Now, the
Lord goes on to describe the nature of food preferred by Sattwic, Rajasic and Tamasic
beings in the following verses.
Verse 8
Foods which
increase life, purity, strength, health, joy and cheerfulness, which are
oleaginous and savoury, substantial and agreeable, are dear to the Sattwic
people.
Verse 9
The foods
that are bitter, sour, saline, excessively hot, dry, pungent and burning, are
liked by the Rajasic and are productive of pain, grief and disease.
Verse 10
That which
is stale, tasteless, putrid, rotten and impure refuse, is the food liked by the
Tamasic.
Sattvic
Food
That kind
of food which energizes the system, which contributes to the enhancement of
life, which increases strength in the body, which ensures health, which is
delighting to the taste and enjoyable at all times, which is full of delicacy
and the heart opens up, as it were, when we eat such food—that food
is sattvic.
Hence, a
vegetarian diet is beneficial for cultivating the qualities of the mode of
goodness that are conducive for spiritual life.
Rajasic
Food
A rajasic diet
is irritating, biting, burning, and very harsh in its action on the system. It
causes a burning sensation at the time of eating it, and it affects the
stomach, and it may even create a stomach ulcer. These diets are very much
desired by people who are rajasic in their nature.
Persons in
the mode of passion find such foods attractive, but those in the mode of
goodness find them disgusting. The purpose of eating is not to relish bliss
through the palate, but to keep the body healthy and strong. As the old adage
states: “Eat to live; do not live to eat.”
Thus, the
wise partake of foods that are conducive to good health, and have a peaceable
impact upon the mind i.e., sāttvic foods.
Tamasic
Food
Tamasic people
do not want freshly cooked food; they only want yesterday’s food. They would
rather have leftovers from yesterday than freshly cooked food.
Gatarasaṁ is food whose taste has gone
because it has been kept too long.
Pūti is
food that is not pleasant to the taste and is almost stinking.
Paryuṣitaṁ is
food which was cooked yesterday.
Ucchiṣṭam is the leftovers from
somebody’s meal. That should not be eaten.
Amedhyaṁ is very impure food, kept in
a dirty place, cooked in a dirty manner, with an impure mind, with emotions of
unhappiness, tension, anger, and dislike.
Impure foods also include all kinds of meat products.
Impure foods also include all kinds of meat products.
Nature has designed the human body to be vegetarian. All these
physical characteristics of the human body reveal that God has not created us
as carnivorous creatures, and consequently, meat is considered impure food for
humans.
Meat-eating also creates bad karma. The Manu Smṛiti states:
māṁ sa bhakṣhayitāmutra yasya māṁsam ihādmy aham
etan māṁsasya māṁsatvaṁ pravadanti manīṣhiṇaḥ
(“The word mānsa (meat)
means “that whom I am eating here will eat me in my next life.” The learned say
that meat is called mānsa (a
repeated act: I eat him, he eats me).”
Dear All,
Videos are
available showing Swami (Sri Sathya Sai Baba) partaking food during His
visit to Hostel/Hospital etc. It is height of Sattvic and just few teaspoonful of food.
If we take
inspiration from that, at least we can hope to reach the Sattvic food level at
some point of time.
The author
often tells to few sadhakas, “Food is eaten by him as a charity, for, the
internal system of his body need some food and hence, he has to grant them some
food. That is all and there is no other purpose of eating food. “
When we
visit Banaras and we are told that we should leave some food as an
offering, never to take it again, we seldom make a promise to give up some food
that we love, we give up only that food which we never like or which we have
once in a blue moon.
Dietary
control is very much part of ceiling of desires also for all human beings,
especially those who are in Sai fold.
Love.
