eating with understanding

To know how to eat is to know how to live. Not to know how to eat is to die. It depends on the way you eat and the way you cook. We must offer healthy food. When you are seated at the table, breathe deeply, look deeply at what is on the table; practice mindfulness in order to recognize what is good for your body or your person, and what is not good for you, and make the decision only to eat what is going to nourish you properly, and do not make a war in your body and your mind by what you eat. The Buddha has made this point many, many times. He suggested that we should practice mindfulness of eating. The first kind of eating he spoke about is the edible food, the food we take through our mouths. We have to eat in such a way that compassion is maintained while we eat. We have to eat with understanding and compassion.

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Each time we see food on the table, we should breathe deeply in order to see what kind of food we are going to eat, because there are foods which will create war in us when we have eaten them,. This body, which has been transmitted to us by our ancestors, is something we need to take care of, we should not destroy it with the food we take. If we do not eat mindfully, if we destroy our bodies when we eat, then we are eating the flesh of our ancestors, our parents, and our children. Your children are there in you, even if you are still very young, your children are already there in you, and the future generations are there in you. They are waiting for the right moment to manifest, but they are there in you. So eat in such a way that happiness can be there in you. When you eat meat, when you drink alcohol, you can continue to do these things, but do them with mindfulness. Mindfulness shows us that there are so many people dying every day because of hunger. UNESCO has said that 40,000 children die every day of malnutrition. Imagine, 40,000 children every day!

A huge quantity of cereal grains is used to make alcohol and to raise animals for meat, so when we eat these things it is just as if we are eating the flesh of our own child. We have to eat with discrimination, with mindfulness, in order to be able to see clearly, and to keep compassion alive in us. A person without compassion cannot be happy--it is something I have learned during my life. If you do not have compassion, happiness will be impossible. Without the energy called compassion, we are cut off from the world, we cannot be in touch with other living beings in the world. So eat in such a way that compassion is possible. Look at nature, look at the living beings, and let us learn how to cultivate our land, and make food in such a way, and eat food in such a way, that life around us is still possible, as well as within us. This kind of food is called edible food.


from the Dharma Talk on Mindful Consumption given by Thich Nhat Hanh on July 17, 1998 in Plum Village, France.

http://www.plumvillage.org/


Photo: walking meditation on the way to the formal lunch, Lower Hamlet, Plum Village, June 2006 © Courtney Powell.

If you would like to see more photos by this photographer, please refer to:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thecnote/sets/72157594182328685/