Category Archives: Contemplative Practices

On Contemplation and the Complication of Chocolate

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Learning that contemplation practice would be part of this course brought me some anxiety. As one who struggles when invited to “focus on the breath,” mindfulness goals are slain by an internal battle of brain versus lungs. My Zen façade hides a bar brawl of distractions fighting for my attention. Our class has contemplated hunger, exotic foods, a raisin… As the course progresses, I’m realizing these sessions aren’t necessarily a quest for Zen or epiphany as much as they are a space to ask. To feel. To notice. I am reassured by Professor LItfin’s insights into the mind’s natural tendency to roam and how contemplative practice works to “encourage students to actively integrate their subjective experience into their objective learning.” We are connected to the goings on “out there.” Our experiences are relevant and even essential for deep learning.

A recent contemplative practice was done after having viewed clips where cocoa famers in Africa’s Ivory Coast taste chocolate for the first time and another revealing persistent child labor in cocoa farming. Thoughts after watching:

  1. What a way to illustrate inequities and ironies of the global food system
  1. Is chocolate ruined forever? 

I’m joking about #2. Kind of – chocolate is considered an essential business in my house. But paying attention to the lives behind food brings awareness and hopefully, action. Look yourself and your food in the eye, acknowledge that it was planted, tended, harvested, and processed by people.

Who’s lives are behind this square of chocolate? Does fair trade mean new improved taste with less guilt?

A young boy uses a machete to break cocoa pods at a farm on Africa’s eastern Ivory Coast. Image Source

Sometimes the clarity we seek in the moment eludes us only to be realized later. For me, the questions multiply. Having had some room to reflect upon our contemplative sessions, I continue grappling with my place in the food ecosystem. How can I be more than a consumer? If further contemplation of food, hunger, and our role in food systems can guide me towards understanding, or at least deepen my appreciation for food, I’ll keep practicing.

I discovered this chocolate scorecard which ranks brands according to fair labor practices and environmental impact.

Sources

BBC News. (2011, November 10). Cocoa farms still using child labour [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-15686731/cocoa-farms-in-ivory-coast-still-using-child-labour

Green America . (n.d.). Child Labor in Your Chocolate? Retrieved May 4, 2020, from https://www.greenamerica.org/end-child-labor-cocoa/chocolate-scorecard

Litfin, K. T. (2020). The Contemplative Pause: Insights for Teaching Politics in Turbulent Times. Journal of Political Science Education, 16(1), 57–66. https://doi.org/10.1080/15512169.2018.1512869

O’Keefe, B. (2016, March 1). Bitter Sweets. Retrieved May 2, 2020, from https://fortune.com/longform/big-chocolate-child-labor/

VPRO Metropolis. (2014, February 21). First taste of chocolate in Ivory Coast – vpro Metropolis [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEN4hcZutO0

 

How Are You?

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Before the start of Spring Quarter, I signed up for this class not knowing really what I was getting into and what I would learn or gain from it. With this in mind, our professor started our first class session with a contemplative practice, and to me this specific one had me think the most and allowed me to really think about myself and how I am with everything that has been going on around me and in the world. She took time from class to have us reflect and to give thought about things when she asked the class “how are you.”

For me personally, I did not really put in much thought because at first I was thinking to myself, I am good, which was straight forward and to the point. However, because of the fact that she gave us a solid amount of time to ourselves, not just a few minutes, I was able to dig deeper and really contemplate on what has happened to me given the coronavirus pandemic and the stay at home order, and how it has affected me and so many other people around me. It made me realize how much I have taken advantage of before COVID-19 worsened and the stay at home order was implemented, such as going to some place, and seeing and talking to people in person. I know I am not the only one who is struggling with this, because being sociable really helps boost my mood and has a positive effect on my life. After that exercise I understood that it is normal for me to feel upset, stressed, just anything that had a negative influence on myself because this current situation is a difficult time. I really appreciated that contemplative practice the most because I realized everything I have been feeling, and that I knew so many people were going through that as well, and that I was not alone in this. We all are struggling somehow. Because of this practice, I twas able to come up of ways to ease and help myself stay positive, too keep myself busy. And it has helped me in the long run.

