Food Meditation
WHEN EATING OR DRINKING, BECOME THE TASTE OF FOOD OR DRINK, AND BE FILLED.
Download,Transcript Vigyan Bhairav Tantra Vol 1, Chapter 33
Suggestion for drinking: The 10 min discourse above can be a guided listening meditation for drinking a beverage like tea, water, milk. A dedicated beverage will further strengthen the meditation by association, its distinctive aroma or taste will trigger a person easily into meditative state.
(Alternative Title : Fulfillment Meditation)
OSHO on how to taste food : An on-the-spot teaching
OSHO teaches us how to eat as if each food is tastier than another, demostrating the intensity and openness of tasting the food sensitively.
From One Hundred Tales for Ten Thousand Buddhas
by Ma Dharam Jyoti, Chapter 33
Chapter 33
I am staying with Osho in Sohan's home. Osho enjoys to eat lunch with us at the dining table. Sohan is really a great cook. After His morning discourse we reach home around 10:15am. Within one hour, Sohan prepares the lunch, cooking a variety of delicious dishes. By 11:30, we are all setting on chairs around a big rectangular dining table which is decorated with flowers in the middle. Every meal is a great feast. Osho likes to tell jokes while eating and creates much laughter around Him.
Today there are so many dishes, one is puzzled from where to start. Sohan is standing near Osho and starts serving Him food from different bowls. Osho is never miserly in appreciating the food He likes. Today, He enjoys eating Dahi-wada. It is an Indian dish made of little balls of crushed dal, fried and soaked in curd. He says to Sohan, "Sohan, Dahi-wadas are really delicious." Sohan responds, "That means the other dishes are not delicious." Osho looks at Sohan in surprise and says, "No, no! I don't mean that. I will tell you a story so you understand what I mean."
Then He tells this story:
Mulla Nasruddin was in love with two beautiful women. He was telling both of them separately that you are the most beautiful woman I have ever met. One day both the women meet and realize that he is saying the same thing to both of them. They go together to Mulla and asked him, "Now tell us the truth, who is more beautiful?" Mulla thought for a moment and said "You are both more beautiful than each other."
We all cracked up in laughter and Osho says, "Sohan, all your dishes are more delicious than one another." Sohan, now getting the point, also starts laughing.
Food Addictions: Eating Less and Losing less energy
From
THE ULTIMATE ALCHEMY, VOL 2
CHAPTER 8, QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
You are a creator. We create our time, we create our space, we create our milieu, through living. So whatsoever your position in life and whatsoever your work and whatsoever your outward situation, do not make it an excuse. You can meditate all the same, and meditation doesn't need time. It needs a deep understanding, not time.
And it is not in conflict with other things. For example, if you are eating, eat with awareness. No extra time is needed. Rather, on the contrary, you will save time because you will eat less. With awareness you will eat less; with awareness you will become more efficient. You will save time. With awareness you will lose less energy, you will dissipate less energy. And even after a whole day's work, you will be as fresh as in the morning - because it is not work that exhausts you: it is the attitude.
THE ULTIMATE ALCHEMY, VOL 2
CHAPTER 8, QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
You are a creator. We create our time, we create our space, we create our milieu, through living. So whatsoever your position in life and whatsoever your work and whatsoever your outward situation, do not make it an excuse. You can meditate all the same, and meditation doesn't need time. It needs a deep understanding, not time.
And it is not in conflict with other things. For example, if you are eating, eat with awareness. No extra time is needed. Rather, on the contrary, you will save time because you will eat less. With awareness you will eat less; with awareness you will become more efficient. You will save time. With awareness you will lose less energy, you will dissipate less energy. And even after a whole day's work, you will be as fresh as in the morning - because it is not work that exhausts you: it is the attitude.
Meditators' Notes
MEDITATION TIP: FOOD ADDICTIONS AND EATING LESS : The above excerpt has a very useful hint for those of us wishing to enter their food additions like coffee, sweet addictions etc with awareness. Enjoy the sweets or bitterness of coffee very slowly with awareness and with closed eyes, for 10 mins. Allow the taste to permeate throughout the body, and experience the full taste in the moment with closed eyes. Allow any feelings that may arise and ebb. Cooperate with the melting of the energy blocks as the taste sweeps inside of you. Dont eat once the taste fills you up and at which point eating more doesnt produce more taste. We are filled with a lot less of the sweets/coffee. Bringing our attention inside we may experience that we are looking for a mood beyond the feelings such as the mood of sweetness, not the sweets themselves or sharp lightness for the senses, not coffee itself. With this wisdom, we will bring more sweetness into our life, through other avenues like smiling (sweet emotions), sweet melody, sweet fragrance, sweet touch (self-massage) and loving meditations allowing us to enjoy more sweetness as part of every day life. This will slowly engender a taste for the sweetness of inner silence. Or more exercise instead of morning coffee, that will engender an alertness leading into inner silence.
Smokers among us are likely to enjoy deep breathing and sucking meditations to de-stress. Our drinkers and drug users are likely to enjoy dancing and humming/sound meditations to create the euphoric psychedelics that deeply affect the nerves. Those who eat for calming nerves chattering from fear, may continue to eat slowly and allow more feelings of fear to arise and flow as it is soothed by the incoming food (please take care to not eat so fast as to obstruct the emergence of feelings). Remember you are not your feelings, you are simply allowing a mothering situation for them to come and go. You are a witness. So take care to not externalize these feelings. This is also true for the food addictions from feelings below. Those who eat lots of very spicy snacks and other extremely caustic foods are using the foods to stimulate the release of anger (frustration, irritation) from suppression, and it is best released slowly allowing the taste of the food to go in and not obstruct the feelings from emerging and subsiding. This is best done by holding the food with saliva in the mouth to taste it as long and as much as possible. Those who wish to eat very salty foods, are looking to stimulate pleasure from an otherwise unpleasant/deadening situation and it is best savoured very slowly as well, allowing the saliva from the mouth to produce a tremendous amount of pleasure throughout the body. In all of these meditations, remember that you are not your feelings, you are the witness and allow the feelings to come and go without externalizing them.