Japan – Discovering Zen Words – Today’s Best Word is “青苗、春雨に慈つ Seibyo harusame ni sodastu”
Seibyo,harusam ni sodastu
Zen is difficult. Zen word is also difficult. That’s why I interpret it as I please. I think that’s fine. Enou Zenji, Dogen Zenji, Ikkyu-san, and Ryokan-san are likely to say, “That’s fine, that’s fine. Let it be."
Today is “Seibyo,harusam ni sodastu"
The Frog, the Field, and the Original Japanese landscape
The Simple Lesson of the Paddy Field
If you grew up in Japan, you know the sound of frogs in the rice fields. It’s a sound that is simply built into the blueprint of a Japanese soul, just like the color of young rice shoots is the color of spring. Rice fields mean frogs. It’s a truth as fundamental as “red means stop."
In spring, when the water warms the muddy rice field, the chorus begins. There are so many kinds—forty-eight varieties, half of them native only to this small stretch of islands. But the main players in the everyday drama are the little ones: the Tree Frogs and the grand, noisy ones—the Tono-sama Frogs.
The Tono-sama (which means “Lord" or “Feudal Ruler") gets his name honestly; he is the loudest voice in the marsh, a little dictator of the damp earth.
The Mystery of the Missing Frog
For a child, the frog is a bundle of profound, muddy questions.
In winter, the fields dry out completely. The earth cracks. There is no sign of a frog, there’s nothing to suggest that the rice was growing lushly. They are simply gone.
Then, the water returns. The fields are flooded for planting, and suddenly, magically, there they are. They are back. They just are. They swim with an utterly straight face, alongside the tiny, translucent ghost shrimp. By the time the planting is finished, the water is thick with tadpoles—wiggling possibilities.
And the essential question that settles in every child’s mind is the same: Where did the frog come from?
What We Learn from the Tono-sama Frog
And that, my friends, is the lesson we carry from the rice field into the messy adult world.
Life is full of seasons when the water dries up—when the inspiration, the hope, or the joy seems to have cracked and vanished entirely. We look around and ask, “Where did the good things go? Everything is dry."
But the frog teaches us about endurance and the certainty of return. The important, essential parts of life—whether it’s creativity, or love, or even just the simple sound of happiness—don’t disappear forever. They just go underground, finding a way to survive the drought, waiting patiently for the water to return.
And when the conditions are right, they are back. They are noisy. They are swimming with a straight face. You can count on the frog.
The Great Frog Choir and the Mystery of Silence
Sudden silence
And then there is the sound itself. The choir.When the rice is tall and green, the frogs are not just making noise—they are announcing their deepest desires, singing a loud, boisterous, song of love. You listen to this great, relentless din, this seemingly endless celebration… and then, it stops.
Suddenly. Completely.
In the middle of a warm, rainy night, a profound silence falls over the field. It’s the kind of silence that doesn’t just lack noise, but actively hushes everything around it. It is a shared, universal pause.
And just when you think the show is over, one timid voice—a soloist, perhaps one who couldn’t stand the pressure of the quiet—offers a tentative croak. Just one. Then, as if a hidden conductor has dropped the baton, the entire orchestra explodes back into sound, louder than before.
The Full Picture
But the rice field is not a quiet sanctuary; it is a lively, working community. The frogs are the choir, but the Heron and the Egret are the critics, arriving in the wet season to stalk the singers. Their sharp cries cut through the air, adding another layer to the symphony of survival.
This noisy, watery, busy, sometimes silent, and always active place—this paddy field—is not just scenery. It is the original picture of life.
It is a place where every creature, from the booming frog to the egret preying on a frog, is simply doing what it must do, following the rules of the season, and performing its part in the great, orchestrated drama of existence. Children fall asleep listening to the frogs and feeling the wonder of nature.
