5. Eating with Bodhichitta
The bodhisattva way of performing the eating yoga is that you yourself are the servant serving all sentient beings who are your lord or master. They are the precious ones from whom you receive all past, present, and future happiness, so you are a servant to them. A bodhisattva eats food to serve them; that is the bodhisattva eating yoga. (Lama Zopa Rinpoche)
Photo: Bill Kane, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, 2016
The daily activities that you are doing, the point is to make them most beneficial for sentient beings, a cause for enlightenment, a cause for oneself to attain omniscience so that one can liberate sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and bring them to enlightenment. Make the activities that you normally do in daily life, anyway – for survival and so forth – make them most beneficial. Make them not only become Dharma, but the purest Dharma, the cause of enlightenment to achieve the cessation of all mistakes of mind and complete all the qualities, the highest success.
It is explained in the teachings that, by practicing eating yoga, you transform your eating into eating yoga. That is one thing; that is the most important thing. Then, you are making offerings to Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Then, you are making charity to all sentient beings, including those living in your body. The many tiny creatures, sentient beings, that are living in your body, to bring them to enlightenment, how can you do that? By revealing Dharma when they become a human being. How do you do that? While they are in your body, by making food charity to them. That is why Buddha explained the eating yoga, so that your eating and drinking becomes the yoga of eating and drinking. If you don’t do that, what happens is that your eating becomes ordinary eating, just for pleasure and survival, and is done with attachment. It just becomes the cause of samsara, just another cause of samsara – to be reborn again in samsara and experience all the sufferings again. And not only that, in particular, to be reborn in the lower realms. If eating is done with attachment seeking the happiness of this life, then you get reborn in the lower realms.
There is one quotation in Pabongkha’s Calling the Guru From Afar. In every moment, in every second, it is in your hands – whatever action you are doing – as to whether it becomes the cause of enlightenment or the cause of hell, the cause of the lower realms or the cause of enlightenment, the cause of liberation from samsara or the cause of samsara. It is similar, even for this life, whether it becomes the cause of a problem now or the cause of peace, inner peace, now. If you eat with a healthy mind, free from attachment grasping to the pleasure of this life, then it becomes inner peace. Otherwise, it becomes a problem. Even today in this life, because there is no peace in your heart, but disturbances, unhappiness, no satisfaction, dissatisfaction, so it just becomes the cause of problems. Totally, it is in your hands. Liberation from samsara is totally in your hands. When eating, walking, sleeping, doing your job, whether you want it to become the cause of liberation or the cause of samsara, it is in your hands. It depends on your mind; it depends on how you think. It depends on your motivation, so everything is totally in your hands. There are three things: the cause of samsara, the cause of the lower realms, then one more – you are running out of merits. You received this food, this enjoyment, as a result of past good karma, some merits collected in the past. You are living on that result, so what you are doing is just finishing that. You are just only using that, finishing your merit; that is it.
If there is no continual merit, if you don’t make this action Dharma, then there is no continual making of merit. It is like living on the money you collected with hard work in the past, but it finishes fast if you are not collecting any more money by working. Like that, you are living on the merit collected in the past by practicing Dharma, but it is finishing. When it finishes, then you experience the result of past negative karma. That is why many wealthy people… They became wealthy early in life and, at that time, have no idea that this came from good karma, no idea at all. They think that they will be rich in this life forever. Because they don’t understand Dharma, they don’t use their money, their wealth, to collect merits, so everything is done with attachment clinging to this life. Therefore, everything becomes negative karma. There is nothing that becomes virtue, collecting merits. Then after some time, they run out of merit. Then nothing is working; everything is stopped. Then, they can’t even pay the rent for the house. Even the things that you don’t normally have to worry about like paying rent for the house, even basic things, become an unbelievable worry. Then, they cannot take care of their family. I have seen many like that. While they were wealthy they didn’t meet Dharma, there is no Dharma. Even if they heard Dharma, but they did not practice it. They did not use their wealth to collect extensive benefit by making charity to sentient beings and offerings to Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. You didn’t do that, so when you run out of merit, aaaah, at the same time you have to keep your image, a rich house, rich this and that, because you are in a rich society. You joined many of these people, so you have to keep the image. Maybe as a Western person maybe not much; it may be more in the East, Indians. Then, they suffer so much. They don’t have [money] but they have to keep up the image, then there are lots of debts, masses of problems, on and on like this. That is what happens.
