by Shawn Kirby L.Ac.

As a child, I remember my grandfather as a paragon of good health. While he did refrain from smoking and alcohol, which no doubt attributed to his overall health and longevity, he also ate as he pleased, enjoying a wide variety of home cooked meals, greasy diner food, donuts, apples from the trees on his property, fast food, and anything else that looked good to him. Despite this varied diet, he enjoyed perfect digestion. What was his secret? By today’s “Whole Foods” standards, his diet was often atrocious, so “eating clean,” was not the secret to his cast iron gut. Was Jack possessed of superior “jing” (or in scientific parlance, superior genes) which enabled him to “get away with” eating foods that would send other people scrambling for antacids? Or was there a different reason altogether, one that was directly connected with his attitude toward food?

My grandfather, dead now for many years, grew up in Denver during the Great Depression. During the school year, young Jackson ate the “school lunch,” part of a new government sponsored program that was designed to both help prevent nutritional deficiencies and hunger in low-income school children while simultaneously disposing of surplus agricultural commodities. When summer vacation came around, however, Jack’s mother could no longer afford to feed him. Consequently, young Jack spent his summers near Eldorado Springs, where he pan-handled for his meals and slept under a bridge until the school year started back up in September. Suffice it to say, Jack had a very different relationship to food than most modern Americans. To young Jackson, food mattered – and that made all the difference.

...

Mythologist and scholar Joseph Campbell has posited that all the religious traditions of the world can, for the most part, be traced back to two root myths which have their origin in the misty past of the Paleolithic. Perhaps surprisingly, at least to the modern Whole Foods shopper, both mythologies and the theology that sprang from them to become modern religion, were primarily concerned with food.

The first of these myths was the hunting myth which focused on prey animals. Variations of this myth can be found around the world, form the Blackfoot people of the North American plains to the Kalahari Bushmen of southern Africa. It is in this mythology that we find the origin of the idea of the soul.

The Blackfoot story tells of a tribe of the old ones who hunted Buffalo in the traditional manner of chasing the herd over a cliff and then harvesting the bodies of the fallen buffalo below. One year, no matter how hard they tried, the buffalo simply would not go over the cliff. In a moment of frustration, a young girl of the people spoke aloud that, if the buffalo would just go over the cliffs to their death so that her people could eat, she would sacrifice herself and marry one of the buffalo. In an instant, dozens of buffalo leaped to their deaths and the young girl was snatched up and taken away by a very large buffalo, who happened to be the herd’s shaman.

After the people had returned from their hunt, and were busy butchering meat for that night’s feast and drying meat for the long winter ahead, it was discovered that the girl was missing. Her father tracked her to the buffalo herd, but was discovered and trampled to death by the buffalo shaman and his followers. The young woman was distraught, and wept for her father. The buffalo shaman was surprised by this, and said to her, “why do you weep for your father? You have never wept when you have killed my people.”

The girl thought about this for a moment, and then asked permission to perform a ceremony for her father. The buffalo shaman agreed, and the girl went to magpie, and asked the bird if he would help her to find something of her father that was still intact. The magpie returned in due course with one small bone fragment from her father’s thigh bone. The girl then placed this under a blanket, and began to dance and sing, moving clockwise around the blanket. When the ceremony was complete, she lifted the blanket and her father stood up, very much alive and well. The buffalo herd was shocked at this, and stood in amazement.

The buffalo shaman then asked the girl and her father if they would agree to enter into a pact. If the people would perform this dance, so that the buffalo might return each year and escape death, then they would willingly leap over the cliffs. The girl and her father agreed wholeheartedly, and this was the beginning of a ceremony that was performed before each and every hunt.

The symbolism of the story shows several things. First of all, we see the primary motif of all hunting mythology, that of the immortal soul inhabiting a body, literally a “meat suit” that was worn and then discarded, shed like a snake’s skin. A new body, and re-birth, would come again the next season - time to the ancients was a circle. We also see, in the actual performance of this dance that Paleolithic man understood and used sympathetic magic, dressing in costumes of their prey animals, allowing them to “get inside the heads of their prey.” Every aspect of the story-telling, techniques and theology involved point to a sublime and heart-felt empathy with the animal, for the animal itself was worshiped as an object of deity.

Gundestrup cauldron, 1st century BCE. Here we see Cernunnos, the archetypal Celtic shaman, seated in meditation, wearing the horns of the prey animal he hunted. In his right hand is the Celtic “torc,” a symbol of nobility, and in his left hand a serpent, symbolizing his mastery over the mysteries of death and re-birth.

