The sense of being Wholeness (by Duc Luu, Feb 25, 2000.)

I remembered in Vietnam, whenever mom shopped for fish, mud-fish for example, she always looked in and observed the entire mud-fish bucket. Once mom was satisfied with a certain one, a whole and a completed mud-fish in a sense that its fin and gills were not damaged in any way, she pointed out that particular one so the owner would grab it for her. She had a same style of shopping for food, vegetables, or anything in that regard.
In those old days, when the fast-pace growing technology has not had dominated people lives, people like my mom had time to exercise their own personal contact and close touch with their way of life. A complete relationship with the food one eats was just an example. Growing up as a kid in Vietnam, where rice has alwasy been the main course of each meal, every kid in town including myself, knew for the fact that there were a fairy tale story to teach kids how to treasure their main course meal. The story simply warned kids to eat up every single tiny rice grain, on each meal, and should not waste them uneaten. Each rice grain, once left uneaten and once got washed out to the sewel, would become the so-called "living worm" and kids, once died, will be punished by the devil by being forced to eat those "living worms" after all. At least that was a common way to teach kids how to treasure rice products in my culture. Coming from the part of the world where rice is the national product, people at least understand the whole process of making rice that are complex. Showing some way to respect farmers, those who made the product one eats possible, seems to be reasonable and understandable.
Taking rice making process as an example, peasants, more than anyone else, treasured their rice because from the day one, they did scatter the grains around the field, bend down to till each tiny plant, one by one, on the soil. Once they grew tall and got ready, farmers had to thresh them all into bushels when the harvest season came. After drying off those grains under the heat of the sun, back in the old days, buffaloes would step on those raw grains to peel off the husks, people would then shake them, thrash them all under the wind, and then they become each individual grain that we call rice.
Understanding their own works, farmers, more than any one else, eat their food with gratitude. They treasure their home-grown product gratefully. They sit on their front porch, pray and wish for rain when the dry season gets too long. They pray so that bugs would not to destroy their crops when the harvest season comes, and so are there many other prayers that were said in such a way that only farmers understand their own connection with the cosmic world that they live in. From the farmers point of view, that also reveals such a deep, great, and personal connectivity on the food they eat. It symbolizes more of a great sense of things being seen as a whole since they rely so much on the conditions -as one might see it - that God brings into their working fields. Farmers rarely take things for granted.
Today's society has distracted people in so many ways. Being busy to cope so many things in life tends to distract one's personal relationship with the origins of things. Fixing oneself a quick meal from the oven or microwave, per se, a perfect sample as how easy it is for one not to relate to the hardwork and connected process of all things around himself. Opening up a bag of rice, without knowing its own journey as how it ends up on one's dinner table, is a fair way to say that it is hard not to admit that one does not take things for granted.
One has habit of praying before each meal as I observed. It is a good way of thanking God for what is given. It is a good way of telling others how much one appreciates for what has been brought to his dinner table. However, it would be even more meaningful if one actually takes a moment and sees how the meal, like a little tiny grain of rice, ends up on his plate. Only after that moment takes place, one would then have a full understanding of the wholeness.
In a broader sense, once one feels a sense of how special things are when they all come together and fit in an overall scenario, he would then have a sense of being special himself because he, like the little tiny grain of rice, througout a long journey of life, would have a deep connection and a tremendous impact onto others in this universe; a sense of being wholeness.

Duc Luu