杏吧原创

The phenomenon called I
Is a single blue illumination
Of a presupposed organic alternating current lamp
(a composite body of each and every transparent spectre)
The single illumination
Of karma鈥檚 alternating current lamp
Remains alight without fail
Flickering unceasingly, restlessly
Together with the sights of the land and all else
(the light is preserved鈥� the lamp itself is lost).

THE relationship between faith, science and nature could hardly be worse than it is now. On the one hand, evangelical ideologues, drawing on an ersatz faith-based theory called 鈥渋ntelligent design鈥�, are eager to wrench back the hands of the scientific clock. On the other, polemical books by the 鈥渘ew atheists鈥� 鈥� Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and so on 鈥� have thrown down the secular gauntlet, challenging believers鈥� fundamental tenets.

So what has the verse above to do with all this? The lines come from a poem, the preface to Spring and Ashura, by Kenji Miyazawa, who was to become one of Japan鈥檚 most popular 20th-century poets. Having studied and translated his work over the past 40 years, I am convinced that his profound, lyrical legacy may offer some balm for what are very western wounds. To Miyazawa, science, religion and nature were one: he saw himself as a tireless and faithful chronicler of nature. His work and short life expressed the concord of science and faith in a remarkably powerful way.

Science was booming in Japan when he was born in 1896. In fact, the catchphrase of the early Meiji era was wakon yosai, 鈥渨estern technology and the Japanese spirit鈥�. For 250 years, a strict policy of national isolation had kept Japan cut off from the rest of the world. This left it with a lot of catching up to do in science and technology.

Western experts in everything from engineering and architecture to biology and astronomy were invited to Japan, where they were given a free hand and were supported by generous stipends. Their students were quick learners, and by the early 1920s the level of research and development had, in most fields, reached that of western Europe. But this could not be said of the district where Miyazawa lived.

He was the eldest of five children in a well-to-do family in Hanamaki, in Iwate prefecture, some 450 kilometres north of Tokyo. The development of Japan, both economic and social, was grossly uneven during the Meiji era. While wealth and technological knowledge gravitated to major ports such as Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka and Kobe, remote Iwate was Japan鈥檚 鈥淭ibet鈥�, its inhabitants bogged down in semi-feudal relationships on farms, in factories and in the home. Miyazawa鈥檚 father was the town pawnbroker, and as a child he watched miserable tenant farmers pawning their meagre goods for a pittance to tide them over poor harvests or drought.

Miyazawa trained as an agronomist and became expert in the use of fertilisers. This, he hoped, was the best way to bring farms in his beloved Iwate into the modern world. He saw applying scientific practices as the means to save Iwate from recurring disasters, particularly its cold summers.

He was also deeply religious, a member of the strict Nichiren Buddhist sect. In fact, his conscience was so burdened and his desire to spread his religious message so strong he took personal responsibility for natural calamities, blaming himself for not discovering an effective scientific solution to the problems that arose. He was to spend his life teaching scientific agricultural methods to Hanamaki鈥檚 farmers, and writing poems and stories about the woods, mountains and skies of the district which show a keen scientific eye for detail.

In a world where poets generally preferred to view nature as a jumping-off point for their own meditations, Miyazawa鈥檚 approach was 鈥� and remains 鈥� unique. But he was largely unappreciated until the 1990s 鈥� a good half-century after his death in 1933. Then Japan鈥檚 young people, disillusioned with their country鈥檚 pursuit of economic expansion for its own sake, started to find his work deeply appealing, making it unexpectedly popular.

Among the many things that attracted them was Miyazawa鈥檚 commitment to nature, coupled with the idea of acting out of compassion and empathy. There was also something unusual in his drive to collect all the aspects of nature into a single poetic world view. In his most famous poem, Strong in the Rain, he speaks of the kind of person he would like to be:

In whatever occurs鈥� his understanding
Comes from observation and experience.

By studying nature through observation and experimentation, the poet understands it more profoundly, and can express its qualities more exquisitely.

When Miyazawa observed a phenomenon, he saw in it its past and its future. Thus, a character in his novel Night on the Milky Way Train called Professor Vulcanillo explains that a 2000-year-old map of the world is not a map of the world as it was then, but an expression of what people thought the world was like. This leads Miyazawa to the notion that human consciousness and the observer鈥檚 mental state are critical in deciding how reality is depicted. For him, a river might not be described accurately without mentioning sediment carried down in the Ice Age. The poetic 鈥渘ow鈥� should include scientific observations regarding the past and reasoned speculation about the future for it to be true to life.

For a young man from Iwate, he was very aware of some of the world鈥檚 most advanced scientific theories. After a walk in a forest of cypresses, he wrote that he saw 鈥渟livers of sky quivering in various ways鈥� among the branches. He described that light as:

Messengers, so to speak, of a catalogue of light
From every possible era that is or ever was.

This 鈥渃atalogue of light鈥� is a catalogue of time. Miyazawa recognises that the light from the celestial objects we see represents images from different times in the past. At a time when Einstein鈥檚 theories were not well understood in Japan, the poet from Iwate uses one of its tenets to illustrate the nature of the universe.

As a science teacher, he often led his pupils on excursions: fuelled by his love of geology, they could study formations and search for fossils. These were some of the happiest times for Miyazawa (who led an austere and sexless life), marching along the banks of the Kitakami river or trekking up Mount Iwate).

The fact that he died in obscurity would not have mattered to him. As our opening lines show, he saw a life as but a spark or a burst of light. Perhaps his most enduring epitaph is in lines written in 1924:

The propositions that you have before you are without exception
Asserted within the confines of a four-dimensional continuum
As the nature of the mental state and time in and of themselves.

Distilled, his world view is that one鈥檚 faith and one鈥檚 essential goodness are enriched by the methods and discoveries of science. Both western atheism and western creationism are, for better or worse, concerned with the existence of an almighty God amid reality. To Miyazawa there was no conflict between the two. I believe he would have agreed with the Dalai Lama, who said in 2005 that if science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change.