The Long Day

I shared a fortune cookie with my mom tonight.  She’s had Alzheimer’s for twelve years now.  There weren’t enough cookies for everyone, and so as I opened it, I said Here’s a challenge, fortune cookie gods: Make this a fortune for two very different people.

Our fortune read, “Even the longest of days will come to an end.”

Well done.  We split that cookie, she and I.

The dance of delusion

Believe not on the faith of old manuscripts, your master’s teachings, or national belief.   Believe not on the faith of traditions, popularity, or your own dreamings, persuaded that God inspires you.

No, reason truth yourself.   Examine it, test it, and if you find it does good to one and all, live it, and believe.

- my paraphrase of the Buddha, responding to people asking him how to know which prophets were telling the truth

I was reading a chilling article in the NY Times Magazine recently, “How Baida Wanted to Die.”  It was a series of interviews with Baida, a foiled Iraqi female suicide bomber.  The Iraqi woman was in prison, and the American woman interviewer was told by a police director that she would like Baida.  “She’s honest.”

Of course, this was a very odd thing to say, but the interviewer came to agree with him.  I think they both missed the point.  This woman freely and calmly admitted what she had tried to do and said she couldn’t wait to get out and get the explosive vest waiting for her.  She said it was in revenge for a military raid (including Americans) killing her father and four brothers, all of whom she was helping make IEDs (bombs).  She was making the bombs in revenge for seeing the Americans shoot a neighbor.  She felt these IEDs were all being used against the military, and when the interviewer told her the vast majority killed ordinary Iraqis, she would only say that was forbidden.

This woman may have been honest with the police, and she may have been honest with the interviewer, but she was not honest with herself, and I did not like her.  I feel compassion, yes, for her being immersed in a patriarchal and religious extremist culture of violence, where revenge seems like a reasonable use of one’s life.

But what I found most interesting was a fascinating part of the NY Times article where Baida begs the interviewer to come visit her in prison.  The journalist is warned that Baida, who has a cell phone, may be setting her up for a kidnapping by relatives.  The interviewer is careful and does not tell when she’s coming and does not stay long.  She asks Baida if she wants to kill her, and the woman says, “Frankly, yes.  Not specifically you, because I know you.”  The interviewer pressed her, would she betray her to her family?  “I won’t sacrifice my friendship.  But if they insisted, yes, I would, yes.  As a foreigner it is halal (good) to kill you.  If they kill Americans, they will do a big huge banquet for dinner.”  And she smiled.  She went on to tell how her relatives had called to get information about the journalist, and promised to help Baida escape if she gave it to them.  She seemed excited.  “They do not want to kill you, but to torture you and make lunch of your flesh.  I could not do anything to help you.”  She described seeing an American tortured, his eyes gouged out, and added “God keep you safe.”  She smiled again and continued pleasantly, “If I had not seen you before and talked to you, I would kill you with my own hands.  Do not be deceived by my peaceful face.  I have a heart of stone.”  The journalist left hurriedly, knowing Baida had called her cousins when she arrived, and they were on their way for her.

Baida’s speech sounds psychotic, but it’s just torn.  She has a wall up in her mind between two things that she believes: “All Americans are evil and I want them to die.”  “Some Americans are friendly and helpful and I don’t want them to die.”  This wall is crucial to her daily functioning because obviously these two things are mutually exclusive.  In this fascinating speech, you can see her dancing back and forth from sentence to sentence, peeking first on one side and then the other side of this wall.  Baida has three choices.  Her first choice is to continue to wobble back and forth in this dissonant way, believing two incompatible things.  The alternative is to knock down the wall.  It will be painful to knock it down and see both sides at once, because she will see that her model doesn’t work, that she must give up one of these ideas.  So her second choice is to believe all Americans really are evil and must die; she will then have to convince herself that each American that she meets is evil, from the soldiers handing out candy bars, to the aid workers, and even friendly interviewers.  She will have to mock anyone who supports a more compassionate path.  Her third choice is to knock the wall the other way, to see Americans as they really are, the good and the bad, and to decide what is the best way to respond.

Think Baida is unusually deluded?  As a vegan, I see this dance all the time right here in America.  I used to do it myself.  On one side of the wall is loving animals, wishing them to be happy and free of suffering.  On the other side is eating them.  Those two things are incompatible.  For a long time, I did something like what Baida was doing in the prison.  I gave animals a hug, and then I sat down to eat them.  Oh, little piggy, you’re so cute and so yummy.  Ugh.

