Dear friends.
Eating can be also a meditation.
And actually eating meditation is my favorite meditation,
because not only are you able to focus to concentrate on one object of your mind, but it's also tasteful and nourishing,
and it already starts with you preparing the food or packing the food or buying the food.
It really depends in what condition and where you are.
And you see it doesn't really matter if you prepare the food for yourself,
if you buy it in an lunchbreak from your work or if you pack it at home.
Thầy often says that the dining hall, the kitchen, the dining table in his eyes is an eating meditation hall.
And it doesn't make a difference if you do practice sitting meditation in a meditation hall
and you know, you become more still when you enter a meditation hall
because of the collective energy that has been accumulated there,
you can feel that concentration, that energy of focus and clarity in the meditation hall.
The same energies we can create in our dining hall, in our kitchen, and at our dining table,
when we learn how to eat mindfully.
In canteens of big companies, I see there is a very habitual behavior and groups coming together
and mostly groups meeting is at the same table while you're all eating at the same spot.
Maybe you can break that habit and look for a spot outside
or somewhere at the window or the corner or somewhere where you know that group is not always talking.
So you can be and try practicing being present with and for you food and with and for yourself.
At this kind of wedding, becoming one, getting the food into you,
chewing it, swallowing it, digesting it and becoming it.
At the beginning of the meal,
when you don't have the support of a community and you have difficulties stopping coming down and focusing on the food before you eat.
You can take the help of the five contemplations, which are doing exactly that.
Five contemplations, which help you to look deeply into the food.
To be present for the foods to establish mindfulness.
[BELL]
This food is a gift of the Earth.
The sky.
Numerous living beings and much hard and loving work.
Maybe we eat with mindfulness and gratitude so as to truly receive this food.
Maybe recognize and transform unwholesome mental formations.
Especially our greed, and learn to eat with moderation.
Maybe we keep our compassion alive by eating in such a way that reduces the suffering of living beings,
stops contributing to climate change, and heals and preserves our precious planet.
We accept this food so that we may nurture our brotherhood and sisterhood,
build our Sangha and nourish our ideal of serving all living beings.
[BELL]
So when we pack up, prepare or buy our food, we want to see what are we taking in.
So if you sit down, you might want to look at your food.
Take a minute or two.
Just look at the food in front of you and look deeply.
See what you see what you see there.
Which colors are there?
Name what you have on your plate.
There's a broccoli, there's a cauliflower, there's a chickpea.
There's rice.
Now, if you look at these things and if we are able to look deeply, take the time
we see where they came from, we see the way they needed to go to come onto our plate here.
We see the cooks in the canteen, mom in the kitchen, whoever preparing the food.
We see the store where it has been bought.
We see the truck that brought it to the store.
We see the farmhouse and the farmer harvesting it.
If you go further back, we see the farmer taking care of the growing plants.
Even further back,
We see sowing the seeds, watering them.
When you see from nothing,
and from there, now we have a finished meal.
Isn't that great?
So just to see how many conditions, how many hands were necessary for this food to manifest on our plate,
It's already a great sense of gratitude
not only the farmers and all these hands but the sun, the rain, the soil, the wind. All the elements contributed.
And they all came together for us to be nourished.
When I think of that, I really want to be nourished and I don't want to waste my time just putting things into my mouth
and chewing them unmindfully without even recognizing what I'm doing, just for the sake of my taste buds.
I want more.
I want the whole story.
So when I take the first spoonful with this awareness,
I'm taking the first spoonful with a different energy, with a calm and a peace for myself, but also for the food with a gratitude.
And I decide not to talk because I really want to be present,
with this food that becomes me.
I want to really be present for myself.
So when I take that first spoonful into my mouth, I also don't want to swallow it directly, but let it sit there a little bit and and enjoy the taste.
It will sit on your tongue and you will enjoy the taste.
The fragrance will go up your nose and you will smell it.
You can go with your tongue around and feel the consistency.
You feel the temperature.
It is a playful investigating and exploring and a grateful discovery of what will become you in a moment.
And then you can start chewing without any hurry, without any rush.
There's no rush.
I chew until I fall in love with the food in my mouth.
And when I really love the food in my mouth, I swallow it with a smile on my face
and I send it further, deeper into myself,
knowing that now the real nutriment, the real nourishing part, will start.
So while we're eating, I'm taking my first spoonful and putting down my spoon
while I'm exploring the food with my tongue, while I'm chewing because I don't want to have the spoon in my hand.
Why should I make myself a burden?
And a spoon in my hand only will tempt me to stir the food to take another one.
But I know my mouth is still full, so I hold it in front of me.
I'm not free when I want to be free and enjoy what it is, I just put it down and free myself from it.
Enjoy the food and chew in love.
Make it a sacred act.
Now when I chew my food until I fall in love and then swallow it.
Usually you say, out of sight, out of mind.
But we don't want to let go of our food so easily.
We want to follow what does happen now.
It will go down to our stomach.
It will be massaged there and further processed, and it will enter the guts.
And there it finally, like this solved, will enter our body system and will become us.
The orange carrot that we were chewing, tasting the sweetness of it.
Now we know that vitamin A of the carrot, how it will serve our body.
How it will help us to have energy, to feel light but strong,
to smile, to work and earn money for my family to live.
To help others
to think and to care and to take care of myself and of the world who offered this food to me.
So when I see this whole context looking deeply into the food
with all of these steps we have seen when we started eating.
From the cooks to the farmers, from the sun to the rain,
we feel a sense of wanting to taking care of
the wholeness of that circle and cycle
and contribute to that by live and to eat in a way
that contributes to the well-being of this planet.
Here in the community when we eat for 15 or 20 minutes in silence.
Then we hear another sound of the bell
[BELL]
And that means that we can.
Stand up.
Take a second.
Start mindful conversations or go and wash our dishes.
But these 15 to 20 minutes
are our time, our time of really pure and focused meditation on that food,
on us, to offer us the time and the space, to witness this becoming one.
I call it a wedding.
Eating is actually a wedding, two become one.
And there's a lot of joy to.
So if you have difficulties given the settings in the canteen, at home,
little children who make it difficult to be quiet for a 15 or 20 minutes, you just shorten that time, but you make it a quality time
and you are just there for your eating, for your food, for yourself.
No TV, no newspapers, no smartphone, no conversations.
You can do that after that sacred time
and you will know why when you try it.
Let us put this love and this care into ourselves
and say, I want to eat mindfully because I love myself.
I care for myself.
[CLOCK CHIME]
When we're done eating, we know if we don't live in the castle and are prince or princess, we need to wash our dishes.
Nobody will wash it for us.
Washing our dishes is part of the eating meditation,
just as preparing, cooking the food, taking care of the dishes afterwards.
And it's a beautiful practice.
Thầy often says washing our dishes is like bathing the baby Buddha.
We can make it a pleasant practice.
We can use warm water, enough soap so we don't want to speak.
We want to be really present for it.
We want to move the sponge on the plate gently.
Let us do everything.
what we do with that awareness, that mindfulness of gratitude and joy that is inside of us.
This care for ourselves, for our species, for our planet,
in this very moment, in every this very moment.
Thank you.