Eating

Understood as a spiritual exercise

December 8th 2012
Human beings, like animals, have to take in food to survive. But unlike animals, they can consciously use the act of eating as a way of growing psychically and spiritually. And I will go so far as to say that until they are able to view the act of eating from a broader, deeper perspective, it is pointless their claiming to be cultured, civilized. This, for me, is the test. When people learn to eat with an enlightened awareness, when their food fills them with wonder and gratitude at the thought that the whole universe has worked to produce the fruit, vegetables and cereals that give them life, then, yes, we can talk of culture and civilization.