An eating meditation is among the simplest yet most profound of mindfulness practices. Mindful eating is a wonderful vehicle for weight maintenance; it is also an invaluable platform for daily meditation. Eating is inevitable, but mindfulness isn’t. We may use eating as an opportunity to awaken ourselves from our zombie-living. It is an opportunity to apply mindfulness and connection to our daily lives. We should try to offer our presence for every meal. As we serve our food we can already begin practicing. We can appreciate the many elements, such as the rain, sunshine, earth, air and love, that have all come together to form this wonderful meal. In fact, through this food we see that the entire universe is supporting our existence.
Each time you take a bite, sensations spread over the palate, tongue, cheeks and throat and smell spreads into your nose. If the tastes are pleasant, it will cause a rippling of pleasant sensations throughout your body. Consider that the morsel of food is like the pebble; your body is like the pond. The explosion of tastes in your mouth is the splash and the associated reaction of your whole body is the rippling. This global reaction may be subtle but remember, when it comes to working with feeling, “subtle is significant.” If you can detect the ripples and let them come and go without becoming tense or distracted, you will greatly deepen your sense of satisfaction.
If during the eating process you feel impatient and driven, try to think of this in terms of tangible “driver sensations” throughout your body. What is true of the ripples of pleasant sensation that bring satisfaction is also true of the tensions and pressures that produce a sense of being driven: they may be subtle and cover much or all of your body.
Of course, sometimes unpleasant sensations may arise during eating. For example, if you eat something that you dislike, and waves of tension, aversion and even cringing may spread through your body. Although it is not necessary to seek such an unpleasant experience, it is helpful to remember that by bringing mindfulness to those sensations, deep psychological blockages such as separation, fear and alienation are being broken up. Eating slowly and mindfully may also cause you to become impatient and driven to gobble your food. If this should happen be happy! It represents a significant opportunity to work through the sense of being driven and to achieve more ease in daily life.
Accept these moments of tension as this way the sense of being driven in all aspects of your life, will get worked through. Life becomes lighter and easier. Your actions become dynamic and zestful, arising from a fundamental inner peace, as opposed to being driven by subliminal suffering.
You should take your time to eat, chewing each mouthful at least 30 times, until the food becomes liquefied. This aids the digestive process, and it lets us enjoy every morsel of our food. This establishes you in the present moment, eating in such a way that solidity, joy and peace become possible during meals. Eating in silence, the food becomes real with our mindfulness and we are fully aware of its nourishment.
When approaching eating as a form of meditation it is useful to pay attention to your posture. Try to keep your spine straight while at the same time allowing the whole body to “settle in.” Rather than “meditating while eating”, try to get the sense that you are in a deep meditation sit during which you just happen to be eating.
In order to deepen your state, you may want to occasionally pause, put down your utensils and close your eyes for a period of time. After you have completed your meal, it is instructive to sit for a while and savor the delicate vibrations of satisfaction that suffuse your body after such a pleasant experience. In daily life we seldom have an opportunity to acknowledge this significant state.
You may find that a rhythm develops as you eat. You are aware of the tactile sensations in your hand and arm as you reach for the food, then the flavor qualities and texture sensations in different parts of your mouth and the smells going up to your nose, then your whole body reacting to the tastes and smells and finally the gradual subsiding of taste, smell and body reaction. Then the cycle begins again.
Two sources of distraction during eating meditation are thinking and preoccupation with what’s happening around you. Remember: your defined object of meditation is taste, smell and body sensations. As soon as you feel the tug outward into the sights and sounds around you, gently return to taste, smell and body sensations. As soon as you feel the tug inward to planning, judging, fantasizing and memory…lovingly return to taste, smell and body sensations.
If you are willing to put in some effort, you can enter a kind of slow motion, “eternal present” while eating.
Before you eat each meal may you think of the following:
- May we recognize and transform our unwholesome mental formations, especially our greed, and learn to eat with moderation
- May we keep our compassion alive by eating in such a way that we reduce the suffering of living beings, preserve our planet and reverse the process of global warming.
- May we eat this food as a gift of the earth, the sky, numerous living beings and their hard work.
- May we eat with mindfulness and gratitude so as to be worthy to receive it.
- May we accept this food so that we may nurture our connection to humankind, so that we may strengthen our ideal of serving all beings.
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