So if we recognize that this wall is keeping two incompatible beliefs in our mind, and we set out to be more consistent, what shall we do?  First we knock down the wall, and confront the painful contradiction that we love animals but we eat them.  It hurts too much to see this clearly, and something must change.  Some people knock the rubble down on the compassionate side, burying it, hardening their hearts, at least to food animals.  They are the ones who call pigs lazy and dirty and turkeys stupid.  They mock animal-supporters as sentimental “Bambi lovers.”  They may even work with animals, but they are blinded by the stereotype.  Or they feel they have no choice; there’s a part in Gail Eisnitz’ Slaughterhouse where she quotes a slaughterhouse worker.  I couldn’t find the text just now, but I think his job was to deal with the pigs who fall off the killing line, alive.  He went down into the pit they fall into, and one of the pigs nuzzled his leg and looked up at him.  He said he looked down and thought something like, “This was probably a really nice animal, but in another 30 seconds it would be my job to bash its head in with a pipe.  So I did it.”  Do you suppose that job takes a toll on a person?

The stories trump the obvious truth.  People somehow convince themselves that cows are for eating but cats are not.  People may even tell themselves that we need meat, even though they know lots of people are healthy without it.   People picture animals having a good life on Old McDonald’s Farm, even though they suspect that their meat comes from factory farms.   There is a fine line between ignorance and indifference, and sometimes we nail that line down so it doesn’t get away from us.  We don’t want to know.  The truth isn’t the only victim of this choice.  When we bury our compassion or shackle it to certain species, a heavy price is paid – a part of us, I would say the best part, is dead.

There’s a third choice.  When we confront this inconsistency – love animals or eat them, one or the other, can’t do both – and decide to love them, we can open our eyes to the truth.  I think you will find that vegans and vegetarians can more easily discuss animal body parts and watch difficult movies about animal suffering.  Everyone knows, deep in their hearts, that the “food” on the table is a bowl of arms and the animals in the videos are suffering, but the vegetarians have already faced this truth.  We don’t have the pain of dissonance, of inconsistency, of complicity.  For us it is just raw compassion, mixed with an affirmation of our decision.

Two years ago I knocked down the last of this particular wall, and I embraced love and compassion instead of cheese.  As the Buddha suggested, I find that this truth does good to one and all.  I will live it, and believe.

Delusion

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/magazine/16suicide-t.html

I was reading a chilling article in the NY Times Magazine recently,

“How Baida Wanted to Die.”  It was a series of interviews with

Baida, a foiled Iraqi female suicide bomber.  The Iraqi woman was in

prison, and the American woman interviewer was told by a police

director that she would like the Iraqi, “She’s honest.”

Of course, this was a very odd thing to say, but the interviewer

came to agree with him.  I think they both missed the point.  This

woman freely admitted what she had tried to do and said she couldn’t

wait to get out and get the explosive vest waiting for her.  She

said it was in revenge for a military raid (including Americans)

killing her brothers and her husband, all of whom she was helping

make IEDs (bombs).  She was making the bombs in revenge for seeing

the Americans shoot a neighbor.  She felt these IEDs were all being

used against the military, and when the interviewer told her the

vast majority killed ordinary Iraqis, she would only say that was

forbidden.

This woman may have been honest with the police, and she may have

been honest with the interviewer, but she was not honest with

herself, and I did not like her.  I feel compassion, yes, for her

being immersed in a patriarchal and religious extermist culture of

violence, where revenge seems like a reasonable use of one’s life.

It may have been this article or another where the author was

matter-of-factly listing off some recent bombings and casualties,

and I had to stop and take a deep breath.  It was all so insane.  As

Doctor Phil, would say, “How’s that working for you?”  Who is helped

by killing and revenge?  The dark mind finds brief satisfaction in

the suffering of one’s enemy, but is it joy?  Is it happiness?  It

is tinged with hate and anger – it cannot be good.

There was a fascinating part of the article where the Iraqi begs the

interviewer to come visit her in prison.  The journalist is warned

that the prisoner, who has a cell phone, may be settin her up for a

kidnapping by relatives.  The interviewer is careful and does not

tell when she’s coming and does not stay long.  She asks the Iraqi

if she wants to kill her, and the woman says “Frankly, yes.  Not

specifically you, because I know you.”  The interviewer pressed her,

would she betray her to her family?  “I won’t sacrifice my

friendship.  But if they insisted, yes, I would, yes.  As a

foreigner it is halal (good) to kill you.  If they kill Americans,

they will do a big huge banquet for dinner.”  And she smiled.  She

went on to tell how her relatives had called to get information

about the journalist, and promised to help Baida escape if she gave

it to them.  She seemed excited.  “They do not want to kill you, but

to torture you and make lunch of your flesh.  I could not do

anything to help you.”  She described seeing an American tortured,

and added “God keep you safe.”  She smiled again and continued

pleasantly, “If I had not seen you before and talked to you, I would

kill you with my own hands.  Do not be deceived by my peaceful face.

