Impermanence and food

Really grokked impermanence now while eating. Due to all these thoughts, I am moving a little fast, but since I have a nice ground underneath, not so fast as to be lost in it. I got to the last piece of zucchini and paused to do some eating meditation with it. On the fork, it was so beautiful - this intricate pattern of specks in the green. Just gorgeous. And I knew that I was about to destroy it. Beautiful intricacy was all over the plate - all the spices, the cellular structure of the sweet potato, everywhere. And everywhere being destroyed - turned into mush. Of course, that mush is being turned into me, which is also complicated and beautiful, but form is constantly arising out of mush and turning back into mush. And according to entropy, eventually the mush will win out on a cosmic scale.

I am finding this very sad. Not entropy, really, since that really is far in the inconceivable future. But, the destruction itself. It would probably be wise to lose my attachment to form. When I think of Keats being crunched into scrap metal, it makes me very, very sad. Then again, better to be recycled than dumped somewhere to decay. Look, I’m like this all the time, especially with waste. Early on during retreat it was clear to me that nature always makes too much. Just what she does. Trees let go gazillions of seed pods or cones or fruit, and only a couple of them ever make it to become new trees. The rest are “wasted.”

It is good, of course, not to waste. But I think it’s fair to say I take it to an absurd level. The main consequence is not having new things myself, which creates a certain emotional tone that isn’t nice. But why waste the existing one?

Waste connected to this perception of destruction. But every plate of food has destruction of complexity in it. This is impermanence. Learn it.