life is infinitely entertaining and wonderful

With the exception of man, all living things--birds, insects, fish, microbes, even parasites--live happily in nature: free, never employed, never obliged by others or by themselves. During the three years that I lived in the Indian and African jungles, I never once met a monkey, crocodile, serpant, ant or elephant that was unhappy, diseased or working for money. I found among these creatures of nature not one that was asthmatic, cancerous, diabetic, rheumatic or a victum of high or low blood pressure. All primitive people living among them were also relatively happy and healthy before the invasion by colonizers armed with guns, alcohol, chocolate and Christianity. The only principle of life for these primitive was this: "He who cannot enjoy life, must not eat." (1)

Happiness or misery, health or sickness, freedom or slavery--all depend upon the manner in which we conduct our daily lives and activities. Our conduct is dictated by our judgement. It, in turn, is a result of our comprehension of the structure of the world and the infinite universe. Unfortunately, there is no school or university where we can learn to judge, think and understand with clarity and freedom. In France, for example, I have seen FREEDOM, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY in big letters everywhere, but never in reality. (1)

Strangely enough, many of those who preach the "power of faith" and the miraculous healings of Jesus and also of the great Buddhists swallow medicaments they buy in drugstores and go to hospitals to be cured by empiric and symptomatic medicine. Why, then, do they preach the importance and superiority of faith? All that they preach about faith is true and exact, but they do not know what faith is. They are but phonographs. They have to learn first by study and experience that faith is the perfect understanding and realization of the constitution of the universe and its Unique Principle (in old fashioned terminology: the Kingdom of Heaven and its justice); that it is internally a clairvoyance (extrasensory perception) which sees and comprehends everything through infinite time and space, and it is universal love that embraces all antagonisms so fully as to make them complementary, giving infinite and eternal happiness to everyone. (2)

Macrobiotics is the fundamental way of eating and drinking in the Zen Buddhist monastery where it is called Syozin Ryori, the cooking that develops the supreme judgement. This is consistent with the belief that physiology precedes and determines psychology. By contrast, what is customarily served in Chinese and Japanese restaurants in the United States appeals to the low, sensory judgement; it compleatly eclipses higher judgement. The true masters of Oriental cooking can prepare food according to Macrobiotic principles that not only taste delicious but also create health and happiness.

If the food industry in America were to adopt and industrialize Macrobiotic food and drink, we might witness the first food revolution in the history of mankind and the first all-out war on human sickness and misery. (1)

 

1. Zen Macrobiotics - George Ohsawa - 1965
2. The Book Of Judgement - George Ohsawa - 1956
©Copyright George Ohsawa Macrobiotic Foundation - G.O.M.F