Tenzo Note 11: Samhain, the Autumnal Transition of Life

As the season calls upon us to let go, inviting us to transition before the long gestation of winter and the rebirth of spring, here are some thoughts about food and mortality.

What is food, and what does it say about us? To delve into the essence of our nourishment is to uncover the layers of what it reveals about our beliefs, but is this truly the most profound way to understand its inherent reality?

I am a flexitarian, abstaining from meat while occasionally consuming fish or cheese, along with a weekly indulgence in croissants, and I find contentment in this balance. I recognize that extremism can be counterproductive, as it accentuates polarization. In conversations about slaughterhouses, I advocate for collective awareness over personal responsibility, emphasizing that the suffering of animals is a reflection of the suffering embedded within the system. I applaud every instance where individuals raise questions about animal exploitation, believing that such inquiries have the potential to initiate change. I also understand that veganism may not be a comprehensive solution for this transition, as it could potentially result in job losses that would not benefit anyone, including the animals that rely on human care. In summary, I grapple with these issues, managing them to the best of my ability. Ultimately, even with a coherent discourse, deep dissonance crawls in.

But is this sustainable? What impact do my food choices truly have, and what do they say about hope for a real change? What does our collective approach to food production reveal about us as humans living among other beings?

Discussing our food appears nearly impossible because we have intertwined with the complexity of our food system, serving as both agents and recipients.

When I drive, I often pass by fields where tagged cows graze peacefully, their calves frolicking around them. In other fields, I witness calves without their mothers, and in yet other ones, I see solitary cows. I also encounter livestock trucks during my journeys. On a 500-kilometer trip, I typically encounter around twenty such trucks. Many of these vehicles carry pigs that curiously sniff the air with their snouts. However, most of the time, I am oblivious to the reasons for these empty trucks, a realization that eventually brings a sense of relief. But then it dawns on me that they are "in transit," and I am inevitably filled with sorrow. Once, I encountered a truck parked at a gas station, and I made eye contact with the animals inside. It was a truck filled with calves, and we gazed at each other for an extended moment. They exuded a remarkable calm, an infectious tranquility, akin to defiant wisdom in the face of human ignorance. Eventually, I resumed my journey, leaving them behind on the road.

With my eyes wide open, I allow the road to narrate the state of the world. The essence of our food materializes on the windshield of my car, encompassing animals, trucks, and stores. Amid these forms, I begin to discern the underlying structure, and in the negative spaces, I perceive reflections of my own self.

I Eat, swallow, digest, excrete my food 

I Eat,swallow, digest, excrete the world

Similar to how the road is swallowed by my car, everything ingested, assimilated, absorbed, transformed, expelled, and returned has perpetually intrigued me. I am convinced that I exist based on what flows through me and what I encounter. I am a composite of this constant movement, an intimate relationship that is sometimes indecent, an ongoing dialogue with myself that I occasionally wish to forget but that invariably resurfaces. Regardless of my actions, I am intertwined with the world, existing within the encompassing space of everything. I recognize that this is the core of my reality—the dynamic reality that molds me while simultaneously deconstructing me.

While my food primarily traverses my mouth, esophagus, and stomach, it also passes through the diaphragm, belly, and heart, where emotions are intertwined with nourishment. The culmination occurs through the anus and urethra, where everything is transformed in a different manner. Sometimes, even the mouth becomes a conduit when my body struggles to digest the absurdities of the world, and it unsettles me.

Because everything is ingested and consumed, eating inevitably entails consuming the world, devouring life, and being devoured.

My wandering thoughts distort and reshape the world at will. I perceive the road as a colossal mouth that swallows me as I consume the passing landscape. I am an integral part of a colossal organism, where the sound of the engine becomes the rhythm of mastication.

Within this collective reflection of the world's noises, while passing another truck loaded with cows, I come to understand the reasons behind “the situation” . Why don't we even acknowledge the beings we are about to kill to satiate our hunger? Why do we ravage salads without expressing gratitude? Why has water become separate from ourselves?

