Lo Spirito e La Visione Di Ohsawa - Di M. Rossoff

8/7/2019 Lo Spirito e La Visione Di Ohsawa - Di M. Rossoff

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/lo-spirito-e-la-visione-di-ohsawa-di-m-rossoff 1/6

This article is reprinted from MacroMuse Magazine. Copyright © by the publisher,

Michael Rossoff. To reproduce, please contact the publisher at MichaeIRossoff.com.

On Macrobiotics

If you decide to embark upon themacrobiotic way, know that you will

change .Your whole lifewillchange. It is

inescapable, unavoidable. It will remain

impressed on the very foundation of

your existence. And, once having

experienced the effects of the Unique

Principle, you willnot beable to forget it

no matter how hard you try. For the

Unique Principle is harmony and its

memory never sleeps.

After a period, when you have

nourished body and mind the

acrobiotic way, remembering

roportion, and combining in yourselfthe bitter, the pungent, the salt and the

weet, balancing your food intake

etween Yin and Yang, it may occur to

ou for some reason, or for none atall,

o forsake the Unique Principle, to

orget the whole thing.

Understand before you begin that you

ill not be allowed to forget. Not only

ill your body protest and memory

aunt the hours of your day, but the

ner man, your true self, having tasted

he elusive nectar, having ventured,

ven briefly, over the border into the

ng yearned-for state called harmony,alled happiness, called peace, called

ace, will evermore plague you seeking

eturn. The macrobiotic discipline is

thing if not revolutionary. Exercisingt, you will completely remake and

mold your character, your body andrain. (B.)

Chewing is most important in

crobiotics. Youhave no teeth in your

tomach nor in the intestines. So you

ust chew in your mouth, so times per

uthful, at least. If youhave no time tohew, or if you are so busy that you

annot taste quietly your food and

rink, you have no qualification to step

to this Macrobiotic diet. (8,)

Many people think that Macrobiotics

a 20th century variety of stoicism. But

who cannot drink, smoke, eat fruit or

eat is a cripple. Macrobiotics is a way

build health that enables us toeat and

ink anything welikewhenever we likeithout being obsessed or driven to do

. Macrobiotics is not a negative way of

ving...it is a positive, creative, artistic,

gious, philisophical. (B.)

The Spirit and Visio

On Acupuncture

Throughout the world today,

acupuncture is in a state of confusion.

Although it is still practiced in the

Orient and has become fashionable in

Europe, this acupuncture isno the same

as that of the ancient Far East. The fact

that these contemporary schools, as

serious and well-intentioned though

they may be, are different and in conflict

with each other is evidence that they

lack the essence of life itself, which isembodied in the unique principle. (1.)

In its true spirit, acupuncture cannot

be appreciated except by those who have

understood the unique principle and

applied it in their daily lives byfollowing

the way of eating. Without this

fundamental understanding and its

biological application, the practice of

acupuncture could be dangerous. (I.)

On Judo

The ultimate aim of Judo is to make

strength unusable to and supress fear

which is the origin of all evil and

conflicts. (M.)

On Tolerance

If you have to learn tobe tolerant, youreveal that your understanding is

limited. There is nothing intolerable in

this world. All things are tolerable.

The whole of nature (birds, bees,

animals, fish and every truly free

human being) accepts all with great

pleasure: bad weather like good, deathlike life, difficulty like joyfulnes. There

is neither protest, objection nor

complaint, for everything is in

equilibrium. He who accepts everything

with great pleasure has no need to know

the meaning of tolerance. (e)

On Gratitude

Those who know true gratefulness

never forget that they were once ill;

they always remember who or what

healed them and are eternally

thankful. (B.)

On Himself

I have suffered misgivings in calli

this volume T he M acro bio tic G uid eb oo k f

Living since I have no qualifications as

teacher of morals, much less th

ambition to be one. My biggest desire

to give of my years of experience

dealing with a fundamental

relationship - the one that exisbetween food and life.

As you read, you will surely conclud

and with good reason, that Ihave been

gourmandizer all my life!I have been

big an eater that I have surprised an

frightened myself more than once.

