The Fifth Mindfulness Training is about mindful consumption and health. This includes the practice of dwelling happily and peacefully in the present moment. The Buddha has said that nothing can survive without food. This means that our health, our happiness, our love, our peace as well as our anger, depression, and despair need food to continue to survive. This is why we have to consume in a way that supports good health of body and mind.
In Buddhism, we talk of consuming four kinds of nutriment or food: edible food, sense impressions, volition, and consciousness. Most of us absorb many toxins because so many unhealthy and addictive things are being produced all the time, with the intention of creating more consumption. A lot of the sickness, violence, anger, and despair around us result from toxic consumption that leads to ill-being. Mindful consumption is a concrete path toward a more nourishing and healing society.
The first nutriment the Buddha talked about is edible food. Many of us eat unconsciously. We are rushing from one place to another, talking while we eat, or struggling to feed a family after a tiring day of work. Many of us get our food from a place, like the supermarket, that is very disconnected from the place where our food is grown. Every time before we eat a piece of food, it’s good to practice looking deeply to see where that piece of food has come from.
Countries such as China and India used to be primarily vegetarian. Now, many people who have just gotten out of the situation of poverty in these countries want to eat meat like the rich people they see on television or read about in magazines. But the production of meat contributes to poverty and hunger by using up key farmland that could be used to grow larger amounts of other foods that could feed more people. If you continue to look deeply into eating a piece of meat, you may see the fear and frustration of the animal that has been killed. The body and mind of the animal are not separate. When the animal is very afraid, in pain, and completely unable to do anything to save her life, all that frustration and pain goes into her flesh and then the human consumer eats it. Even if we’re eating a vegetarian diet, we may be eating foods that have been processed with toxic chemicals; the crops may have been picked by workers who aren’t treated fairly or paid properly; the foods may be transported long distances; and there are many other ways in the growing, transporting, and marketing of crops that contribute to suffering. It’s not enough to just say that we eat vegetarian or vegan food and then not think about other aspects of our food consumption. Every time we eat or go shopping, we can look deeply into the process of how the food came to our table.
Sense impression is another kind of food we eat everyday. Sensory impressions are everything we take in through our senses: eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind. Ads on billboards, conversations we overhear or take part in, videos we watch, and texts that we receive—all these things penetrate into us, whether we want them to or not.
According to the Fifth Mindfulness Training we can see the computer as something we need to take great care in using. If we’re not careful we can become addicted to going on the Internet. In our tradition, when a monk or a nun uses the Internet, she or he has to have another monk or nun alongside so that they don’t get sucked into toxic consumption. While many of us use computers for work and can’t apply this practice, we can make agreements in our homes and families about how we use digital media. We can agree on specific times and places where this media is used and we can agree not to use it as the default way we spend time with other people.
When you have a conversation with a friend, you consume. What the other person says may be full of jealousy, craving, or despair, and while you’re listening to him or to her, you’re consuming. If you don’t have enough insight and compassion, these poisons will penetrate into you, and you will get sick after a number of years. We can give ourselves permission to withdraw politely from an unhealthy conversation. Whenever you’ve been listening to a great deal of negativity, for instance if you’re a psychotherapist, you need to refresh yourself before you do anything else. A good way is to do walking meditation and be in touch with all the wonderful manifestations of life that are there in nature. In your daily life you should have enough time to consume healthy things that nourish your joy, your happiness, your compassion, and your understanding.
When you read an article in a magazine, you consume. That article may be full of anger, fear, and violence, and if you continue to read articles like that every day, you’ll get sick. People who commit violent acts have always consumed a lot of violence, anger, and fear before committing that act. We are so busy that we don’t have the time to protect each other.
Volition is the third source of nutriment. Volition is your aspiration, your deepest desire, what you want to do with your life. This is a very powerful source of energy that helps us to be alive. Yet many of us don’t take the time to sit down and identify our deepest desires. If your deepest desire in you is to help save our planet, this is good nourishing food. If your deepest desire is to help children to be better protected, to have better education, to have a better environment, that is good food. But if your deepest desire is to have more money, fame, power, and sensual pleasure, this is toxic food that leads to craving, attachment, overwork, taking what should go to others, and other forms of living without mindfulness.