The Sound of Memory and the Loss of Generosity
The Limits of Imagination
The Chinese poet wrote: “Autumn frost stains the crimson leaves; spring rain nourishes the green shoots."（青苗、春雨に慈つ）
It is a beautiful couplet. For those of us living in the cycle of four seasons, especially in Japan, the picture instantly forms: the lush green of the young rice in the paddy, the blazing red maples against a crisp sky. For a Japanese person, Aonae (green shoots) means the rice that feeds us.
But here is the simple truth: Our imagination is handcuffed to our experience.
A person in the tropics might understand the rain, but the image of frost-stained crimson is just ink on a page. Someone in the desert understands neither. They can look up the image on the internet, yes, but the feeling—the visceral memory of that changing world—remains locked inside the life you have actually lived.
When the Music Becomes Noise
This brings us to the frog.
The frog chorus, a sound that should be etched into the Japanese soul, is currently facing a time of trial. Some people—we might call them the “unblessed" or the “unmoored"—now complain that the ancient sound of the frog is noise pollution.
They tell the rice field owner to “shut up those frogs." This is a profound moment of absurdity. You cannot tell a frog to obey rules. Frogs do not care about property lines or human complaints. The only way to silence them is to remove the water.
But if you remove the water, the rice does not grow.
The frog is not just a singer; he is a part of the ecological machinery that sustains the rice. The life of the frog supports the life of the rice, which in turn supports the life of the human. This is an ancient contract.
The Sound of Intolerance
Those who share this ancient memory—the connection between the croak, the water, and the meal—do not hear noise. They hear the sound of the contract being fulfilled. They hear the sound of the earth working.
But those who call the sound “annoying" are the ones who have lost the memory. They have been cut off from the natural rhythm of life.
And this is the greatest lesson of all, a lesson the frog teaches us about human nature:
When we divorce ourselves from the natural world—from the cycle of seasons and the rhythms of community—we lose our ability to be generous. We lose tolerance.
The frog is too loud.
The cicada is too loud.
The New Year’s bell is too loud.
The sound of children playing is too loud.
These are not new sounds; these are the original sounds of life. When a society begins to complain about the ancient, essential sounds of its own existence, it is a sign that it has lost more than just its tolerance.
The Great Escape: Stepping Away from the Screen
The Cure for the Small Fury
We have just spoken of the great, ancient drama of the rice field: the frogs, the herons, the poetry, and the noise that some now mistake for pollution.
And here is the ultimate, simple instruction we receive from all that memory and rhythm: Stop being angry about the small things, and go outside.
Why? Because the natural world is right there. It is right next door.
We are given an abundance that money cannot buy and that Wi-Fi cannot stream:
The yaung,green shoots nourished by the spring rain (the literal embodiment of the phrase:"Aonae, harusame ni sodastu").
The chorus of frogs, proving that life endures.
The wind traveling through the thick, maturing rice staiks.
The overwhelming, deafening shower of the cicadas’ song (Semi-shigure).
The autumn leaves, wet and quiet under the gentle rain.
The silent, pure descent of white snow.
The Lesson of Perspective
We have all this, yet we often choose the small, glowing smartphone screen instead. We choose the manufactured anger of the timeline over the quiet majesty of the snow.
The essential truth here is one of perspective.
You cannot understand how small your worries are until you place yourself next to something truly large. Step into the field. Feel the wind moving the grain. Stand under the relentless, beautiful noise of the cicadas.
When you immerse yourself in the natural world, you recognize the essential simplicity: You are a small, temporary part of a vast, ongoing, beautiful miracle. Your minor frustrations over a noise complaint or a social media post instantly shrink to their correct, insignificant size.
There is a beautiful sound to that Chinese verse, “Aonae, haru ame ni hagukumu” (Green shoots, nourished by the spring rain). It sounds like life, enduring and simple.
So, put down the phone. The greatest stories, the loudest music, and the truest lessons are waiting for you, just beyond your door. Go and be nourished.