Sacred Food

The first morsel is to destroy

all evils,

The second morsel is to practice

all good deeds,

The third morsel is to save

all sentient beings --

May we all attain the Path to Buddhahood.

First of all, Happy New Year to everyone! I want to begin the New Year with this prayer because it reminds us all to be a giver. Sacred - means worthy of respect. And it is in our modern days of time that food is seen out of respect. In our fridge, if it is a bit rotten, discoloured, wilted or too soft, we tend to trash it. I used to work at a cafe and I couldn't believe how much food was wasted. When food does not sell or when plates came back to us with just a few bites and then in the dump it travels. It bothered me a lot. A lot of energy/conditions involved into producing the food on a plate. I haven't thought of sacred food as much these years but the awareness came back to me as I read the article called "Gift of Food" by Vandana Shiva in a magazine called Resurgence in which agricultural crisis, heath crisis and poverty were discussed. Here is my mini summary of it below.

I learnt about "Annadana" - an Indian word meaning giving of food and how food is sacred. "The giver of food is the giver of life."

True isn’t it? Food creates life. Without food, we would starve and die with hunger pains. And believe me, when we are hungry, we will not be picky about our food and we will eat every piece of it.

It talks about gratitude, “the very possibility of our being alive is based on the lives of all kinds of beings that have gone before us--our parents, the soil, the earthworms--and that is why the giving of food in Indian thought have been treated as everyday sacrifice
that we have to perform.”

Did you know that the poorest villages, when the people use their bread ovens, the first piece of baked bread was given to the cow first then to whoever was in hunger?

Did you know that in this tribal area called Chattisgarh, people make beautiful weave design with rice in a paddy for birds to eat during off season in the rice field?

Did you know that in harvest festival in South India, women often decorate their house with beautiful artwork using rice called Kolam? It is to feed the ants. Yes, you heard it, ants. I understand some of us would be disguised or shock. It is really beautiful if you think about it. It is an offering to life.  It is a good deed. It is because of them that we exist. All beings, insects, soil organisms, earthworms etc gave us the conditions for life, food. They make the soil fertile allowing life to grow on it and creating healthy food.

The big problem is when we decide to take out nature’s role. We used nitrates as fertilizer and poison to keep bugs dead. “When you have the right balance, living organisms never become pests; they all coexist, and none of them destroys your crops.” We genetically modified our food source (GMO). The crops are engineered so the plants release toxins throughout its core. The effect is the birds and insects eat the part of it and die so fewer crops for insects and birds.

People ask: “How can we protect biodiversity if we are to meet growing human needs?

How are we are going to meet growing human needs without protecting biodiversity?

There seems to be surpluses of food in the West but is that really true when you do not calculate labour-displacement, species-displacement, and resource-destroying while only seeing labour-production? It is not cool when we have food as a result of taking it away from others. Are we really creating more food? Is the more “less nutrition, less species, less nourishment, [fewer] farmers? The giving of food is related to the idea that every one of us is born in debt to other beings; our very condition of being born depends on this debt…to the bees and the butterflies that pollinate our crops, to the earthworms and the fungi and the microbes and the bacteria in the soil that are constantly working away to create fertility that our chemical fertilizers can never, never replenish.”

Be like nature, be generous, one seed from nature can produce enough food to feed many people. But with one GMO seed, we are doing the opposite of giving. “It is taking food from the food chain and the web of life.”

What we can do:

1. Support your local organic stores.

2. Waste less food.

3. Be mindful of insects when you walk

4. Help a worm in need when it rains.

5. Provide bird friends some seeds

6. Do not litter.

Want to add more to my list? New suggestions are below.

7. Consider becoming vegetarian and / or vegan.

8. Support your local veggie restaurant.

9. Eat a high proportion of nourishing foods compared to "Junk" foods.

10. Start an organic garden on your own or with friends and family.

11. Take a moment before you eat your food and imagine where it came from before it got to you, and where it go after it leaves you. Then give thanks.

12. Invite friends over and cook for them. Take the opportunity to lovingly share with them how you made the food, the choices and why.