I have a heart of stone.”  The journalist left hurriedly, knowing

Baida had called her cousins when she arrived, and they were on

their way for her.

Baida’s speech sounds psychotic, but it’s just torn.  She has a wall

up in her mind between two things that she believes: “Americans are

bad and I want them to die.”  “Americans are friendly and helpful

and I don’t want them to die.”  This wall is crucial to her daily

functioning because obviously these two things are mutually

exclusive.  In this fascinating speech, you can see her dancing back

and forth from sentence to sentence, peeking first on one side and

then the other side of this wall.  Baida has three choices.  Her

first choice is to continue to wobble back and forth in this

dissonant way, believing two incompatible things.  The alternative

is to knock down the wall.  It will be painful to knock it down and

see both sides at once, because she will see that her model doesn’t

work, that she must give up one of these ideas.  So her second

choice is to believe all Americans are evil and must die; she will

then have to convince herself that each American that she meets is

evil, from the soldiers handing out candy bars, to the aid workers,

and even friendly interviewers.  She will have to mock anyone who

supports a more compassionate path.  Her third choice is to knock

the wall the other way and turn to peace.

Think Baida is unusually deluded?  As a vegan, I recognize this

dance all the time right here in America.  I used to do it myself.

On one side of the wall is loving animals, wishing them to be happy

and free of suffering.  On the other side is eating them.  Think

about it.  Those two things are incompatible.  For a long time, I

did exactly what Baida was doing.  I gave animals a hug, and then I

sat down to eat them.  Dick King-Smith is a chldren’s author (think

“Babe” who is a master at expressing people’s discomfort with this

dissonance, often showing the switch within two sentences.  In this

excerpt, from Ace, the Very Important Pig, Farmer Tubbs is delighted

his piglet is communicating with him, and remembers he’s the

grandson of Babe: “‘So you never know, young Ace – you might be an

extraordinary pig when you’m full grown.’  Except you never will be

full grown, thought the farmer.  I shall sell you…when you’m eight

weeks old, and a few months after that you’ll…be pork.  He was

careful…not to say this out loud…  The piglet might understand

what he was saying.”

So if we recognize that this wall is keeping two incompatible

beliefs in our mind, and we set out to be more consistent, what

shall we do?  First we knock down the wall, and confront the painful

contradiction that we love animals but we eat them.  It hurts too

much to see this clearly, and we must change.  Some people knock the

rubble down on the compassionate side, burying it.  They are the

ones who call pigs lazy and dirty and turkeys stupid.  They mock

animal-supporters as sentimental “Bambi’lovers.”  They may even work

with animals, but they only see the stereotype, not the honest

animal.  They have to willfully enforce their delusions.

There is another children’s story that I recently read to my

daughter that I found illuminating in its simplicity.  “The Three

Erics” is in the wacky book Wayside School, by Louis Sachar. There

are three boys named Eric in the class.  Wikipedia puts it well:

“Each one is given an inapproriate, stereotyped, and just plain

wrong nickname.”  Two of them are fat, and everyone thinks that all

three Erics are fat, so they call the skinny one Fatso.  The kids in

the class make judgements about the Erics based on some of them,

instead of directly seeing and understanding.  They see two mean

Erics so they tell themselves a story that Erics are mean, and when

they come to nickname the third Eric, instead of seeing how nice he

is, they are blinded by their story, and they call him Crabapple.

Similarly, two of the Erics are bad at sports, so the one who is

good at sports is nicknamed Butterfingers.  At first listen, this

just seems silly, but it isn’t hard to think of real-life

situations.  You’re walking down a dark street in a bad part of town

and a group of African Americans is approaching you.  All the

stereotypes pop into your head and you become afraid, but these guys

may turn out to be a pastor and his boys choir leaving evening

services.  Remember the police who killed an innocent immigrant in

his doorway?  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amadou_Diallo)  The

police just saw the whole scene differently, and missed all the cues

that this wasn’t a thug.

