The association of Zen and macrobiotics was made early on. One of the very first books in English on macrobiotics was entitled Zen Macrobiotics, and was written by George Ohsawa and first published in 1960 and again in 1965.

It is interesting to note that searching through a complete collection of George Ohsawa’s works in Japanese one will not find a book of the equivalent title. As far as we can tell, George Ohsawa had little, if any, direct knowledge or experience with Zen, and for that matter, most of his disciples. Of course, being Japanese itself, one could claim, almost earns you the right of membership or association.

It is naturally assumed because of the breadth and scope of macrobiotic cosmology that it must have had something to do with Zen. At any rate, the macro- of macrobiotics presupposes or somehow makes it seem bigger and perhaps “superior” to Zen. Yet truth be told, it does not and never has had anything to do with Zen.

How strange! I think it time to ask a few questions, for questions can open doors.

“…Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually,
without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
Resolve to be always beginning - to be a beginner."
- Rainer Marie Rilke

For young idealists such as myself searching for the promised land in the late 60s and early 70s, Zen Macrobiotics sounded like the perfect ideal, a spiritual goal with practical means all rolled into one, But, in truth, no one really gave it much thought at the time. In actuality, the two terms have very little to do with each other.

Zen is a distinct school of Buddhism that made its way to Japan from China in the 8th century. Depending on which sect of Zen you’re talking about, it will almost always have a prescribed set of practices and disciplines designed to produce over time a sudden transformation of consciousness often referred to as satori or nirvana.

What I find most interesting is that the distinct set of disciplines associated with Zen and the ultimate intention of achieving enlightenment have very little to do with present day goal or intention of macrobiotics. It is as if we had hijacked the word in order to ride off the appeal of Zen at the time and to make it sound sexier.

Now, of course, we no longer refer to macrobiotics with its Zen modifier. As it should be I suppose. Or should it? Do they, in fact, have anything in common with each other?

That is the question…sayeth Hamlet. Has the Zen, whatever that might mean, been lost or removed from macrobiotics, or was it ever there in the first place? If Zen and macrobiotics are part and parcel of each other, how do we recover that heritage, or more importantly, what does it demand of us in terms of our own “being”? Is spiritual salvation or enlightenment, whatever that might be, the ultimate goal and context for macrobiotics? Can we really eat our way to the promised land?

There is no evidence so far for that assertion. On the contrary, one could make the case that macrobiotics past and present has failed the Zen test. In other words, it has devolved into specialized knowledge and techniques, designed not so much for spiritual liberation, but for career development and entitlement of one kind or another…counselor, dietician, feng shui master, 9-star astrologer etc.

I do not further accept the crude attempt to associate the ladder known as “levels of judgement” with any kind of progress toward spiritual awakening. That is a complete misconception: the idea that someday-oneday…after having chewed your gazillionth mouthful of brown rice, and having achieved a cosmological perspective of infinite proportions…that you will have earned the right to sit at the right hand of God. Sorry. That ain’t gonna happen.

OK then, one might legitimately ask, how do we or can we pursue a macrobiotic path and unfold our own spiritual being at the same time?

Have they become mutually exclusive as the evidence seems to show? Or can they become mutually constitutive, that is, go hand in hand?

We must keep asking such questions, resisting the temptation for immediate answers. Or better yet, resist the need to defend oneself or macrobiotics for that matter. Only those hung up on an ideological version of macrobiotics will have trouble staying with this line of questioning.

We must remember what Einstein said when he eventually saw through the Newtonian facade that explained reality and he understood the ramifications of the new physics of quantum mechanics.

“It was as if the ground had been pulled out from under
one, with no firm foundation to be seen anywhere, upon which one could have built.”
(P. A Schlipp, Albert Einstein: Philosopher – Scientist, On Quantum Theory, 1949)

I think what I am trying to say is that our invention of macrobiotics no longer contains the seeds for true spiritual liberation. I am not even sure if it ever did. When I look around and survey macrobiotic leadership, old or new, I find a lot of pseudo-spirituality but few if any authentic embodiments of Infinity. Infinity has become merely an empty concept.

When you truly enter Infinity, you die, You die to everything you know and everything you believe, including of course the very idea of yourself. If you die to everything you know and believe, including your attachments to loved ones, to macrobiotics or any other system or paradigm, and to your past and everything that has ever happened to you, then death itself can be transformative and rejuvenating.