My big appetite would surely hav

brought me to an early, miserable deat

had I not been engaged in an unendin

search for the secret of food. Itwas mo

fortunate that near the end, when Iw

almost dead, I found Macrobiotics. (B

MacroMuse April 1982



o f George Ohsawa

On Cooking

The cook is a veritable physician-artist. The cook is like a great musicianwho creates a serenade, a rondo, amarch, an allegro, or a lullaby with justone scale of five notes. The cook

resembles a flutist who draws a pure and

passionate melody from a little tube ofbamboo. But above all the cook is a poetlike Whitman, Verlaine, Rodenbach,Mallarme, or Pierre Louys. The poemsare simple, full of silence,comprehensible, extremely profound,and symbiolic. In them everyone finds adifferent-meaning. Moreover there aresome cook-artists who understand thecomplete significance and thesuperiority of macrobiotic cooking-sa

way of preparing food that gives notonly health but also eternal joy; not onlyjust a feeling, but in the long run a

sensitivity for absolute justice. (G.)

On History

Across the history of all countries inthe whole world, there is not oneexample of a person who saved hiscountry from confusion, from violence,from misery by applying an immutableInstructive Principle which showed theway of order and peace. (L.)

Great men survive forever. Thedifference between the great and thesmall is their longevity in time andspace, that is to say, the dimension intheir memory. The longer they live inthe memory of a nation or world andthe greater the number of those whoadmire, the better for us--theirsuccessors. (K.)

On Love

To love a child, to love a man, or to

love a woman is not necessarily love, it isoften sentimentalism, that is to say,

selfishness. We do not know how tountangle the conflict between love andliberty. We don't know that the principleof liberty and that of love is but one. It isthe ignorance of the principle whichcauses the conflicts, the tragedies, andall the evils. (M.)

On FoodMy most significant discovery i

America is that here the idea ofprincipal food has entirely disappeared.No professor or man of medicinenowadays seems to be aware of its greavalue. By contrast, it has always been oprimary consequence in the life of thOrient to the point that it was evendefied in the beginnings of our history.

The idea of principal food, the basiand significance of which is primarilybiological and physiological, and onlysecondarily economical, geographical,

and agricultural, is one of the mosfundamental discoveries of man. (C.)

By all means enjoy love in the animalfashion, at the first stage of judgement,mechanical or blind. But developyourself, your love, to the second,

sensorial levellwhich however, alwaysends tragically}. Then raise your love tothe third, sentimental levellwhichalways ends in hallucinations}. Hurryalong, then, to reach intellectuallove(asillustrated in the biographies ofnumerous scientists), sociallovefrevolutionaries and reformers) andideological lovetphilosophers). Finally,attain the seventh stage of judgement--Supreme, Infinite, Eternal Love whereonly endless happiness and infinitefreedom are seen, felt and known. Thisis a goal, and the result, of

macrobiotics. (E.)

I am not against the theories omodern nutrition in the least. I merelsay that such a concept of nutrition,physiology or life is incomplete and thawe cannot rely upon it as the basis foestablishing health. For us to rely osuch imcomplete theories as a guide thealth and full life can be extremelydangerous. (B.)

Those who believe that we cannot liv

without meat, sugar, milk, fruit analcohol as well as those who cannostand these foods are alreadyexperiencing deep illness in theidigestive tracts as well as in theithinking. They are mentally anphysically sick, having arrived at thintermediary stage between mental anphysical illness: Allergy. Those who arfree can live with these foods or withoutthem. (G.)

Food and the phenomena of life ar

very closely related: where there is nfood, there are no phenomena of lifeGrowth, size, strength, wisdom,ignorance, ideas, attitudes, activitiesthe rise and fall of race and nation--allare affected. They are dependent,determined and controlled by what weat and drink.

On the simplest level, we are alivbecause of our apetite for food. If we arat all thankful for that life, we arexpressing our gratitude for the hungerthat is its driving force.

He who has a healthy appetite ca

April 1982 East West Center of Washington,D.C.



