Special Feature Crossposted on The Macrobiotic Guide Online
"From one grain, ten thousand."
See Macrobiotic
Principles
This ancient understanding of the universal principle of generosity
and abundance is at the heart of macrobiotics, veganism, ahimsa,
and the spiritual teachings of the world's religions. It points
to the truth that we live in an essentially benevolent and cooperative
universe, and that life is a miraculously creative exuberance flowering
all about us, and with which we are invited to participate by giving
of ourselves.
From one grain spring hundreds, thousands, and millions of grains,
each of which has the same potential. How do we respond to this
existential exuberance of life bursting with more life? Our response
depends on our food! From the early days, there have been two types
of agriculture: plant and animal.
Plant agriculture is essentially more feminine work, cooperating
with the cycles of nature, nurturing the spontaneous growth of herb-,
fruit-, nut-, and seed-bearing plants, and saving the precious seeds
so they could be planted again the following season.
For thousands of years, sacred rituals celebrated the miraculous
abundance of the Earth, the powers of rain, sun, and green growth,
the fecundity of Nature's ever-giving and replenishing womb, and
the joy of receiving a bounty of fragrant, delicious, and life-giving
vegetables, fruits, and grains.
From the beginning, roughly eight to ten thousand years ago, animal
agriculture was essentially men's work and it required violence
and the cruel domination of animals who always resisted as best
they could the mutilations, thefts, confinements, and killings that
were forced on them for their flesh, fur, and secretions. It began
with wild sheep and goats and spread to cows, pigs, chickens, and
other animals, and it always brought out the worst in the people
who practiced it.
Universally, we feel a sense of wonder and joy upon entering a lovingly
tended organic garden. It exudes beauty, magic, delight, and blessedness,
and we instinctively feel grateful, humble (from humus, earth),
and blessed in the presence of the gifts we receive so freely from
forces that accomplish what we can never do: bring forth new life
from seeds, roots, and stems. And universally, we are repulsed by
the violence and sheer horror and ugliness that are always required
to kill animals for food, and at a deep cultural level, we feel
ashamed of our relentless violence against animals for our meals.
We cannot create life, but we can most certainly cause death, and
we do so on a massive scale. It spreads to our plant agriculture.
Though we could humbly cooperate with life by creating widespread
networks of small-scale organic gardens, we tend instead to dominate
nature violently, the way we dominate animals for food, and create
the kind of pesticide-ridden, mono-cropped industrialized agriculture
that is actually a manifestation of the same mentality required
by thousands of years of animal agriculture.
As children, we are all taught to disconnect from our natural sense
of compassion and mercy, and to participate in eating foods of blood
and terror soon after we lose our mother's breast. We are injected
with all the stories that rationalize our violence, the no-soul,
protein, taste-good, and superior-species stories that armor our
feelings.
As we get older, we are forced to participate in preparing the foods,
cutting flesh from bone, hooking unsuspecting fish, stabbing "meat"
and hardening our hearts to the cries of terrified calves and starving
children, whose grain we feed instead to livestock.
We are cast out of the garden into the rat race of competition and
consumerism, ashamed of ourselves. It is this low self-esteem that
drives the profits of corporations enriching themselves on our insatiable
craving for gadgets, drugs, and entertainment to help us forget
what we know in our hearts, and to cover over the moans of the animals
entombed in our flesh.
The choice is set before us at every meal between the garden of
life or the altar of death and as we choose life and eat grains
and vegetables rather than flesh, milk, and eggs, we find our joy
rising, our health increasing, our spirit deepening, our mind quickening,
our feelings softening, and our creativity flourishing.
We are all connected. At the core of virtually all spiritual teachings
are two interdependent directives: to love God (i.e., to connect
authentically with the transpersonal dimension) and to love our
neighbor (i.e., to treat other expressions of life with kindness
and respect). In the Buddhist tradition, as but one example, these
are considered to be mutually supporting, so the more authentic
our meditation experience, the more we become spontaneously compassionate,
and the more we practice compassion, the deeper our meditation practice
will be able to bring us.
At the core of the Buddhist teaching of ethical living is the Five
Precepts, which are simply the five universal taboos that virtually
every culture on this planet has honored and required of its members:
1.) not killing;
2.) not stealing;
3.) not committing sexual violence or misconduct;
4.) not deceiving;
5.) not forcing alcohol or drugs on others.
When we act in these ways, we not only harm others,
we harm ourselves. As Mary Baker Eddy wrote, "The wrong done
another reacts most heavily against one's self." In animal
agriculture, we routinely break all five of these precepts against
animals used for food. They are:
1) mutilated and killed by the billions
every year;
2) have their babies stolen from them, as well as their
milk, their eggs, and their freedom;
3) are sexually abused and raped by the billions every
year (euphemized as insemination);
4) are deceived by barbed hooks and dark tunnels ending
with electroshocks, stun guns and stabbing blades;
5) are forced to take antibiotics, drugs, hormones, and
psychotropic pharmaceuticals against their will.
This violence lurks in all the animal-derived foods
we eat, perhaps most ironically in the "humanely-produced"
meat, dairy, and eggs that are growing in popularity. Cold, premeditated
killing is an ultimate betrayal of trust and it is the fate of these
animals, and it is an ultimate conscience-destroyer as well for
the perpetrators who directly and indirectly cause the killing.
We are here to bless the world. We are each one grain who can bless
ten thousand, and that is not just our potential but our joy. As
we find our song and give it voice and wings, we contribute to the
healing of our world and join with others in the celebration of
love and beauty on this Earth.
The inner teaching is generosity, humility, and gratitude: that
as we give and nurture, we receive and are blessed. Mindfulness
of our food choices is the key to creating not just the outer gardens
of beauty, sustainability, and nourishment, but to nurturing the
inner garden of our hearts. Choosing plant-based meals is the foundation
of spiritual awakening, authentic generosity, humility, and ensuring
the future of life on Earth-the ten thousands depending on us today.
We are ALL connected.
The world is like a grain of wheat.
When a person sowed it,
He believed in it;
When it grew, he loved it
For he looked forward
To thousands of grains in the place of one;
When he worked it,
He was saved,
Because he prepared it for food.
And again he kept back some grains to sow.
So it is possible
For you to receive the kingdom of heaven;
Unless you receive it through direct knowledge
You will never be able to discover it.
From The Apocryphon of James (brother of Jesus):
World Peace Diet: Eating for Spiritual Health and Social
Harmony (Paperback)
by Will, Ph.D. Tuttle Order on Amazon.com
or Amazon.co.uk
Dr.
Will Tuttle, composer, pianist, and Zen priest, is author of
The World Peace Diet and is co-founder of Karuna Music & Art
and the Prayer Circle for Animals.
Find out more about Dr. Will Tuttle at www.willtuttle.com
Watch a
Youtube Of Dr Will Tuttle!
Flickr Photo: Mike Brown
