation every morning, we could feel that Thay was walking with us, enjoying a thousand views of Mt. Fuji, as clouds danced around its peak, constantly changing their formations in the crisp May sunlight choreographed by the wind. It was a perfect setting to appreciate “The World We Have,” Thay’s message about the importance of living in harmony with the natural environment. “This experience (of participating in the retreat) was more than fantastic … it was indescribable,” a comment by a couple from the US, sums up the happiness and joy we all shared.

The collective energy of mindfulness generated by the participants is still with us in our daily practice at our respective practice centers and Sangha locations. For most Japanese participants who had no previous exposure to the Buddhist practice in the tradition of Plum Village—including the First Lady of Japan, Akie Abe, who took a day off from her busy schedule to join us on the final day—the retreat was an eye-opening experience. Phrases like “smile at yourself,” “go back to your breathing,” “touching the earth,” and “beginning anew,” which had no meaning to them before, have become words to live by in their daily practice. As one Japanese monk put it, the retreat marked a new beginning for Japanese Buddhism. To be sure, Japan is a Buddhist nation, with eighty-seven million people, close to seventy percent of the population, professing to be Buddhists, and seventy-six thousand temples scattered all over the land, at least one temple per five square kilometers. However, most Japanese who profess to be Buddhists are not practitioners, and most temples that call themselves Buddhist do not serve as venues for Buddhist practice for the ordinary Japanese. Many social commentators, including some Buddhist priests, go as far as using the somewhat derogatory term, “funeral Buddhism,” to describe the reality of Japanese Buddhism today. Offering funeral and memorial services is the major social function most Buddhist temples play, as well as their major source of income.

It is not surprising that those who are concerned about the role of Buddhism in Japanese society, including the members of the organizing committee, should turn to Engaged Buddhism in the tradition of Plum Village as a way to make Buddhism socially relevant and accessible to the ordinary Japanese. “We will pass on the word, among ourselves and to our children and grandchildren, about the high peak of Fuji,” concludes Yamabe no Akahito in his poem quoted at the beginning. This line summarizes the determination shared by the participants in the May retreat almost word for word, except that we could rephrase the last part as “about our experience at the foot of Mt. Fuji.” We are determined to continue our practice wherever we are, making sure to transmit Thay’s message, “One Buddha Is Not Enough,” to our friends at home and abroad and to our children and grandchildren so that they, too, will embrace the practice of mindfulness, smiling at each other and listening deeply to each other.

* Published in The Mindfulness Bell, Issue 71, Winter/Spring 2016.

Tetsunori Koizumi, Director

The conception of the universe, or nature, in the tradition of Eastern thought is that of a self-governing web of relationships whose order comes about not by the transcendent God but by spontaneous cooperation among all things in it. Although not created by God, nature is regarded as divine and sacred and, hence, needs to be revered by humans.

In Hindu thought, especially in the early Vedic period when the universe was seen as being controlled by the devas, divinity was a natural part of this world and was considered to exist in mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, and plants. Natural forces—and natural things, including animals as represented by the sacred cow—were regarded as manifestations of the divine law called rita. In short, nature was sacred in itself. Sacred places—mountains, rivers, and so on—were called tirthas, or “crossings”. These places are still revered today as places where people can cross over from the mundane concerns of life to the transcendent realms of the divine.

The Brahmana period, which saw the rise of the Brahmin class as the mediator between man and nature, and the subsequent Upanishad period brought in a slight variation in the original theme of man-nature continuity in Hindu thought. Man and nature are regarded as one in that the innermost self or soul (Atman) is the same as the universal soul (Brahman), for Brahman is the ultimate reality that underlies all existence and animates all living beings. Spiritual salvation called moksa, or “liberation”, is possible, as is discussed the Upanishads, only when we manage to find unity between Atman and Brahman.

Buddhism inherited the theme of unity of man and nature which Hinduism had developed. As a matter of fact, the Buddha went a step further when he denounced the idea of the individual human being having a distinct and separate self as an illusion: “Thy nature is not constituted by the matter of which the body consists, but by the sankharas, the forms of the body, of sensations, of thoughts. The person is the combination of the sankharas”¹.

Our self, like all other things in nature, is a sankhara, a conditioned entity, which is subject to change as nature itself is in a state of constant change. And in this fundamental sameness of all things in nature lies the root of spirituality in Buddhist thought. The idea that all things in nature are fundamentally the same was of central importance in the formation of the Mahayana tradition. In the Tendai school of Buddhism in Japan, for example, all things in nature were regarded as fundamentally the same because they all possessed Buddha-nature, namely, the spirituality that is needed for enlightenment. And Kukai, the founder of the Shingon school of Buddhism in Japan, was quite explicit in expounding the universality of Buddha-nature. According to his view, even trees and plants are endowed with Buddha-nature because they, along with all other things in nature, are ontologically one with the ultimate reality, which he called the Dharmakaya.²

Lao Tzu, revered as the “old master” in the history of Chinese thought, was quite explicit in his declaration of the sanctity of nature: “For those who would like to take control of the world and act on it—I see that with this they simply will not succeed. The world is a sacred vessel; It is not something that can be acted upon”³.

