Nothing belongs to anyone: all things belong to the whole

Looking west through the doors of the Cambridge Unitarian Church at nature naturing and O-hikari

A short “thought for the day” offered to the Cambridge Unitarian Church as part of the Sunday Service of Mindful Meditation. 

(Click on this link to hear a recorded version of the following piece) 

—o0o—

Nothing belongs to anyone: all things belong to the whole — Tenko-san

物そのものは本来誰れのものでもない。凡て全体のものである。
 

Objects/things (物 mono) in their essence (本来 honrai) belong to no one in particular. They are, in all (凡て subete), for the whole/collective (全体 zentai).

 
—o0o—

One of the most important truths we have always needed to acknowledge and live by is, as the non-sectarian, religious and spiritual teacher and exemplar, Tenko Nishida-san, pointed out, that “Nothing belongs to anyone: all things belong to the whole.”

In our deeply materialistic and capitalistic age it’s tempting, of course, for most people immediately to think about what this insight means in terms of material/financial wealth and to point to the profoundly shocking fact that, according to the World Inequality Database, in 2023 the top 10% of the world’s population owned nearly ¾ of the world’s wealth, while half the world’s population is almost entirely deprived of wealth. This is something that clearly needs to change, and I’d encourage everyone to find ways actively to support all peaceful religious, political, social and economic initiatives — including personal ones — which seek to redress this deeply, deeply disturbing and ultimately destructive imbalance in material/financial wealth.

However, as befits a creative, free spiritual community that seeks to promote a liberating type of free-religion (自由宗教 jiyū shūkyō), it’s vital for us to realise that Tenko-san was referring to something more fundamental than financial or material wealth, namely, what we might call the underlying structure and intra-acting processes of creation itself — the true source of true wealth which, as Jesus once observed, neither moth nor rust can destroy (Matthew 6:19-21). 

 

There are many ways to illustrate this true source of true wealth — especially in our own age that can draw upon the powerful resources of the modern, natural sciences — but one of my personal favourites remains that recently offered up by Emanuele Coccia in his books “The Life of Plants” and “Metamorphoses.” For Coccia, the primary lesson we can learn from the life of plants is that everything in our world is interdependent, a mixture, and that, as Stuart Walton summarizes in a review: 

 

“. . . the ways in which plants rely on and interact with the biosphere as a whole is not a matter of simple aggregation of heterogeneous elements, or of some kind of vaporous fusion, but of true symbiotic blending. What penetrates its surroundings is in turn penetrated by them, living from the life of other entities. According to this picture, the whole world is conceivable as an all-embracing atmosphere, in which the breath of life itself is fundamentally implicated. ‘The world is not a place’, says Coccia, ‘it is a state of immersiwon of each thing in all other things.’”

In his own life and thought, especially through his still existent community called Ittōen — meaning “Garden of the One Light,” situated in the north of Kyoto — Tenko-san fully understood that truly to be in the world is to be like this, i.e. in “a state of immersion of each thing in all other things.” He saw that, like plants, neither individual human beings nor their individual religions and spiritualities are pure and wholly separate things, neither are they a matter of simple aggregation of heterogeneous elements, or of some kind of vaporous fusion but were, instead, are expressions of true symbiotic blending. What penetrates each human being, religion or spirituality is in turn penetrated by them, living richly and gratefully from the life of other humans, religions and spiritualities and all other sentient and non-sentient things in the cosmos. 

 

Tenko-san saw that the whole cosmos was also conceivable as an all-embracing atmosphere, in which the breath of all life is fundamentally implicated.

 

Consequently, Tenko-san and his protégé, the important Japanese Yuniterian (sic) Imaoka-sensei, and for me, the kind of creative, free and liberating religion or spirituality they promoted and which we are trying to promote here, is a living process that can help a person develop and continue to hone a state of mind and body such that they can come fully to understand their immersion in all other things in a universal cooperative society (宇宙的共同社会 uchūteki kyōdō shakai).

It is no coincidence that within the community at Ittōen there is no specific principal object of worship because this interpenetrating life of all things, is what is revered. Consequently, the central focus of their prayer/meditation hall is a large round window [see pictures to the right and below] looking out upon a grove of mature trees, providing them with a view of nature-naturing (natura naturans) which is regarded by them as both God (神 kami) and Buddha (仏 hotoke), and which is referred to them with the highest honour and respect as, O-hikari (おひかり), “The Light.” 

In the church where I am minister we, alas, do not have such a window at our east end — although from where I speak on a Sunday morning I can look westward out onto the trees of Christ’s Pieces (see photo at the head of this post) — but I find it deeply significant that our own altar, which sits behind me when I speak, has upon it no explicitly religious symbol but simply a display of silk flowers, the central one of which is a sunflower. It is called a sunflower, of course, because it constantly turns towards O-hikari (おひかり), “The Light.” As some of you know, this is why the Religious Society of Czech Unitarians chose the sunflower as one of their community’s symbols because, in its constant turning to the light, it reminds us that the life of plants, of nature-naturing (natura naturans), is always quietly and gently affirming the truth that, “Nothing belongs to anyone: all things belong to the whole.”