Perhaps the most poignant example of this can be seen in the example of the Kalahari Bushman stunning his prey with a poison dart and then, in an attitude of deepest reverence and respect, sitting down next to the dying animal and, eye to eye, asking for its forgiveness for killing it, explaining that it’s spirit will live on while its flesh would remain behind to feed his family.

As far back as 30,000 BCE and even beyond, archaeologists have discovered graves of humans and proto-humans laid to rest in the fetal position, facing east towards the rising sun. Their tombs were filled with grave gear such as tools and hunting weapons to use in the afterlife, and bouquets of flowers were left in remembrance and as an offering.

The other root myth was that of the plant world. Ancient cultures that lived much closer to the equator, such as the Polynesian culture, had been oriented towards plants as the source of their food and their spirituality instead of animals. The mythology of the plant kingdom focused on different spiritual values and insights than were found among the hunters. Plant consciousness focused, above all else, on the basic truth that all things are interconnected. People of the rain forest could watch as a tree older than anyone could remember fell to the earth, and within days new plants, mushrooms, worms and other living things would spring up from the dead tree. The matrix of dead and rotting plant matter beneath their feet was the very life blood and birthplace of roots like manioc which formed both the bulk of the diet and the basis of spiritual life. From this phenomenon, early man came to the deep realization that all things form one web of life. (Some of the most profound philosophies of the east, from Lao Tzu’s Tao, to Adi Shankara’s Advaita Vendanta, to Nagarjuna’s Madhyamaka all owe their non-dualistic viewpoints to the insights of plant consciousness.)

(For a wonderful and entertaining modern example of these myths brought to life, I highly recommend James Cameron’s Avatar, where you will see a hunter offer a respectful prayer offered over a felled animal, a religion based on plant consciousness complete with a collective ancestral memory housed in a sacred tree, and a marvelous re-telling of the “hero’s journey.”)

But then, everything changed. Roughly five thousand years ago, the Indus Valley civilization first began the revolutionary technological breakthrough of agriculture and the raising of crops for food. With the advent of agriculture, and the accompanying leisure time that the hunting and gathering lifestyle had never allowed for, people had an opportunity to do something that they had never done before – specialize. For the first time we saw the arrival of people who only did one thing – the proverbial butcher, baker and candlestick maker. This change in the way food was cultivated, obtained and used, created a massive and shocking alteration to the culture and psyche of our species, the ripples of which are still being felt to this day.

On the one had, agriculture produced greater health and longevity, security, the existence of the concept of “wealth,” and vast amounts of free time that allowed for human-kind to develop writing, mathematics, philosophy, astrology and astronomy, architecture and the arts – in other words, nothing less the sublime beauty of civilization and the glory of human-kind. Previous to the agricultural revolution, humans had spent the majority of their time in the pursuit of one thing – food. Now, people had the ability to do as they wished, and the exponential and meteoric rise of intellectual and technological power began. All of this happened because of one simple thing – because of the ability to easily, and reliably, obtain food.

On the other hand, a new trauma began – the trauma of separation. For the first time, the cultural inheritance of a given group of people had become too large and unwieldy for any one person to hold. Paleolithic humans had, to a person, each held the total cultural inheritance of their people. Every story, every skill, every aspect of life was taught to each member of the group. Initiation and the psychological and spiritual ramifications of receiving this inheritance shaped the human race for millennia. But with the advent of agriculture and “civilization” the boon of initiation was now largely forgotten, or replaced with empty ritual. Where once people had been self contained individuals, existing as part of a unified group, now people began to feel like mere cogs in a social and economic machine that was too large and impersonal for them to either understand or identify with. Less than 10% of the population were farmers – the rest were now involved in other endeavors such as commerce, religion or the lucrative new past-time of warfare. People ate well, but they were now paradoxically cut off from what had been the primary source of their spirituality – their food.

---

By all appearances, food matters less to us now that at any other time in history. The Second World War saw the advent of canning and pre-packaged foods, enabling the 50’s home-maker an unprecedented level of convenience. Where the agricultural revolution had freed people from the burden of having to procure food, now processed and preserved foods freed people from having to cook as well. Food became an automatic convenience and an afterthought. Food is now something that people grab on their way to something else, hitting the drive through as they rush to another meaningless activity designed to fill the void in their lives created by an unprecedented abundance of free time.

