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Drove with three friends to see Tenzin Palmo last weekend, 235 km away. She’s touring South Africa. Tenzin is a Tibetan Buddhist nun, an Englishwoman born in London’s East End in 1943.

Tenzin is unique in that she’s taken a vow to reach Enlightenment in female form. That means being a female Buddha.

For twelve years (age 33-45) Tenzin meditated alone in a cave in the Himalayas, snowed under for most of the year. She trained herself to do without sleep — thought of by Buddhists as a state of unconsciousness — not me! I think we should get as much sleep as we can! Tenzin spent every night sitting upright in a 3-foot square meditation box.

She ate once a day at midday, a cooked meal of rice, dhal (lentils) and vegetables, plus sour dough bread and tsampa — a Tibetan staple food of roasted barley flour and tea, rolled into a ball. She also grew turnips and potatoes.

Tenzin says of turnips: “they are the most nutritious of all vegetables greens and absolutely delicious, especially when young. The bulb is also good. Both can be dried so that right through the winter you’ve got these wonderful vegetables.” (from her biography Cave In The Snow, a Western Woman’s Quest for Enlightenment by Vicki Mackenzie, Bloomsbury Publishing, London, 1998).

If you’d like to dry fruit and vegetables, these two dehydrators are excellent in my experience.

One reason Tenzin went up there is because she hit the spiritual glass ceiling — how many female Dalai Lamas have you seen? Finally she got sick of the prejudice and put-downs, and being denied access to the teachings that the monks received. She hit out on her own, encouraged by her lama (guru).

“Bliss is the fuel of retreat.” Tenzin told her biographer. “The joy and enthusiasm is what carries you along. The Buddha named Joy as the main factor on the path.”

“Bliss in itself is useless,” she continued. “It’s only useful for understanding Emptiness. The blissful mind looking at Emptiness is very different from the gross mind looking at emptiness.”

Emptiness is the ultimate Knowing that nothing is really existing. It’s a state of consciousness where there’s no duality. Easy to define, but it takes incredible focus to experience. In that moment you truly see that everything in this world is illusion, including your “I”.

Tenzin’s schedule was: 3-6am meditate, 6am tea + tsampa, 8-11am meditate, 11am meal + break, 3-6pm meditate, 6pm tea, 7-10pm meditate. Twelve hours meditation a day for 12 years! Now that’s dedication to the inner journey, the world that contains “the vastness and wonder of the entire universe” (Cave In The Snow).

I must say I’m far calmer in meditation since I began reaching for raw foods. Sugar makes your mind jittery!

An easy way to eat fresh young greens daily (including turnip!) is to have a GoGreen Automatic Sprouter in your home. Also the Green Smoothie recipe is helpful in going vegan — living your compassion for all sentient beings

I find Maharaji’s techniques helpful in focusing within. Many Buddhists use them, as do Hindus, Christians, Jews, Muslims and even atheists. They’ve spread to more than 120 countries in his lifetime.

The Tenzin Palmo evening ended with this Buddhist prayer:

“May all beings enjoy happiness and the causes of happiness.

May all beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.”

If I ask you, what’s the best food for your eyes? Would you reply carrots? Actually it’s orange juice and orange peppers!

Do you have a problem with glare, distance vision, or reading a book? Then you need to take steps to strengthen your eyes. One person goes blind every 11 minutes in the US. Don’t let it be you!

Our eyes work like this: Light enters the pupil, is focused and inverted by the cornea and lens, then projected onto the back of the eye where the retina lies, which converts the light signal into a neural signal. The optic nerve — a bundle of more than a million nerve fibers — carries this signal to the brain.

The main break-downs occur in the lens and retina.

Cataracts, ARMD, Glaucoma

Cataracts are a clouding of the clear lens of our eye when proteins build up in it. Clouded vision makes it more difficult to drive a car, especially at night, or recognize someone at a distance. Cataracts typically affect distance vision and cause problems with glare.

ARMD (Age-Related Macular Degeneration) is a breakdown of the macula of our eye, a small area in the retina that allows us to see fine details clearly. Macular degeneration makes close work, like threading a needle or reading a book, difficult. ARMD is the leading cause of vision loss as we age.

Glaucoma is where the optic nerve is damaged by too much pressure within the eye. Usually the pressure build-up is caused by fluids not filtering out of your eye at a normal rate. The drainage system is clogged. Glaucoma affects peripheral vision. A person remains unaware of any problem until a majority of nerve fibers have been destroyed.

Prevention is easier than cure. It’s easy to fix a broken tile in your roof. But if you let the hole get bigger until the day an entire storm bursts through and floods your home, then it’s a horror to fix.

How can we best prevent cataracts and ARMD? And keep our vision sharp? On the one hand, there’s the hee-haw “no known treatment; once the retinal tissues are affected, there is little you can do to stop its slow progression.”

On the other hand, two carotenoids — lutein and zeaxanthin — are found in both the lens and macula. In fact, they are the major carotenoids in the human eye. Studies have shown the obvious, that their density in our eyes is modulated by diet.

Help for Our Eyes

Lutein and zeaxanthin are yellowish pigments found in some plants, algae, and photosynthetic bacteria like spirulina. They serve as light-gathering pigments and to protect these organisms against the toxic effects of ultra-violet radiation and oxygen.

In the lens and macula of our eyes, they filter out blue light and near-ultraviolet radiation, and function as antioxidants. Thus they protect the underlying tissues from phototoxic damage.

Lutein and zeaxanthin show promise of protecting against both macular degeneration and cataracts.

Lutein Food Sources

We need to eat foods that are rich in both carotenoids. Here’s a good chart on Carotenoids in Fruits and Vegetables.

