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The practice of eating
from Hoko
We don’t usually take eating as a practice, at least until we get to a retreat or sesshin. Then suddenly eating is formal and there’s a way to do everything. If you’re the self-conscious type who fears being incompetent in public, the rituals around eating may be scary enough to put you off doing sesshin. Let me say right off the top here that that’s just your ego getting in the way, and the way to overcome that is to plunge in and actually do things. |
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One the one hand there’s a lot we can learn from considering eating as a practice, and on the other, we need to not get precious and gee-whiz about it, because that too is only about our egos and the need to create some special experience for ourselves.
When we consider practice of eating we need to consider nature of hunger. There’s physiological hunger, where our bodies need food and nutrition, and there’s psychological or emotional hunger, which we may try to satisfy with food or other things related to craving. We can ask ourselves which kind of hunger we’re dealing with when we sit down to a meal. Eating seems like a simple, everyday act, but of course, it’s tied up with a lot of other things, like memory. Eating is often a social event, an excuse to get people together, or eating may become an adjunct to other activities as a means of promoting fellowship. We may eat things in order to make others happy. If we eat what they made, we’re validating them and our relationship with them. We’re acknowledging that they’re good cooks or good providers, so eating can look like an act of love. On our own part, we can be hungry for the comfort or inclusion that goes with eating, and even if we’re living alone, making a batch of Mom’s famous cookies can bring her back into the room with us.
As a tenzo, I learned long ago eating is closely tied to morale during sesshin. At a time when practitioners are pushing themselves a bit both physically and spiritually, eating is a welcome distraction. In the midst of a seemingly endless sea of zazen, suddenly there’s some degree of moving around, and new information coming in through the senses. It’s a real comfort to know that the tenzo has made food that works specifically for this situation; it will be easy to eat and easy to digest, and it will have the five colors and six tastes. We don’t have to choose it and cook it for ourselves. We can just eat.
Now -- just eating -- there’s a real practice. We hear all the time about just sitting, dropping off body and mind, in other words, not creating fabrications about who we are and what we’re doing. How about applying that same approach to eating? How about eating a meal without creating fabrications about what we’re eating or who we are when we’re eating? That might sound like we aren’t allowed to enjoy the meal or appreciate the ingredients or the cook, but that’s not it. We can absolutely enjoy the meal and be grateful, and not write a story about it that creates attachment.
Now we’re back to nyoho, doing things in accord with the dharma, and that central question: does this thing create clinging and attachment? Of course, one other important aspect of nyoho is ryo, or amount. How much are we eating, and is it the appropriate amount?
When folks are just learning how to participate in formal meals, they often take very little food because they’re concerned that they won’t know what to do with it, and that they won’t finish eating at the same time as others, so everyone will be waiting for them. That’s an understandable human coping mechanism, and when they get over worrying about the mechanics of using oryoki, they start eating more.
It’s also possible to eat too much as a means of distracting ourselves from whatever is coming up in zazen (or in our lives). Then we get to try to stay awake on the cushion after overeating!
There are many stories of folks trying each of the dishes at the start of the meal so they can decide which ones they want more of, and eating those first so they’re ready for seconds. This sort of thing isn’t a new problem. There are instructions for the very earliest sanghas about not hiding bean curry under your rice so you can get more curry when the seconds come around.
There's no question that the amount we eat is a national issue. More than 4 out of 10 adults in the US are considered obese today, and 20 percent of children and adolescents. One thing that can happen when we start to practice is that we notice our craving and aversion and what’s driving that. During sesshin, we might pay attention to how much we really need to eat in order to carry out daily practice, and it might be less than we think. Without the ability to get up and distract ourselves by eating snacks whenever we want, we get to see how the impulse toward unnecessary eating arises.
I’ve also noticed that because sesshin meals are very intentionally balanced, they’re satisfying. I knew I was onto something as a tenzo many years ago with the traditional meal formula when a sesshin participant told me he was not going home at night and eating huge snack, as he usually did during sesshin.
The harmony in eating that starts with the five colors and six tastes continues in our mealtime deportment. After all, Dogen says that the virtue of peace and harmony is the absolute sangha treasure, so eating with some awareness of our effect on others in the immediate vicinity is a good practice. Those very early rules I mentioned before also include things like not chewing with your mouth open, or scattering your food all over, or wolfing down huge mouthfuls, and you just have to wonder -- did these monks have no home training? Just for context, these rules originally applied not only to eating within the sangha but also to being served or hosted by laypeople during almsrounds.
