Eat or Drink Your Way to Enlightenment

(Reproduced. First Published on 23rd August, 2008)

Think of something that you really really like to eat - that makes your mouth water, for some of us a juicy burger, a cup of coffee or tea, even a beer on a hot day. Or perhaps, think of a piece of lime on your tongue, a really acidic piece of lime. Picture it on your tongue. Taste it in your mind. Enjoy every thought, every moment of it, carefully!

Now let us see what happened to us. When we thought of the burger or the coffee or beer an object came to mind. How many of you observed your breadth then? A change in your breadth. And how many of you felt you were salivating?


When our mind came in to contact with the object we drew on our past experience to add a quality to that thought, or in other words we bathed it with all the characteristics we attribute it with. We then experienced a feeling - based on the qualitative description that we gave it

We have to agree that this quality is not the real quality that we may eventually, actually experience. The same would hold true if we were to see a real burger with our eyes and not our minds, when it would follow the same process of cognition. And the quality that we experience is not the actual but it is only what we perceived it to be - which could be wrong.

We must also agree that when we thought of the burger what we thought of was the image of it that was impinged in our mind, an image to which we have extended certain permanence as to its quality and which seem to exist as a single complete entity of its own right without dependence on any constituent part of what it is made of.

If you examine further you would find that you then proceeded to experience a feeling, albeit a pleasant one if you salivated! This pleasant feeling which you perceived as good made you act by salivating. In other words you took the solid object of the burger or the coffee in your mind and based all your perceptions around this solid object.

Likewise, everything we see with our five senses or infer in our mind undergoes this same process. Nothing is what it really is. Everything usually is a "quality added" representation or an image – a misapprehension.

Now, let us take this burger or the cup of coffee - do you really want it? If you are thirsty have a drink of water, if you are hungry eat something. So what are we doing by dreaming of coffee? What we are doing is that we are experiencing the pleasant feeling that we get from a cup of coffee. We then begin to crave for that feeling and cling to it until we make it possible to become one with that feeling by consuming it. When we have the coffee we may feel disappointed, as it was not what we expected. Or, we may feel it is good but soon find that it fails to give us permanent satisfaction even though we have more of it. The more we have it the less we may want it. Economists refer to it as a decrease in the marginal propensity to consume. And, we may continue drinking, chasing after that coffee feeling until we are full, throw up and then tell ourselves - never again coffee. Similarly we can cloy the appetite by eating too much of a sweet food or become cloyed with pleasure, with any activity that we view as pleasurable.

In fact it was not the coffee we wanted, was it? Wasn't it the feeling that we perceived coffee to give us that we wanted? That we craved for? So, in the case of the burger and the coffee we were craving for a feeling - isn't it this true?

These are simple examples. But take anything and everything, isn’t it the same with everything? Don’t we have an object in our mind and then crave for the feelings it brings? Or in other words don’t we act on feelings we get on perceptions that we form on objects?

If you look deeply - you will find when we entertain or satisfy our senses we are satisfying our craving for the feeling it gives.

Let us take the simple case of dreaming or daydreaming - what do we do? What do we satisfy? Aren’t we satisfying our mind with pleasant feelings?

We have addictions - we know we can be addicted to anything - alcohol, drugs, computer games and whatnot - this we know as excessive use of it gives us physical and mental problems. But what about feelings we have? Aren’t we addicted to them as well? If not why do we salivate - salivate for the burger, the feeling of the acidic flavor of the lime on our tongue, look forward to the coffee and enjoy dreaming or daydreaming of its pleasantness?

We are all suffering from an addiction - our craving for pleasant feelings that are found upon objects of the mind. This addiction no one talks of. This is what causes or creates our problems - our suffering.

Now, let us go back to the cup of coffee. How many cups do we need to make us satisfied and then make us sick? So this coffee that is otherwise healthy and that we craved can actually make us sick - so it cannot give us perpetual satisfaction, can it? But the thought of it can, can it not but until your thoughts change?

And once we have taken the coffee we may not want it again for sometime. We have satisfied that craving temporarily and now our mind is occupied by some other craving. So where now is the craving for that coffee? It is gone - no longer there, cannot be grasped, as though it never existed. It would be the same if our coffee craving had been replaced by a craving for something else.

Now let us take our mind back to the same coffee time yesterday. We had the same feeling and craving yesterday and now today. Now we know that it is just a feeling we like to experience and we will realize that it is just as empty today as much as it was yesterday. This we will realize if we examine it after we have the coffee today. Think of all those feelings of coffee we had just a while ago, and yesterday, and the day before and the day before that and so on. What do you think now - weren't those just objects and resulting feelings and our craving for those feelings?

Many of us do not think of this because we have several things going on in our minds at the same time - listening to music, thinking of our spouses, children, friends, errands, chores - all in the same manner - as objects that appear in our mind.

If we were to think about every little step in making and drinking the coffee, consciously being aware of every moment both physically and mentally using the breadth as an aide we will begin to slow our mind. We will then begin to see things more clearly as they are for what they are and recognize their transient nature – “knowledge and vision of things as they are (yathâbutha ñana dhassana). This is divine eating or drinking, mindful eating and drinking and is de rigueur in most or all meditation retreats. You should try doing that all the time and not limit it to practice sessions.

Every experience is fraught with suffering because we do not see things as they are. What we see is what is conditioned, conditioned by desire, by craving, by anger, by aversion, or just by confusion – confusion arising from misapprehension of something or someone’s action or a perceived threat to ones existence. It is just how we are made so we can function in this world, the same as every other animal in this world. But the only difference is that we have the ability to discern this truth from the misapprehended reality and that is if we use this ability to do so. If we don’t we are no better than the animals. We usually display all the animal characteristics as we go about our daily lives. So it is not too late to pause, sit back and think about it.

All things are impermanent in nature, both physically and in the mind. They are not permanent or perpetual, they change all the time. So we cannot make an object of anything as a solid, permanent, static, non-changing object. All things are changing all the time reacting to conditions around it - so our burger and coffee will not be the same everyday (this is referred to as anicca). Nothing has the ability to satisfy us permanently because something else will condition it. And, nothing is the object we see in our minds, the object, which we have deluded by adding a quality or qualities to it based on our notions, concepts and desires, our hatred, our creations and confusions. Although we always perceive everything to exist by itself nothing exists by itself (referred to as anatta).

So if we attach ourselves to what is permanent we are bound to suffer pain, sorrow, sadness and despair when it disintegrates or dies or becomes afflicted with disease or just vanishes. This is the first noble truth: suffering (dukka).

Attachment at the very basic level results from desire and this is the second noble truth, which is the reason for suffering. If we put an end to desire then we will put an end to suffering. This is the third noble truth: cessation of suffering.

In order to do so we need to see things for what they are, see how we desire for things that do not exist by themselves. To cultivate non-attachment to these things requires practice and training through meditation - several techniques of meditation, and living one’s life ethically, with concentration and wisdom so one is not tempted to stray away from one's scrutiny in perception (variously referred to as sampajhana (wisdom in action) or yoniso manasikaro) – done best if one follows the Eight-Fold path of wisdom, ethical conduct and mental discipline, namely Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration. This is the fourth noble truth. This is the only truth that governs reality, governs all phenomena. It is also referred to as sacca dhamma in pali or satya dharma in sanskrit.