Food and Meaning

Just after Christmas I ordered a copy of Ronna Kabatznick's The Zen of Eating. I'm about half way through it and I must say, I'm very pleased. It is both a good introduction to Buddhism - to the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path - and an enlightening reflection on how our attachments to food-related desires can cause us suffering. Our attachment to our desire to indulge in food can cause us suffering, and so, too, can our attachment to our desire to restrain from eating food.

Earlier this week I finished the chapter on Right Aspiration, the 2nd of the 8 steps along the Eightfold Path. Right Aspiration is about cultivating wholesome attitudes and behaviors regarding food and avoiding unwholesome attitudes and behaviors.

Our attitudes about food and consumption are so very important. As Kabatznick writes, "It takes more than a desire to make changes in your behavior. It also takes putting these changes into a meaningful context. If the context is not meaningful enough, turning down food is difficult."

She explores, for example, the difference between dieting and fasting. We often have a very difficult time restraining from eating certain foods when we are trying to diet, and she says that that is basically because our motivation in dieting is usually very self-focused. We want to lose weight so that we feel better and look thinner. It's all about us.

Fasting is easier, she contends, because our restraint is motivated by a higher purpose, often religious. "There's satisfaction in knowing that what you eat (or don't eat) actually means something more than how it is going to affect a number on the scale or how your clothes fit." Fasting, or following religiously inspired dietary restrictions, can move us beyond the boundaries of our tiny, little circle of self-centeredness and into a larger and more expansive relationship with something far bigger and far more important - God, the interdependent web of existence, our community of fellow religious practitioners, or the hungry children of the world, to name a few examples.

Kabatznick gives some ideas about how to make our relationship with food and eating more meaningful. Saying grace before meals is one way. Learning about the context of our food - where it's from, how it came to be before us, and whose hands helped to produce, distribute, and prepare it - is another.

An idea that is somewhat new to me is that which she calls "Dedication of Merit." It's not an entirely new idea to me, actually. I have learned about it before in the context of Buddhist practice. Buddhist monks usually say a gatha or blessing before eating, which ends with their saying, in essence, that they are eating the food before them for the benefit of all beings. In other words, that they are eating not first and foremost for themselves, but instead to sustain their practice, so that others might ultimately be saved through it. They dedicate the merit that comes from eating to all sentient beings.

What was new to me was Kabatznick's application of this concept of dedicating merit to a non-Buddhist context. She describes it as "the practice of offering any benefit that comes from your commitment to healthful eating to specific people or groups of people." She explains that a friend of hers who is a survivor of cancer dedicates the merit from eating well to her husband and daughter. As her friends says, "What I put in my body is my future, and my future affects my family." Thinking about the impact of her food choices on her loved ones makes it easier, she says, to eat well.

In the same way, we can choose to make our relationship with food more meaningful by dedicating the merit from eating well to our partners and spouses, our children, our grandchildren, even our as-yet-unborn grandchildren. Or we can dedicate the merit that comes from eating locally grown produce to the wellbeing of the farmers who grow it. Or the benefits of eating well to lose weight to all those who themselves struggle with weight loss.

Great idea. Great book.

Think about this at your next meal: to whom will you dedicate the merits of your eating today?

Now, eat well and be well...