Today the rules have come down to us from the Vinaya through Chinese texts to Japanese texts quoted by Dogen. Even now there are expectations built into our formal meals about eating in a way that demonstrates courtesy to others. There are guidelines about not elbowing each other when we’re sitting together, and not letting our okesas brush other people. We sit up straight and pick up our bowls to eat rather than slouching over the table on our elbows, slurping up food. We hold up the first bowl and use the spoon to hide the open mouth when putting food in. When we eat something that has a seed, we cover the mouth with the hand to remove it. We eat as silently as possible, including crunchy food, and we don’t clatter our bowls and utensils.
Not only do we do our best to respect the humans at the table, we also include the unseen beings who are present. During sesshin our meals are silent and we don’t do the usual chanting, but outside of sesshin, we do a chant that includes invoking all the buddhas and ancestors. When we do that chant, there’s a clap of the clappers before each name. If that clap comes too close to the beginning of the line, we’ve knocked that buddha in the head. If it comes too close to the end of the line, we’ve stepped on that buddha’s foot. We invite buddhas and ancestors to the meal and feed them in two ways, one by offering a miniature meal tray at the altar that includes all the same foods we’re eating, and the other by offering seven grains of rice from our first bowl to the hungry spirits and wishing for their liberation.
Throughout the meal we have to strike a balance between paying attention to our own eating and being aware of what’s happening around the table. When the doshi stops eating, we all stop eating and put down our bowls while seconds are being taken, until everyone has what they want and we then start eating together again. Newbies often get so engrossed in own bowls that someone has to stop them and point out what's going on. All these eating practices remind us that we’re not doing this alone, and this is one of the reasons that meals are practice. We get to directly experience sangha as peace and harmony.
However, another reason is the sameness of food and dharma, which puts us back into the realm of nyoho. When we’re eating, we’re being nourished by dharma just as we are when we’re doing dharma study or liturgy. Dogen says, Just let dharma be the same as food, and let food be the same as dharma. For this reason, if dharmas are the dharma nature, then food is also the dharma nature. If the dharma is suchness, then food is also suchness. If the dharma is the single mind, food is also the single mind. If the dharma is bodhi, food also is bodhi. [Dogen's pure standards for the Zen community: a translation of the Eihei shingi. United States: State University of New York Press. p. 83] He goes on to help us understand the nature of this sameness, which we also understand from our study of nyoho this year. Again, nyo 如 can mean something is like something or consistent with something, but it also means “completely the same as.” Dogen says, This “same” is not the sameness of parity or equality, but the sameness of awakening to the true sameness [anuttara samyak sambodhi]. Awakening to the true sameness is the ultimate identity [of all the suchnesses] from beginning to end. The suchness of the ultimate identity from beginning to end is the genuine form of all dharmas, which only a buddha together with a buddha can exhaustively penetrate. [Pure Standards p. 84]
Anuttara samyak sambodhi is the awareness of a buddha that allows for impartiality, encountering all things equally. This is awakening to true sameness that comes from seeing all things as empty. Dogen is saying that it’s not that food is like dharma, or food is the equivalent of suchness, but that they are exactly the same. Food isn’t a metaphor or a symbol, it is completely dharma. However, only a buddha together with a buddha can recognize it. This is a famous Dogen phrase; he wrote a whole fascicle of the Shobogenzo on it, called Yuibutsu Yobutsu (Only Buddha together with Buddha). This is radical non-separation or nonduality. Within emptiness, all things are the same. If all conditioned things are without a fixed self nature because causes and conditions are always changing, then what arises from causes and conditions is also always changing, so nothing has a fixed essence or boundary that lets us separate it from anything else.
In this absolute view, all things are the same -- not similar to, comparable to, like, representing something else, but entirely the same. This is the way a buddha sees. Eating and using oryoki are the acts of a buddha, so if we’re all buddhas, then we need to behave like buddhas. Actually, we need to behave like buddhas all the time, and eating meals is one opportunity to do that. If food is nothing other than dharma because all things are nothing other than dharma, then the forms we use are also nothing other than dharma. They’re not add-ons or something extra in the meal process designed to produce a result called people eating and waking up. Carrying them out is the act of a buddha because it puts us in accord with dharma, and here’s nyoho again.
