How to Eat (Mindfulness Essentials, #2)

by Thich Nhat Hanh

If you’re thinking of work while you chew, that’s not eating mindfully. When you pay attention to the apple, that is mindfulness.

A lot of work is in that apple!

We can eat with care, knowing we are caretakers of our bodies, rather than their owners.

We can enjoy our eating a lot more if we practice not thinking when we eat. We can just be aware of the food. Sometimes we eat and we’re not aware that we’re eating.

To be truly present we have to stop our thinking. This is the secret of success.

Standing in line at a grocery store or a restaurant, or waiting for the time to eat, we don’t need to waste our time. We don’t need to “wait” for one second. Instead, we can enjoy breathing in and out for our nourishment and healing.

When we can slow down and really enjoy our food, our life takes on a much deeper quality. I love to sit and eat quietly and enjoy each bite, aware of the presence of my community, aware of all the hard and loving work that has gone into my food. When I eat in this way, not only am I physically nourished, I am also spiritually nourished.

pay attention to just two things: the food that we’re eating and our friends who are sitting around us and eating with us. This is called mindfulness of food and mindfulness of community.

When you can breathe, sit, and eat together with your family or friends in mindfulness, this is called true community-building.

morsel

The first thing to do when you sit down with your bowl of food is to stop the thinking and be aware of your breathing.

To be truly present you need to not just turn off the television or radio in your house, you need to turn off the conversation and images in your head.

We don’t need to eat a lot to feel nourished. When we are fully there and alive for every morsel of food, we eat in a way that each bite fills us with peace and happiness. If we are full of this joy, we may find that we naturally feel satisfied with less food.

When you prepare a meal with artful awareness, it’s delicious and healthy. You have put your mindfulness, love, and care into the meal, then people will be eating your love.

Eating is not only nourishing for the body, but also for the mind.

there are places where people have to walk several miles just to carry back a pail of water on their shoulders. Here, water is available whenever I turn on the tap. Aware of the preciousness of clean water, I value the water that is available to me.

Looking deeply at a tomato, a bunch of grapes, or a piece of tofu, I can see the wonderful nature of these things, how they were nurtured by the soil, the sun, the rain, and the seed.

Try to organize your life so that you have enough time and energy to cook in a leisurely and peaceful way. The energy of love and harmony in the kitchen will penetrate into the food that you’re cooking to offer to your loved ones and yourself.

It’s good to take time to eat, because the time for a meal can be a very happy time. Take time to enjoy your breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Enjoy your meal. Stop the thinking and be there fully, body and mind.

CHEW YOUR FOOD, NOT YOUR WORRIES

Sometimes we eat, but we aren’t thinking of our food. We’re thinking of the past or the future or mulling over some worry or anxiety again and again. So stop thinking about your business, about the office, or about anything that isn’t happening right now. Don’t chew your worries, your fear, or your anger. If you chew your planning and your anxiety, it’s difficult to feel grateful for each piece of food. Just chew your food.

Don’t close your eyes or look down while you chew. You can open your eyes and if you are with people, notice them alive and well. When we chew with awareness, we’re not just nourished by the food, we’re nourished by our practice of mindfulness, peace, and happiness.

When we eat mindfully, we consume exactly what we need in order to keep our bodies, our minds, and the Earth healthy.

As a spiritual family and as the human family, we can all help make our lives more sustainable by following this practice.

We should reflect deeply on what we buy and what we eat. What we buy and eat can contribute to climate change or it can help stop it.

Eating is a chance to nourish our bodies and know that we are not destroying the Earth by doing so.

It takes only one moment to take a mindful in-breath and out-breath before you eat.

Before you focus on the food, focus on being present with your body: “Breathing in, I am aware that my body is still there. Breathing out, I smile to my body.”

When we take a moment to sit and breathe before we eat, we can get in touch with the real hunger in our body. We can discover if we’re eating because we’re hungry or if we’re eating because it’s the time to eat and the food is there. If we’re paying attention and taking our time, we also know how much to eat. Mindfulness is recognizing what is there in the present moment.

You may want to pick one meal a week to eat in silence. A silent meal helps you come back to yourself and arrive in the present moment.

We are what we consume. If we look deeply into what and how much we consume every day, we’ll come to know our own nature very well. We have to eat, drink, and consume, but if we do it unmindfully, we may destroy our body

Our way of eating and producing food can be very violent, to other species, to our own bodies, and to the Earth. Or our way of growing, distributing, and eating food can be part of creating a larger healing. We get to choose.

Your happiness and that of the Earth are intertwined.

The simple act of becoming vegetarian can make a difference in the health of our planet. If you’re not able to entirely stop eating meat, you can still decide to make an effort to cut back.

This begins to nourish your compassion. If you know that you’re living in a way that makes a future possible for your planet, you’ll have joy.

We eat delicious food in order to have strength and good health.

When you eat with mindfulness, you consume deliciously.

Something can be delicious and not healthy, so we have to be very careful about what we prepare and what we eat. Healthy is good, but healthy and not delicious isn’t good either. You have to have both.

you have to plan properly and have the intention that whenever you eat, you eat in freedom.

Upon finishing your meal, take a few moments to notice that you have finished, that your bowl is now empty, and your hunger is satisfied. This is another opportunity to smile and be grateful that you have had this nourishing food to eat,

Some subjects can separate us, for instance, if we talk about other people’s shortcomings. The food that has been prepared carefully will have no value if we let this kind of talk dominate our meal. Instead we can speak about things that nourish our awareness of the food and our being together, cultivating happiness. Refrain from discussing subjects that can destroy your awareness of the people around you and the food.

Wash every bowl, every dish as if you are bathing a baby—breathing in, feeling joy; breathing out, smiling. Every minute can be a holy, sacred minute. Where do you seek the spiritual? You seek the spiritual in every ordinary thing that you do every day. Sweeping the floor, watering the vegetables, and washing the dishes become holy and sacred if mindfulness is there. With mindfulness and concentration, everything becomes spiritual.

Sometimes we hurry through our daily tasks, looking forward to the time when we can stop and have a cup of tea. But then when we’re finally sitting with the cup in our hands, our mind is still running off into the future and we can’t enjoy what we’re doing;

During the time you eat a tangerine, eating that tangerine is the most important thing in your life.

Peeling the tangerine, smelling and tasting it, you can be very happy. Everything we do can be like this. Whether planting lettuce, washing dishes, writing a poem, or adding columns of numbers, we can do it with concentration and awareness.

We should take only what we can eat. We tend to ignore the rule of moderation.

If we chew carefully, if we eat only what is healthy, then we won’t bring sickness into our body or our mind.

If we are hungry, a little snack can be very satisfying. But often we develop a habit of eating a snack whenever we feel loneliness or anxiety. A mindful breath is a good way for your body to “snack” on some mindfulness and recognize and embrace strong feelings that may be there.

Some people eat when they are sad or upset as a way of eating their feelings, hoping the feelings will go away. Food becomes a craving then, rather than a source of nourishment.

Instead of consuming when a feeling of anxiety comes up, invite the energy of mindfulness to manifest. Practice mindful walking and mindful breathing to generate the energy of mindfulness, and invite that energy up to take care of the energy that’s making you suffer.