Food!

It is the world's one crime that its babes grow dull.

Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap.

--- Rachel Lindsey

I love food, because to me, it feels good to eat. I like taking time out of my day to enjoy a good meal, to prepare and enjoy my own food, or even to eat something prepared for me. There is nothing like food, except sunlight, maybe. Solar energy, food energy, heat, momentum- - all are different forms of the same energy, the stuff (energy) that makes up our universe.

I'd like to feel what it is like to be a tree, or a plant, to have such faith in the energy of the sun, to absorb it through my skin like leaves are to trees, and convert solar energy into food energy. Wow. What an amazing process. And plants breathe, too. They breathe in what we as humans, and also the animal kingdom, give off -- carbon dioxide. They give off what we breathe in -- oxygen. Plants are as essential to our well being as anything else on this planet, including our know-how as humans.

Now, this is to say nothing of what goes on in the deep blue sea. That stuff down there is a whole 'nother ball game, so to speak. But there is reaping and sowing going on down there, too, don't be mistaken. It all is give and take, yin and yang, reap and sow. One effects the other. What is the answer to this riddle of duality? The big question of why? Why does the wind blow, grass grow and people die? Who knows. But what a human can enter into is Balance, a state of harmonious balance. And those who discover the truth of that harmony, that balance, that "unconditional state of being" -- those people make life their playground, i.e. Zorba the Buddha.

Bodhidharma:

Mango photo courtesy of Gabrielle Samson

Boddhidharma photo: woodblock print by Yoshitoshi, 1887.