So when someone says “Pigs are stupid,” they aren’t basing this on

any direct experience.  Pigs are actually probably smarter than

dogs.  Turkeys can be very affectionate.  At least the Erics’

classmates based their stereotypes on direct experiences with some

Erics – what experience do we have with turkeys?  All these kinds of

statements are an attempt to keep the wall pushed over that way.

Because it if falls on the other side, we have to change, not only

our minds, but our behavior.

Two years ago I knocked down the last of that particular wall, but I

embraced love and compassion instead of cheese.

Podcasts

I’m not an expert on podcasts, but I really like them and I’ve had a few people ask me about them.  A couple that I like have to do with food, so that’s the connection here.

A podcast is a series of audio or video files available online for people to download for free.  They can be a minute or an hour long, whatever.  There would usually be more than one from the same people, and they are posted periodically, like a newspaper or a TV show.  Visit the web sites of your favorite media and you may very well find a podcast that you like.  You can also Google for podcasts on topics that interest you or browse through directories such as this one.  There are kids’ podcasts, too, often people reading stories.

Most podcasts offer a variety of ways to listen.  Sometimes they may be embedded in your browser window so that Internet Explorer, for instance, will play them for you right on the page.  For example, this site offers you the ability to do that (press the green triangle under the podcast episode title to play it).  But next to that you see you can also Download it to your computer and play it through Windows Media Player, or save it for later, etc.  It’s just an audio file.

You can subscribe to a podcast using your browser bookmark.  Look around the podcast page for “Subscribe” or “RSS.”  This will let you add a bookmark tab that keeps changing to show you the available podcasts (usually your bookmarks stay the same, right?”).  Then you can quickly see what’s new without visiting a bunch of sites.

But I don’t do this.  I use podcatcher software that came with my MP3 player.  Mine is a Creative Zen so the podcast catcher is called ZENcast.  I tell it what podcasts I like and when I open it it automatically downloads the latest ones.  I can use it to transfer to my MP3 player, or I can listen or watch right at my computer.  iTunes does this for iPod players.  There are also free online ones – I think Google Reader is one.  (I recommend making sure any MP3 player you buy comes with good software – we bought a Sansa and it comes with nothing, leaving you at the mercy of a patchwork of freeware and Microsoft applications.)

So that’s what I do.  I already have the podcasts I like set up.  I run ZENcast, it downloads the latest, and I transfer them to my player and take it out for a walk.  I mostly listen to podcasts while I walk, run, or drive.

Here are the ones I like:

• 60-Second Psych and 60-Second Science: Little bites of popular general science and psychology news
• Delicious TV Veg: Clips from the Totally Vegetarian with Toni Fiore cooking show
• The Ethicist: An advice column from the NY Times.  I just love advice columns.
• Legal Lad: A lawyer gives a 5-minute talk about various issues
• Modern Manners Guy: Mr. Manners gives advice
• NOVA Vodcast: usually a video clip from NOVA or Science Now, PBS science shows
• The Onion News Network: Satirical news show, video
• The Onion Radio News: Satirical radio news clips
• LSAT Logic in Everyday Life: A law professor applies logic to current water-cooler topics
• The Public Speaker: Communication tips

Two podcasts that have changed my life:

• Vegetarian Food For Thought: Series of talks on vegan issues, including ethics, communication, nutrition, recipes, and literature
• Zencast: This is a series of very approachable lectures on Zen Buddhism, including a five-week meditation course.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

I went with my family to see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs today (no spoilers).  This was a very funny movie which I highly recommend.  I think most of the jokes were over the heads of our children, but they enjoyed the action and we loved the writing.  I had quite a few thoughts about it, so I will jump around and hopefully make some kind of sense.

I was apprehensive because I wondered if as a vegan I would find all the raining meat upsetting.  I also wondered whether it would make my kids, who are vegetarian, want more of the junk foods that the trailer seemed to be so full of.  I know they wouldn’t want meat, but there was lots of ice cream and candy.  There were very few whole foods.

I paid attention to my thoughts as I watched the movie, and found that since the food really was (mostly) all vegan, it didn’t bother me at all.  Except for the sardines, which did bother me, it did not come from animals, but from water, converted by a machine in the sky.  So when bigger and bigger “steaks” flopped on the ground, so what?   I also considered it carefully and decided that, vegan or not, I had no interest in eating any of it.  I don’t miss steak.  At all.

I’m not really sure why.  I can’t figure out if it’s because craving steak is just a bad habit I have lost, or if I have so fully ingrained my long-time habit of not eating steak, that even when given a completely ethical one, I don’t want it.

