The Inner Art of Vegetarianism: Spiritual Practices for Body and Soul
Carol J. Adams

If one food could express what The Inner Art of Vegetarianism is about, it would be sourdough. Sourdough is an ingredient and a process. From flour and water comes a mixture that transforms other things. If the conditions are right, you can leave the flour and water outside, and beat the mixture several times a day, and those invisible yet vitally important parts of sourdough—lactobacilli and wild yeast—will settle into your mixture. By the third day, your mixture is a bubbling, frothing culture. If you stick your hand into the bubbling mixture of flour, water, wild yeasts and lactobacilli, you can burst the bubbles. It’s that alive!

This is how we add a spiritual practice to our life: we take the basic materials of our lives and we take the time to let them be. We isolate them and let them find new relationships. We let air work on our unrisen selves, on breathing or on our body’s movements. Once a sourdough culture exists, it must be fed or refrigerated. Our spirits, once awakened, want to be fed too. We do it by bringing ourselves to the mat, or to the meditation cushion or to the kitchen.

When it looks as though nothing is happening to sourdough bread dough during its rest time in the refrigerator, something is: it is becoming infused with taste. The lactobacilli are having time to work. The wild yeast is like the part of us that is active. But if we let the wild yeast in us overwhelm the lactobacilli, we won’t have balance, nor will our bread be tasty. We need the rest time, too.

With a sourdough culture, you can always have more. Recipe books always remind you before you start cooking with sourdough to reserve a cup. By reserving a cup, you have the building blocks for the next recipe. Likewise, when activists go out and mix it up in the world, they must beware of depleting themselves so thoroughly that there’s nothing left. We always have to reserve that cup.

Each sourdough culture is unique. Some cultures are fast-acting and the bread rises in a couple of hours. Others work at a much slower pace. We have to know our cultures to produce good bread. We have to know ourselves. With a sourdough culture, you can make light, tasty pancakes in seconds. All you have to do is add a little baking soda to your culture and drop it onto a warm griddle. We can make the way for change, five minutes at a time.

With a sourdough culture, you influence the course of bread baking. By adding half a cup to one cup of culture—that is all!—to a bread recipe, we can dispense with domestic yeast. The sourdough infuses the dough, changing the course of its growth. In the same way, our spiritual practices do not require that we devote all our time to them. But by our commitment, of ten minutes or an hour or two, we influence the course of our waking and our sleeping. It is what is inside that counts.

We bring our entire body to kneading the dough. We feel the strength of our arms, the legs grounding us. How we are balanced influences the energy we bring to kneading. All of me kneads the dough. I look at my sourdough bread dough as it follows the process before baking and I see this: it rises, it falls. The fall is part of the rising. We rise, we fall. Sourdough cultures teach me that what we call sourness is a part of life.

We know where the dough is in the process of becoming bread by touching it. Poke it during the rising stage; if it doesn’t bounce back, it is done rising. Tap it on the bottom when you think it should be done baking, and if you hear a hollow thud you are right, it is. Touch the process.

It took discipline to learn about sourdough. I had to introduce something new into my repertoire. But now I write until 7:15 and know that breakfast will be ready at 7:30. Now I can make the most delectable vegan cakes—with sourdough. Now I can give away sourdough culture so that others can make pancakes. Now I teach others. I am part of the process.

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