Such death, which can happen during our life as opposed to the end of our life, can bring with it a new aliveness and vitality. One could even say a new being, a butterfly, has arisen out of the ashes of the old spent lie burning on the ground, to paraphrase a line from a Dylan Thomas poem called I Have Longed To Move Away.

 

Where’s the Beef?…Woops,…I Mean Zen? Part II
by Greg Johnson

Why is it important whether macrobiotics embodies the spirit of Zen or not? Well, I say it is all important. It spells the difference whether macrobiotics at its core is translational or transformational
(see article (http://www.wie.org/j12/wilber.asp).

As a translational body of work, its job basically is to sort out problems of one kind or another by “translating” say, the understanding of yin and yang, into specific dietary recommendations, or into lifestyle changes having to do with clothing, home design, travel, relationships, spiritual development etc.

There is nothing wrong with any of that, but we should not mistake it as being transformational, for it is predicated on what’s wrong and what should be done. In contrast, a transformational approach is geared toward a radical transformation along an evolutionary axis, a caterpillar-to-butterfly effect. In terms of dynamics, it represents a release from within as opposed to change from without. It also represents a completely different orientation of one’s being.

I do not think Ohsawa applied the Zen modifier merely as a marketing gimmick. I believe that he actually saw the spiritual possibilities of macrobiotics and used the Zen word to emphasize that. In retrospect, I have no doubt that he himself had achieved a breakthrough i.e. had reached Infinity.

Being Japanese and having an affinity for hierarchical systems, he then devised the seven levels of judgement to contextualize or explain his experience. Perhaps because the levels of judgement provide a linear context and direction for macrobiotic growth, they have withstood the test of time and not been questioned in any meaningful way.

There is a vast difference between having a conceptual understanding of Infinity and the actual living experience of Infinity. They are worlds apart…literally. It is like being lost in the desert or at sea and not being able to find or recognize the North Star to orient oneself.

Infinity gives us our orientation as macrobiotic practitioners. Without that, we are as good as lost at sea without a compass. I believe something similar has happened to macrobiotics as a social and cultural movement. It is lost. It has lost its orientation and bearing. Of course, in the mean time, it is putting on a good show, but that that may be all smoke and mirrors.

I have become quite suspicious of the context that macrobiotics has acquired over the past 25 years or so. In my estimation, it has been devolving rather than evolving. The macro- has been becoming more and more micro-. In doing so it has been cast from the garden, become fragmented, and had its power (read Infinity) taken away. The big question is whether we can reverse that process and begin putting the macro- back into macrobiotics. Or why waste our time? I could name a good number of former macrobiotic friends who have opted for the latter option.

I have invested a good deal of my life on this path, and with no regrets. I am eternally grateful to the courage and wisdom of my macrobiotic teachers. At the same time, I feel like the torch is being passed to the next generation whether it wants it or not. What does this generation of macrobiotic leaders have to contribute fundamentally to this body of work? I say it all depends on the context or orientation that we give to macrobiotics. We will either put the spirit of Zen back into macrobiotics or continue devolving into irrelevance.

Psychologists talk about the dark side of human beings, the shadow side where we act out our darker and more selfish and destructive impulses. I would like to suggest that organizations and social movements have a dark side as well. It is quite easy to see it in deranged cults or terrorist groups who believe their ideologies and religions justify their actions, to wit, suicide bombings.

It is much more difficult to see it in well-meaning spiritual or apparently socially responsible groups. These darker areas act like blind spots, wherein those involved are unaware that they have fallen prey to those forces. They truly believe in their mission and that the ends justify the means, even if the results are indicating something completely contrary.

Somewhere macrobiotics has strayed from the path Infinity had laid out (maybe so that we could learn something). It was and is Infinity which gives us our wholeness, integrity and direction. I believe the way was lost at that point where macrobiotics staked itself on the idea that it could cure cancer and in doing so would establish its legitimacy in the eyes of the powers that be.

Unfortunately, it only worked in certain cases and situations. There was no way either to determine why some responded to macrobiotics and others did not. Therefore, no statistics or measures were ever maintained, for in all likelihood it would have probably been shown that macrobiotic dietary and lifestyle changes yielded no discernible statistical difference from conventional therapies.

