George Ohsawa

I'm all for brown rice, but he makes too many unscientific assumptions about nutrition and how it affects us which conflict with other more reasoned diets. People have gotten sick and even died from following extreme versions of his gospel.

In writing this booklet, Ohsawa was not so much interested in explaining the mechanical techniques of acupuncture, as he was in expressing the inexpressible wisdom that lies as the invisible foundation for acupuncture practice, indeed as the foundation for the whole Chinese culture from the earliest recorded history. Ohsawa believed that without realizing the infinite, one's knowlegde of acupuncture was nothing more than a sophisitcated voodoo, at best a form of symptomatice remedy.

Ohsawa explores the concept that each of us must take responsiblity for the level of health or illness we each experience. For any health issues we have, the reader is invited to examine how our choices about food and exercise have contributed to that. He does make the case for a more conscious approach to what we eat, and provides an alternative diet/lifestyle known as macrobiotics.. A lengthy, riveting, and uniquely insightful introduction is provided by longtime macrobiotic follower show more William Dufty. Interestingly, in 2008 Consumer Reports gave its top diet rating to the Volumetrics program, which incorporates most of the principles first put forth by Ohsawa about macrobiotics starting in the 1930s. show less

This volume is considered the primer of the macrobiotic philosophy of Oriental medicine. Zen Macrobiotics should be considered as the guidebook whose aim is happiness through health through nutrition