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The Diet of Non-Discrimination

Human life is not sustained by its own power. Nature gives birth to human beings and keeps them alive. This is the relation in which people stand to nature. Food is a gift of heaven. People do not create foods from nature; heaven bestows them.

Food is food and food is not food. It is a part of man and is apart from man.

When food, the body, the heart, and the mind become perfectly united within nature, a natural diet becomes possible. The body as it is, following its own instinct, eating if something tastes good, abstaining if it does not, is free.

It is impossible to prescribe rules and proportions for a natural diet.* This diet defines itself according to the local environment, and the various needs and the bodily constitution of each person.

The Diet of Principle

Everyone should be aware that nature is always complete, balanced in perfect harmony within itself. Natural food is whole and within the whole are nourishment and subtle flavors.

It appears that, by applying the system of yin and yang, people can explain the origin of the universe and the transformations of nature. It may also seem that the harmony of the human body can be determined and consciously sustained. But if the doctrines are entered into too deeply (as is necessary in the study of Eastern medicine) one enters the domain of science and fails to make the essential escape from discriminating perception.

Swept along by the subtleties of human knowledge without recognizing its limits, the practitioner of the diet of principle comes to concern himself only with separate objects. But when trying to grasp the meaning of nature with a wide and far-reaching vision, he fails to notice the small things happening at his feet.

The Typical Sick Person's Diet

Sickness comes when people draw apart from nature. The severity of the disease is directly proportional to the degree of separation. If a sick person returns to a healthy environment often the disease will disappear. When alienation from nature becomes extreme, the number of sick people increases. Then the desire to return to nature becomes stronger. But in seeking to return to nature, there is no clear understanding of what nature is, and so the attempt proves futile.

Even if one lives a primitive life back in the mountains, he may still fail to grasp the true objective. If you try to do something, your efforts will never achieve the desired result.

People living in the cities face tremendous difficulty in trying to attain a natural diet. Natural food is simply not available, because farmers have stopped growing it. Even if they could buy natural food, people's bodies would need to be fit to digest such hearty fare.

In this sort of situation, if you try to eat wholesome meals or attain a balanced yin-yang diet, you need practically supernatural means and powers of judgment. Far from a return to nature, a complicated, strange sort of "natural" diet arises and the individual is only drawn further away from nature.

If you look inside "health food" stores these days you will find a bewildering assortment of fresh foods, packaged foods, vitamins, and dietary supplements. In the literature many different types of diets are presented as being "natural," nutritious, and the best for health. If someone says it is healthful to boil foods together, there is someone else who says foods boiled together are only good for making people sick. Some emphasize the essential value of salt in the diet, others say that too much salt causes disease. If there is someone who shuns fruit as yin and food for monkeys, there is someone else who says fruit and vegetables are the very best foods for providing longevity and a happy disposition.

At various times and in various circumstances all of these opinions could be said to be correct, and so people come to be confused. Or rather, to a confused person, all of these theories become material for creating greater confusion.

Nature is in constant transition, changing from