We tell ourselves that what we experience in a moment's time, also passes in a moment's time. We step out into the street, for example, and while crossing a car ignores the red light, and you are nearly hit: whew! That was close. And now it is history.

That is a mistaken impression, however. We have trained our eyes on our next paces, or we laughingly pick up the thread of conversation from before our scare, and move on as though nothing had happened; but something has happened, and we engrave the events of our physical lives in the same way a tree writes rings into its body for every hard winter, or an animal writes scars into its flesh and into its spirit for the threats it has narrowly avoided.

Everything is consumed, the flavor sampled… and the essence of the food spreads throughout our bodies to the furthest cells. If we are not conscious of the memory, yet we remember.

One Chicken the Same as Another
We consume food with our mouths, and the goodness of the ingredients, or the fats and the empty calories, are experienced in our bodies. Out of balance, we grow heavy and lethargic; in balance we feel light and energized. And more than the few hours after a meal, the subtle effects of what we have taken into ourselves wash out to our thoughts and our actions and our beliefs. It is as subtle as that.

If you are a meat-eater, you might want to make a simple test. Next time you are in the grocery, purchase two pieces of chicken: one a shrink-wrapped and low-cost cut from a major meat factory; and the other a smaller and more expensive cut from organic and free-range birds, such as Bell and Evans. If you slow down and eat with care, if you take the time while cooking to notice the subtle differences between them (some not so subtle), you will be aware of the texture and the smell, the tone of the meat.

Why, of course: the second chicken lived more naturally, received the light of the sun and fresh air, and exercised. It also received clean and simple feed. It was harder to raise, the farmers may have lost some animals to natural causes, and so the price was higher. Notice the color and smell of the meat of this second, organic bird.

And why should the first chicken be similar? These birds are kept in cages their entire lives, force-fed waste foods — often chicken and other meat "byproducts" that are not part of their natural diet — and laced with antibiotics and growth hormone to preserve the fragile lives, while increasing bulk to sell higher quantity. Their beaks are clipped so they cannot hurt themselves or their neighbors. They are kept in enormous and crowded barns in a pall of bird stench.

You know, the image is so distasteful that our automatic reaction is to pull back, to call the image itself an abomination, and to call those who bring up such images radicals or even fanatics. You've just consumed as picture of decay, and you want to spit it out. "What are you doing! Why are you talking about this!" It's not unlike coming upon a dead and decaying carcass on a walk through the wood, you want to get away from it quickly, that smell of death.

The Science of Common Sense
So let it fade a bit, even though what I have just detailed above are simple facts. They are just facts. That is the chicken most people purchase when they pick up that first package, the cheaper one, without getting a picture of the life of that creature.

Letting the distaste go for a moment, and becoming stout scientists, clinical in our consideration: what has that cage-bound creature taken into its body in its short life? And from what it has consumed, what has its physical body, its cells and muscle fiber, what has it created? There has been no sun on its flesh! It is, in reality, a polluted body. Studies have suggested that the size of our children and their precocious maturity can be traced not to some sudden bend in the evolutionary road, but instead the secondary consumption of growth hormone, taken in through the meat of animals which have been fed steroids.

The distaste is building again; and here I am trying to be clinical. Go back then, to the structure of the cells: there is no movement of the body, therefore there is little cardiac activity, poor circulation, and low oxygen levels in the blood. The cells are malnourished. The brain of the creature is stunted by inactivity and abuse. The spirit of the creature was bent from its earliest days.

We think of surfaces, so we think of taste, and we think of texture, and we think of a full belly. But what we consume, in the very truest sense, is not the flesh of an animal, or the fiber of a plant, but its energy. We take in energy in the form of solid foods and liquids and even sunshine, and we convert that energy we have taken in to fuel our movement and our thoughts. Imagine the difference, then, between fueling this body — your body, the miracle of life that is your physical being — fueling this body with the clotted, tainted offal that was made of a living creature… as compared to a much cleaner, stronger and less dis-eased being.

