37. 73. Is the body a dust-bin?

• When you involve yourself with awareness and appreciation, tasting food is a meditation. But, since 99% of the people live with lack of awareness, they become slaves to the same taste. The same food which has to give enthusiasm to the body begins to create problems.
• The man who has become a slave to taste, instead of eating for hunger, begins eating for taste. Because of eating for taste, well exceeding the actual needs of the body, food is dumped in various varieties into the body. The body becomes the dustbin.
• Know this very big difference between man and animal. Man eats for taste. Animals eat for hunger!!!

When we place a heavy load on a bullock cart and the bullock is unable to pull the cart when you command it to pull, will that mean that the bullock is at fault?

After having dumped so much of food inside that it is much beyond the capacity and needs of the body, and often putting the blame on the body, saying, 'I have digestion problem', what does it mean? Who is responsible? Tell me.

J.Krishnamurthy says, 'You are food'. Tao philosophy says, 'Your eating habit tells who you are'.

There is direct relationship between the food and man's qualities. Vedanta says, 'One who has controlled his tongue is the one who has controlled the nine qualities'.

• While you eat the food, are you able to eat with peace, patience and calmness... Are you able to stop eating when you get the feeling 'enough' in the same way you stop a car by applying the brakes? Without respecting only the tongue, do you respect the body and eat with due thought, 'Will this type of food and this quantity of food suit my body?' Body is the temple, food is prasad (food offered to the deity), and you are the temple priest. Are the prasads which go to the sanctum sanctorum called your stomach, really prasads? Does the puja (worship) take place three times a day in a sacred manner?

Within the temple there should not be any anarchy or misuse. If the holiness of the temple is protected, there the divine energy would get awakened. All will become auspicious and good.

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Wherever Nitti Rajan went, there will be humour going on around him.

Nitti and his wife had gone to attend a marriage. Nitti, who was sitting in the last row in the marriage hall, went outside the hall often. Each time when he returned, he brought a Jangiri (A sweetmeat) with him.

Nitti's wife asked, 'Honey! Why are you going outside often?' 'Jangiri is very nice. That's why...often...' Nitti dragged on.

Nitti's wife asked full of pity, 'This is very bad. Already you have eaten six Jangiris...You didn't give me even one. Even that is all right. But what will happen to your health if you eat so much at a time?'

'One last time....This is the last time...', so saying he ate two more.

Then saying, 'This is the very last one', he came back with the ninth Jangiri.

Nitti's wife asked, 'Please tell me the truth. Are you not feeling ashamed to go and bring nine Jangiris like this just because it is free?'

Nitti said, 'Why should I feel shy? You should only feel that way.'

'Each time I get it, I say that my wife likes it...therefore one more...I get it like this each time. Why should I feel shy?' saying this he laughed naughtily.

In this incident, though Nitti talked rather intelligently, factually, his act of putting as many as nine Jangiris into his stomach, as if dumping it into a dust bin, is equivalent to degrading his body.

The names of the diseases which come by degrading the body in this manner only is called diabetes, blood pressure and the like.

Abnormal food habits of uncontrolled eating, and being a slave to tastes are themselves a disease which spoils the health and degrades the body.

The stomach would cry with the kind of eating habits people have today. Liver will shout out; spleen will curse; kidney will suffer.

Our ancestors had invited us for food in this manner, 'Shall we have some food? Please come and have some food!'

Reason: They had realized that food itself is medicine. 'Eating is a good meditation'.

Today people invite us to eat by saying, 'Come on, let us dump some food inside'; 'Come, let us have a big cut.' This seems to be more appropriate.

The reason for this is:

Annam (Food) is Brahmam (God)! Saliva is life-water.

• Such great truths are forgotten by us or these are concealed from us.

It is a pity that due to our illusory attraction of the so-called civilized western culture, our food-eating method has, for the sake of taste, changed into an incident of dumping food into the stomach.

When people eat food in a great hurry or when it is extremely hot or if they eat it quickly with flavor and taste, most of the times they don't chew more than 4 or 5 times before they swallow it.

The lining of the stomach is very soft but it has to accept food that is extremely hard since the food is not chewed properly.

Take a handful of cooked rice and then squeeze and kneed it with the hand till it becomes like a paste. Then you will understand how difficult it will be for the stomach to make the partially chewed food into a paste.

At the time when the food is in the mouth, the nerves point out to us that the food is hot by giving us a burning sensation. But we are not able to feel the heat when the food reaches the stomach because the feeling that it is hot is not conveyed by the stomach as it is conveyed by the tongue.