An acquaintance of mine, who is really very nice, does not get this.  I see her every few months or so, and each time, she is excited to tell me that she visited some farm and they were treating the animals well there.  “Hmmm,” I say.  She takes that as encouragement and goes on to say, “So, I’ll get you the address, and then you could have it!”  For a moment I don’t know what to say.  I take a second to see that from her point of view, I am deprived of this wonderful product and thanks to her sleuthing I can have it again.  As kindly as I can I tell her that I’m not interested.  She will ask why, and I can point out some of the problems that are still involved, but I can’t seem to convince her that I really, really, really, truly, do not ever want to consume that product again.  Between you and me, I do not want to put in my mouth: dead animals, mammary secretions, or the waste byproduct of a reproductive cycle.  Thanks anyway.

I think I got the point across once when she asked if I would eat a chicken if I had kept it as a pet and which died of natural causes.   I was actually speechless for a few seconds.  Do people eat their pets?  I pointed to my Dad’s dog, who was staying with us, and replied that I would no more eat a dead chicken than I would eat Hallie.  Then I apologized to Hallie for dragging him into it.

This stuff is no longer food to me.  Animals are not food.  It sticks in my craw to call animal flesh “meat,” as though it is something to eat.  There may be cannibals living somewhere in the world today, but how does it make you feel to refer to their victims as “meat”?   Does it feel fine just because they call it that?  I give in and call animal flesh “meat” because if I called it a carcass or a corpse people would get all uptight.

Anyway, all of this rambling is to the point that steak is not food to me any more, whether it comes from a raincloud or a factory farm.

Which brings me to the second thing I noticed about this movie.  Most people give no more thought to where their food comes from than if it really did come raining down from the sky.  The horrors of factory farming, or any slaughter at all, are as far away and as unconsidered as a magical machine over the rainbow.  There was no mention in the movie of the difference in origin of this new food.

Another thing I noticed was that despite eating at least three huge meals per day of junk food, nobody but the Mayor gained weight.  Only one boy overate candy and got sick.  Maybe this water-food was healthy, too.  Oh, except that it was made by mutating the water by exposing it to radiation.  Or something.

Another question I asked myself: Will it make non-vegans hungry?  Will it inspire unhealthy habits?  There was an enormous liquid cheese fountain that made me laugh and gag at the same time, so afterwards I asked my family if that looked good to them, did it make them want to have some.  The vote was one yes, three no’s.  My daughter said none of it made her hungry, but my son liked the ice cream.  I didn’t have the heart to ask my husband what he thought of the 5 lb. steaks.  So, inconclusive.

My last point.  I have been reading up on Buddhism, which I’m finding to be a fascinating psychology, and they make the point that attachment to desire is the cause of all suffering.  The townspeople in this movie were so wrapped up in their desire for this food.  They would desperately pester the inventor to send their favorite meals.  They would gorge themselves on it.  They were only happy when it kept coming, and the thought that the inventor might not continue made those who knew frantic, practically insane.  It was just so important to them.  And it was all great until it wasn’t.

We’re human.  We need food.  We like good food.  We desire certain foods.  But let’s get a grip.

Parzival and Luke

I just finished reading Parzival, The Quest of the Grail Knight (originally written around 1200, retold by Katherine Paterson) to my kids.  (Warning: spoilers)

Parzival was a great knight, but had been given the advice to not ask so many questions because it made him appear to be a simpleton.  So one day he was at a castle where there was great sickness and sorrow, but, earnestly remembering the advice, did not ask what was wrong, though he desperately wanted to know.  Because he did not show compassion and ask what was wrong, the spell was not broken and their suffering continued.  He was cursed by all, and, though still undefeated by any challengers, wandered the world miserably for four years, a failure.  He cursed God and wanted to die.

When he finally realized what he was supposed to do, he returned to the castle and asked the question, breaking the spell, and lived happily ever after.

We discussed the story afterwards, and realized that for all his strength and skill as a knight, it was compassion that was the trait that mattered most.  We also realized that sometimes we get advice that isn’t so great, or that we misunderstand, and that we should follow our hearts and think for ourselves.

Luke Skywalker

By coincidence, my son and I are reading The Dharma of Star Wars by Matthew Bortolin, in which the author explains that at the end of Return of the Jedi, Luke has been told by Obi-Wan and Yoda that he must kill his father or the Emperor will win, and is told by the Emperor that if he kills Darth Vader, he will have turned to the dark side and be under the Emperor’s power.  Luke sees another path, that of compassion.  He sees the good in his father and throws aside his lightsaber, refusing to fight him.  All his strength, fancy footwork, and lightsaber training are for nothing when it comes to the pivotal moment of his life.  He throws off the advice he was given by those he trusted most and follows his heart, thereby saving the galaxy.