Continued from page 9

enjoy the simplest meal, even one that

consists of no more than a bowl of rice.

What a gift from nature is hunger. Who

can afford to be without it?(B.)

I wonder why so many people

(including myself) fall ill in the first

place, why they tolerate suffering for so

long. The answer isa simpleone:we ar~all ingorant of the simple, clear

relationship between food and life. (B.)

On Life

Death is neither a final point nor is it

the entry into the next world. Death is

in reality an interval, a tiny gap in an

infinitesimally small corner of the grand

canvas of empty, infinite space.Without

this canvas no world could exist.

Wemust abandon the exclusivity that

has brought us to the point of thinking

that "our life"isours and by us.Wemust

recall occasionally that the great,

infinite space--the Absolute, Eternity--

is our true life, the origin of our will and

spirituality. (H.)

On Understanding

This indispensable Unique Principle is

not difficult to comprehend, anyone can

understand it, even a child. What is

difficult is the practice necessary to

assimilate it into one's self. For example,

no one ever drowns inwater if he does

not struggle. Evenwhen one knows the

principle conceptually, if one cannot

remain calm in the water, then he

struggles and drowns. That is why one

must learn this principle and use itcontinuously--to deeply know it. In this

way, one learns to swim.(L.)

Understanding with the brain, by

intellectual conception, is not complete.

However, understanding with the

stomach is not all, either. Even

understanding with all the cells isn't.

You should have understood through

the brain, through the stomach,

through the cells, and through your

existence itself, by your activities and

your influence on your society and on

humanity at large. (M.)

I agree that to follow any teachingblindly, even that of our ancestors, is

unwise. Merely to eat as we have been

taught is not enough. But to reject that

teaching without trying to understand

it is equally foolish. The result is what

we have today: the deep insight of our

ancestors has been completely

forgotten; it lies ignored, discarded as

old-fashioned. (B.)

The Spirit & Vision

On Levels of Judgement

You can go from one level of

judgement to another higher one only

when you have exhausted the

possibilities of your present one and

have judged it insufficient and

useless. (G.)

In this finite, limited, relative world,

there are two antagonists at all levels:Yin and Yang (centrifugality and

centripetality), female and male, cold

and hot, death and life, sadness and joy,

spiritual and material. Man becomes a

dualist when he observes these two

sides to phenomena without seeing

their unity. Antagonism isfound at each

of our relative levels of judgement. In

reality, these antagonisms are the

"heads" and "'tails" of the same coin.

Extremes of antagonism "touch" each

other and co-mingle. One kills his lover

at the extreme of love! While this

appears contradictory, it is just such

contradictions which animate the world

and from which man struggles at all cost

to save himself. Most men end their

lives still puzzled by the enigmas of

existence. To understand and enjoy

such contradiction, one must unveil theSupreme Judgement.(E.)

The lotus flower is nice and noble,

stylish and pious. But its roots arecovered with the dirtiest mud in the

bottom of the pond; ithelps produce and

feed these fine flowers. Many people

admire lotus flowers, but they ignore or

hate the dirty mud at the bottom of the

pond. They are sentimentalists or

hypocrites with a narrow and superficial

mentality. (B.)

Without a struggle, livelyor calm, our

judgement does not progress. Still, as

we have learned through history,

struggles have not led to a solution for

humanity. Why? Judgement has been

warped by superstition and by

education that has been directed solely

at our sensual, sentimental, and

intellectual levels of judgement--which

is to say, our lower levels of judgement.

And low judgement is much stronger

than high judgement because we live in

the physical, material world while our

high judgement is spiritual. (G.)

On Attachment

Too much attachemen t isthe cause o

all sickness and unhappiness.

Detachment is the only road to health

Attachment is loss of freedom.

Attachment of any kindisthe beginning

of unhappiness. Even the attachment t

the idea of detachment must beliminated. (G.)

