An item in the Daily Mail describes a British-born man (“Yorkshire’s Robinson Crusoe”) who bought a deserted Seychelles island (Moyenne Island) 50 years ago and has lived there in “blissful solitude” ever since. Includes photos.
Thai village reveres hermits
An article in the Bangkok Post is titled Isolated village reveres hermits: Ancient Karen settlement which adheres to strict tribal customs and beliefs is about as far from civilisation as you can get.”
The article describes an isolated Karen village on the mountainous Thailand-Myanmar border believed to be a century old. The villagers lives a simple Buddhist life and are governed or presided over by a succession of hermits, ten to date. The hermits have convinced the villagers to adhere to Buddhist ethics and eschew alcohol and animals as food. So isolated is the village that local Thai police serve as their liaison, helping teach children, bring medicines, and instruct in the Thai language. Includes photos.
URL: http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/290825/isolated-village-reveres-hermits
Naked Japanese hermit
A news item about a “naked” Japanese hermit went the rounds of most media during the past week, specifically media, web sites, and blogs that would not otherwise pay attention to hermits. So the keyword brought the attention. Here is the familiar Reuters coverage, text in full, which also featured an oblique photograph:
Dangerous currents swirl around Sotobanari island, which has not a drop of natural water, and local fishermen rarely land there.
But 76-year-old Masafumi Nagasaki has made this kidney-shaped island in Japan’s tropical Okinawa prefecture his retirement home, with an unusual dress code: nothing at all.
Naked, he braves lashing typhoons and biting insects as a hermit in the buff.
“I don’t do what society tells me, but I do follow the rules of the natural world. You can’t beat nature so you just have to obey it completely,” he said.
“That’s what I learned when I came here, and that’s probably why I get by so well.”
The wiry Nagasaki, his skin leathered by the sun of two decades on the island, worked briefly as a photographer before spending years on the murkier side of the entertainment industry. When retirement came, he wanted to get far away from it all.
He chose Sotobanari, which is roughly a 1,000 meters across and means “Outer Distant island” in the local dialect. It lies off the coast of Iriomote island, far closer to Taiwan than to Tokyo.
His resolve was tested relatively soon into his stay when a massive typhoon swept over the island, scouring away most of the scrub he had counted on for shade, as well as carrying away the simple tent he lived in.
“I just scorched under the sun,” he said. “It was at that point I thought this was going to be an impossible place to live.”
For the first year he lived on Sotobanari, he threw on clothes whenever boats passed his way. But slowly the island stripped away his embarrassment.
“Walking around naked doesn’t really fit in with normal society, but here on the island it feels right, it’s like a uniform,” he said. “If you put on clothes you’ll feel completely out of place.”
He does throw on clothes once a week for a trip to a settlement an hour away by boat, where he buys food and drinking water. He also collects the 10,000 yen ($120) sent to him by his family, on which he lives.
His staple food is rice cakes, which he boils in water, eating whenever hunger strikes – sometimes four or five times a day. Water for bathing and shaving comes from rainwater caught in a system of battered cooking pots.
Each day is conducted according to a strict timetable, starting with stretches in the sun on the beach. The rest is a race against time as he prepares food, washes and cleans his camp before the light fails and insects come out to bite.
It isn’t the healthiest of lifestyles, he concedes – but that isn’t the point.
“Finding a place to die is an important thing to do, and I’ve decided here is the place for me,” he said.
“It hadn’t really occurred to me before how important it is to choose the place of your death, like whether it’s in a hospital or at home with family by your side. But to die here, surrounded by nature – you just can’t beat it, can you?”
URL: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/17/us-japan-naked-hermit-idUSBRE83G0LW20120417
Zhongnan hermits today
Sympathetic article titled “The sound of silence is the height of seclusion,” in China Daily, describes the contemporary hermits of the Zhongnan mountains. The hermits are Taoist and Buddhist. Li Jiwu, a researcher in religious studies at the Shaanxi Academy of Social Sciences, “who has been studying the mountain’s hermit culture for five years, believes these reclusive people perform vital work on behalf of the society they’ve shunned, both by setting an example to others and by passing on the wisdom they’ve acquired.”
Quoting Li:
Although these people live far away from modern society, they are actually helping it. They’re like a mountain stream that brings fresh water down into the town – the water eventually reaches it one way or another.
The hermit culture has been associated with the mountain for so long that the local authorities and people are very supportive towards those setting up their mao peng [i.e., “grass hut”].
The authorities even allow hermits to live in an abandoned village located higher up the mountain. The villagers moved out in the 1990s as a part of a poverty alleviation program. The village accommodates about 16 hermits, and although they live close to each other, they rarely talk.
Not everyone can cope with the hardship and loneliness on the mountain, especially lay practitioners. I have seen many quit within weeks because there is always something they can’t let go, such as wealth or even the Internet. People should realize that it is not a getaway holiday. Being a hermit is a serious lifestyle choice.
URL: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2012-03/29/content_14936505.htm
NYT: Is silence going extinct?
The article writer joins a scientist in Alaska’s Denali National Park in search of silence and natural sound, with commentary on the status of silence and natural sound as components of wilderness and animal life. Remarks the scientist: “If you’re on foot and you choose to focus on the natural quality of the landscape, you’re completely immersed in nature; nothing else exists. Then a jet will go over, and it kind of breaks that flow of consciousness, that ecstatic moment.” Part of that natural quality and flow of consciousness is silence.
For more than 40 years, scientists have used radio telescopes to probe starry regions trillions of miles away for sounds of alien life. But only in the past five years or so have they been able to reliably record months-long stretches of audio in the wildernesses of Earth. … Indeed, though soundscape ecology has hardly begun, natural soundscapes already face a crisis. Humans have irrevocably altered the acoustics of the entire globe — and our racket continues to spread.
Article includes representative natural sounds of Denali National Park.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/magazine/is-silence-going-extinct.html