Tag Archives: contemplative practice

Beyond Meditating

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It’s become kind of a cliche for people to talk about the benefits of meditating. The contemplative practices are a good way to practice meditating on a subject, rather than meditating with the sole purpose of relaxation, which have the potential to leave you wondering the whole time if it’s working. The practices are a different approach to learning about a subject that give you space to ruminate, rather than tackling the subject head on. It’s like the daytime equivalent of “sleeping on it”.

I got the most out of the practice where we contemplated hunger, which I had been putting off for several days because every time I got hungry I just didn’t feel like waiting another 20 minutes to eat. Normally I get a little frustrated by the amount of thoughts that come into my head but with this practice I found that my thoughts were focused almost only on hunger. A physical need dictating where my mind went made it easier for me to focus on the practice.

The most compelling section of this practice was when we stopped breathing for ten seconds. It’s an awful feeling, which is probably the point of the exercise because with my hunger I feel like I can wait to eat and I’ll be fine, whereas by depriving myself of air I can feel that want turn into need very quickly. It was similar to the practice where we watched videos about cocoa farmers, talked about commodity chains, then ate pieces of chocolate. Adding a physical component makes learning about anything a more memorable, more impactful experience.

Below is a link to Miriam Jordan’s article that I referenced in my last post about farmworkers during the pandemic. If you take the time to read it, I recommend eating a piece of fruit afterward and considering who helped it get to you.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/us/coronavirus-undocumented-immigrant-farmworkers-agriculture.html?searchResultPosition=1

Raisins Throughout History; a Contemplative Practice

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The main goal of the contemplative practice on raisins was to look introspectively at the modern processing of foods. When participating in the practice, however, I felt drawn in another direction. My mind kept wondering to ancient fields. It is believed, according to California Raisins among other sources, that the Phoenicians were the first to produce raisins. What I pictured during this practice was happy workers with beautiful sunsets over Mediterranean vineyards. The reality would likely have been much different.

Just like today, exploited workers likely would have worked long hours to produce raisins that, according to Sun-Maid, were frequently prized possessions of the wealthy across many civilizations throughout history. While the raisin is a relatively cheap commodity today, it represents a trend in agrarian history. Land largely held by the wealthy is worked by laborers, often too poor to afford the food they are producing, to make something the wealthy will enjoy. This was likely the case for many civilizations in which grapes were produced and is certainly the case for much of the fresh produce grown in America today. The raisin may bring a sweet smile to its eater but is a powerful symbol of the agrarian system that has remained relatively constant throughout time.

This contemplative practice was successful in engaging me in a new way of thinking about my food. I made links to a raisin that I otherwise would never have seen. I think that I took the exercise in a different than intended direction but I enjoyed the path it led me down.

 

Work cited

“History of Raisins and Dried Fruit.” Healthy Living, Sun-Maid, sunmaid.jp/healthyliving/history_of_raisins_and_dried_fruit_English.html.

“History.” The California Raisin Industry, California Raisins, calraisins.org/about/the-raisin-industry/history/.

The Time to get to Know What’s in My Cup

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There are many types of meditation, while riding the calm wave of one’s breath. A contemplative practice is but one form of meditation. It serves as a moment for critical thinking, noticing, wondering, etc. Questions of how and why, and whatever else comes up along the way. This intentional moment to explore can be applied to anything in the imagination.

 

Dark beans…

 

I don’t usually think “exotic” when I think of coffee. Strange, because it’s possible that the coffee I drink comes from the same place my bananas do. In writing this blog, I also noodled around google images and found that raw coffee cherries have a color as vibrant and varied as a bag of Skittles. So why a disconnect between the two? Coffee is experienced through aromas, the sounds of grinding and brewing; dark beans, or dark powder. Now with coffee pods, you don’t even see the coffee.

 

In considering coffee and bananas, and tropical foods in general, during our class’s contemplative practice, it became very clear how     interdependent I am on world food systems for both sustenance and pleasure. Technically I don’t need coffee, but a life without my cup of Joe is not one I’m interested in. This process made me more appreciative of what I have in respects to coffee. In that sense I think that a contemplative practice is great, though I don’t necessarily know what to do with that recognition.

 

The world coffee trade is something I feel I have little control over, aside from buying organic and hoping that a rainforest wasn’t cut down for the sake of my morning ritual. But, in order to take care of something, it has to be valued. Perhaps with recognition and a willingness to pay a little more for coffee, that can make some difference.

 

Contemplative practices highlight the lack of compassion in America in the time of COVID.