At same time, forms we use for formal meals give us the chance to reflect: ah, yes, I’m a buddha and eating is the act of a buddha, and food and dharma are one thing. Like zazen, we’re sitting in one place, doing something silently, without talking and paying attention. We’re also continuing to open the hand of thought and drop off body and mind. We’re noticing and letting go of our craving and attachments, and, like zazen, we’re realizing the self without relation to others that includes everything. No one can manage our deportment but us, and no one can eat for us; we do these things for ourselves, without relying on others. However, of course, we can’t eat in complete isolation -- that practice includes everything. Someone grew this food and cooked it and served it. Causes and conditions were necessary to get this food into our bowls, including systems of agriculture and transportation and commerce. We have our individual part to play, and it’s completely our responsibility with this karmic body and mind. We determine our own actions and carry them out ourselves, but we do that in a way that’s completely interpenetrated with this one unified reality.
Also, like zazen, when we’re engaged in something, we just do that. When we eat, we just eat, with nothing extra, not being attached to a particular outcome, not worried about our self image, not concerned about trying to get more, not concerned about what comes next on the schedule or what we’re going to do after sesshin.
Now, all of that is fine for when we’re engaged in formal meals in the temple, but that’s not the way most of us eat most of the time. How do we practice with these teachings at home? We might consider the gokan no ge, or verse of five contemplations, which is part of our chanting for formal meals.
We reflect on the effort that brought us this food and consider how it comes to us
We reflect on our virtue and practice and whether we are worthy of this offering
We regard it as essential to free ourselves of excesses such as greed.
We regard this food as good medicine to sustain our life.
For the sake of enlightenment, we now receive this food.
We reflect on the effort that brought us this food and consider how it comes to us
This is a big reminder about interconnectedness, and how we are supported by the entire universe all the time. We can’t possibly do everything for ourselves. Even if we could grow and cook all of our own food, we couldn’t do it without sun and rain and seeds and soil. The reality is that we never live in isolation; it’s not possible. When we do sesshin here, we make it a point to mention to everyone during the final wrap up discussion and in the newsletter which local farms grew our food that week, because Sawyer, our operations manager, knows that. He gets a lot of things direct from farmers, and the sangha grows some of the rest for ourselves. The effort being made on our behalf isn’t just the farmers and truckers and grocers and cooks, it’s the entirety and energy of universal functioning. Uchiyama Roshi would say that everything I encounter is my life, or another way to say that is that we’re living one life with all beings. When we consider how our food comes to us, and how we come to our food, that’s a really big story.
At home, we can take a minute before biting into the sandwich to think about where it came from, and where we came from. Maybe that contemplation starts before we make the sandwich, when we’re at the store buying groceries.
We reflect on our virtue and practice and whether we are worthy of this offering
How are we using the energy of the food we’re eating? Are we using it to carry out the three pure precepts (doing what’s wholesome, avoiding what’s unwholesome, taking care of all beings)? Or are we using it to engage in the three poisonous minds and spill that suffering onto others? Some beings died so we could eat them. How are we using those donated lives?
One way to reflect regularly is to participate in our monthly ryaku fusatsu, where we hear the precepts read aloud and consider how we’re practicing with them. Everyone and anyone is welcome to attend -- you don’t have to tave publicly taken precepts.
We regard it as essential to free ourselves of excesses such as greed. [sometimes We regard greed as the obstacle to freedom of mind.]
Here’s one of those three poisonous minds: greed. What better opportunity to see how that arises than at mealtime? It’s essential to free ourselves of the three poisons because they’re the most basic delusion we have. All other delusion and suffering is based on them. There may be 108 bonno, or seductive delusions, but they all come down to greed, anger and ignorance. Eating is a basic function, and greed is a basic delusion; there’s nothing complicated about that. Meals are one dharma gate for this, but we can certainly consider where else in our lives we’re getting caught up in craving and aversion.
We regard this food as good medicine to sustain our life.
You may know that traditionally, monks don’t eat after the noon meal. There is no dinner, and that carries over into senmon sodo practice today. The third meal of the day is considered medicine rather than a meal. It’s often leftovers and there’s less ceremony attached to it. There may be no chanting, for instance, and there are only two bowls rather than three or five. All that’s to remind us that we’re eating in order to take care of this body, which is the ground of practice. We can certainly enjoy and appreciate the food, but without developing attachments.
For the sake of enlightenment, we now receive this food.