It shows that carrots are low in both lutein and zeaxanthin (2% each). They are not your best eye food.

Most green vegetables have good lutein, but a very low content (0-3%) of zeaxanthin. Spinach is the highest in lutein with 47%. Next comes cucumber 38%, green pepper 36%, celery 32%, brussels sprouts 27%, green beans 22%, green lettuce 15%.

I imagine all the dark green leaves — like kale, collard, dandelion — are at the top with spinach.

Many gourds are high in lutein, e.g. pumpkin 49%, zucchini 47%, yellow squash 44%, and butternut 37%. So are kiwi (54%) and red grape (33-43%) — both good eye foods.

Egg yolk and corn are highest in both lutein + zeaxanthin. But egg has high cholesterol, and dehumanizes birds into egg-making machines. Corn you never know if it’s genetically modified when there’s no GMO labeling. So I don’t touch those two.

Zeaxanthin Food Sources

There’s evidence that our body converts lutein into zeaxanthin — intake of lutein also raises macular levels of zeaxanthin.

But for conversion to happen, you need intermediate nutrients. It’s best to increase your intake of zeaxanthin itself, and not rely on your body making it out of lutein.

Zeaxanthin is the most prevalent macular pigment, so we should eat more of it.

The chart shows best dietary sources of zeaxanthin are: orange pepper 37% (red pepper is 0% + green pepper 3%), orange juice 20%, honeydew melon 18% (cantaloupe is 0%), mango 16%, and orange 15%.

Eat More Greens

In 1993 the US Case Control Study Group for Eye Diseases showed that when we eat more dark green leafy vegetables, we have 43% lower risk for ARMD.

Victoria Boutenko in her DVD Greens Can Save Your Life calculates that we need two large bunches of greens a day to meet our nutrient needs. That’s a full bunch of spinach and a full bunch of kale!

Victoria eats this as two quarts of Green Smoothie a day. I doubt I’d ever enjoy two meals a day of green smoothie! I’d hate to spend all that time buying, washing + blending so many green leaves and fruits. Besides, it makes meals so boring!

Because eyesight is so precious, I decided to take a supplement — thank you to my optometrist friend Manoj for advising me to do so!

My eyesight is faltering, no doubt from 30 years of heavy smoking from 1966 to mid-1990’s. I blend green smoothies and juice oranges as often as possible, but it’s obviously not enough for my eyes.

Take Supplements

For lutein, 6-12 milligrams daily has shown a decreased risk of ARMD. Zeaxanthin is not as well researched but we can safely surmise 6mg daily will protect our eyes.

Vitamin C helps build the collagen fibers in the lens, and of course it’s a water-soluble anti-oxidant. Many studies have shown protection against cataracts with as little as 300 mg vitamin C daily. You’ll easily get this in living foods from an Automatic Sprouter.

I discovered bilberry improves my vision. I normally don’t take supplements any more, except for B12 and alternating green superfoods. But recently I happened to ingest bilberry when my mom refused a heart supplement I’d bought for her. So I took it myself rather than waste it.

I clearly noticed a difference in my vision when driving at night. In fact, I noticed the change first, so went to the supplement to see what was in it. Bilberry was the only eye-food there.

I’ve just ordered a supplement with lutein, zeaxanthin and bilberry. The best one I found is HBC’s In-Vision. You’ll see from their site that HBC nutraceuticals feature in many pharmacology + herbal research journals, as well as books by MD’s in integrative medicine.

Check out their well-researched In-Vision supplement here. Click on “Eye Health” in the blue lefthand column, then click on “Invision with Lutine.” I ordered 4 for the price of 3, to save on shipping.

I’ve booked an eye test, and will go again in one year to see if In-Vision reverses my weakening eyesight. I’m trusting it will halt further decline.

I also take organic Hawaiian Spirulina which is exceptionally rich in zeaxanthin. One tsp (5g) has 6 mg zeaxanthin.

The body does not synthesize lutein or zeaxanthin, so they must come through diet or supplements. I don’t trust those eye supplements that throw everything in, like zinc and Vitamins E + C too, because they unbalance too many other metabolic pathways.

Rather stick to the absolute minimum you need to care for your eyes — lutein, zeaxanthin, bilberry.

Eye Exercises + Sunglasses

For eye strain, practice 10-10-10. Every 10 minutes, look up for 10 seconds, gazing round to 10-plus feet away. Also look round in a circle without moving your head, rolling your eyes. And blink often when at the computer.

To pump blood into the tiny capillaries of our eyes, we need exercise. They’re like the lymph system. Fluids only flow with exercise. I find running up a little hill over + over works wonders. I instantly see better!

Jumping on a trampoline every hour or so is ideal. It does wonders for back strain too. You stop sitting in the same position for hours, pressing down on the same vertebrae and risking a painful slipped disc.

Ultraviolet light burns our eyes. We need full-spectrum light to enter our eyes daily, but if you’re in the sun at its brightest, try to wear sunglasses. Look for glasses that filter 99-100% of both ultraviolet A and B rays (UVA + UVB).

Protect Your Eyes Today

Remember what I say in the Energy Soup recipe. Ask yourself, Is it different from what I ate yesterday? Eat a variety of colors daily! And a variety of greens.

Lutein and zeaxanthin are also found in nettles, algae and the petals of many yellow flowers such as marigold. When you blend raw nettle into a Green Smoothie, it loses its spikes.

I believe if your eyesight is weakening — and you don’t Blend or Juice two big bunches of greens a day — then begin taking a good supplement like In-Vision today.

Prevention Is the Cure