Children no longer have any idea where food comes from, and considering the horrors of genetically modified Monsanto franken-corn and the modern feed lot (a friend of mine refers to these as "cowschwitz"), modern multi-billion dollar agribusiness has no interest in field-trips to the factory. Television chef Jaime Oliver recently hosted a television program where he asked young children to identify an assortment of vegetables. Most were absolutely clueless, unable to recognize even the most common and basic produce items, although one young lady earned points for effort by guessing that an eggplant was a pear. My wife has floored, even visibly freaked out, cashiers at grocery stores by appearing at the checkout stand with rhubarb, parsnips and Swiss chard in her basket. “What is that?” they ask, looking askance at the offending vegetable as though it might leap from the counter and attack them.

A former colleague of mine said to me that he would be a vegetarian if he couldn’t eat processed meat, like hamburger and cold cuts. “Hot wings just look like… a carcass, you know?” Food was once an object of worship, the center point of the religious life. People once learned about and experienced compassion, death, life, sex, honor, dignity and morality from food. Today, food has become an object found in discreet packaging, complete with marketing slogans and logos, that serves no other purpose than to quell a crude physiological urge.

Almost in revolt against this snowballing trend, a new movement (or fad, depending on who you talk to) is growing. First Julia Child, and later the irrepressible Martha Stewart, re-introduced the idea of actual cooking back into the American consciousness. People are trying to cook their own dinners again, reveling in the newness and revolutionary nature of the activity. As the Culinary Institute of America has turned out more and better chefs, a growing “foodie” scene has developed, and where once American food meant greasy diner fare, people are now insisting on, and finding, truly exceptional restaurants across the country.

Self taught chef, Thomas Keller of California’s French Laundry has been called, “one of the best French chef’s anywhere” by Michael Richard a grumpy Frenchman and belligerent Francophile if ever there was one. Some think Keller is the best chef in the world. Why? What makes this man so much better at his chosen craft than anyone else? In his book The Soul of a Chef, food writer Michael Ruhlman attempts to answer this question, focusing the final 3rd of his book on Keller and his restaurant. Keller’s attention to detail is legendary. Asparagus is kept in water and stored upright like cut flowers in his refrigerator. Fish is kept on ice in the same position that it would swim in, rather than on its side. When he made the decision to incorporate rabbit into his menu, Keller took it upon himself to learn everything he could about rabbit.

“He [Keller] stunned, killed, skinned, gutted and butchered them all for service that week, and he did learn how to break down rabbits. But he learned something more. He had taught himself about respect for food and, its opposite, waste. It had been hard to kill those rabbits because life, to Keller, wasn’t meaningless. If their lives hadn’t meant anything, it would have been easy to kill them. He took that life, and so he wouldn’t waste it… ‘They taught me a great amount about care – it’s up to me not to waste them.’” Ruhlman pp 199-200

Why is Keller one of the best, if not the best, chefs in the world? He’s recaptured what we have lost – respect for food. All food comes from death. That is the basic realization that our ancestors understood, and why they viewed food with the deepest reverence. Misguided modern assumptions about the nature of consciousness might lead us to believe that plants are unconscious, but our ancestors knew better – plants too, were seen as conscious, willing participants in the suffering and death that is part of life. (Modern studies have shown this to be the case – a potato that has been hooked up to sensors will “flinch” when startled by a loud noise, and “scream” when it is cut into. Noted author Michael Pollan has posited that certain plants may, in fact, be domesticating us. For more on this see his excellent book, The Botany of Desire.) All food comes from death, and ignoring this fact has lead us to a spiritual wasteland.

---

Why did my grandfather have such excellent digestion? He didn’t shop at Whole Foods. He didn’t read labels. He didn’t buy organic. He didn’t take supplements. He didn’t cleanse. He didn’t limit his diet either in terms of types of food or of quantity. What he did do was regard what he ate with profound gratitude, respect and joy. Jack didn’t eat, he dined. He feasted. He rejoiced in the pleasures of the table more than anyone I know, because he knew what it meant to go hungry.

How many of our patients suffering from digestive complaints could be helped by nothing more than a little perspective, mindful eating, or by simple gratitude?

Selected Reading

Joseph Campbell - The Masks of God, volume 1 Primitive Mythology, The Masks of God volume 2 Oriental Mythology, The Masks of God volume 3, Occidental Mythology, the Power of Myth with Bill Moyers

Michael Ruhlman - The Soul of a Chef