4.
Feeding the Body, Nourishing the Soul
The Yoga of Cooking and Eating
Cooking is generally thought as something you do to feed yourself and your family. However cooking, if done with
the right consciousness, can be a way to reconnect with the divine.
Whether or not that reconnect actually takes place depends on one’s consciousness. Our consciousness during our cooking should be that we are “cooking for the pleasure of God and that we want to share our food with others.”
Knowing that we’re cooking for someone else can help remove some of the selfishness we harbor in our hearts and can increase the quality of selflessness. Since the process of yoga is meant to purify the heart and mind and reconnect with the Supreme, cooking with the right consciousness can be transformed into a yoga practice.
This entails that the cook isn’t allowed to taste the food while the cooking is taking place. As soon as one hears this, the immediate response is that of complete surprise. How is it possible to cook without tasting what we are doing? It takes practice and a recipe should be followed. Since the food is being cooked for the pleasure of God, God should be the first individual to taste it. It gets even more difficult, as the cook isn’t even supposed to be thinking of eating or enjoying the food while cooking.
As bizarre as all this might be sounding, this is the method of cooking adopted by those who adhere to the Bhakti or devotional path within Vedic tradition. One way to express our love for people we care for is to cook for them. So a similar way to cultivate our
love for God is to cook delicious preparations with a mood of love and devotion to God.
Gadadhara Pandita Dasa, a follower of Vedic tradition, explains it by the example of a mother. Most people will agree that the best meals are often prepared by a loving mother.
Why a mom enjoys cooking for her children? She gets pleasure from watching them eat what she’s cooked.
The food she’s prepared is imbued with her feelings of motherly love and care. Her consciousness has entered the food and is being transferred to me. That transference of consciousness creates a powerful bond. So, even though she may or may not use the perfect amount of turmeric, hing or cumin, the most important ingredient is bhakti, or love.
Consciousness affecting material things may seem a bit farfetched, but we witness this effect taking place with works of art and music, and how they’re embedded with the consciousness of the particular artists.
When we listen to or examine a work of art or music, the artist’s mood also becomes apparent and many times we can be emotionally impacted by that mood. Similarly, cooked food is no less a work of art than traditional art or music and is invested with the emotions and consciousness of the cook.
the right consciousness, can be a way to reconnect with the divine.
Whether or not that reconnect actually takes place depends on one’s consciousness. Our consciousness during our cooking should be that we are “cooking for the pleasure of God and that we want to share our food with others.”
Knowing that we’re cooking for someone else can help remove some of the selfishness we harbor in our hearts and can increase the quality of selflessness. Since the process of yoga is meant to purify the heart and mind and reconnect with the Supreme, cooking with the right consciousness can be transformed into a yoga practice.
This entails that the cook isn’t allowed to taste the food while the cooking is taking place. As soon as one hears this, the immediate response is that of complete surprise. How is it possible to cook without tasting what we are doing? It takes practice and a recipe should be followed. Since the food is being cooked for the pleasure of God, God should be the first individual to taste it. It gets even more difficult, as the cook isn’t even supposed to be thinking of eating or enjoying the food while cooking.
As bizarre as all this might be sounding, this is the method of cooking adopted by those who adhere to the Bhakti or devotional path within Vedic tradition. One way to express our love for people we care for is to cook for them. So a similar way to cultivate our
love for God is to cook delicious preparations with a mood of love and devotion to God.
Gadadhara Pandita Dasa, a follower of Vedic tradition, explains it by the example of a mother. Most people will agree that the best meals are often prepared by a loving mother.
Why a mom enjoys cooking for her children? She gets pleasure from watching them eat what she’s cooked.
The food she’s prepared is imbued with her feelings of motherly love and care. Her consciousness has entered the food and is being transferred to me. That transference of consciousness creates a powerful bond. So, even though she may or may not use the perfect amount of turmeric, hing or cumin, the most important ingredient is bhakti, or love.
Consciousness affecting material things may seem a bit farfetched, but we witness this effect taking place with works of art and music, and how they’re embedded with the consciousness of the particular artists.
When we listen to or examine a work of art or music, the artist’s mood also becomes apparent and many times we can be emotionally impacted by that mood. Similarly, cooked food is no less a work of art than traditional art or music and is invested with the emotions and consciousness of the cook.
When we eat, we’re not only eating the food and it’s ingredients, but we’re also eating the consciousness of the cook. A very important question we can ask ourselves before our next meal is, “Whose consciousness am I eating?”
It is one of the most important and least understood activities of life that the feelings that go into the preparation of food affect everyone who partakes of it. This activity should be unhurried, peaceful and happy because the energy that flows into that food impacts the energy of the receiver.
That is why the advanced spiritual teachers of the East never eat food prepared by anyone other than their own disciples. If the person preparing the food is spiritually advanced., an active charge of happiness, purity and peace will pour forth into the food from him, and this pours forth into any one who partakes of it.
To be healthy, we need to prepare our own food, for ourselves and our families. We can return to good eating practices one mouth at a time, one meal at a time, by preparing our own food and preparing it properly.
Food decorating the super market shelves is devoid of any feelings other than that of pure greed and exploitation. Because people are eating such foods, they are turning into desensitized robots. These days no one reacts if a man is killed in broad daylight.
It is one of the most important and least understood activities of life that the feelings that go into the preparation of food affect everyone who partakes of it. This activity should be unhurried, peaceful and happy because the energy that flows into that food impacts the energy of the receiver.
That is why the advanced spiritual teachers of the East never eat food prepared by anyone other than their own disciples. If the person preparing the food is spiritually advanced., an active charge of happiness, purity and peace will pour forth into the food from him, and this pours forth into any one who partakes of it.
To be healthy, we need to prepare our own food, for ourselves and our families. We can return to good eating practices one mouth at a time, one meal at a time, by preparing our own food and preparing it properly.
Food decorating the super market shelves is devoid of any feelings other than that of pure greed and exploitation. Because people are eating such foods, they are turning into desensitized robots. These days no one reacts if a man is killed in broad daylight.
“That anyone should need to write a book advising people to "eat food" could be taken as a measure of our alienation and confusion. Or we can choose to see it in a more positive light and count ourselves fortunate indeed that there is once again real food for us to eat.”
~ Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto