Spiritual Views of Food

   The other day, one of my language students had asked me whether the Buddhist celebration of Vesak involved fasting of any kind. My student was in some ways reflecting on the Muslim traditions where people fast as part of their spiritual life. I had suddenly recollected on how Buddha had gone through many periods of fasting, before he had almost reached the point of wasting away. A young woman had then spotted him and had given him some sweetened milk, which allowed the Buddha to continue his journey toward enlightenment. Many scholars have interpreted this event in the Buddha's life as particularly meaningful in that it reminds people of the Middle Path toward consuming things: neither indulging in food out of craving nor denying things out of a misplaced belief in 'self-denial'.
    Meditative practice sometimes reveals our complicated relationships with food, particularly as the practice can increase a person's sensitivities. Just in the car tonight on the way from group practice, the facilitator was sharing about how he develops a kind of sensitivity toward sweet things while on intensive retreat, to the point where he can even sense a mental confusion after tasting a candy. Long after retreat, the facilitator will often have sweet things, since they are commonplace in Western society, but the period of not eating sweets makes him sensitive to their effects on the mind. The discussion made me realize that there are so many things that can bring a person to a state of confusion, including the everyday stimulants of caffeine or the sugar found in chocolate and soda. The confusion would come from craving: wanting something and then getting excited about having it. I have to say that my weak points are caffeine and sweets, and they are such a source of excitement to the senses. Is the solution then to cut them out altogether?
       For health purposes, I would say it's best to minimize stimulating foods as much as possible. It's easy to say, but hard to do in a society that values fast pace and almost constant stimulation. I am even tempted to say that curbing the habit of stimulating the senses requires a different kind of environment: one that is a little less competitive and certainly more natural. I think it's also important to get a sense of when people use food as a stimulant. For example, I have noticed that I tend to desire sweet or caffeinated beverages when I am under pressure or might feel emotionally isolated. It's almost as though the sugar or caffeine will lift me out of an emotion that I don't particularly like or enjoy. Here, it takes a lot of compassion to just be with that emotion rather than giving into the temptation to go into a more 'exciting' or joyful one. A second point is to be curious about difficult or heavy emotions. If I cultivate more gratitude toward emotions that feel tense or difficult and even embrace them, I will have less recourse to trying to switch to something more joyful or stimulating. And this attitude of equanimity also ends up helping the meditative practice as well.
    I don't  necessarily think that any food is 'bad' for a person. For instance, there doesn't seem to be that many foods that are harmful to people as long as they are in moderation. I think from the Chan perspective, the problems would arise when people are not aware of the habit energy that is behind consuming the foods that one enjoys. That habit energy is often accumulated emotional things, and food  is sometimes a way to assuage the habit or hide difficulties. If I am not aware of how I am approaching the foods that I enjoy, I will miss the attachments I create. I have already hinted at how these attachments are often hidden in the 'object' of the food itself, and it's hard to disentangle from the object of craving unless I face the difficult emotions that go into that attachment.
   Attachment is always a combination of avoiding things I don't enjoy, liking the pleasant, and ignoring the nature of the pleasant/unpleasant. It would be helpful to observe these challenging emotional energies without using food as a way to block them out. And this  bare observation can be one way to overcome enmeshment in cravings for food or other substances.