Any one of us could have done these things.  No Force training, no Yoda or Obi-Wan, no midichlorians, no lightsaber, no bulgy muscles were necessary, nor was the ability to fly a fighter jet ludicrously fast.  You don’t have to know how to joust or look good in armor.  All that was needed, by both Luke and Parzival, was to let loose the compassion that is within all of us.

It’s true that these are just stories, written by someone.  Neither one of these heroes actually saved anyone with their compassion in reality.  But these stories endure because they resonate with us; they tell us something important about ourselves, about what we believe in, about what we aspire to.  What kind of world would we live in if, when the going got tough, the tough got compassionate?  What if instead of being afraid to help someone on the street in need because everyone else was stepping over him, we were to follow our heart and the values we think are important?

Because I only post things here that relate to what I eat, of course I have a food angle for this.  What if we ignored the babble we hear about farm animals?  “Cows are so stupid, they deserve to be eaten.”  “I don’t feel sorry for turkeys – they’re dumb.”  Pigs are fat/dirty/lazy.  “Beef: It’s what’s for dinner.”  Dairy makes strong bones.  Are you getting enough protein?

We hear all this junk from people and institutions we trust, or we absorb it without question.  What if we ignored the ads, the USDA, the farmers, friends, teachers, and our mothers, and, in the face of the incredible suffering inflicted on our fellows, simply did what we felt was right?  What if we found our compassion deep within, and unleashed it?

The Spider and the Monk

Here is this week’s Zen Speaks.

There was once a monk who was bothered by a great big spider whenever he tried to meditate.  He spoke to his Master: “Every time I try to meditate, this big spider appears, and no matter what I do, I just can’t get rid of it.”

“Hmmm…  Next time you go to meditate, grab a paintbrush, and if that spider shows up again, draw a circle right on its belly; then you will see what kind of a monster it is.”

So the monk took his master’s advice, and as soon as he had finished drawing the circle on the spider’s belly, the spider disappeared and the monk was able to continue meditating in peace.  When he withdrew from his concentration, the first thing he saw was a big black circle right on his own belly.

The narrator speaks: We all experience troubles and worries, but it often happens that our greatest troubles arise from ourselves.

I find so many applications to this idea that it will be hard not to go on and on.  A whole blog site could be dedicated to this.  I’ll cover just a few situations briefly.  I’m sure you can think of others.

Up until I was in my early 30s, I was terrified of spiders.  I was too grossed out to squish them myself, but I would call in my hero.  I had accepted that this was just a phobia I couldn’t do anything about, until one day I overheard a coworker say, “I used to kill spiders, but I decided it’s not their fault that I’m afraid of them.”  From that day on I made an effort to imagine what it was like to be the spider.  I found that I could relate to the spider, and my fear evaporated.  I still think they’re kind of yucky, but I’m not afraid, and I can peacefully coexist with them.

The fear, and my problem, was within me, not the spiders.  Most of us are not afraid of “food animals,” but we have other ignorant prejudices about them, such as that they are stupid or filthy.  I think if we put ourselves in their places and look at them for what they really are, we can overcome these prejudices and find truth and empathy.  The change is within us.

How about health problems?  We bemoan our poor health and look to outside causes and cures.  We want the medical community to fix our problem for us, but we are often the problem.  What we are eating is killing us.  So many of our western diseases of affluence, such as cancer, heart disease, and osteoporosis, could be reduced or eliminated by changing our diet.  (Source The China Study by T. Colin Campbell)

One of my favorite books is How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, by Dale Carnegie.  This book is not full of answers for how to fix your problems.  It doesn’t help you get your mechanic to stop overcharging you.  It won’t remove yellow waxy buildup or pimples.  This book helps us deal with our problems by changing ourselves.  The companion book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, tells us “Any fool can criticize and most fools do,” and that we should work on improving other people right after we have perfected ourselves.  He shows us the circle on our own bellies.  Google these life-changing books and you can read them online for free.

Another book I really liked was When Anger Hurts.  This self-help book showed how you can take any situation such as waiting forever in a toll booth line and turn it around in your mind to avoid getting angry.  It used various strategies such as putting yourself in the place of the other person.  The main point of the book is that we make ourselves angry, with our thoughts of what others could and should be doing.  After reading this book, when I hear people say anger is healthy, I am very dubious.  I think anger can be avoided in most situations, is very unpleasant for all involved, and I have trouble coming up with examples where it could actually help.

