Masanobu Fukuoka on Diet.

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This piece by Masanobu Fukuoka bears on the ongoing discussion:

(from _The One Straw Revolution_)

 

_Summing up Diet_

 

"In this world there exist four main classifications of diet:

 

1) A lax diet conforming to habitual desires and taste preferences.

People following this diet sway back and forth erratically in response

to whims and fancies. This diet could be called self-indulgent empty

eating.

 

2) The standard nutritional diet of most people, proceeding from

biological considerations. Nutritious foods are eaten for the purpose of

maintaining the life of the body. It could be called materialist,

scientific eating.

 

3) The diet based on spiritual principles and idealistic philosophy.

Limiting foods, aiming towards compression, most "natural" diets fall

into this category. This could be called the diet of principle.

 

4) The natural diet, following the will of heaven. Discarding all human

knowledge, this diet could be called the diet of non-discrimination.

 

People first draw away from the empty diet which is the source of

countless diseases. Next, becoming disenchanted with the scientific

diet, which merely attempts to maintain biological life, many proceed to

a diet of principle. Finally, transcending this, one arrives at the

non-discriminating diet of the natural person.

 

 

_The Diet of Non-Discrimination_

 

Human life is not sustained by its own power. Nature gives birth to

human beings and keeps them alive. This is the relationship in which

people stand to nature. Food is a gift of heaven. People do not create

foods of nature, heaven bestows them.

 

Food is food and food is not food. It is a part of man and is apart

from man.

 

When food, the body, the heart, and the mind become perfectly united

within nature, a natural diet becomes possible. The body as it is,

following its own instinct, eating if something tastes good, abstaining

if it does not, is free.

 

It is impossible to prescribe rules and proportions for a natural

diet. This diet defines itself according to the local environment, and

the various needs and bodily constitution of each person.

 

 

_The Diet of Principle_

 

....It may seem that the harmony of the human body can be determined. But

if the doctrines are entered into too deeply one enters the domain of

science and fails to make the essential escape from discriminating

perception.

 

Swept along by the subtleties of human knowledge without recognizing

its limits, the practitioner of the diet of principle comes to concern

himself only with separate objects. But when trying to grasp the meaning

of nature with a wide and far-reaching vision, he fails to notice the

small things happening at his feet."

 

 

love, andrew