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Nature = 3 Chi + 3 Heats + 4 Bodies + 3 Kingdoms

Master Cho Han-kyu, interpreted by Kim Chang, Founder of Korean Natural Farming (Janong)

Spoken in Korean. Translated to English and checked line by line.

Cho puts up his 'Natural Farming' title slide and asks what nature is: three chi, three heats, the bodies and three kingdoms; farming is heaven, earth and people working with them, and food is the gift. Then he recites the Lord's Prayer, tells how pastors scolded him and threw him out, and says 1 Corinthians 3:16–17 is why he farms. A voice from the room sums it up in English.

What they found

The question

What does Cho mean by nature, and why does he farm?

How they tested it

Cho's slide deck opens on '자연농업' (J. Natural Farming Institute). He lists nature's parts from the floor, then spends most of this page on faith: the Lord's Prayer in Korean, an argument with pastors, and the verse that brought him to natural farming. The page ends on the slide '자연농업은 생명과 환경을 지켜나가는 농업이며, 회복의 농업입니다.'

Results
  1. Nature is three chi, three heats, four bodies and three kingdoms

    Cho's opening definition on the title slide.

    ▶ 39:47 As spoken

  2. Three chi: heat, air, water

    ▶ 40:10 As spoken

  3. Three heats: heat of the sky, heat of the earth, heat of fermentation

    ▶ 40:20 As spoken

  4. Bodies: sky body, earth body, object body, air body, microbe body

    Cho names five (천체, 지체, 물체, 기체, 균체) while saying 'four bodies'. 물체 is the physical body: 'our body, the papaya'.

    ▶ 40:31 As spoken

  5. Three kingdoms: plant, animal, microbe

    ▶ 41:39 As spoken

  6. Farming is what heaven, earth and people make together using all of nature; its gift is our food

    Food is 'our daily bread' from God; Cho then recites the Lord's Prayer.

    ▶ 42:13 As spoken

  7. Cho came to natural farming through 1 Corinthians 3:16–17: the body is God's temple

    Eat proper food grown by God's grace to keep the temple healthy. 'Right there I got caught, and that's how I came to do natural farming.'

    ▶ 52:16 As spoken

  8. Cho regards natural farming as God's work and farming as loyalty given with love and hope

    ▶ 55:19 As spoken

  9. Natural farming protects life and the environment; it is farming of recovery

    Slide: '자연농업은 생명과 환경을 지켜나가는 농업이며, 회복의 농업입니다.'

    ▶ 56:08 From the slides

Hold it loosely
  • This page is philosophy and faith; there are no rates, dates or recipes.
  • Cho names five bodies while saying 'four'; which four he means is not settled here.
  • The Lord's Prayer recitation is partly garbled in the audio; the transcript gives the standard Korean wording he was reciting.
  • The English summary at about 3254 s comes from someone in the room whose name is not said.
For your farm
  • In Cho's frame, fermentation heat stands beside the sun and the earth as one of nature's three heats.
  • Microbes are a kingdom of nature in their own right, beside plants and animals.
  • Farming is people working with sky, earth and living things, not over them; food is what that work gives.

Next to Master Cho's teaching

  • Agrees

    Nature = three chi (heat, air, water), three heats (sky, earth, fermentation), four bodies, three kingdoms Same list in the 2016 Master Cho Conference notes. Older CGNF basic material says 'two heat' (sky, ground); here fermentation heat is the third.

    Master Cho Conference , p. 1

  • Differs

    The four bodies The CGNF basic copy lists four bodies: heaven, earth, air, object. Here Cho also names a microbe body (균체), five names for 'four bodies'.

    BasicCopy3 SESSION2: PPPHILOSPHY, p. 1–14

  • Agrees

    Natural farming protects life and the environment It is the motto of his technical bulletins and Theory book; here he adds 'farming of recovery'.

    Cho, Cho Han-Kyu's Natural Farming (Theory), p. 1–4

“You have to live a faith of daily life. How can you just do a faith of teaching?”

▶ 44:48

“So right there I got caught, and that's how I came to do natural farming.”

▶ 53:35

“Natural farming is farming that protects life and the environment, and it is farming of recovery.”

▶ 56:08

In this talk

  1. 39:34What is nature: three chi, three heats, bodies, kingdoms
  2. 42:32Food is daily bread: the Lord's Prayer
  3. 44:31Scolded by pastors: a faith of daily life
  4. 45:21The Mongolian spot and Samsin Halmoni
  5. 47:43Theology, blasphemy, thrown out of church
  6. 52:151 Corinthians 3:16–17: why Cho farms
  7. 56:06Natural farming protects life and the environment

Transcript

English translation, checked against the Korean as spoken.