Food!

"Next having closed off the dam of the senses with the gate of mindfulness, be measured in your food intake, for the sake of meditation as well as good health."

Handsome Nanda 14.1, Ashvaghosha

This next canto deals with food and sleep. The food aspect is very important to me because at heart I'm a "hobbit" and really enjoy food and drink. But just as with everything, this can get out of balance, into the too much or too little, into the clinging to or pushing away category. As always, it is to find the Middle Way and this is what Ashvaghosha says:

"Just as the scaled go down with a heavy weight and up with a light one, but stay level with the correct weight, so does this body with its food. Therefore you should take food with due consideration for your own capacity. Don't apportion yourself too much or too little even if you have strong opinion on this subject, for when it is weighed down with heavy food, the fire of the body dies down like a small fire all at once covered with a lot of fuel.

Total avoidance of food is not recommended, for a person who doesn't eat is extinguished like a fire without fuel." 14.5-8

These words sound so simple but it is not so easy in our culture where the possiblities of getting food and the choices are so great. It must have even been so at the time that Ashvaghosha was writing as he says:

"The world likes alternatives and is distracted to the core by sensual experience. If a man lives in it in seclusion, indifferent to choice, virtuous and with his heart at peace, then he has sipped the taste of wisdom as if it were the cup of deathlessness and is content at heart. A man of discernment, he grieves for the clinging world as it hoards sensual experience."

14.51-52

So, now I try to take a "sip of wisdom" when I'm at the supermarket, before I cook or when I look for choices for my lunch or an evening out. To not be so distracted by sensual experiences and alternatives and definitely not to hoard those experiences. Not so easy, when you have the heart, and stomach, and tongue, and eyes of a hobbit!