Further, it could probably be demonstrated in some cases that macrobiotic recommendations actually contributed to a further deterioration of a person’s health due to malnourishment originating from the radical and nutritionally restricted nature of the diet employed. We got in over our heads and paid the price.

This is still going on in many places because counsellors have become dependent on that income for their livelihood. Of course, everyone is protecting themselves better now with liability release forms and the like but that does not alter the fundamental problem that we may have, inadvertently and with good intentions, become modern-day snake oil salesmen. When you are operating in a non-scientific paradigm, you are asking people to make enormous leaps of faith based on a highly conceptualized framework that lacks for the most part scientific validation.

On the possibility that this assessment of the state of affairs of macrobiotics is accurate, or near accurate, what recommendations can I or anyone make to rectify or transform this situation? I would like to make a simple suggestion to start: that we consider the possibility that a new expression of macrobiotics wants to arise out of the old one. This new expression is one that lives up to the promise of its name and can represent the next generation of macrobiotic leaders. It is one which has learned from, but at the same time, transcended the shortcomings and limitations of what preceded it.

It recognizes that the entire history of macrobiotics, from the time the word was first coined by the early Greeks to the present time, represents one continuous evolving process in which periodically wholesale changes take place wherein one worldview replaces another.

These epochal changes take place because the prior model simply reaches its limits and exhausts its possibilities. This time is no exception. Therefore, it is natural that we show reverence, respect and gratitude for those upon whose shoulders we are standing. That does not mean you sacrifice or surrender your voice or your say. Quite the contrary, in this new expression you find your voice and your say.

The second suggestion I would make is that we no longer charge for individual or group consultations. We do them for free. An exception can be made for licensed medical professionals, which these days can include acupuncturists and certain alternative therapists who have been certified by a state agency or governing body. That should eliminate the creation of a lot of false hopes and promises, not to mention law suits, and go a long way to restoring integrity to macrobiotics. What we provide instead is a broad education on what it means to be human in the grandest sense.

Now I run what used to be a macrobiotic organizatioon in London, the Community Health Foundation (dba Concord Institute), an organization founded by Bill Tara in 1976 and later managed by Simon Brown in the early 1990s. I say used to be because we have so revamped the educational curriculum and mission that it hardly resembles your usual macrobiotic center. Upon taking over the CHF in 1994, which had hit some hard times, I decided to reinvent the entire educational curriculum and give macrobiotics a completely different look and orientation.

I was sceptical of the whole idea of counsellors and counselling as well as its identity as a healing and curative diet. I saw that macrobiotics fit better in an evolutionary context, and that biological integrity could play a key role in that process.

Irrespective of the tone of the article, I make no spiritual claims of one kind or another. Having spent a bit too much time in the UK, I have over time developed a case of the Simon Cowells, which goes along way to explaining any arrogance you may experience. I need someone to hang it on. Nonetheless, life through macrobiotics has taken me on an incredible journey, of both the inner and outer variety, and exposed me to many wonders and many experiences, some that have literally turned me inside-out.

At the same time, I find there is no escape from being human and each day I have to deal with that arrogant part of me which thinks it knows everything and keeps the world out. I don’t know about anyone else but there seems to be no end to having to shovel my own you know what. That is what makes this journey so interesting. It has no end.

- Greg Johnson is the executive director of the Community Health Foundation (CHF), the parent organisation of Concord Institute. In 1970, he began studying macrobiotics with Michio Kushi, the foremost educator and authority on macrobiotics. Macrobiotics, the ancient art and science of health and longevity, was reintroduced in the West with a distinct Oriental flavour by Nyoichi Sakurazawa in the 1950s and by several of his disciples, Herman Aihara and Michio Kushi, in the 1960s. In 1973, Greg encountered the transformational work of Werner Erhard, who had developed a group process intended to bring contextual awareness to our life situation.

In subsequent years, including 10 years in Japan, he sought the opportunity to integrate these two bodies of work into a single cohesive educational curriculum. Seeing these as expressions of a major reconciliation of mind and body and East and West, his search came to fruition in 1994, when he received word of the potential closing of a leading macrobiotic educational organisation in London, the Community Health Foundation, due to the loss of their director and a dire financial situation. After reviewing his proposal, the trustees of the organisation hired him as their director, opening the way for a major reinvention of the educational curriculum that has guided the organisation for the past 13 years.

Posted: 12 June 2007