Being Met by Japan

One of my favorite places on the planet is the Japanese Garden at the Botanic Gardens in Fort Worth, Texas. I dropped by the Japanese Garden gift shop earlier this week, The Treasure Tree.  I walked across the low bridge that leads to its weathered wooden porch, passing a water lily bud, rising like a scepter from a green pond. I entered the store, a space full of light, where windows look onto the natural and man-made beauty that surrounds. To the right of the entrance was a new set of shelves, populated by Japanese dolls.  I felt drawn to them, as though they were magnetized and I was a set of iron filings.  As I looked at them, a young woman from behind the cash-register counter said to me in a gentle voice, "Aren't they wonderful?"

I turned to meet a young Japanese face lit by bright, dark eyes and an enchanting smile.  "Yes," I agreed, "they certainly are."  "Why do you like them?" she asked me.  I talked to her about my childhood and my love of tales from Japan, the kimono my father brought me after a trip, white with red and blue flowers. It was a child's toy, screen-printed, not embroidered, but the sleeves were just right, as was its shape. I had a book of Japanese stories, which included several about dolls and Japan's Festival of Dolls. She was pleased, but also surprised.  We looked at the dolls together, commenting on their different postures, painted faces, and "kimonos." 

I spotted one on the bottom shelf and said, "Here, this is the one for me." 

"Oh," she replied, "you did not pick a doll that was made for tourists, but for a family. Look, there is writing on the bottom."  She looked at the characters that are indecipherable to my Western eyes. "This doll comes from the region where I live."

"And where is that?" I asked.

"It is the same area where the earthquake happened," she replied.

"Is your family all right?" I asked.

"Yes," she said with a smile.  "They are all right. They work in the medical profession, so they have been very busy--and they will be busy for a long time."

Her face radiated peace and strength. I reached my hand out across the counter to touch hers. I told her about the haiku on this blog. I told her how deeply millions of Americans felt for her country and its people. Then my eyes filled with tears, and the words disappeared.

She continued to smile, and her face continued to be peaceful.  "Thank you," she said.

Even as a child, I felt strongly that cultures other than my own had lessons to teach me, secrets to reveal to me. As I have traveled within and been exposed to a variety of cultures as an adult, I have learned that each culture has highs and lows, bright spots and dark. You can learn from the dark sides, but you can't live from them. The high spots, though, are a different story.

"Smile at fear," Pema Chodron writes.  Today, as I remember Sayoki's gentle, courteous manner, her delicate smile, I think we need also, somehow, to learn to smile at death, to smile peacefully in the midst of loss. Not a smile of denial, or of resignation, but a smile of pure presence.  I see you, loss. I see you, death. You are inescapable, unavoidable, and yet I will smile at you. It is my way of acknowledging your necessary existence and the suffering you cause. It is also my way of saying, "I am here, too. I am alive enough to look at you, and brave enough, having looked, to smile."

Helping Japan--With and Without Money

My sincerest thanks to everyone who contributed Haiku poems as we meditated on the Loss of Home...the Loss of One's World, both of which have occurred on a colossal scale in Japan. 

There are many funds to which one can contribute to help Japan. One of my favorite fund sources is Unicef.  This organization is the "Grandfather" of the rest, and its ability to rush to disaster areas and  put resources in place for children is nothing short of amazing. Any donation to Unicef will be very well-used indeed. Also, consider receiving their catalogue with their unique cards, calendars, and gifts. All purchases help fund Unicef's efforts, and the products are exceptional and aesthetically satisfying. (You can also shop online.)

We often forget, however, that not all help is financial or even physical. Dr. Emoto is a Japanese scientist who has done phenomenal studies with water and words.  Read about his work here.  For now, I will share just one example. Dr. Emoto asked a group of people to speak words of love and gratitude over containers of water. He asked a second group to speak words of hate over other containers of water.  Then he froze the water samples and photographed them with a dark field microscope.  The "loved" water revealed a crystalline structure that was beautiful. The "hated" water's crystal-structure, on the other hand, was deformed, discolored, and ugly.

This is what Dr. Emoto has asked citizens of the world to do now for his country: 

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To All People Around the World,

Please send your prayers of love and gratitude to water at the nuclear plants in Fukushima, Japan! Human wisdom has not been able to do much to solve the problem, but we are only trying to cool down the anger of radioactive materials in the reactors by discharging water to them. Is there really nothing else to do?