Photo Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle

The Inherent Exploitation of Chocolate

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The contemplative practice that has resonated the most for me was the one on the production of chocolate because I crave it so often while I rarely eat breakfast or raisins.

The practice asked us to think about who was affected along the way, but perhaps the better approach after watching those videos would be to ask who was exploited along the way? Is it the unpaid child laborers dragged away from their families who allowed me to get this piece of Dove milk chocolate (or, more correctly, a few pieces)? Is it the farmers struggling to make ends meet who are so separated from much of the commodity chain that they’ve only heard stories of what their cocoa is used for?

Highlighted are cocoa growing countries in southeast Asia, west Africa, and Latin America. http://www.cargillfoods.com/emea/en/products/cocoa-chocolate/origins/index.jsp

It made me, to a certain extent, savor the chocolate more. Perhaps I’m not going to stop eating something I love so much because of these revelations, but instead I’ll at least be conscious of the chain of injustice that brings it to me, both the injustice against people but also the environmental injustice which professor Litfin notes with chocolate’s strain on our water system.

As I opened my eyes and stood up to throw out the wrappers strewn across my coffee table, I was left still thinking of the farmers eating chocolate for the first time and the looks on their faces. It was a joy rarely seen and reminds us how our food system keeps the people most integral to it disconnected from its rewards.

In this stressful time, few things can hold my attention for more than a few minutes, but this stuck in my mind for a while. That is the beauty of the contemplative practice, those moments of solitude to sit back and just reflect.

Sustaining Myself

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As a young person in today’s interconnected world, I am often so consumed with my role in social, academic and political systems that I forget I am a part of my own system. When I ask myself, “who am I?”, I think of my roles in others’ lives. I am a daughter, a sister, or maybe a friend, but I rarely think of myself as possessing a body that interacts with and consumes from the world.

A drawing I made, representing how we are all unique individuals, but we are largely similar with regards to our needs for survival.

Being so disconnected from my body, I rarely think about the way I am treating it. I base my eating habits around what will make me happy instead of what will make me feel good. Two pints of ice cream sound wonderful at the end of a taxing day, but perhaps my day would have been better if I had drank more water and nourished myself more completely throughout the day. Not only do I contain a living system within me, but I am also part of a system composed of my past and future selves. What I eat and the thoughts I have today will affect the person I am in a few days or years, and the experiences I have between now and then will shape the way I remember myself as I am today.

These are lemons that I helped pick from my dad’s lemon bush.

Learning about the food system forces me to connect to my body, because I am forcibly reminded of how reliant I am on international systems to survive. It’s now impossible to ignore the voice in my head nagging me to not only eat healthier, but more sustainably. The next time I go to the kitchen, perhaps, I will choose a fruit that comes from a family member’s tree, and feel secure in the knowledge that I am paying it forward to myself and to future generations.

Source: Sarah Oliver, VIM Fitness.

From Harvest to Consumption: A Bittersweet Tale

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I recently spent some time in Cape Town, South Africa. There I had two professors, a husband and wife, both from the area. I quickly noticed that they did not have conventional wedding bands. Rather, they had outlines of wedding bands tattooed on their fingers. Toward the end of the academic quarter I discovered why this was. The mining history in South Africa is a horribly devastating one; black South Africans had been forced into mining jobs, paid little to nothing, and lived in treacherous conditions. The legacy of the mining industry impacts individuals and families to this day. So, my professors abstained from the traditional gold or diamond bands in protest and demonstrated their loving connection with tattooed wedding bands instead.

Two men eating their rations in a shanty town created for miners to live in for most of the year (https://showme.co.za/facts-about-south-africa/history-of-south-africa/the-history-of-south-africa/)

Although this anecdote might seem random or even irrelevant, it is what came up in my mind when engaging with the chocolate contemplative practice. Why? The bitter sweetness of the chocolate, both in taste and through its commodity chain is shared with the wedding band. Both are a sort of celebration, a dessert and a union of love. Both have seen, and still see terrible injustices and human rights abuses in their commodity chains. Both require an immense amount of water and fossil fuels. In both cases, the harvesters and primary suppliers, the “beginning” of these global commodity chains, often never have the opportunity to see the final result of their grueling work—chocolate or wedding bands. Just as the food we consume embodies water, so does our consumption of other goods.