But we all know that the skin of the stomach is much softer than the skin of our tongue!

We don't give the same importance that we give for the taste of our tongue, to our stomach and our body's well-being and for our health.

About this, Thirumoolar says beautifully (in Tamil)

'Udambar azhiyin uyirar azhivaar; Thidampada Meygnanam Seravum mattar.'

Meaning: If we waste our life without looking after our body with care, our body alone will not get destroyed. Along with that, the life-energy and strength will also get destroyed and reduced.

Being in possession of an unhealthy body and with very low life-energy, there will be no possibility at all of experiencing the states related to the spiritual knowledge of joy, enjoying life and living blissfully.

Eating beyond the limits, eating only for taste and eating food without properly enjoying it, are all wrong.

While eating, without doing the only activity of 'eating' in all its totality, engaging at the very same time with many other activities like talking, watching some programmes, reading will result in many mistakes.

One beautiful Zen statement:

'While eating, eat!

While singing, sing!

While eating, don't sing!

While singing, don't eat!

While eating - eat.' (This is very nice meditation)

Without doing any other work and without thinking about any other thing, by doing the only action of 'eating' in all its fullness (by meditating), beneficial results obtained are:

• 1. By doing only one activity deeply...the mind, without flying to the future, without suffering for the past, will remain only in the present moment. Being in the present moment is a wonderful meditative state.
• 2. By the food remaining in the mouth for a long time...All the chemical substances needed for fully and totally digesting the food and converting it as energy, will be secreted through the saliva.
• 3. Because it is tasted and enjoyed fully, 'satisfaction of tasting' will be got. If one Mysorepa (a sweet) is slowly chewed and eaten in such a manner that the sweet taste mixed with the flavour of ghee gets dissolved in the saliva itself and disappears, then, going beyond one Mysorepa, eating a second one will be avoided. One mysorepa itself will create total satisfaction.

If there is a habit of swallowing the sweet after chewing just 3 or 4 times, even after eating ten mysorepa we feel like eating one more. There will be no satisfaction.

If only a single mysorepa is eaten in such a manner of slowly enjoying, experiencing the joy, till the taste of sweetness dissolves and melts away in the mouth, then just a single mysorepa will give great satisfaction which will not be obtained even after eating ten mysorepas.

• 4. A recent research study talks about what happens when the food is made like a paste in the mouth itself by slowly chewing it again and again:-
• Healing chemicals are secreted much in the saliva.
• Since the work of making the food as a paste becomes lesser, the blood circulation and the energy required to be spent for that is also saved. Consequently, the usual feeling of tiredness after the meal will not be felt and we will be energetic.
• Because of chewing many times to make the food pasty, many important facial muscles obtain good movements. On account of this, the hardness on the face reduces and softness begins to increase.
• As we get the satisfaction of having tasted the food well we can avoid taking extra food, which is not required by the body.

Eating the food along with joyfully experiencing it is possible only when we put into practice the meditation of 'eating while eating'.

Without simply dumping the food into the stomach, if we experientially eat, then the food itself will become medicine.

Without knowing how to eat food experientially, even if you eat a feast, full satisfaction will not be got. For a feast to get digested, many a time, a medicine may be necessary.

If you learn to eat food experientially, even an ordinary meal will become a feast. That itself would be a good medicine too!

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A meaningful incident

A question asked by a reader:

• Which is meditation? I point out that state at which your body is in perfect harmony with yourself, and the method to make it happen that way as meditation.

• Whatever action you do duly respecting your body, mind and soul and worship your life, is meditation! That only is meditation!

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Meditation chisels

Chisel No. 28

Foundation for a close relationship

Who is your very close friend?

After finding the answer, continue.

Surely, other than your own name, all other's names would have run in your mind! Man very sincerely wants to love everyone, except himself. In that he is very eager.

What help you have done so far to your body, which lives solely for you?

Except for excessively using its five senses whenever he wants, man does not do anything good for his body. The body, which is a friend who works

faithfully, is not respected. His pet animal is respected more than his own body.

Respecting your body is the beginning of bliss. It is the entrance for true love. It is a foundation for a deep relationship. Maintain your body to at least half the extent you maintain your clothing.

Have interest upon your body. Observe your body. Save it. Show love and affection.

Begin to live for yourself. Have deep friendship with yourself.

Implement what all you have read.

You will see comfort, pleasantness, enthusiasm, blossoming in your body.

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