The flip side of the concept of assigning blame outside ourselves is seeking happiness outside ourselves.  As if the monk couldn’t meditate unless a giant spider sat on his head.  The Wizard of Oz is a well-known example of this; Dorothy travels all over Oz to discover that the answer to her problem was on her feet all along.  When I was younger, I thought it was a cop-out that the good witch claimed she didn’t tell Dorothy the significance of the magic shoes earlier because Dorothy wouldn’t have believed her; I mean, wouldn’t Dorothy just give her shoes a quick click to try?  But I have come to believe that metaphorically it is often true that people think the answer has to be “out there.”

Lastly, many people seek happiness in food.  I hear, “I couldn’t live without…”  What do you think they say?  air? water? shelter? love?  No, people usually finish this sentence with “cheese” or “dairy.”  I’ll go into this more some other time, but my reason for living is not derived from the mammary excretions of a cow.  If I find that a food no longer meets my values, I shrug my shoulders and discard it.  The alternatives are:

1. give it up reluctantly and think about it longingly and resentfully
2. keep eating it and be Torn
3. change my values to suit my tastes

I found in thinking up this blog entry that I could apply the lesson of the spider to any problem in my life that I could think of, from crying babies to fear of death.  How can you put it to work for you?

Torn

Here is my pick for this week’s Zen Speaks comic, “Torn”:

“There once was a nun named Eshun who was very beautiful, and one day during lecture a young monk secretly fell in love with her.  He wrote her a love letter in which he said that he wanted to meet with her in private.  The next day, as soon as the master ended his lecture, Eshun stood up and said to the monk who wrote the letter, ‘If you really love me, then come up here right now and embrace me.’”

The narrator continues, “If your mind is torn by two conflicting desires, the contradiction will destroy your mind’s unity and tranquility.  Just remember, when you should grab something, grab it.  When you should let it go, let it go.”

I drive down the road and I know that I should obey the speed limit, but the speed limit is ridiculous.  My desire to be a good citizen and follow the laws that We the People enact, and my desire to go a more reasonable (faster) speed, cause me conflict, and not only inside my mind.  My kids sit behind me, looking from the speedometer to the speed limit sign, and somehow I have to  explain myself.  The justifications take quite a bit of talking.

When I was considering going vegan, I agonized over the decision.  I was torn between the food I wanted to eat and the suffering I knew it was causing.  I twisted and turned, I rationalized, I whined.  “I don’t eat that much,” “It won’t make any difference,” “I buy ‘humane’ products and how can I be blamed if they aren’t?” and all the rest.  But the answer always returned, the answer I didn’t want to hear, squashing my excuses.  Finally I realized that this epic battle going on inside of me was between unfathomable, obscene suffering and… restaurant cake.   And I laughed out loud at myself.

A short time after becoming vegan, I realized how much that disconnect had broken my spirit.  I only became aware of it when it healed.  For the first time in my life, I could fully embrace my compassion.  I didn’t reign it in, or shackle it with rationalizations.  I didn’t wall it off like in an Edgar Allen Poe story.   I didn’t allow people to make me feel ridiculous for loving Bambi and Wilbur.  I was free.

I know that even friendly people look on my food and my lifestyle with pity.  They feel that I am restricted by self-imposed rules about what I can’t eat, that I am cut off from many foods which form the basis of their own diets.  From the inside, being vegan is not about restriction, it is about freedom of spirit, and the wholeness of a mind that was once Torn.

Now I can look at you in peace; I don’t eat you any more. – Franz Kafka

The Gates of Heaven

Another comic from Zen Speaks:

There was once a general who asked the zen master Hakuin, “Are there really such things as heaven and hell?”

“What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a general.”

“Ha, ha, ha!  What idiot asked you to be his general?  You look more like a butcher to me.”

“What?!  I’ll cut you to pieces!”  And the general raises his sword to strike, enraged.

“Here lies the gates of hell!” shouts Hakuin.

The general bows penitently.  “Excuse me… Please forgive my insolence.”

“Here lie the gates of heaven.”

The narrator pipes up, “Heaven and hell aren’t places that suddenly appear after death.  They exist here and now.  Good and evil involve just a single instant of thought, and the gates of heaven and hell are ready to open for you at any time.”

Sartre said, “Hell is other people.”  I think hell is ourselves.  We make our own heaven and hell on earth, mostly for ourselves, but also for anything under our power.

