Gratitude to All Things

When we take a sip of water, perhaps we care whether it's from a mountain spring, but seldom do we ponder the journey it took, trickling through crevices of which mountain, scooping up minerals along the way, absorbing sunlight, tree shadows, and the scent of flowers melting into the stream.

Sometimes I wonder, even if we traverse this world quietly and simply, how many lives nurture us, disappearing into their own existence through shouts, tears, or muted silence. Through a food chain, they transform their nutrients, trace elements, into a part of our bodies. They allow us to live vigorously, to love, to passionately engage; they enable us to continue contemplating, writing our understanding of life, guarding the Earth, and exploring the universe.

In the morning, even with a modest breakfast, how many grains of rice simmer into congee, how many wheat kernels turn into steamed buns or bread that enter our bodies? How many rice plants, wheat stalks do they come from, most likely not from the same field? Different farmers tirelessly work for their growth, from soaking seeds, germination, sowing, to weeding, fertilizing, pest control, until they mature after enduring wind, frost, rain, and snow. During this process, they also rely on the efforts of sunlight and rainwater, even the moon's clear brilliance during nighttime rest.

Similarly, a dollop of fermented bean curd, also goes through the growth and harvest of soybeans, and the collective effort of probiotics during fermentation. We only know the taste, finding it too bland or too sweet. We equally do not know which calloused hands planted these soybeans, or whose skilled hands crafted the finished product of fermented bean curd in jars.

A handful of assorted vegetables, along with peanuts, and milk from a cow from somewhere unknown...

Occasionally, buying a few tea eggs from a breakfast stall. I do not know which farm or chicken coop they originated from, which hens laid them; how much grain, how many insects these hens consumed to lay these eggs.

And if it's a fertilized egg, it was originally a seed of life, waiting to hatch under the warm embrace of a mother hen's wings for 21 days to become a fluffy chick. But in one selection, it wasn't as fortunate. For the sake of energy transfer, it, along with many other seeds of life, were traded, boiled, cooked, inevitably ending up in my mouth, digested by my stomach, absorbed by my intestines, becoming a part of "me," calories, fat, protein... my body contributes to it, my spirit includes this bit of text I'm writing now, it owes to it - because without the body, the spirit would hardly exist.

And if it's a grand lunch or dinner, I can't even begin to count how many lives "sacrifice" for me.

The lively shrimp, because of my direction, my payment, obtains the "right to deprive it of life." It seems only natural. Perhaps in my childhood, I occasionally questioned this, but as an adult, I've become accustomed to it.

Of course, I know the roles these plants and animals play in the energy exchange process. From one form of life to another, it's filled with struggle, consumption, birth, growth, death, unseen energies transmitting, intersecting, dissipating.

Of course, I know society is a tight or loose machine, incorporating all people and natural things as much as possible, including emotions, souls, thoughts. Each of us is just a part of a component, fitting or misfitting, wedged in by the gears of time, revolving with the sun and moon.

On Earth, we're accustomed to the seeming "divine will" that humans perish, voluntarily or involuntarily. I cannot challenge this rule, but I can sigh, and in this "conquest," humans become increasingly reckless, squandering the treasures of nature.

Before the formidable humans, all things seem powerless, lacking even the ability for passive resistance. But just as the water flows past the drawn sword, water achieves a kind of strength in its softness, accumulating infinite energy in its "non-rupture." In "non-violent non-cooperation," all things of nature are like water, but in melting, retreating, they turn, like whirlpools and towering waves, "softly" killing, devouring you.

When slaughtering a cow, we focus on its flesh, tendons, yield, never caring about the sorrow in its big eyes, the cries from its throat. When swinging the knife at a rooster's neck, we have no interest in discussing how its bright feathers were once so alluring and charming in the eyes of the hen, how its crowing throat once heralded the arrival of dawn, how it established a mysterious connection with the passage of time. What we care about is how these animals are manipulated by various cuisines, transformed into different tastes and presentations.

When we take a sip of water, perhaps we care whether it's from a mountain spring, but seldom do we ponder the journey it took, trickling through crevices of which mountain, scooping up minerals along the way, absorbing sunlight, tree shadows, and the scent of flowers melting into the stream.

We rarely think about how our poems, writings, romantic words, originally came from sunlight, dew, grains, or a beef cow because on this chain of energy exchange, they seem so indirect, elusive, with gaps between links, a long path, yet in reality, they can connect, merge in an instant - they have never truly been disconnected.

They are brief, accidental, they are eternal, inevitable.