Dear Friends,
Namaste!
We have been discussing the most important aspect of balanced diet –the balance of our own body, mind and intellect while eating!
We looked at what constitutes the balance of our mind and body. We were discussing the balance of our intellect. Among the three, balance of intellect is the most crucial. Because according to Yoga Shastra, subtle always rules over gross and although mind is more subtle than our body, intellect is even subtler!
Lord Krishna, founder of the science of Yoga, has called a person of steady intellect as “Sthita-Pragya” (‘Sthita’ – steady, ‘Pragya’ – intellect). And how do we steady our intellect? By focusing our consciousness on right, positive thoughts! Our intellect, thus anchored in the right thoughts (through-out the day in general and while eating in particular), steadies the ship of our life and prepares us to weather any storm.
So what thoughts to think while eating? Sage Ramdas has beautifully captured the essence in a simple quadruplet that can be roughly translated as follows:
“We must think of Almighty God or Universal Cosmic Energy or Absolute Reality at the time of taking each mouthful. Indeed, it does not cost us any money to think this noble thought. When we thus align our consciousness and hence the life (and digestive) force within us with the Universal force, the food gets easily digested and we get the maximum possible nourishment from what we are eating. Food thus effortlessly assimilated within our system tremendously enhances the life-force within us and makes our life worth living because this life-force strongly expresses itself or emanates out and engulfs our lives as pure joy. Therefore, food is a consummate manifestation of life-force itself and we must treat eating as not merely a mechanical process but a complete spiritual experience in itself!”
More simply put, we should think about all the good that food will do to us when eaten properly and how we will put the strength we get from that food to good use once we get well-nourished! This not only enhances our enjoyment while eating but also helps the digestion of food thereafter. This makes us healthy and happy for life!
It is quite amazing how the right perspective dramatically enhances results arising from the same action. A mercenary killing for selfish motives experiences very different outcome of his actions than a soldier killing to save his country. In either case, although the action of killing remains the same, the soldier derives immense satisfaction, fulfilment and indeed adoration from fellow countrymen whereas the criminal is hunted down for the rest of his life by the law of the land as well as his own conscience! The power of the right thought is such that it can make all the difference as beautifully illustrated in this story from Ramayana:
After the demon-king Ravana kidnapped and kept Seeta, Lord Rama’s wife, captive, Lord Rama decided to attack Lanka and rescue her. He took help from Sugreeva, the then Dravidian king, and came with him and his army on the southern-most Indian shores of the Arabian Sea.
The army decided to build a bridge so that they could cross the sea and reach Lanka. However, whenever they would try to construct the bridge with stones, it would cave in under its own weight! The entire army got tired and frustrated.
That’s when Hanumana, an avid follower of Lord Rama, told them to chant the name of the Almighty Rama while building the bridge. This infused the Sugreeva’s entire army with right thoughts. They started thinking about the noble warrior that Rama was, his valour, his kindness, his love for them. They started thinking about how distressed he had become due to separation from his beloved wife and how it was critical for them to help him out in reuniting with Seeta. They got extremely motivated, resolved that they would let nothing stand in the way and achieved the wondrous engineering feat of constructing the bridge right across the Arabian sea.
Using this bridge, they landed on Lankan shores, defeated Ravana’s army and helped Rama in regaining the joyful company of his beloved Seeta.
There is no substitute to positive thinking and it is more relevant while eating than most other activities. For, eating is a psychosomatic experience – an experience that involves not only the body but also the mind. And the best way of reigning in the mind is through conscious positive thinking, thinking about the larger interests, thinking about the bigger picture.
Having thus put due emphasis on balancing out our toolset (viz., body-mind-intellect) first, let’s now turn our attention outwards and think about balancing the food itself!
But for this, dear friends, we will have to wait until the next week.
Take good care of yourselves until then...
No comments:
Post a Comment