This makes me think of a line from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.  Ebeneezer Scrooge, a very hard employer himself, was moved by the kindness his boss had showed him: “He had the power to make us happy or unhappy, to make our work a pleasure or a burden.”

We all have that power every day.  We can make our own lives, the lives of those we meet, and the lives of those who are or are not on our plates, a heaven or a hell.  It is completely up to us.

Carrying a Woman Across a River

This week’s Zen Speaks is very useful – I think about it frequently in many contexts.  Two monks approach a woman hesitating at a river’s edge.

One day while the zen monk Tanzan and a young monk were travelling, they happened upon a beautiful young lady in distress.

Tanzan says, “Here let me carry you across.”

On the other side, she thanks them and says goodbye.  The two monks continued on their journey for more than half a day.  The young monk is troubled.

“I thought we monks were supposed to avoid women.  Why did you just do that?”

“Huh?  Oh, you mean that woman way back there?  I put her down long ago.  Are you still carrying her?”

We often carry things much longer than we need to.  Grudges, hurt feelings, embarassing moments, longing for the past, unhelpful traditions.   I once heard someone say that he would imagine an envelope labeled “Waste Of Time” and he would put unhelpful thoughts into it and file them away.

Since this is a food blog, I am going to drag the food connection into this by suggesting that we do not need to eat today what we ate yesterday.  And I’m not talking about leftovers, I’m talking about leftover ideas about what a plate should look like, what we need to eat to be happy and healthy, what it’s OK to do.  Shirley Jackson wrote a story about being stuck in pointless traditions.  It’s called The Lottery (wikipedia includes two audio versions under “Listen To”), and it was published in The New Yorker in 1948.   ”Nothing in the magazine before or since would provoke such a huge outpouring of fury, horror, rage, disgust and intense fascination” (Oppenheimer).  I think about food traditions when I read it.  Traditions that don’t reflect who I am.  Traditions I no longer want to carry.

A Blind Man Carrying a Lantern

This week’s zen comic from Zen Speaks:

When a blind man was leaving his friend’s house, the friend handed him a lantern to take on his way.  The blind man said, “I don’t need a lantern.  It’s all the same to me whether it’s dark or light.”

“I know, but if you don’t have a light with you, someone might accidentally run into you.”

“Oh, all right.”

So the blind man is running along with the lantern in one hand and his cane in the other, when he and another man collide.  The blind man calls out, “Can’t you see a light right in front of your face?!”

To which the other man replies, “Hey, buddy, your light was already out!”

The narrator pipes in, “Using another person’s ideas to enlighten other people is like the blind man carrying a lantern…  The light may go out along the way, and you’ll never even know.”

Up until my sophomore year of college, I used to read literature for my English classes, and then, because I wasn’t sure what the story meant, and didn’t see any way of figuring it out on my own, I would look up commentary on it.  Then I knew what it meant.  Then, finally, I had some professors who questioned me on my conclusions.  “This doesn’t make sense,” they would write on my papers.  I looked, and indeed, it did not make sense.  It had not really made sense before, but I figured the professional literary critic who thought of it knew better than a punk like me.  I snicker now to think of some of the conclusions those critics came to.  They surely had PhD’s in English, and they were wrong wrong wrong.  This is the point when I began to trust myself, and I have never forgotten that even people who have a doctorate in something can be ridiculously, laughably, wrong.

So often I am having a conversation with someone, and they say something that I am certain they can have given no thought to, and I realize they have probably heard this somewhere and it sounded good so they are passing it along.  It’s one of those ideas that goes around with no one questioning it.  I particularly notice this with people who enjoy Fox news.  When I (politely) challenge them to support what they have just said, they are completely at a loss.  They may spout more, equally empty  platitudes, but there is no substance to their speech.  Thoughts don’t have to be original, but they should be at least well-considered.

What does this have to do with food?  There is so much misinformation floating around about animal products.  There are truths that are deliberately hidden, about treatment of animals, about the effects of this stuff on our bodies, about what we need to eat.  There is strange logic that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.  There is moral hair-splitting, cognitive dissonance, and indifference.  This babble comes from our politicians, our government, media, industry, friends, and family, even me!  Don’t just take my word for all this stuff – never – question everything I say!  If we took a moment to listen to what we say, both to ourselves and to others, and weed out that which we know to be true from that which we merely repeat, maybe we can all end up somewhere closer to the truth.

Let’s not carry the lanterns that are handed to us.  Let’s light our own.