What is Suiten?

“Suiten” is a Buddhist word coined by the Japanese polymath Minakata Kumagusu (1867–1941), naturalist and biologist. It means a place where a myriad of truths and bonds gather and co-arise dependently.

Minakata campaigned against Meiji’s Shrine Consolidation Policy, sounding the alarm that destroying the sacred forests would threaten not only the natural ecosystem but also the foundations of local communities and their spiritual ecology — which he knew were inseparable from nature — and, ultimately, human existence itself. More than a century on, his warning still rings out on the path humanity has taken through modernization.

The Words of Suiten is an invitation to carry the worldview and insights nurtured through Ecological Memes into the practice of individuals and organizations. At the same time, we hope it becomes an entrance — a suiten — that reconnects us with the field of the living world from which modern society has been drifting away.