Here’s the conclusion of the whole thing about the practice of eating: we’re eating in order to wake up and liberate all beings, including ourselves. There may be other reasons too why we eat, for social or other reasons, but we never forget our bodhisattva vows about liberating beings, ending delusion, taking up dharma gates and attaining the Buddha way.
When we consider practice of eating we need to consider nature of hunger. There’s physiological hunger, where our bodies need food and nutrition, and there’s psychological or emotional hunger, which we may try to satisfy with food or other things related to craving. We can ask ourselves which kind of hunger we’re dealing with when we sit down to a meal. Eating seems like a simple, everyday act, but of course, it’s tied up with a lot of other things, like memory. Eating is often a social event, an excuse to get people together, or eating may become an adjunct to other activities as a means of promoting fellowship. We may eat things in order to make others happy. If we eat what they made, we’re validating them and our relationship with them. We’re acknowledging that they’re good cooks or good providers, so eating can look like an act of love. On our own part, we can be hungry for the comfort or inclusion that goes with eating, and even if we’re living alone, making a batch of Mom’s famous cookies can bring her back into the room with us.
As a tenzo, I learned long ago eating is closely tied to morale during sesshin. At a time when practitioners are pushing themselves a bit both physically and spiritually, eating is a welcome distraction. In the midst of a seemingly endless sea of zazen, suddenly there’s some degree of moving around, and new information coming in through the senses. It’s a real comfort to know that the tenzo has made food that works specifically for this situation; it will be easy to eat and easy to digest, and it will have the five colors and six tastes. We don’t have to choose it and cook it for ourselves. We can just eat.
Now -- just eating -- there’s a real practice. We hear all the time about just sitting, dropping off body and mind, in other words, not creating fabrications about who we are and what we’re doing. How about applying that same approach to eating? How about eating a meal without creating fabrications about what we’re eating or who we are when we’re eating? That might sound like we aren’t allowed to enjoy the meal or appreciate the ingredients or the cook, but that’s not it. We can absolutely enjoy the meal and be grateful, and not write a story about it that creates attachment.
Now we’re back to nyoho, doing things in accord with the dharma, and that central question: does this thing create clinging and attachment? Of course, one other important aspect of nyoho is ryo, or amount. How much are we eating, and is it the appropriate amount?
When folks are just learning how to participate in formal meals, they often take very little food because they’re concerned that they won’t know what to do with it, and that they won’t finish eating at the same time as others, so everyone will be waiting for them. That’s an understandable human coping mechanism, and when they get over worrying about the mechanics of using oryoki, they start eating more.
It’s also possible to eat too much as a means of distracting ourselves from whatever is coming up in zazen (or in our lives). Then we get to try to stay awake on the cushion after overeating!
There are many stories of folks trying each of the dishes at the start of the meal so they can decide which ones they want more of, and eating those first so they’re ready for seconds. This sort of thing isn’t a new problem. There are instructions for the very earliest sanghas about not hiding bean curry under your rice so you can get more curry when the seconds come around.
There's no question that the amount we eat is a national issue. More than 4 out of 10 adults in the US are considered obese today, and 20 percent of children and adolescents. One thing that can happen when we start to practice is that we notice our craving and aversion and what’s driving that. During sesshin, we might pay attention to how much we really need to eat in order to carry out daily practice, and it might be less than we think. Without the ability to get up and distract ourselves by eating snacks whenever we want, we get to see how the impulse toward unnecessary eating arises.
I’ve also noticed that because sesshin meals are very intentionally balanced, they’re satisfying. I knew I was onto something as a tenzo many years ago with the traditional meal formula when a sesshin participant told me he was not going home at night and eating huge snack, as he usually did during sesshin.
The harmony in eating that starts with the five colors and six tastes continues in our mealtime deportment. After all, Dogen says that the virtue of peace and harmony is the absolute sangha treasure, so eating with some awareness of our effect on others in the immediate vicinity is a good practice. Those very early rules I mentioned before also include things like not chewing with your mouth open, or scattering your food all over, or wolfing down huge mouthfuls, and you just have to wonder -- did these monks have no home training? Just for context, these rules originally applied not only to eating within the sangha but also to being served or hosted by laypeople during almsrounds.