On Faith

Crimes, hostility, poverty, wars an

especially so-called incurable illness ar

all the end result of a lackof faith. Fait

is the solid foundation upon whichjudgement rises. If you have confidenconly in man-made contrivances such a

laws, power, knowledge, science,

money, drugs and medicines, you hav

faith only in relativity, not in infinity

Since all relative judgement is transitory

and of little value, you should learn th

structure of infinity, the eterna

. Creator. (C.)

On Religion

If a religion cannot guarantee health

the fundamental basis of happiness

then I consider it false: a mere opiate. I

is false and deceitful, nothing more thansuperstition. (E.)

On Change

Every day, every minute, one see

great changes and our life must be a

unceasing adventure! Adventure is th

big change--stagnant life is death! Th

earth and all the worlds, flying every

second at an enormous rate towards a

unknown point of foreign origin (th

eternal world), seems to enjoy showin

us that liberty and justice are nothing

but and adventure. (J.)

OnMeditation

Real prayer is the meditation tha

helps us to recognize once and for all th

infinite richness that we have a

possessed since the very beginning

without beginning. The fundamenta

preparation fpr meditation is fasting

True fasting is to detach yourself from

all that you love the most but that is noabsoulutely necessary for life: sugar

pastry, fruit, alcohol, exotic or out-of

season products, meat. dairy foodchemicalized food, etc. (G.)




f George Ohsawa

On Health

e person who has never been sick isruly secure because his health is afrom his parents. They haveed him with a strong foundationhe can eventually destroy through

ment.True health is that which youelf have created out of illness.if you have produced your owncan you know how wonderful itly is. (B.)

ou do not have the will to live mosty and happily, you must not andbe cured.

ck people incerssantly express thefor a cure; they claim to haveill to rid themselves of disease atost. Will of this variety is merely ato escape from the status quoism. It reveals an unwillingness tothe eternal order in life, the orderoscillates between difficulty andre. Wemust continually re-createwn happiness by recognizing anddisease at every instant of our

any a man wishes to be cured byor by some mechanical device, allwhile by-passing his ownment and personal respons-People of this sort do not deserveplete cure. They must not and, innnot be cured.e Will,by contrast, is unique andin quite a different manner. Theo life seeks and finds, first of all,ginning cause of all unhappiness,ease, all injustice in the world andproceeds to eliminate it withoutviolent, artificial means. It

ers through methods that are inth the structure of the Infinite

se, naturally and peacefully.e drove to cure only symptoms ore control of one's health withouting responsibility iscomparable totion on the part of an individuale can step in front of a movingd not be struck down. It issimpleiveness and egoism; it eclipses andWill, the order in the Infinite

(C.)

On Happiness

He who thinks that happiness dependson the circumstances reveals himself tohave low judgement. Supremejudgement always shows us the bestway of conducting ourselves on a dailybasis under any curcumstance. (G.)

Your freedom, justice, health andjoyfulness must be completely yours.Health or freedom given by others is adebt that must be paid sooner or later ifyou are not to remain a slave or a theif.In truth, you cannot pay all that you

owe in this life, because you havenothing but what you owe. You will befreed from debt if you distribute infinitejoyfulness and thankfulness toeveryone you meet. This amounts to areal understanding of the structure of

the infinite universe and its justice. Theearth gives back ten thousand grains inreturn for each grain she has received."One grain, ten thousand grains" is thebiological law of this world. He whoviolates this law cannot live happily. (C.)

All our unhappiness comes form ourjudging ability in total or partial

eclipse. (K.)Peace cannot be obtained on a

collective basis. It is not dependent onothers. It is individual andpersonal...and may be further describedas the ability to change sickness tohealth (and vice versa), unhappiness tohappiness (and vice versa), and slaveryto freedom (and vice versa). He whocannot do so does not know absolutepeace. (E.)

On War & : Violence

Law is always force or violence. Peacecannot be established by any law norany legislation. Such peace is peace inprison. (K.)

Weapons and their ferocity are in realitythe very symbol of fear. The more andbigger you fear, the more and greaterweapons you want to have. (K.)

Fear is the mentality of those whoanticipate defeat. To fight is to beignorant of happiness. This is whyvictory is double-edged: It always callsfor defeat, but it can only be thebeginning of defeat, on thisplanet (M.)