A child rakes cocoa beans on a drying rack, demonstrating the child labor frequently used in chocolate’s commodity chain (https://www.ethical.org.au/get-informed/issues/animal-testing/young-boy-rakes-cocoa-beans-on-a-drying-rack/)

This contemplative practice prodded me to think about our own responsibility in the commodity chain. Should we model ourselves after my professors? Should I stop my father from consuming his ritual post-dinner chocolate bar each night? The contemplative practice did not lead me to a final and perfect answer, but it did allow me to consider one family’s response to the injustices of a different commodity chain, offering me insight into what I believe is the right thing to do. Ultimately, this is the starting point. This is the headspace from which we can begin to consider how to alter our personal behavior to support what is right for the environment and for other human beings.

– Sophie Stein

Re-engaging with Contemplative Practices

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The contemplative practices have been a bit of a rollercoaster for me. At first, I did not like them at all. I did not think they were engaging, I had trouble focusing during, and I did not learn any great insights into myself. I often turned them on as background noise during other tasks. In preparation for this post, I decided to do them again. My second experience was much different. I set aside a specific time for the exercises, watched the videos attentively, engaged with the material, and listened to the practices without distractions. This significantly altered my opinion of the practices.

I have never been very good at meditating, I have a hard time turning off my brain and only thinking about one thing at a time. At first, I was not invested in the practices because I just assumed I wouldn’t enjoy them. However, after forcing myself to engage with them wholly, I gained a new appreciation for calming your thoughts.

I liked the practices that had preparation videos more than the ones that you dive straight into. The videos allowed me to ease into the right mind frame and they evoked emotions that helped guide my thoughts during the contemplative practice. The videos made me want to engage with the topic which helped keep my mind on the topic throughout the entire exercise.

The practices allowed me to look at my eating habits more critically and systemically. I can’t say that I gained any extraordinary insights into myself, but I do think that it is useful to take the time to really think about the foods that seem so normal to us. We all need to slow down and contemplate the world around us to appreciate the privilege we have.

A picture I took in New Zealand that makes me feel contemplative.

Chocolate and Trafficking: Producing Anxieties over the Chocolate Industry

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Whether it crunches, snaps, or melts– chocolate varieties have much of the same impact on global populations that harvest it. Human trafficking and child labour pervade the chocolate industry, with U.S. Department of Labour estimates citing over 2 million child labourers engaged in the dangerous task of harvesting cocoa beans. 

For me, hearing this is nothing new.

In 2015, I first engaged with a non-profit called Dressember-– a non-profit that seeks to eradicate human trafficking by calling attention to unethical fashion production. Dressember also raises awareness for other unethical industries. They even promote ethical alternatives to chocolate, coffee, and clothing brands. 

Infographic via dressember.org 

Despite knowing this, going into this contemplative practice was still even more difficult to process as I watched farmworkers taste for the first time the product that they didn’t even know was being produced from their labour. This produced a certain anxiety that I recognized immediately– if farmers don’t know where their product is going, and if populations largely don’t understand where it is coming from, how can we generate awareness for labour injustices like these? How can we promote more transparency in the supply chain to ensure human rights protections? These are things I wonder as I sit behind my screen, with the privilege of simply contemplating, allowing myself to entertain ideas of socially just practices. But how is this put into action?

Among increasingly conflicting ideas about globalization and “fair trade”, I found it hard to connect myself to an immediate solution during this exercise. The contemplative practice connected me to the true complexity of the issue. Damaging and unsustainable practices give me insight into the ecological blindness that companies operate with, but with child labour, this opens us to the ethical blindness that companies operate with, viewing human bodies and children as dispensable lives.

