A few years ago, I studied holistic nutrition and the same year, I became lay ordained as a Buddhist teacher. During my studies, I found that there was a direct connection between the two disciplines.

In my nutrition class, as my final paper, I looked at the loss of nutrients in non-organic soils.

As a general rule, an organic farmer feeds the soil during and after each harvest by planting a cover crop and through other methods that enhance and build healthy soil, such as applying compost. In fact, soil management is a requirement under federal organic guidelines.

Non-organic farmers on the other hand, instead of the soil, feed the plants, and that is usually done by applying Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potassium – NPK.

However, plants absorb a much greater variety of elements than those three, and as a consequence, soil, over time, gets depleted of essential nutrients.

So in my final paper, I wanted to know if there is any correlation of what is missing in non-organic soils and the most common diseases in the US. I picked the ones that cause the most deaths: heart disease, cancer, diabetes, stroke, and a couple of others – and what I found was amazing:

Heart disease, for example, the number one death-causing disease in the U.S. with 50% of all deaths. One of the most beneficial nutrients for optimal heart health is Selenium – a nutrient that is one of the most depleted nutrients in non-organic soils throughout the US.

So while all diseases are caused by a variety of factors such as lack of exercise, an unhealthy diet, or smoking, I found that exactly the nutrients that are known to be beneficial to prevent these diseases are the ones that are missing the most. Even the exact order of their depletion rate correlates directly with the order of the diseases that kill us the most.

So for me, there was a direct connection to Buddhism, a teaching that is anchored around happiness and kindness.

In relationship to soil it became clear that she gives us clothes, and food, and nourishment, and that when we are unkind to her, when she is incomplete, when she is hurting – so are we.

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