On Friendship

The intimate friend is most precious inthis world. The number of yourintimate friends is an indication of yourliberty and happiness ...The intimacy offriendship is parallel with yourconception of the world. If you can havean intimate friend, your power will be athousand times fortified. But there are

many who cannot make even a fewfriends in this world where some twohundred fifty millions of their brothersand sisters are living. Poorest is he whocannot make even his wife an intimatefriend. (K.)

On Truth

If the truth is not unique, andabsolute, it is not the truth. If the truthis divided, what we have are finite factslimited by time and space. (G.)

On Symptomatic Treatment

If you don't believe yourself to beresponsible for your sickness whateverit may be, then you are a dualist. If yoursymptoms disappear or are destroyed bya symptomatic treatment, it amounts tonothing more than a transfer of theillness to another location, or thepostponement of the calling of yourdebt. (G.)

If symptomatic medicine does notundergo reform, it will be the ruinationof mankind. Unfortunately, scientificand technical medicine is not based on

awareness of Life. Consequently,it cannot cure disease. Instead itemploys destructive weaponry: radium,gas, x-rays, and radioactive cobalt.Modern Western Medicine does not seethat the symptoms of disease are themost useful alarms Life hasbequeathed us. (E.)

He who cannot explain themechanism of cause and effect cannotsave the unhappy, sick person ...Insteadhe deceives him with a very seductiveword - karma. The sick people who

cannot find the ultimate cause of theirsickness in their behavior andjudgement are incapable of curing theslightest illness, even one as small asvaricose veins. To attack and destroysymptoms instead of reforming dailybehavior is to postpone the day of cure.Sooner or later it ends in a catastrophe.It is well worth noting that there is onlyone fundamental illness: Ignorance ofthe order of the universe, lack ofsupreme judgement, which has beenbrought about by the embryological,physiological, familial, scholastic, andsocial education. (G.)

April 1982 East West Center of Washington, D.C.



On family

Youcan enjoy a truly happy lifeonly if

you have achild.This issoobvious ifone

spends sometime at an old-age home for

childless, lonely people. It is very

depressing. How sad it is to give up

having children only because you donot

want to take the trouble to raise them.

The individual who avoids parenthood

because he wants the freedom to enjoy

himself or because his income islow, isacoward. He will never understand or

enjoy pleasure, gratitude orhappiness. (B.)

Weall seek happiness inour lives.Yet

most of us forget that married life - the

well-spring from which the family

grows - can and must be the factory that

produces this happiness.

What makes a family happy? Mental

and physical health, first of all.

Macrobiotics is the most practical, easy

way to fulfill this requirement. (B.)

Scolding by our parents is part of our

training for lifeandweshould lookup to

them with gratitude for it. Either weget

this training from them when we are

young or from life itself later on. By the

same token, we should not attempt to

side-step the scolding of God

sickness. (B.)

Whether a home is happy or not

depends upon the health of its

inhabitants. Here the importance of the

mother or wife cannot be over-emphasized. In her hands liescontrol of

the life source, the well-spring of power

- the kitchen. She must be willing to

acknowledge the importance and

dangers of food. She must have clarity

of mind and begentle, careful, tolerant,

clever. She must know and understand

Macrobiotics and be capableof applying

her knowledge at all times. (B.)

On Spoiling Children

Nature isviolent and severe and only

he who was trained to withstand

nature's painful test can become happy.

Behold the pines which seem to scratch

the sky. They grow on the mountain

rocks, without compost, without water,

in constant struggle against the snow

and the glacialwind, holding up its spine

straight to the sun. The sapwhich oozes

out seems to be 1000 years old. Oh, the

wood which carpenters use grows not in

the fertile fields.

In spite of this lesson from nature,

paren ts spoil their darling children.

They satiate them with food and dress

them warmly. Because they spoil them,

the children become weak, As they

become weak the parents treat them

with even more sweetness. Thus,

children growing up no longer view

their paren tsas one should viewa father

and mother. These children take their

parents as free servants. (L.)

