Once I heard this teaching. Our Holy Lamas were on retreat in China, in a very remote village at the top of high mountains. All they ate for two months was watermelon and squash, what was growing in the garden in the front of the house. And then they went to Morocco, again with a garden in the front yard. The instructions from both caretakers at each place were to just add water and eat what grows. “There’s your food.”
The simple act of removing ourselves from a fossil fuel demanding food supply chain, such as how food is grown and transported with current cultural practices, begins to globally protect life on a deep and wide level. We protect ourselves and agricultural workers, all inhabitants of the earth, from harmful pesticides and petroleum based fertilizers, expensive and toxic packaging and storage methods, and we eliminate diesel pollution and co2 emissions from freight and transport activities. (Did you know the food from your luncheon plate traveled over 22,572 miles to get there?)
Culturally we first need to wean ourselves from pleasing a spoiled child-like palate that demands variety on a daily basis. This way of eating is toxic to the entire planet and all the beings who live on it. In the retreat environment especially it will be important to practice simple eating that is not harmful to life. The only way to do this is by growing food locally.
Each retreat cabin will have a small walled-in garden, green house and rain water catchment system. The retreatant consults with a nutritionist to learn nutritional requirements for optimal health during three-year retreat, and what foods fulfill those requirements. A high yield organic gardener specialist then plants each garden, to yield all fresh produce requirements, including fruits, vegetables, herbs, grains and legumes to taste. Retreatant will water daily, or as needed, enjoying foods as they ripen and are stored in the earth (not in the fridge).
Instead of delivering groceries and trash, caregivers periodically deliver starter plants as part of a rotating planting system implemented village wide ensuring food continuity, also redistributing larger volume crops yielded at each cabin. Wild harvesting nutritionally important native foods rounds out the program.
This action significantly contributes to moving from a toxic, fossil fuel based relation with planet earth, one that demands we kill each other’s children for the fuel that moves our food to us, to a sustainable and healthy relation with the dynamics of this earth. How we nourish our bodies is a vitally important part of the model in demonstrating world peace.