Fasting with Purpose

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I should begin this post with a little bit of honesty. I initially found these contemplative practices to be questionable at best. I couldn’t understand the points being made, or find the headspace to allow myself to listen. I am not really a spiritual person, nor do I take the time to think reflectively about how things make me feel.

This all changed during the hunger practice. By coincidence, I just had not eaten all day prior to doing this contemplative practice. It became relatable, and it finally clicked. I felt the hunger and was actually able to experience introspection. In my life I have been lucky enough to never experience chronic hunger, but I can now (at least slightly) sympathize with those that do experience this. I will never completely understand true hunger, and neither should anyone else. It should be a global initiative to end hunger and food instability/inequality. This evolved into a deeper understanding that I will carry through the rest of this course.

This breakthrough actually surprised me so much, I went back and redid the previous practices. They made so much more sense and their message was received on a deeper and more thoughtful level. I realized that the introspective aspect of this class is just as important as the reading and analysis.

Sweet Guilt

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I am a chocolate fanatic. I’ve never turned down a piece of chocolate in my life, I always have a chocolate stash, and it’s definitely number one on my list of favorite sweets. I’ve always liked it and probably always will. I’ve never had a negative thing to say about chocolate… until this contemplative practice.

Chocolate is consumed primarily by affluent countries (https://www.statista.com/chart/3668/the-worlds-biggest-chocolate-consumers/)

After the little lecture at the beginning of the session I couldn’t stop thinking about all the negative attributes of chocolate. The first thing that I kept coming back to in my head was the fact that chocolate is mainly consumed in affluent countries. It is something I’ve had at my fingertips for my whole life. I started to feel bad as I realize it’s a product I have completely taken for granted. People work so hard harvesting and managing the cacao plants, developing the chocolate, and distributing it out. I’ve never had a thought of gratitude towards the people who made it possible to have the piece of chocolate in my hand. I felt incredibly guilty.

Alter Eco, an example of a sustainable chocolate brand. (https://www.alterecofoods.com/collections/chocolate-bars)

This feeling continued through the contemplative practice. As time passed my thoughts transitioned from the social aspect of chocolate to the environmental aspect. Why do we like chocolate? We like the sweetness which comes from sugar, and the creaminess which comes from milk, or maybe its the smooth texture that wouldn’t be possible without the use of water or fossil fuel power. All of these ingredients have negative ties to the environment, aka it is unsustainable. Going out of my way to buy sustainable chocolate wasn’t even a thought I had until this contemplation.

The point I want to get across is that sitting down, thinking about a concept with an open mind like we do in these contemplative practices, can really make a difference on how you think about things. This practice allowed me to open my mind to the reality behind chocolate, and it really will change my consumer habits.

Drowning and Deep Breaths

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Image: https://www.tga-ins.com/Newsroom/ArticleID/483/How-to-know-if-someone-may-be-drowning-Learn-the-signs

As I close my eyes to contemplate, every attempt to clear my mind brings rushing thoughts. My mind does not join my body in calm. Focus, focus, I tell myself. Why is this so hard? That is how many of my contemplative practices start. I am deeply meditative on my own self, but I never thought to bring my meditation to a global level. Was that even possible? I opened my mind and changed my perspective from the self to the world system. My experiences are like a coin. On one side, I find myself plagued by despair. On the other, I can achieve great calm.

In the hunger contemplative practice, we held an exhale for twenty seconds. My lungs screamed for breath. Every second, I told myself to wait a little longer, a breath would come, and finally, I breathed deeply. But as I breathed in deeply, a thought intruded. Could others? For people severely affected by COVID-19, their breathing is more like drowning. Every unassisted breath they take is never quite sufficient, and they are left with desperate lungs. These unresolved thoughts left me disturbed even after the practice ended.

On the flipside, contemplative practice can bring stillness, quiet, and calm. Our first in-class practice made me realize how tense I was the moment we were asked to relax. Every deep breath felt like releasing a burden off my shoulders. Then we were asked to feel our weight in our seats, to just know we exist. Framing the practice in that way made it much easier to remember that we are living, breathing organisms. We are not cogs in a machine. I learned that I have always stared at the vast sky, where I want to be, but I forget I am walking through a field of roses.