People are doing it: living minimally, in beauty and awareness,

A beautiful review of A Different Kind of Luxury by yoga teacher Emily Perry was just published in Elephant Journal.  Here are a few choice excerpts:

What makes times such as these meaningful for me is the story—reflecting on change and impermanence though the telling and retelling of one’s experience. After an event such as Fukushima it so easy to overlook the stories waiting patiently in the ether, waiting for us to discover them.  Andy Couturier has done just that: he has uncovered and beautifully told the stories of men and women in Japan before the disaster, giving us a glimpse into the lives of people working to live simple lives in a modern Japan. 

Couturier’s book, A Different Kind of Luxury: Japanese Lessons in Simple Living and Inner Abundance, has been my guide over the last few days. Filled with stories—encounters really—with Japanese women and men, this book was born out of years and years of travel and living in Japan before the disaster. Reading this book has given me a sense of not only the  immensity of the loss, but also a sense of the alternative culture in Japan working towards living in a world in a more environmentally friendly way.

........ 

People are doing it: they are living minimally, in beauty and awareness, with time to think and create and thrive. And while this book isn’t a how-to book by any means, it brings us an in-depth look at the lives of people that have found ways to bring more meaning, more being-ness instead of busy-ness, into their lives.  (Emphasis added.)

Indeed.  Just yesterday I was listening to some rich and wonderful modern folk music by Mr. "Bob" Uchida, who is a friend of Masanori and Wakako Oe (Chapters 11 and 7).  It's a powerful poem by Gary Snyder translated into Japanese and sung in his high, clear meaningful voice accompanied by hammer dulcimer.  In this song I can feel all the beauty of the Japanese countryside and his mourning at the loss of species, even as he creates something of purpose and beauty for me, for us.  As Emily wrote, this song "gives you a sense of the alternative culture in Japan working towards living in a world in a more environmentally friendly way."


I found one of Mr. Uchida's songs on YouTube.  It isn't the song I was listening to, but you can get a feel for the nature of this man and his singing here at in this video, which is about the Chernobyl disaster:

I would like to end by telling you that even if your life is very different from the people in the book, you can live a good life for yourself, no matter how much tech surrounds you.   One of my writing students Kerry Gough put it this way when he responded to my article last week in the Huffington Post:

A cup of tea in a candle-lit room conversing with my best friend, wife and lover Leila soothe my soul much more satisfactorily than the mad chase for more material things. Surely we love our power-driven iPads, iPods, iPhones, Blackberries, Macs, Nooks, Kindles and laptops, but when we are obsessed with unlimited power or the desire for the cool feel of the plastic and aluminum of our gadgets in our hands, have we given up the comfort of the warm feel of a friend's hand in ours? Andy has it absolutely right. The direction we are headed may enable us to become the masters of our environment but will we reign over a toxic realm?

Feature article in Huffington Post

I just placed an article in the Huffington Post about the one-year anniversary of the tsunami-earthquake-nuclear meltdown in Fukushima.  

It is very helpful if you either "comment" on the article at the bottom, or share it with your friends and family by email or facebook, etc.   By the logic of the online journalism world, the more people who do that, the more voices of this kind get promoted, and spread around.


I hope you go to their site and read the whole article, but I'd like to excerpt a couple of pieces here.  First of all, if you need a refresher (or a primer) on the arguments against nuclear power, here they are:

Let's dispatch the common arguments for nuclear power, since the nuclear industry's PR machinery will soon be kicking into high gear on this anniversary of the Fukushima tragedy.

Nuclear power is not carbon neutral. It takes petroleum to mine the nuclear fuel, to refine it, and to transport it. Uranium is often dug up in huge open pit mines in areas inhabited by, and thus endangering, Native Americans and Australian aboriginal peoples. It takes huge amounts of petroleum-based resources to build the nuclear power station and to transport the waste. By their very nature nuclear power stations are targets for terrorists, and it takes tremendous human and material resources to guard and protect them. Areas of the earth in Ukraine and now Fukushima are abandoned wastelands. And if the Japanese, who are rightly renowned for their advanced engineering and their attention to detail, cannot operate nuclear plants safely, no one can.  

Furthermore, after 50 years of nuclear power, no one has yet discovered a solution to the problem of nuclear waste, waste that will have to be kept separate from all life forms for thousands of years. And although the nuclear industry is still asking for (and getting) huge subsidies from governments all over the world, Wall Street investors don't want to touch nuclear power with a ten foot pole.

I myself am off in a few minutes to a protest at the closest nuclear power plant from where I live, in San Luis Obispo, the Diablo Canyon Plant.  My partner Cynthia got arrested protesting it 27 years ago when they were building it.  Directly on an earthquake fault.  


Please take a moment today to do something to oppose nuclear power.  Thanks.


Here again is the link to the article.

If you don’t desire too many things, you can have some time.

We modern people have the possibility, the opportunity to set up our lives in a way so there's time to contemplate.  But the ability to constantly stimulate ourselves, and the enticements to do so, make it difficult for our brains--which are wired to chase after the next new stimulation--to actually think about the question: What is the real priority of being a human being, alive today? 

Here's a passage where Atsuko Watanabe, Chapter 2 of  A Different Kind of Luxury, talks about this:

After a moment of consideration, Atsuko says, “What I really want is more time.” I look up at the clock. We’ve been talking now for almost four hours. I compare this with how hard it is for my English students to make time for even a one hour lesson, once a week. People are insanely busy here.

Atsuko Watanabe in the summer rice fields

Then Atsuko adds, “Long ago people probably didn’t have time either.” I imagine rural life of two centuries ago, peasants struggling all day long, every day, just to provide enough to survive. “They were really busy; they couldn’t realistically expect or seek having more things or time. Now, as long as you don’t desire too many things,you can have some time.” I recall now what Atsuko said years ago when I first met her, that her priority has been to have the time to muse and reflect and really think about things. She’s been making this her priority for years. The results, I speculate, are the subtlety of her thinking, and the deeply considered nature of her choices. Perhaps it is simply about making sure that you have time for yourself. “Most people have directed their attention toward having things more than time, and that’s why they are always running.”

One of the opportunities that we have, that perhaps people in traditional, or less "developed" societies don't necessarily have, is the ability to see how chasing after money doesn't necessarily lead to happiness.  So what the people I profiled in the book have done is to take that opportunity that modern material abundance gives us, and not try to just run after the symbols of success, but to cherish the opportunity to live really rich lives.

What will you do with yours?