The Mindfulness Survival Kit by Thich Nhat Hanh

Author:Thich Nhat Hanh [Nhat Hanh, Thich]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781937006600
Publisher: Parallax Press

THE FIFTH MINDFULNESS TRAINING: CONCRETE PRACTICES

1 :: Mindful Eating

When we eat a meal, there are two objects of our mindfulness: the food and the people who are there with us during the meal. Practicing in this way we are sure to find better and better ways of consuming food without exploiting our Earth and other living beings. Before eating a meal you can read, either aloud or to yourself, the Five Contemplations. Of course we don’t just read the Contemplations but we meditate on the words throughout the meal.

The Five Contemplations

1.This food is a gift of the whole universe, the Earth, the sky, and much hard work.

2.May we eat in mindfulness and with gratitude so as to be worthy to receive it.

3.May we transform our unskillful states of mind, especially our greed.

4.May we keep our compassion alive by eating in such a way that we reduce the suffering of beings, preserve our planet, and reverse the process of global warming.

5.We accept this food in order to nourish our brotherhood and sisterhood, build our Sangha, and realize our ideal of serving all beings.

If we look deeply we shall see that the topsoil from which our vegetables grow is composed of the dead bodies of many plants and animals including humans, so we say that it is the gift of numerous living beings.

In order to be worthy of the food we have received, we simply have to be mindful and feel grateful while we’re eating. If we’re not mindful and grateful the food loses its reality and becomes like ghost food. When we feel grateful, we feel happy. We feel grateful to Mother Earth, to Father Sun, and to all those who have worked so hard to produce the food. Each grain of rice is soft and fragrant but it is also the result of the suffering of the little animals who died as it was cultivated and harvested as well as the suffering of the workers who harvested it. Meditating like this, we see how precious food is and we never want to waste it.

We don’t need to think while we eat. In Plum Village, before we eat we sometimes remind ourselves that in the same way we normally turn off the television before we eat, let’s also turn off the radio station with the call letters “NST” (nonstop thinking) so that we are truly able to enjoy the food and the presence of our family or our Sangha. Unnecessary thinking is an unskillful state of mind. Sometimes we eat our thoughts rather than the food; we’re so busy thinking that we don’t even know what’s in our mouth. Before we put something in our mouth we can look at it for a moment and call it by its name. If it’s a piece of carrot, we know that we’re going to chew carrot. We can chew it as many as fifty times so that it becomes liquid and is easy to digest. While we chew like that we visualize the carrot as it grew in the field and how the rain and sunshine have come into it.

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