How To Walk The Middle Path With Food

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After his renunciation, Siddhartha Gautama sought various teachers and teachings to attain liberation or nirvana. He studied under the great teachers of his time, and he mastered everything that was taught to him in a very short time. But he was dissatisfied because none of these paths showed him how to awaken or attain nirvana.

Disappointed, Siddhartha left his meditation teachers and practised severe austerities. These austerities practised by ascetics included minimal intake of food, different forms of breath control and mind control. Siddhartha practised these techniques for six years. During this time, he became so emaciated that his bones were visible under his skin. Siddhartha thought that his extreme self-denial would lead him to awakening or liberation.

One day, on the verge of exhaustion and starvation, Siddhartha fainted near a stream. He was found by a young woman, Sujata. Sujata was on her way to make her daily offering to a tree spirit whom she worshipped. Her daily offering was kheer, a milk rice pudding made as a traditional offering to Gods and Spirits.

When Sujata saw the unconscious and emaciated Siddhartha lying beside the stream, she revived him with the water from the stream. Her heart was filled with compassion for this emaciated man lying on the ground. She offered the bowl of kheer to Siddhartha, urging him to eat.

Siddhartha refused, saying, “I am practising austerities to be liberated. On this path, I will not eat food or drink anything until I am liberated.”

Sujata admonishes him, “Look at where this has led you. You were almost dead. Is that the liberation you were looking for?”

Siddhartha, too weak to say anything, just hung his head.

“There is no reason to go to extremes to achieve your goal. You don’t have to feast every day, but you can take whatever your body needs to sustain and achieve your goal.”

Sujata’s teaching and compassion moved Siddhartha. He gratefully partook of the offering of kheer and felt life energy come back into him and said,

The middle path is the foundation of Buddha’s teachings. Zen teacher Jan Chozen Bays explores the middle path in her book Mindful Eating: A guide to rediscovering a healthy and joyful relationship with food.

Jan talks about Mind Hunger in Chapter 2, one of the nine types of hunger.

This paragraph resonated with me deeply. Over the past few years, many YouTube and Instagram “health influencers” have created and disseminated “scientific information” on how we should eat, what we should not eat, the foods that cause cancer, and the habits that are keeping us from losing weight.

I’ve got a few friends who are deep into this kind of information. They consume hours and hours of videos and information on this content and share it with me, with pronouncements like “lentils have carbohydrates and proteins,” “soak your millets for 8 hours,” “eat 40 gms of protein a day,” and “don’t consume food that is refrigerated.”

This repeated and persistent onslaught of information about food was increasing my anxiety, and I was developing a complete lack of confidence in my body’s ability to know what food is good for it. My friends who “live a healthy life” following everything in these influencer’s videos seem to be living in a perpetually anxious state when it comes to food.

That leaves little space for enjoyment, being present, and taking pleasure from food.

This is a problem for regular people and even doctors like Jan Chozen Bays.

In the context of eating, finding the middle way means not clinging to any food and not hating any food. Don’t go overboard with anything, in either a positive or negative way. Food is food. The rest is mind games.”

For those of us who think knowledge is power and that we need to know the scientific facts about food to be healthy, Jan explains how our mind works.

The mind is a key part of our eating, and we do need external information about what we eat and our health so that we can make informed choices. But we also need to cultivate the quality of discernment between thinking and awareness.

When we are “thinking,” we are not aware; we are caught in the stories in our heads. When we are aware, we are in the present moment, rooted in our bodies, senses, and here and now.

Our mind can play an important role in our eating and health choices, but awareness leads to connection with our bodies. Our five senses and our bodies are our biggest sources of data about what is good for us or not. When we build a connection with our body, listen to it, and observe it, we will be able to understand the subtle ways in which food we ingest is transformed in our body.

We will be able to make choices rooted in the moment, the ever-changing nature of the body, and be present to whatever comes up for us.

Jan urges us to cultivate the skillful quality of awareness that will help us walk the middle path. Awareness, presence, and connection will help us skillfully improve our relationship with our food and discern the information we consume about food and our health.

This will conclude this edition of our newsletter, in which we continue exploring Jan Chozen Bays’s book Mindful Eating. In the next edition, we will explore the concept of awareness and connection with our bodies.

If you are reading the book, tell me what the most insightful moment in the book has been so far.

And we finish this edition with a tiny story.

💌 Siri