Expense and Obscurity of Macrobiotics

[garymill]

I am living on a macrobiotic diet and am very grateful that I found out
about macrobiotics and that there were people who dedicated themselves to
it and helped make macrobiotics happen in the first place.

I was immediately convinced of it by the way it tasted and the way I felt
eating in this manner. - And I guess being a utalitarian type of person it
made a lot of sense to me.

However there are some aspects that make me wonder:
All the books I have examined so far seemed to be somewhat superficial.
Also the classes are very expensive. I have trouble understanding this.
Why, if one wishes for people to join in a macrobiotic lifestyle would one
want to make it so exclusive?

I'm thankful for any thoughts on this matter.

Ulrike Solbrig, Berlin ulrike@solbrig.de

[Roy Collins]

Hi Ulrike. Macrobiotics is a lifelong learning process that is constantly changing and evolving as we move through the time/space continuum. To explain this experience would be quite difficult. My feeling has always been that life itself is the book, and that the book contains just a small section of the life experience.

Modern macrobiotic sage George said we do NOT need books to study macrobiotics. He told us to observe nature like the wild animals and find out for ourselves. I took his advice 35 years ago and have only attended 6 macrobiotic lectures during this time. Even in these lectures I learned only the opinion of the speaker (but usually disagreed on most principles that were discussed).

It is interesting wild animals don't read but know how to life balanced lives in the environents they are born into. Why can't we do this? Book writing is a relative new invention. Speech is also not so old in comparison to age of mankind. People have been on the planet Earth for millions of years. Still there are some very good macrobiotic books that contain the main principles and theories about this practice, like Kushi's Book of Macrobiotics and Ohsawa's Zen Macrobiotics. I also think Esko's book on Cooking is quite good and Muromoto's Healing Ourselves. WE can extrapolate much from just these four works.

I have found that no matter how many books you read on cooking, nothing beats taking a class or two or three with a
real live macrobiotic cook. A good macro cook makes the experience of cooking like an art form. No book can explain this experience. Also many macro cook books tend to be on the gourmet end. Again you just need a few classes in order to grasp the concept and you can go off on your own.

Regarding the high cost some teachers/lecturers charge; I can only say that if they truly want to help their brothers and sisters and the earth then they should so this freely, or at least to cover for travel, food, lodging costs, food supplies, books, etc. Some macro teachers like to make a living doing this, however. Some like to make a system of certification, etc. This is their perogative but I disagree. My first cooking class cost one US dollar and that included the meal. The teacher was Shizuko Yamamoto (1968 or 1969). I also disagree on the counselling idea as to me this fosters dependency.

I think we should just help each others like all friends do. This is what I do here at cybermacro. I get no pay but reward is great to help people. Some may disagree but that is fine with me. We all have rights, and personal beliefs. I have a regular job so I don't need the money. I drive a school bus and I restore antique oil paintings and teach art classes. I try to get people to think and learn to apply yin/yang thinking in all areas of life. If I give a lecture I ask only for a donation for my travel and personal expenses. I tell people if they don't have money then they don't have to pay. I agree that macrobiotic classes and lectures and consultations are way too expensive. We need to focus more on prining good, self-help macro guidebooks. I hope this answers some of your questions. Maybe you can write a good book on macrobiotics for German friends.

In peace, Roy

[mike chen]

the appearance of a written version of mb was pretty miraculous:
george ohsawa had to come down with a case of tuberculosis; he had to lose his mother to tuberculosis; he had to be sent home (to die of tuberculosis) by the public health authorities; he had to discover a text by sagen ishizuka in a second-hand bookseller's penny-value bin; this book, in turn, had to be the exact text that showed him how to save his life.

from that point on, ohsawa tried to understand [read: rationalize] the process by which his life was saved. historically, orientals rationalize [read: think] in terms of yin and yang. the
complicating factor was that the japanese government's military advisers had convinced the emperor to proscribe the use of traditional japanese medicine. they favored the newly-developed western medicine, and they wished to introduce that system's chemical-based nomenclature. ohsawa needed to think in terms of chemical notations.

thus, you will find substantial effort expended by early mb theorists to analyze and substantiate their work using sodium-potassium relations. are you having difficulty understanding their theories? do you find their theories to be superficial? this is not surprising.

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on the other hand, yin-yang theory (the traditional way of oriental thought) isn't hard to pick up. ohsawa can teach it to you in an hour. (the application is another matter . . . perhaps. in my case, for example, i was dense enough to take twenty years to come . . . to an appreciation of the yin-yang equivalency of diet!)

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ohsawa showed many persons - western as well as eastern -
how to save their lives. his version of applied mb is not for the exclusive use of orientals. by the same token, of course, he does use rice. when clients were saved. he didn't ask for cash. instead, he asked, How much is your life worth to you?

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