Thursday, December 17, 2020
Wednesday, December 16, 2020
Sadhana Panchakam - Post 44
Even when one is not hungry or even when the food is not nutritious for physical health or for spiritual development, if one craves to possess, desiring to appropriate for oneself as one's and one's alone.
Sri Sankara says there should be no craving for delicious food, for it goes against the very spirit of Tapas. He hopes that this rule will help people to maintain simplicity in food for the sake of good health.
Cravings & Aversions
The key point in this Step is to “avoid likes and dislikes” over food. Swami Sivananda offers a golden guideline: “Don’t eat only what you like, nor avoid everything that you dislike.”
Elsewhere he says, “Everyday avoid at least one thing that you like; and everyday eat at least one thing that you dislike.” In this way, the great Master always alerted his disciples to the danger of likes and dislikes, the principle behind such rules.
Ask a Sadhaka living in a remote place where delicacies are not easily available, how disturbed he can get when he sees them coming to the Ashram!
Besides being a temptation to the senses, tasty foods have the added disadvantage of taking more time to prepare, and being invariably unhealthier. Since time and health are both precious, to render natural foods tastier by elaborate procedures is wasteful labour. This time can be made available for Sadhana.
Step 27 is meant to “keep the tongue in its place.” That is the spirit of the rule, but the intellect, as one may expect, finds a way to violate it.
Chandhogya Upanishad says that the only thing that should be sought is the self within the heart, for that assuredly is what one should understand.
The mind which is overwhelmed by desire for food and things palatable to senses, rejects or suppresses all other thoughts. If instead one desires the self then that would stimulate the mind to desire and that which is spiritual.
Craving diverts mind from the principal objective for which food is eaten of the food which is to nourish the body and invigorate the energies to fruitful enterprise.
Otherwise the purpose having been fashioned wrongly the objective fails to its goal.
20 GOLDEN INSTRUCTIONS BY
SWAMI SIVANANDA
Nowhere, it is said that
we need to follow all twenty all the time…Even if we can adopt a few and blend
in sometimes with our detoxification routine, we will get the benefits of these
golden food rules.
1) Beware
of false hunger, eat only when hungry
2) Eat
less and chew more
3) Fast
once a week
4) Do
not overload your stomach
5) Include
raw food in your diet
6) Control
that craving for variety in food
7) Identify
the foods which match each other well from your experience and make more of
such combinations
8) Do
not eat when you are angry
9) Give
up greed of eating more food
10) Bad
sensations in throat or stomach are signs towards cleansing fast
11) Do
not take meals late at night
12) Skins
of apples and carrots contain valuable minerals and vitamins, do not remove
them
13) Rice
and Veggies taste best when steamed, try switching between polished and
unpolished rice
14) Take
food at fixed hours
15) Sitting
in Vajrasana for ten minutes after a meal helps in digestion of food
16) More
simple and natural food, better it is
17) Do not
make sudden and drastic changes in your diet, introduce gradual changes
18) Observe
silence while taking food
19) Do not
engage in strenuous physical or mental work immediately after a meal
AND…,
20) Thank God
every time for your meal!
Love.
Sunday, December 13, 2020
Sadhana Panchakam - Post 43
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.
Equally, the
Sannyasin receives it and blesses the giver, knowing that a share of his
spiritual merit goes to the receiver. Thus both giver and receiver are blessed
by this form of charity.
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.
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