Today the rules have come down to us from the Vinaya through Chinese texts to Japanese texts quoted by Dogen. Even now there are expectations built into our formal meals about eating in a way that demonstrates courtesy to others. There are guidelines about not elbowing each other when we’re sitting together, and not letting our okesas brush other people. We sit up straight and pick up our bowls to eat rather than slouching over the table on our elbows, slurping up food. We hold up the first bowl and use the spoon to hide the open mouth when putting food in. When we eat something that has a seed, we cover the mouth with the hand to remove it. We eat as silently as possible, including crunchy food, and we don’t clatter our bowls and utensils.
Not only do we do our best to respect the humans at the table, we also include the unseen beings who are present. During sesshin our meals are silent and we don’t do the usual chanting, but outside of sesshin, we do a chant that includes invoking all the buddhas and ancestors. When we do that chant, there’s a clap of the clappers before each name. If that clap comes too close to the beginning of the line, we’ve knocked that buddha in the head. If it comes too close to the end of the line, we’ve stepped on that buddha’s foot. We invite buddhas and ancestors to the meal and feed them in two ways, one by offering a miniature meal tray at the altar that includes all the same foods we’re eating, and the other by offering seven grains of rice from our first bowl to the hungry spirits and wishing for their liberation.
Throughout the meal we have to strike a balance between paying attention to our own eating and being aware of what’s happening around the table. When the doshi stops eating, we all stop eating and put down our bowls while seconds are being taken, until everyone has what they want and we then start eating together again. Newbies often get so engrossed in own bowls that someone has to stop them and point out what's going on. All these eating practices remind us that we’re not doing this alone, and this is one of the reasons that meals are practice. We get to directly experience sangha as peace and harmony.
However, another reason is the sameness of food and dharma, which puts us back into the realm of nyoho. When we’re eating, we’re being nourished by dharma just as we are when we’re doing dharma study or liturgy. Dogen says, Just let dharma be the same as food, and let food be the same as dharma. For this reason, if dharmas are the dharma nature, then food is also the dharma nature. If the dharma is suchness, then food is also suchness. If the dharma is the single mind, food is also the single mind. If the dharma is bodhi, food also is bodhi. [Dogen's pure standards for the Zen community: a translation of the Eihei shingi. United States: State University of New York Press. p. 83] He goes on to help us understand the nature of this sameness, which we also understand from our study of nyoho this year. Again, nyo 如 can mean something is like something or consistent with something, but it also means “completely the same as.” Dogen says, This “same” is not the sameness of parity or equality, but the sameness of awakening to the true sameness [anuttara samyak sambodhi]. Awakening to the true sameness is the ultimate identity [of all the suchnesses] from beginning to end. The suchness of the ultimate identity from beginning to end is the genuine form of all dharmas, which only a buddha together with a buddha can exhaustively penetrate. [Pure Standards p. 84]
Anuttara samyak sambodhi is the awareness of a buddha that allows for impartiality, encountering all things equally. This is awakening to true sameness that comes from seeing all things as empty. Dogen is saying that it’s not that food is like dharma, or food is the equivalent of suchness, but that they are exactly the same. Food isn’t a metaphor or a symbol, it is completely dharma. However, only a buddha together with a buddha can recognize it. This is a famous Dogen phrase; he wrote a whole fascicle of the Shobogenzo on it, called Yuibutsu Yobutsu (Only Buddha together with Buddha). This is radical non-separation or nonduality. Within emptiness, all things are the same. If all conditioned things are without a fixed self nature because causes and conditions are always changing, then what arises from causes and conditions is also always changing, so nothing has a fixed essence or boundary that lets us separate it from anything else.
In this absolute view, all things are the same -- not similar to, comparable to, like, representing something else, but entirely the same. This is the way a buddha sees. Eating and using oryoki are the acts of a buddha, so if we’re all buddhas, then we need to behave like buddhas. Actually, we need to behave like buddhas all the time, and eating meals is one opportunity to do that. If food is nothing other than dharma because all things are nothing other than dharma, then the forms we use are also nothing other than dharma. They’re not add-ons or something extra in the meal process designed to produce a result called people eating and waking up. Carrying them out is the act of a buddha because it puts us in accord with dharma, and here’s nyoho again.