I think there is. During over twenty years of  research of hado-measuring and water-crystal photographic technology, I have witnessed that water can turn positive when it receives pure vibrations of human prayer, no matter how far away it is.

I would like to ask all people around the world to please help us to find a way out the crisis of this planet! Please say the following phrase: “The water of Fukushima Nuclear Plant, we are sorry to make you suffer. Please forgive us. We thank you and we love you.”

Please say it aloud or in your mind. Repeat it three times as you put your hands together in a prayer position. Please offer your sincere prayer. Thank you very much from my heart.

With love and gratitude,
Masaru Emoto, Messenger of Water
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Dr. Emoto's message makes me realize that I have been thinking of the radioactive water as a "thing."  Water is actually more Being that Thing. The water is the symptom. The cause is human greed and carelessness (The plant should not have been built on a faultline and needed to be closed many years ago). I have had no sympathy at all for the water, which is losing its basic, natural identity. It, too, suffers.

This reminds me yet again to practice compassion--with others, with nature, with myself. Loss is much harder when we judge ourselves or others, when we look at life and loss as simple events, rather than long, organic processes.  As we continue to "get along with grief," may we turn more often to compassion and its inherent wisdom.

This closes our contributions for Japan. The next post will start a new chapter to help us all keep "getting along."

Light and Love Sustain

The rest of Helen Schulman's Haiku for Japan:

The ground crumbles.

All that is familiar vanishes.

Light and love alone sustain

Earth in chaos.

Beautiful souls living life day to day

Suddenly gone.

Loved ones lost.

The tsunami of aging rages.

The river of change rolls on supreme.

Amidst the rubble,

The cries of a child.

The miracle of life goes on.

Helen Schulman spent seven years living in India during the 1970s where she practiced yoga and meditation.  While there, she was Editor-in-Chief of English publications for a popular ashram, at which time she edited a bi-monthly magazine and various books on Eastern philosophy.  She has a Masters in Social Work from New York University and has held various positions in the USA that involved editing as well as social work.   She has written poetry for many years.

Images from the Dover Collection of Japanese Art Deco

On Losing Home

Japan is now the one word that brings to mind 1000 pictures. And in those pictures, shades of grey: earth, smoke, water, mud. The greys we see in news photos from the site of the tsunami and the nuclear plant's demise come from the family of greys reserved for ruin. The color of ancient temple stones after their painted colors have faded and the weather has had its way with them. The color of ash--the earthy chalk left behind from the flaming scarlet of a volcano's lava flow. The color of a sunless sky on a frozen day. The color of shock,the color one's face turns when it is our turn to face the loss.

I was talking to a friend today about the colossal losses that more than 400,000 Japanese citizens and other residents now face. I cannot forget the brief interview with a grandfather who lost his entire family--absolutely everyone--beneath and because of the wave. Oddly enough, my friend and I had the same thought while watching the latest reports. And the thought is this:

I need to be aware that this can happen to anyone anywhere--and that includes me. You may find that an uncomforting thought. Yet, it has its purpose. It keeps me from having a false sense of immunity. It also reminds me that, while Japan's tragically homeless are in the current news spotlight, millions of others are also without homes. Perhaps it was the economic tsunami that made their home disappear. Perhaps it was the loss of a loved one, the end of a marriage, a war injury, or any one of many other reasons.

The shock of the loss of home is a universal one. In our mobile, fast-paced culture, we have allowed home to become a target, as much as a root.  I have lost more than one home, and in one instance lost most of the possessions in that home. I remember clearly how each loss felt.

I have read that the Japanese word for home and person is the same word. I don't know if that linguistic tale is true. I do know, however, that the thought carries truth within it. When we lose our home, we lose part of our deepest self. Which part?  It depends...I believe each home-loss is as unique as the death of each human being.

Many years ago, I studied Japanese architecture (solamente as an aficionada). My studies led me to write a haiku poem. I post it now--my tiny tribute to the land and its people, its art, its life, its will to survive--and for anyone who has had to look at "Home" from the outside-in, hoping one day to be inside that which should shelter us, mind, body and soul.

On Looking In

Japanese houses

Serenest angles leading

To the hidden Way

I fight for your calm

And when defeated, realize

It must be given

Do you have a Haiku in you that you would like to write to and for Japan at this moment?  If so, send it here, and I will post it on the blog.