Thich Nhat Hanh, in his book Anger, looks beyond the mere physical and sees how the outer conditions of these animals of course must result in twisted and distorted beings, the flesh of abused and frustrated and angry creatures will as a matter of course be suffused with that same horrific anger. Think of that chicken-like creature in a cage — how could it being anything else? When we are not careful to look beyond the mundane, we eat this contorted energy without noticing. It is not so slight a poison as we would like to believe.

The Consequence of Habit
That is hard language and hard imagery… but it is true imagery, and it can server you as a nudge, a small awakening in a larger lulled sleep. There is so much to manage in this adult life — in fact much more to manage in our affluence than there ever was in our poverty. This is not to idealize poverty, but to recognize that all is not necessarily as well as we wish it to be.

When we are not aware, we consume whatever is at hand, and much of it is filled with weight and dis-ease. It is not simply food of the mouth, but all the food of the senses which we take into our being: the music or noise, the perfume or the odors, the softness or abrasion, graceful or jagged forms of the world. When we are not aware, it all enters into us, without a gate. Without a gatekeeper, the ragged enters with the noble, and the sublime is lost among the trivial. One piece of chicken looks like another piece of chicken, and our senses become dull, our senses are dim-witted in their lack of refinement, so the flesh of a strong and healthy creature is indistinguishable from that of one which is diseased.

Any fool could tell the difference.

But perhaps only fools, because they look at simple things, one simple thing at a time. I think fools don't eat so much. The eyes take in a gentle, subtle stream, the ears, the mouth, so that what arrives at the place of cognition, of differentiation, has already been gated. If you're not a fool, though… I am sorry to say that you have got your work cut out for you.

Help Yourself
Do not consume despair. You must be able to choose when global or regional or even local news reaches you. The vast majority of published information is akin to my text about the abomination-bird, above, with the exception that you are given nothing to do about it. Chernobyl burns, a dam wreaks havoc with the Chinese ecosystem, a fool's war dissolves into anarchy… check in on this kind of news once every few days, maybe once a week. You will not be at risk, I promise you. 

Do not consume fury. The music that enters through your ears is energy, is vibration, which takes up residence in your mind and heart and, more subtly, in your cells themselves. You dance, you sway, you move to a beat. If the performers are contorted with anger or with bleak despair, their music will find sympathetic vibration to similar feelings within you. There are times to listen to such works — as handled by great artists, who take us into the truth of hard existence, and bring us back again.

Do not consume for another's benefit. Television, when new, was somewhat more innocent. A novelty, it has modest value to marketeers and salesmen, modest value to politicians. That quickly changed, however, and now it is rare to find any programming which has not been created primarily with the intent to take advantage of weakness or dissatisfactions in your life. Television news is completely devoid of any real analysis, and has become for the most part tabloid journalism. When we consume emptiness, we become less discerning. When we allow others to think for us, and their thoughts are simplistic, we become simple. When we as a nation become too simple, then we as a people become weak, reactionary, and unfit to stand on the world stage. So choose silence, before you choose static, and fill that silence with questions: why do I think this or that? Is that something I really believe, or am I repeating something I have heard…?

Do not consume the superficial. When you touch, make an effort to feel deeper than the skin. When you embrace, make an effort to experience the deeper embrace. In our haste to avoid or escape our discomforts, we can choose connections which only increase our isolation. When we settle for less than the deepest possible connection, we have hurt ourselves. And in our pain we respond by denying we are hurt, and so hasten the cycle of loneliness and impotence.

Enter the Master: You
Each of the senses must be treated with the greatest care and love, like some fragile and perfect lens, we must clean them with care, and not allow the filth of living to cloud them. It is a pleasant practice, pleasant once you have found the gate, found that the gate exists, found that you are the gate and its keeper, found that everything passes through you and is beautifully, permanently within your power to admit or to deny.

Every time you succeed in denying destructive thoughts or energies into your self, you reinforce the knowledge that you are capable and strong. Every time you succeed in bringing nurturing thoughts or energies into your self — even if it is the smallest glimmer of light, in the darkest corner of a day or a week — you reinforce the knowledge that 
there is beauty in your life, that your choices can result in health and in contentment.

When you listen to them, it is surprising to find how quickly the senses respond, and teach you what is pure, and what is not.