At same time, forms we use for formal meals give us the chance to reflect: ah, yes, I’m a buddha and eating is the act of a buddha, and food and dharma are one thing. Like zazen, we’re sitting in one place, doing something silently, without talking and paying attention. We’re also continuing to open the hand of thought and drop off body and mind. We’re noticing and letting go of our craving and attachments, and, like zazen, we’re realizing the self without relation to others that includes everything. No one can manage our deportment but us, and no one can eat for us; we do these things for ourselves, without relying on others. However, of course, we can’t eat in complete isolation -- that practice includes everything. Someone grew this food and cooked it and served it. Causes and conditions were necessary to get this food into our bowls, including systems of agriculture and transportation and commerce. We have our individual part to play, and it’s completely our responsibility with this karmic body and mind. We determine our own actions and carry them out ourselves, but we do that in a way that’s completely interpenetrated with this one unified reality.
Also, like zazen, when we’re engaged in something, we just do that. When we eat, we just eat, with nothing extra, not being attached to a particular outcome, not worried about our self image, not concerned about trying to get more, not concerned about what comes next on the schedule or what we’re going to do after sesshin.
Now, all of that is fine for when we’re engaged in formal meals in the temple, but that’s not the way most of us eat most of the time. How do we practice with these teachings at home? We might consider the gokan no ge, or verse of five contemplations, which is part of our chanting for formal meals.
We reflect on the effort that brought us this food and consider how it comes to us
We reflect on our virtue and practice and whether we are worthy of this offering
We regard it as essential to free ourselves of excesses such as greed.
We regard this food as good medicine to sustain our life.
For the sake of enlightenment, we now receive this food.
We reflect on the effort that brought us this food and consider how it comes to us
This is a big reminder about interconnectedness, and how we are supported by the entire universe all the time. We can’t possibly do everything for ourselves. Even if we could grow and cook all of our own food, we couldn’t do it without sun and rain and seeds and soil. The reality is that we never live in isolation; it’s not possible. When we do sesshin here, we make it a point to mention to everyone during the final wrap up discussion and in the newsletter which local farms grew our food that week, because Sawyer, our operations manager, knows that. He gets a lot of things direct from farmers, and the sangha grows some of the rest for ourselves. The effort being made on our behalf isn’t just the farmers and truckers and grocers and cooks, it’s the entirety and energy of universal functioning. Uchiyama Roshi would say that everything I encounter is my life, or another way to say that is that we’re living one life with all beings. When we consider how our food comes to us, and how we come to our food, that’s a really big story.
At home, we can take a minute before biting into the sandwich to think about where it came from, and where we came from. Maybe that contemplation starts before we make the sandwich, when we’re at the store buying groceries.
We reflect on our virtue and practice and whether we are worthy of this offering
How are we using the energy of the food we’re eating? Are we using it to carry out the three pure precepts (doing what’s wholesome, avoiding what’s unwholesome, taking care of all beings)? Or are we using it to engage in the three poisonous minds and spill that suffering onto others? Some beings died so we could eat them. How are we using those donated lives?
One way to reflect regularly is to participate in our monthly ryaku fusatsu, where we hear the precepts read aloud and consider how we’re practicing with them. Everyone and anyone is welcome to attend -- you don’t have to tave publicly taken precepts.
We regard it as essential to free ourselves of excesses such as greed. [sometimes We regard greed as the obstacle to freedom of mind.]
Here’s one of those three poisonous minds: greed. What better opportunity to see how that arises than at mealtime? It’s essential to free ourselves of the three poisons because they’re the most basic delusion we have. All other delusion and suffering is based on them. There may be 108 bonno, or seductive delusions, but they all come down to greed, anger and ignorance. Eating is a basic function, and greed is a basic delusion; there’s nothing complicated about that. Meals are one dharma gate for this, but we can certainly consider where else in our lives we’re getting caught up in craving and aversion.
We regard this food as good medicine to sustain our life.
You may know that traditionally, monks don’t eat after the noon meal. There is no dinner, and that carries over into senmon sodo practice today. The third meal of the day is considered medicine rather than a meal. It’s often leftovers and there’s less ceremony attached to it. There may be no chanting, for instance, and there are only two bowls rather than three or five. All that’s to remind us that we’re eating in order to take care of this body, which is the ground of practice. We can certainly enjoy and appreciate the food, but without developing attachments.
For the sake of enlightenment, we now receive this food.
Here’s the conclusion of the whole thing about the practice of eating: we’re eating in order to wake up and liberate all beings, including ourselves. There may be other reasons too why we eat, for social or other reasons, but we never forget our bodhisattva vows about liberating beings, ending delusion, taking up dharma gates and attaining the Buddha way.