Nature is sacred, according to Lao Tzu, not because of the presence of a supreme and transcending creator behind it. As a matter of fact, nature, or tzu-jan in Chinese, literally means “spontaneous self-generating process”. Nature is sacred because this spontaneous self-generating process, which Lao Tzu calls Tao, ensures, if not intervened by humans, justice and providence to all things in it.

Of the Taoists, Chuang Tzu is best known for his explicit concern over the issue of the relationship between man and nature. What is important, according to Chuang Tzu, is to recognize the unity of all things: “The universe is the unity of all things. If one recognizes his identity with this unity, then the parts of his body mean no more to him than so much dirt, and death and life, end and beginning, disturb his tranquility no more than the succession of day and night”⁴. How do we go about realizing this unity for ourselves? Chuang-tzu’s advice for us is to completely immerse ourselves in this “spontaneous self-generating process”. In calling us to go “back to nature”, Chuang Tzu reminds us of Rousseau who would make a similar call in eighteenth-century Europe.

Like other traditions in Eastern thought, Taoism, too, suggests meditation as one way of accomplishing unity with nature. In this process of unification, we are asked to get rid of all dichotomous notions—such as those of good and bad, giver and receiver, and subject and object—until we become aware of the unitary origin of all phenomena, namely, Tao. Later on, when Taoism was converted into a religion, Taoists developed rituals, regarding them as effective means of harmonizing human life with the forces of the universe, for humans and the universe share the three life forces—shen (spirit), qi (breath), and jing (vital essence)⁵.

Confucius himself had very little to say on cosmic matters; in fact, he forbade his disciples to engage in idle speculations on these matters. This does not mean that Confucius was not interested in the question of man’s place in the universe. On the contrary, his whole social philosophy stemmed from his desire to establish the social order which would reflect the kind of order he found in heaven, for, as he put it, “heaven is author of the virtue that is in me”⁶. Living, as he did, in the midst of the turbulent Spring-Autumn period, it was obvious to Confucius that the social chaos of the day originated in the rule of power and that the social order would not be restored until the rule of virtue founded on sound social ethics was reestablished: “The rule of virtue can be compared to the Pole Star which commands the homage of the multitude of stars without leaving its place”⁷.

Nature and spirituality come into sharper focus in Mencius who saw human nature as a reflection of heavenly nature. To become a man of virtue was, therefore, nothing but the process of self-realization. The eleventh-century Confucian thinker Chang Tsai went furthest among Confucian thinkers in claiming the basic oneness of man and nature: “heaven is my father and earth is my mother, and even such a small being as I finds an intimate place in their midst. Therefore, that which fills the universe I regard as my body and that which directs the universe I regard as my nature”⁸.

Nature-worship is central to Shinto, an indigenous faith of the Japanese. In Shinto, kami is the term used to refer to the animate features of the natural environment. Kami are to be found everywhere—in mountains, streams, trees, and rocks—often assuming human forms. Indeed, nature is spirituality itself because kami are endowed with mitama, or “holy spirits” ⁹. Rigorous physical training, such as praying under a waterfall in a remote mountain on a chilly winter morning, is often employed to invoke kami in nature and us. Here we find an idea of total immersion in nature, the same idea that would be elevated into a worship of nature by Romantic thinkers of the West in the eighteenth century.

Common to all systems of Eastern thought is the idea that nature is an all-encompassing and self-generating process, which includes humans. Nature, in other words, is not an entity that exists outside of the space of human experience. Hence, the idea that nature is an object of rational inquiry, or that things in nature can be exploited for the benefit of humans, is foreign to the traditional view of nature in Eastern thought. Eastern philosophers are indeed united in their insistence that nature is something to be identified with and that humans can benefit only by learning about nature’s ways.

Carus, The Gospel of Buddha, Oxford: One World, 1994, p. 157.
Kukai, Kobo Daishi Zenshu, Tokyo: Mikkyo Bunka Kenkyujyo, 1964.
Lao-tzu, Tao Te Ching, New York: Modern Library, 1993, Chapter 29.
Creel, Herrlee G., Chinese Thought: From Confucius to Mao Tze-Tung, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953, pp. 100-101.
Welch, Holmes, and Anna Seidel (eds.), Facets of Taoism: Essays on Chinese Religion, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979.
Confucius, The Analects, London: Penguin Books, 1979, VII.23.
Confucius, ibid, II.1.
Callicott, J. Baird, and Roger T. Ames (eds.), Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought, Buffalo: State University of New York Press, 1989, pp. 73-74.
See, for example, Aston, W.G., Shinto: The Way of the Gods, London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1905.

A Thousand Views of Mt. Fuji: 2015 Japan Retreat*

Nature and Spirituality in Eastern Thought