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Amidst the uncertainty and frustration in the time of COVID, I found my reactions to our contemplative practices to reflect these emotions. During the “like a raisin in the sun” exercise, I felt agitated by the Sunmaid Raisins Hollywood commercial. The commercial associated California raisins with the glamour of Hollywood, but much like its’ glowing description of Hollywood, it failed to account for their deeply troubling underlying issues. As we learned through our coursework, the modern production of raisins relies on the routinization of labor, including the exploitation of migrant workers. One of the raisin production videos showed individual workers harvesting raisins, but the subsequent video depicted the Korvan mechanical grape harvester doing the work instead. This made me consider the fate of the migrant worker, while their jobs may be unpleasant, they are still being displaced by the mechanization of labor and are losing what little work they can find.

Direct capture

Finally, hearing Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem,” written in the face of horrific oppression during the Civil Rights movement made me think about the bravery exhibited by black activists during that time and made me frustrated with the rampant anti-quarantine protests occurring today. Privileged people throughout our country are protesting for their “freedom” amidst lock-down orders, and what saddens me is that they have mistaken science-based, lifesaving measures as oppression and are mobilizing against it while many of them stand idly by while our political system facilitates hunger amongst racial and economic minorities. I am especially disturbed by these issues now with the virus exacerbating the systemic food insecurity of vulnerable people. Though I am hopeful that one day we will remedy these issues, I am disappointed in the priorities of our fellow Americans, and know we have a ways to go.

Link to Sunmaid Raisins Hollywood commercial: https://youtu.be/cJZcFq8ige8

Contemplating Complicity in Global Food Injustice

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Figure 1: Granlund, 2011

With ever constant demands for my time, energy, and thoughts, I usually don’t stop and think deeply about where and how the food I consume is produced. A reoccurring theme of my feelings after contemplative practices were complicated emotions around my own complicity in global food injustices.

Never was this clearer to me than during the contemplative practice on chocolate. Watching the cocoa farmers experience eating chocolate for the first time, I knew it was just one of the many global food injustices propagated by a global trade system which values consumers in developed countries, over producers in developing countries. From countries experiencing famine contractually forced to export their food (Carolan, 2018), to rice originally smuggled and planted by West African slaves, returned to these countries in the form of contingent and domestically damaging “food aid”(Lecture 4/30), the systemic inequalities that I implicitly benefit from are all around me.

Initially, these contemplative practices filled me with a feeling of guilt and ineptitude considering the miniscule impact my individual actions could make on these globally propagated problems. Yet, as they progressed, I eventually came to a feeling of resolve.

Figure 2: Campesina 2020

While I can’t help cacao farmers in West Africa and may not be able to change global trade agreements on my own, I can still do something. I can acknowledge the privilege that I have and help bring these issues to the attention of my fellow citizens, who collectively can more effectively demand for more equitable international food politics and purchasing agreements such as getting more involved in the Food Sovereignty and Beyond Fair Trade movements.

Overall, these practices have shown me that I can and need to slow down and appreciate all the people whose lives went into supporting my own and do my part to make their lives a little bit better.

Sources:

Campesina, La Via. “Till, Sow and Harvest Transformative Ideas for the Future! Now Is the Moment to Demand Food Sovereignty – #17April.” Focus on the Global South, 16 Apr. 2020, focusweb.org/till-sow-and-harvest-transformative-ideas-for-the-future-now-is-the-moment-to-demand-food-sovereignty-17april/.

Carolan, Michael. “Cheap Food and Conflict.” The Real Cost of Cheap Food, Routledge, 2018, p. 78.

Granlund, Dave. “Dave Granlund – Editorial Cartoons and Illustrations>.” Dave Granlund Editorial Cartoons and Illustrations RSS, www.davegranlund.com/cartoons/2011/07/27/obesity-and-famine/.

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

 

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

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.

Insight Into Yourself

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I took Pol S 384 with Karen last fall and took the in-class contemplative practices with her, but I didn’t feel the power of it until our first in-class practice this quarter. The whole practice was about a simple question: How are you? But I felt energized and refreshed after that.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the uncertainty of a new learning style, and the stress of being alone in a country away from home made me feel depressed and stressed out. I could not stop worrying about the exacerbating problems of COVID-19 and focus on my study. However, through the practice, I calmed down and started to feel the innermost emotions and energy.

Follow Karen’s guiding questions and her soft, gentle voice, I began to ask myself: who am I? Do I feel good now? How can I live and study normally if the world is normal? Can I keep being healthy and optimistic under such huge anxiety? What if I take a break and accept all the unusual things as the new normal?

After the ten minutes of asking myself and seeking for answers, I was clearer about what I should do and realized that I was trapped in negative thoughts and it’s OK to be not OK. I felt full of power and energy after doing that contemplative practice. I became efficient and positive about life again. In my opinion, contemplative practices give us an opportunity to focus on our thoughts and have some insight into the problem. That’s why I like to do the practice right before our class. It helps me settle down to be prepared for the class. And I especially like the in-class ones, since they make me feel the class is united and we are all together in this extremely hard time.

日落, 海, 波罗的海, 字符, 男子, 女子, 晚上, 太阳, 性质, 海岸, 体质, 暮光之城, 心情