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.

On a walk with my dog last week I realized that change is in the air. There was a sense of – dare I say it – fall in the air. I don’t want to create any kind of year-end overwhelm here and I am the greatest critic when the Christmas decoration in department stores goes up already at the end of October – and yet, in this case, I could swear I felt a tad of fall last week.

Maybe it was the light, which right now is as golden in the morning as it gets as we are only three weeks past summer solstice.

Maybe it was the wind and the way it made some dry leaves shuffle against each other

Maybe it was my memory; maybe I remembered these days and somewhere deep down I knew that summer is right here, right now, and that after the summer, fall will come.

I was reminded of the seasons, of this year, of time passing, the celebration of what is yet to come this year, the harvest, the bounty, the flavors of 09, the progression from spring to summer, from seed to carrot, from caterpillar to butterfly, from boy to man, from summer to fall.

And it is such an interesting little struggle – in my anticipation for the opening of the Point Reyes Farmers Market every year I can also hear the voice in my heart that says, “no, please don’t let that day ever come” – because that day will also be the beginning of the end.

So as we are seeing tomatoes and summer squashes ripen, and boys graduate, and girls become women, and dogs get older, I am walking into this season with a somber sense of gratitude – for the seeds that have become food, for the grapes that will soon be wine, and for the courage to accept that we can’t do anything about it, that this is just the way life is.

A good friend send me the following article:

“Why do leaves burst into color exactly? It’s a sort of magic trick, a sleight-of-leaf maneuver, in which the tree, sensing impending autumn, yanks the green from the leaf, thereby exposing the leaf’s true color. The “real” color of deciduous trees are the ones you see in autumn. Spring and summer are one long green disguise, a cacophony of chlorophyll.”

So the beauty, the color of fall, is not something that happens “to” the leaf, but is a revelation of what has always been.

Just as the leaf, the carrot, or the cherry, the boy, or the girl, life is about expressing our true innermost beauty, which is always inside of us. May this year’s harvest be abundant and full of wisdom.

I was invited last week to be part of a preview of the film Food, Inc. (in theaters on June 12th), followed by a panel discussion with San Francisco Bay Area organizations such as Food and Water Watch, Pesticide Action Network North America, and the California Center for Public Health Advocacy – amazing organizations that have done fantastic work over the last years to change awareness and to make this world a better place.

Food, Inc. is an important movie for anyone who cares about food. It features interviews with Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food) and Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), and reports on some of the darkest areas of cruelty in the production of the food that we eat.

The movie is extremely powerful, so much so that half way through the film I found myself torn between appreciating the intention and rejecting it for the cruelty it shows.

I was sitting in the theater knowing that I would be part of the panel discussion right after the film, and I had to make a choice – either to let this movie not fully affect me so that I can be the role of executive director, or let myself feel what I felt and not really knowing if I could give a great presentation afterwards.

I was struggling with that conversation in my body between heart and mind, trying to answer the question: How can I choose numbness or ignorance right now, when I am sad about the perceived numbness of the slaughterhouse workers in the movie that I am watching?

Finally, I chose to fully feel the movie.

Right after the film had ended I sat down to be part of the panel, yet I knew I couldn’t just launch into my regular talk. My heart was beating and the scenes of the movie were still very much in my head, and so I expressed on the panel that I am struggling with the message of the movie, with the display of cruelty and violence, and I was wondering if anything good could come out of it.

I said that I know that education is important but also that my inspiration comes from the work of Marin Organic – amazing farmers, stories from the land, progressive ideas and first and foremost, hope and beauty – and that I don’t know how we could possibly hold both – the dichotomy and necessity of displaying cruelty in the pursuit of creating beauty and positive change?

Isn’t the motivation out of watching cruelty always anger, or fear? Can there ever be anything beautiful come out of anger or fear or will that motivation follow through the entire creation, like a silk threat, and destroy the creation at the end because of its inherent weakness?

And who are we to display the organic movement as the solution and the food industry as the evil “other”, when it is all about engagement and integration and changing things by becoming a part of it, because, truly, we are already a part of it?

And so I went on and on.

The film and my internal conversation stayed with me the entire week.

I realized last night – while all these thoughts of course are valid – that my motivation that evening came at least in part from fear myself – the fear that if we don’t all love more, we will fail as a movement.

And by following my fear, completely without knowing, in debating my thoughts with the audience and building a space as in “me and the other” between me and my fellow panelists, I, myself created the second greatest force that stands in the way of transformation and positive change – which is “separation”.

Everything I so strongly stood against that night, the separation, the being motivated by fear, the “me and the other”, in that moment, I had become myself.

What an incredible lesson.

I finally got the full meaning of Gandhigi’s “Be the change that you want to see in the world”. I believe what he is actually saying is not to be different – and then feel right about it – but actually, simply, be more loving.

Food, Inc. – in theaters on June 12th. Difficult to watch, but perhaps important to watch it anyway. You decide.