On Man and Woman

The most important characteristic

a man is bravery. In addition, he m

also have the following traits: streng

reliability, firmness, adaptabilit

courage, and tolerance.

The most important characterist

for women are self-denial, toleran

sweetness and punctuality ...in a wo

womanliness. I do not imply tha

woman must beobedient. I simplymthat she should not be stubborn. (B

The kitchen is the pharmacy of l

and the woman the pharmacist. Sh

the planner of culture; the director

the play...she determines whether

not it is tragic or joyful. Though

husband may be cruel, stubborn

stupid, the wife who understanMacrobiotics well enough can chan

him even if it takes three, five, ten

twenty years. The longer it takes a

the more difficulties there are to

overcome, the greater the significa

of her achievement. The biggest t

always takes the longest time. In t

sense, the evolution of human

depends primarily upon the judgeme

of women. (B.)

On Healing

Our macorbiotic medicine cannot be

considered medicine in a country where

symptomatic medicine holds sway. Our

medicine is not all curative, palliative or

symptomatic but rather educational. It

teaches those who are sick now to heal

themselves. The cure is totally

dependent on their will and on theircomprehension. (G.)

Healing power is in our minds. Thematerial for opening our minds and for

healing disease, however, is food.(B.)

How canwe judge someone? To judge

is to know the untimate cause with aview to freeing the person from his

original error. Judging outside the

framework of truth is to inflict

punishment, and this punishment never

works. Teaching without knowing this

unique truth creates intellectual

criminals. (G.)

Macrobiotic medicine has many reallywonderful medicaments extracted

from plants. With these natural

medicines and proper diet, it is easy to

cure any disease, but it is exceedingly

difficult to cure a patient. He must be

taught how to become a free man and

how to do this with allhis heart and with

his deepest imagination, faith and

will. (A.)

On the Change of the Seasons

When the long cold winter and yin

come, spring is not far. The

transformation of yin winter into yang

spring doesn't happen overnight. Just as

one prematurely decides that spring has

arrived earlier than usual, cold returns

to make us shiver. The cherry tree,

however, knows by itself what to

believe. It remains on guard, holding

tight its buds. Winter does not take the

place of spring all at once nor change

each day step-by-step directly from yin

to yang. It isa process of alternating yin

and yang, which subtly moves forwarduntil the daywhen one arrives at spring

without even realizing it. (L.)

More Gems

Symbolically,air is infinite freedowater is unlimited receptivity, and lig

is supreme judgement. Their natur

combination and transformation,

accordance with the order of t

universe, is called "grains anvegetables." (G.)

Jesus is aGrand Master ofJudo:wh

attacked by thousands of enemies mu

more powerful than himself,

defeated them all and his victory h

been lasting for more thancenturies. (M.)

I alone recommend a macrobio

vegetarian diet as one of the easie

ways to attain most rapidly the suprem

state of man. But you should ta

another way if you find somethinbetter. (N.)




lntheWestOroville, T~nslated by Ken Burns,

.IHJ 1 . . ! ~ E ! _ n c t Dei\thG.0 .M.F.. Oroville. 1971

11] Acupuncture and the PhiloliQphy of theF . " E e . t

Tao,Sooks and" PUbJtshers' Inc., Boston, MA.•1973

Gf!j)rge()~~WapiesintheCongoG,.Q.M.F~,' 19'1;3

(J)

[M)

[K] Two Creat Indiansin JapanFi:ve, Elements Aeseanch. ·N ' ew Lo .ndon , CONN.•1974 . , ,

11,000 ahs d'Histoi,r, de 18 Chine'Lib:roirie PhUosophique J.' ,,,trin, Virin" France',1969. 'Excerpts translated by Peggy·Rossoff.

Le livre du JudoUnpublished translation by Patrick MomaL

Edited by Mwhael Rossoff.

[LJ

Lo Spirito e La Visione Di Ohsawa - Di M. Rossoff

Documents

Transcript of Lo Spirito e La Visione Di Ohsawa - Di M. Rossoff