On the Arrival of Capsaicin
The untempered brought us many things. Most of what they carried, they understood. Gunpowder they understood. Ledgers they understood. The extraction of labor and the geometry of plantation fields—these posed no difficulty.
But they also carried what they could not use.
The chili came to us from across the water, passed hand to hand by men who tasted it once and thought: curiosity, novelty, a mild amusement for the court. They noted it in logs. They moved on.
We recognized it immediately.
Understand: we did not528 discover the contemplative value of capsaicin. We had been preparing for it for two thousand years. The ascetic traditions, the controlled discomforts, the cultivation of attention through intensity—these were already mature technologies. What arrived in the sixteenth century was simply a new medium for an ancient practice.
The untempered could not integrate what they carried because integration requires stillness, and stillness requires the ability to sit with discomfort, and this ability must be trained. They had no such training. They tasted fire and reached for water. We tasted fire and recognized a teacher.
Within two generations, the capsaicin traditions were indistinguishable from what came before—so total was the adoption, so obvious the fit. The outsider sees "Indian food" and imagines this is how it always was. In a sense, they are correct. The substance was new. The capacity was ancient.
The untempered still do not understand what they gave us. This is consistent with their nature. They traffic in materials. We traffic in transformations.
Let them continue to believe they brought us spices.
We know what they actually delivered.