Editor’s note: With support from Bishop Rev. Marvin Harada, a BCA EcoSangha Committee has been established and will be submitting a charter for BCA approval. The purpose of the committee is to promote each BCA’s implementation of the 2015 BCA EcoSangha Resolution. The EcoSangha Committee intends to submit monthly articles to the Wheel of Dharma with perspectives and news of our activities.
March 1, 2025, marks exactly 10 years since the BCA National Council approved the EcoSangha Resolution, stating in part, “… our Buddhist religion is inherently ecological in vision and conservation-oriented in practice.”
The respected Buddhist scholar Francis H. Cook called Buddhism “cosmic ecology,” referring to the foundational teaching of interdependence in its most profound sense. However, Buddhism is not just ecology; not just science. Buddhism is also committed to bringing about a cure; thus, we engage in conservation to heal a suffering world.
In a very real sense, ecology and conservation are like the two primary aspects of the Buddha: wisdom and compassion. Wisdom is understanding and compassion is the skillful response or living out of that understanding to bring an end to pain and suffering. Wisdom points out the nature of the disease and compassion leads to the cure.
The EcoSangha resolution concludes with the following statement, “THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that each BCA temple be encouraged to adopt policies that promote an awareness of the profound implications of our behavior on future generations and to promote ecologically friendly behavior in the spirit of ‘mottainai.’”
When Karen Akahoshi and I drafted the resolution in 2014, it did not contain the final phrase “in a spirit of ‘mottainai.’” This was added by the BCA Ministerial Association. At the time, I thought, “Why in the world are they adding a Japanese expression that few of our members understand?” Was I ever wrong! Just ask “Mottainai Grandma” (a children’s book by Mariko Shinju). Just ask 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai (sadly, she passed away in 2011). What follows in this article are some of the things I learned about mottainai and its relation to Shin Buddhism in the past 10 years.
“Mottainai Grandma” expresses the most common understanding of the phrase. When her young grandson is finished eating, she exclaims, “You left so much food, mottainai, what a waste!” When I heard the expression as a young minister in San Francisco in the late 1970s, I became quite interested in it and started taking note of how it was used. I remember one young woman saying, “When my grandmother washed rice, if even a single grain of rice fell out of the pot, she would return it and say ‘mottainai.’ Doesn’t it just mean ‘don’t waste?’”
A deeper understanding of the expression was promoted by Nobel Peace Prize awardee Wangari Maathai, who founded the Green Belt Movement in Kenya. She was the first person to receive this award for achievement in the field of environmental activism.
A year after she won the Nobel Peace Prize, she traveled to Japan where she inquired if the Japanese had such a concept as the three R’s: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. In response, she was told about the concept and culture of mottai-nai and was deeply inspired by it. She was told that the original meaning of the expression comes from an awareness that we are negating or killing the essence of something along with an accompanying sense of regret or reluctance to waste. Maathai was deeply inspired by what she heard and felt it added a fourth R, Respect, to the three R’s; respect and affection for nature and the objects we are surrounded with.
Following Maathai’s visit, the Mainichi newspapers and Itochu Corp., in collaboration with Maathai, launched the MOTTAINAI Campaign to spread awareness of the expression internationally.
She was invited to address the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women and called on people of all nations to make “mottainai” their rallying cry. She even held up a T-shirt with the words emblazoned on the front.
According to the Japanese government’s website, “Then Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro also made an appeal to make mottainai an internationally recognized expression during the Group of Eight summit of industrialized countries in Britain in 2005.”
It is worth noting that one part of Japan’s MOTTAINAI Campaign was to raise funds for Maathai’s home country in its efforts to reforest Kenya and beyond. The campaign in Kenya is called MOTTAINAI Green Project and the Million Tree Campaign. That campaign inspired today’s global Trillion Tree Campaign.
A Shin Buddhist understanding and appreciation of mottai-nai can be found in Rev. Chijun Yakumo’s wonderful book “Thank You Namo Amida Butsu” (You would be lucky to find a copy of this 1995 Nembutsu Press publication).
Rev. Yakumo emphasizes the regret we feel when we become aware we are killing or wasting the essence of something is a subjective feeling “and can be considered only in relation to ourselves. If mottainai is translated, ‘How unworthy you are!’ that would only be a statement on a moral or ethical level, and have no sense of its Buddhist nature.” (page 16)
The attitude of mottainai is the opposite of entitlement. As Buddhists, we are aware that to live is to live interdependently and, to live interdependently, is to live at the expense of other forms of life.
As Rev. Yakumo writes, “For me, there is no way to truly appreciate the lives I consumed other than to devote myself to becoming a Buddha; otherwise, my living this life sustained by their sacrificed lives would truly be mottainai.” (page 18) It is for those of us who live mottai-nai lives that Amida Buddha exists. To quote Yakumo sensei again, “Amida Buddha’s Infinite Compassion and Wisdom exists precisely to cause the birth of such unworthy persons in the Pure Land.” (page 17)
In conclusion, since it is the goal of the MOTTAINAI Campaign in Japan to make the expression known and appreciated around the world, it is entirely appropriate that we have concluded our EcoSangha Resolution with the words, “… in the spirit of ‘mottai-nai.’”
Let us in BCA start our own MOTTAINAI Campaign at every temple. Let that be OUR rallying cry! To that end, and with Bishop Rev. Marvin Harada’s encouragement and support, we are in the process of creating a BCA EcoSangha Committee with the goal of implementing the EcoSangha Resolution at all our BCA temples and beyond.
In my next article, “Issa and the Spirit of Mottainai,” I will present the famous poet’s Jodo Shinshu inspired haiku poems.
BCA Minister Emeritus Rev. Don Castro is the retired Rimban of the Seattle Betsuin Buddhist Temple.
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