Tangerine Party

A couple of class periods ago the class had a 'tangerine party'. During the tangerine party the class went outside and each person consciously peeled and ate their citrus fruit. The exercise was overall very eye opening to the fact that most of the I eat I am not thinking about what I'm actually doing. This phenomenon of absentmindedness while eating is especially apparent in Western society. While I was peeling my tangerine I thought about the journey the tangerine took to get to me. First the tangerine tree was planted then it was picked. However, in order for the tangerine to have been picked someone needed to pick it. After the tangerine was picked it was shipped to the US where it was distributed to grocery stores (and so on). The point is that tangerine could not have been in my hand at that moment if it wasn't for a variety of other factors. In fact I could not have had that tangerine in my hand at that moment if it wasn't for everything else in the world. This relates to the Eastern philosophical idea of inter-being. In this idea things in the world are related to other things through the idea of existence. This is very opposite to US culture where people don't often think about what a thing is or where it came from but rather what the object can be used for. It is the essence, not the appreciation for existence that seems to be valued in many western cultures.