If we’re motivated by compassion and a desire to help ourselves and others to suffer less, that’s a much healthier and more nourishing kind of food. The energy provided by this kind of deepest desire, the ideal to serve, is very powerful and can give us a lot of strength to confront the difficulties presented to us in our daily lives. Our practice is to reexamine the food of intention that we consume every day, to make sure we’re providing ourselves with good, high quality food in terms of our volition.
The fourth nutriment is consciousness. We have many good things in our consciousness like mindfulness, concentration, insight, love, compassion, and joy. If we know the practice of mindfulness, we may touch the seeds of joy, happiness, mindfulness, and wisdom in us so that they become wholesome, healthy energies; that is good consumption.
The body can also consume itself. If we go on a fast for ten or fifteen days, our bodies begin to consume the fat and toxins that have been stored. You can survive a month without eating because there is a reserve of nutrients in your body.
Our consciousness consumes our thoughts and feelings and the environments in which we spend time. We need to be aware of what we’re feeding our consciousness. Consciousness can consume the good things it contains, or it can consume the things that aren’t so good.
Suppose you’ve suffered a lot as a child. You have many sad memories of the times you suffered, and all of these are still stored in your consciousness. Many of us have made a habit of going back to the past to experience again and again the suffering that we endured in the past. It’s as if we’re watching a film of the past over and over again, reliving the suffering of the past. The past has become a kind of prison for us, and we’re no longer free to enjoy the wonders of life available in the present moment.
There are animals that are ruminants, like water buffalo and cows. After chewing and swallowing, they bring up the food again and they chew and swallow it again. There are people who continue to consume the suffering of the past in that way. They spend their time during the day ruminating over their own suffering from the past.
The practice of mindfulness can help us get out of that prison and begin to learn how to live our lives in the present moment. If we are aware that we’re replaying the past, we can make a concentrated effort to notice something that is healthy and wonderful right in front of us at that very moment. It might be a part of our body that is working well and not aching; it may be the blue sky or the softness of a pillow under our head. If we breathe and pay attention to this wonderful thing that is present with us right now, then the movie will recede and lose some of its power, as if it no longer is being fed the electricity it needs to keep going.
You can even take the hand of the wounded child within you and invite her to come with you into the present moment. This can be very nourishing and healing. It will make you stronger so that later on when you want to look into the past you can do so with more perspective, while remaining firmly grounded in the present moment. This way you don’t lose yourself in the sorrows of the past.
There is also the food of collective consciousness. If you’re with a group of people who are all practicing being mindful together, as a group you’ll produce a collective energy of mindfulness, joy, and compassion. If, however, you’re in a group or a neighborhood where people are angry, violent, fearful, and hateful, then you and everyone around you will consume this food and will begin to act, react, speak, and look like they do, and to express the energy of anger, fear, and violence, whether you want to or not. Together these individuals create a collective energy of violence, anger, and hate that you can feel every time you go to that area. If you live in a place like this, or if your children go to school in a place like this, you and your family are consuming that food. If you stay around that energy for a few years, you’ll continue to consume the collective energy of hate and violence. If we can become more aware of our consumption, and deliberately focus on surrounding ourselves with people who are producing the energy of mindfulness, understanding, and love, then we can protect ourselves, our children, and our society, and get out of this present situation that’s full of anger, fear, violence, and despair. When we’re nourished and strong enough, we may be able to help transform that negative environment.
The Fifth Mindfulness Training is about happiness. We consume because we want to be happy. But consumption is not true happiness. People consume in order to cover up their suffering. Many people pour themselves a glass of alcohol or open the refrigerator to take something to eat or drink in order to help them forget their suffering, their difficulties, their loneliness, or their weariness with life. This is something peculiar to our modern society.
Happiness is not something that we have to look for and find somewhere else. Returning to the present moment, we are in touch with the wonders of life inside and around us. With the help of our mindful breathing and mindful steps, we can produce happiness straightaway. When we have mindfulness, concentration, and insight we become very rich people who are able to produce much happiness for ourselves and others; we don’t need to run after anything anymore.
Comments
Post a Comment