‘Eating well is an art. It doesn’t require fancy cooking, but it does require practice and concentration.’
Thich Nhat Hanh invites us to eat mindfully, and shows how each mouthful can nourish us on many different levels. Eating joyfully feeds our sense of compassion and understanding, and helps us achieve a healthy weight.
Thich Nhat Hanh is a world-renowned writer, poet, scholar and Zen Buddhist monk, who lives mostly in the monastic community he founded in France. The author of the New York Times bestseller Anger and the classic work The Miracle of Mindfulness, as well as numerous other books, he conducts public workshops and peace-making retreats throughout the world. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967.
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Silence
Anger
Being Peace
Breathe! You Are Alive
Creating True Peace
Fear
Fragrant Palm Leaves
Going Home
The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching
Living Buddha, Living Christ
The Miracle of Mindfulness
No Death, No Fear
The Novice
Old Path, White Clouds
Peace is Every Breath
Peace is Every Step
Present Moment, Wonderful Moment
The Art of Communicating
The Sun My Heart
Transformation and Healing
True Love
To cultivate mindfulness, we can do the same things we always do—walking, sitting, working, eating, and so on—with mindful awareness of what we are doing. When we’re eating, we know that we are eating. When we open a door, we know that we’re opening a door. Our mind is with our actions.
When you put a piece of fruit into your mouth, all you need is a little bit of mindfulness to be aware: “I am putting a piece of apple in my mouth.” Your mind doesn’t need to be somewhere else. If you’re thinking of work while you chew, that’s not eating mindfully. When you pay attention to the apple, that is mindfulness. Then you can look more deeply and in just a very short time you will see the apple seed, the beautiful orchard and the sky, the farmer, the picker, and so on. A lot of work is in that apple!
With just a little bit of mindfulness, you can truly see where your bread comes from. It has not come from nothing. Bread comes from the wheat fields, from hard work, and from the baker, the supplier, and the seller. But the bread is more than that. The wheat field needs clouds and sunshine. So in this slice of bread there is sunshine, there is cloud, there is the labor of the farmer, the joy of having flour, and the skill of the baker and then—miraculously!—there is the bread. The whole cosmos has come together so that this piece of bread can be in your hand. You don’t need to do a lot of hard work to get this insight. You only need to stop letting your mind carry you away with worrying, thinking, and planning.
In modern life, people tend to think their bodies belong to them, that they can do anything they want to themselves. But your body is not only yours. Your body belongs to your ancestors, your parents, and future generations. It also belongs to society and to all the other living beings. The trees, the clouds, the soil, and every living thing brought about the presence of your body. We can eat with care, knowing we are caretakers of our bodies, rather than their owners.
When we eat we usually think. 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. Our mind isn’t there. When our mind isn’t present, we look but we don’t see, we listen but we don’t hear, we eat but we don’t know the flavor of the food. This is a state of forgetfulness, the lack of mindfulness. To be truly present we have to stop our thinking. This is the secret of success.
When we serve ourselves food and then bring it to the table, we don’t need to feel we’re waiting for other people to serve themselves and be seated. All we have to do is breathe and enjoy sitting. We haven’t eaten our meal yet, but we can already feel joy and gratitude. It’s an opportunity for us to be peaceful.
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. We can use that time to notice that we will soon be able to have food, and we can be happy and grateful during that time. Instead of waiting, we can generate joy.
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. The way I eat influences everything else that I do during the day.
Eating is as important a time for meditation as sitting or walking meditation time. It’s a chance to receive the many gifts of the Earth that I would not otherwise benefit from if my mind were elsewhere. Here is a verse I like to recite when I eat:
In the dimension of space and time,
We chew as rhythmically as we breathe.
Maintaining the lives of all our ancestors,
Opening an upward path for descendants.
We can use the time of eating to nourish the best things our relatives have passed onto us and to transmit what is most precious to future generations.