Bhiksha & Prasad
– A Sanctified Means for a Sanctified Object.
1. Traditionally, Bhiksha is food begged by Sannyasins from householders. The householder gives it, knowing that the receiver is especially dedicated to the spiritual path.
2. Food is viewed as coming from the Divine Mother Herself, and is received and given with great respect and reverence. It is treated as sacred Prasad of the Lord.
3. Prasad or sanctified food offered during a prayer is meant to be kept very simple. Usually a single grain is cooked or some fruit is cut and offered at the shrine and distributed to those attending after the prayer is completed. In the case of Bhiksha, it is to be obtained from visiting a maximum of 5 homes and should not contain any luxury items. It is not intended to be a feast.
4. Sanctified food, eaten as the Lord’s Prasad, becomes the medicine for the body, according to the first meaning of Step 25.
He who consumes food, without discrimination, is not freed from evil even as he who does not help others in this world nor turns the wheel thus set in motion is evil in nature, sensual in his delight and lives in vain, eating the food prepared by them alone eating verily their own de-merits.
Food and rest should be taken of such quality and in such quantity as would promote healthy body and wholesome mind and rejects those which makes one dull and Food when eaten is transformed three-fold, the coarsest portion becomes the fasces, the intermediate one becomes the flesh and the subtle becomes the mind.
Enlarging the meaning and scope of food, Gita says the food that brightens life, vitality, strength, health, joy and cheerfulness, succulent, soft, sustaining is agreeable to the luminous ones. Bitter, sour, salty, too hot and too pungent, rough and burning food producing pain, hurt and disorder are preferred by the energetic.
Food that is spoilt, tasteless, putrid, stale, left half-eaten by others and impure is relished by the obscure ones. A human being should be wise in vision and austere in approach, accepting food as the need of the body and not for satisfaction of the senses. Then food consumed being useful as medicine and not an object of desire.
The mind is made out of the subtle essence of food. So it is attached to those persons from whom it receives the food.
If you live with a friend for a couple of months and take food with him, your mind gets attached to that friend who feeds you.
That is the reason why a Sannyasin lives on Madhukari Bhiksha from three to five houses, avoids attachment and travels from village to village. He is not allowed to stay for more than a day in a village during his Parivrajaka (wandering itinerant) life.
The mind of a Paramahamsa who thus lives on alms is as clean as the Ganga water and is absolutely free from attachment of any kind. Attachment is death. Attachment is the root of all evils.
Love.