It was in Japan, a few months after the Tohoku earthquake and the Fukushima power plant explosion, that I decided to accompany a group of artists, musicians, designers, and chefs from Kamakura on a journey to explore the concept of deep time. After two days of traveling by van, we arrived at the home of Junkei, in his magnificent century-old house, nestled in the midst of a lush vegetable garden. Five days after the earthquake and the day following the nuclear explosion, he had abandoned everything, including his wife, to venture into the abandoned regions of Japan.

It was October, with autumn just beginning to emerge, and the sun still permitted us to remain outdoors. We embarked on the task of preparing dinner: we gathered ingredients, started a fire, fetched water from the river, washed and cooked vegetables, and then enjoyed our meal around the fire beneath the stars. It was an ordinary, simple meal, prepared with the natural wisdom that comes from merely being humans together. This ordinariness transformed into the extraordinary, for once nothing stood between life as it was experienced, the act of taking life, and the process of cooking it. There were no stores, no merchants, no trucks, and no factories—just a singular "We." This direct transformation of living organisms into sustenance through the ritual of the kitchen evoked a sense of gratitude and respect that I had never felt before. There was an element of the sacred in this process.

A decade later, I understand this experience more profoundly. We were within the matrix, and everything we consumed or obtained was an inseparable part of the same Body. This feast, consisting of potatoes, traditionally cooked rice, and stir-fried vegetables, tapped into the essence of death and its eternal renewal.

It was within the elemental alchemy of this fire-cooked meal that I sensed a common thread—our sustenance is derived from everything, primarily from others. We feed off death, and we are part of the perpetual cycle that refuses to distinguish between "life" and "death" or "neither life nor death."

However, in our modern culture, death is often associated with despair and the end of something. Consequently, we tend to deny it rather than embrace it as an inherent facet of our reality.

But how did this happen ? 

Modernism is undoubtedly a contributing factor. In a society that has staked everything on progress, reintroducing death into our existence disrupts the trajectory. Death becomes almost an incongruity, and accepting it risks straying from the sacrosanct concept of identity, potentially derailing the machine.

In our current era, we no longer engage in ritual sacrifice, we no longer consecrate, and we no longer celebrate.

With that, abhorrent behaviors emerge in our civilized society—cases of rape, slavery, self-mutilation, anorexia, and bulimia manifest sporadically, as though symptomatic of a multifaceted human dysfunction. It's as if a society that has transitioned from "living with" to "consuming" is experiencing a collective moral decay. 

To consume others, to utilize them without acknowledgement, to exert control over bodies, including ours, through diets and detox regimens, to exploit, extract, and possess—these behaviors are symptomatic of a society that has lost touch with the essence of life.

To recognize death is to grasp the concept of deep time.

Addressing food in our time compels us to confront human exploitation, animal genocide, the decimation of plant life, and the acknowledgment that we are both victims and perpetrators. Surrendering to the complexity of our relationship with food is, in my view, the path we must follow. 

We ought to contemplate our food, express gratitude for the sacrifices that have allowed it to reach our tables and recognize that what we consume is the result of millions of lives offered, from microscopic bacteria to our own ancestors. 

This food enables us to journey through life, taking our turn to nourish the world and allowing ourselves to be digested by the vast universal body.

Amidst the hallowed whispers of Samhain's night,
Let us embrace the shadows, bid the fading light,
Happy regeneration, in this feast we partake,
We dine, we honor death, and life we shall remake.

In the bounty of the harvest, the table set with care,
Let's honor the passing, let the old ways share,
Of our food, of our world, we bid a fond adieu,
To make them live again, in a cycle ever true.

As the veil between worlds shimmers, so thin,
We lay our souls bare, let the banquet begin,
 Happy regeneration, in this timeless refrain,
We dine, we are reborn, in the cycle's gentle chain.

With every setting sun, with every twilight sigh,
We honor what has been, as the old worlds die,
To see them rise anew, in the endless cosmic game,
Happy regeneration, in Samhain's whispered name.