MY HUMBLE GOLDEN RICE - From scarcity to abundance

a small Japanese story I learnt from Master Toshifumi Ishida san

I remember this special day, visiting the filed of a friend in Suo Oshima, looking at his ripped rice, drying in the sun, ready to be packed and sold, when the threat of an epidemic was in nobody’s mind in our 2019 reality, where our world could only be moving towards its ever greater expansion.
in my today day, in my world clear water, fresh air, silence, proximity and boundaries on the open sea, I remember this Japanese saying and how we had forgotten how fragile we are and how we have step overs head to make our way forward.  

Ripped golden rice

For most of us, our century have been so fare extremely generous: economically, socially and healthily.

Of course we have had ups and downs, lows and high but over all the majority of us have been blessed by amazing new possibilities and technologies allowing us the equilibrium between amazing progress and massive destruction, forgetting too easily that not all we see as normal is a due but more likely a duty.

suoOshima, rice paddy fields

Toshifumi Ishida’s golden rice, bowing under the weight of its own abundance, teached me what no amount of wealth or success ever could.

In Japan, the measure of a man's greatness is not how tall he stands but how deeply he bows.

The richer the grain, the lower it leans toward the earth that made it.

Writing from the water, somewhere between the shores of Langkawi and the open sea, I find this image strangely perfect: whatever happens, whatever life brings or takes away, the wisest response is not to harden but to soften.

To remember, as the rice reminds us, that maturity and gold are not invitations to rise above, they are reasons to bow deeper.