There are three things, three problems, that happen if this one action of eating doesn’t become Dharma – the danger that happens. There is one thing to know: Everything is in your hands; it depends on your mind. These are very powerful words. I don’t remember them exactly, but think that. It kind of gives the idea.
Hinayana, Mahayana, and Vajrayana Ways of Eating
There is the eating yoga of Hinayana: eating food unstained by the three poisonous minds of anger, attachment, and ignorance, but just to survive in order to practice the Dharma. There is a prayer that monks commonly recite according to the Theravadin tradition, the Hinayana.
Seeing this food as medicine,
We eat it without attachment or hatred,
Not to become fat, not out of pride,
Not to look strong, only to sustain the body.
Eating is not for beauty of the body, elegance, to become soft, flexible, all this. It is just to survive in order to practice Dharma:
The bodhisattva way of performing the eating yoga is that you yourself are the servant serving all sentient beings who are your lord or master. They are the precious ones from whom you receive all past, present, and future happiness, so you are a servant to them. A bodhisattva eats food to serve them; that is the bodhisattva eating yoga. There is a prayer to achieve enlightenment for sentient beings, and then for the sentient beings living in your body, you make charity to them and then they achieve enlightenment. That is the bodhisattva way of doing eating yoga.
Through gathering together the organisms in my body with material things at the present,
In the future may I gather them with the Dharma.
In order to achieve the state of a complete buddha for the welfare of sentient beings,
I will consume this food and drink.
The tantric way of doing eating yoga is that you use what you are eating as a tsog offering or burning offering practice. Then, your eating becomes that practice: a tsog offering or a burning offering practice. For tsog offering, normally what you do is to visualize the guru-buddha-deity in front. But mainly, here, based on having received a tantric initiation, you yourself are the guru-deity. The three become one, [you, the guru, and the deity]. Then you eat the food as a tsog offering. You make an offering of “tsog.” Tsog is “collection,” offering a “collection,” enjoying the party of dakas and dakinis gathering. Most people have taken a highest yoga tantra initiation, so you see it as transcendental bliss and voidness. Of course, that is very secret. It is highest yoga tantra – very, very secret. Even to mention the name… In the strictest way, you cannot mention even the label. The real tsog is that.
Yourself as the guru-deity. At your heart, there is a syllable HUM, or visualize the deity – the Tara body mandala or the Vajrayogini body mandala, or the Heruka body mandala – at your heart, then making offering to that. You don’t just become the deity, but the guru; that is the most important one. Then you transform [the food and drink] into nectar, exactly the same as tsog. Then, generate great bliss. When you do that, then you collect the highest merit. You are offering it to the guru, so you collect the highest merit.
Eating Food Offerings Made by Others
The karmas collected with even small respect, some small praise, or you offer some small help to your parents of this life, then your karma is unbelievably powerful, so you start to experience happiness in this life. It is the same if you do some small harm or hurt [to your parents]; because the negative karma is very heavy, you start to experience the result in this life. Of the three types of karma, this is one you create in this life and start to experience the result of in this life. Then, there is karma you create in this life and experience billions or zillions of lives later.
Then, more powerful than your parents are monks and nuns living in the thirty-six vows. Then fully-ordained monks and fully ordained nuns are even more powerful. Then, more powerful than them are the arhats. Then, of numberless arhats and one bodhisattva, the one bodhisattva is more powerful than numberless arhats. It is said that if you look at one bodhisattva with a calm mind, then the merits are far more greater than if you make charity of your eyeball to the three realms’ – desire realm, form realm, and formless realm – sentient beings. Looking with a calm mind at a bodhisattva is more merit than making charity of your eyeball to them, because his bodhichitta is so powerful. If you look at one bodhisattva like this, glaring, then the negative karma is more heavy than taking out the eyeballs of all the sentient beings of the three realms. Then, of numberless bodhisattvas and one buddha, one buddha is more powerful. Then, of numberless buddhas and the guru, the guru is the most powerful. So the highest merit you collect is that with the guru. Then, there is unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable purification. It is the most powerful.
For those who are not living in pure vows, then eating offerings made by other sentient beings with devotion become like poison. If you do the tantric yoga of eating, with yourself as the guru-deity and bless the food and then eat it in this way, it doesn’t become poison; it becomes the means of collecting extensive merits and purification. Then, the other one is tsog offering, and then the other is like when you do a fire offering, with many different substances, seeds and so forth. Here, it is similar. You eat like a burning offering practice, and there is also unbelievable purification and you collect extensive merits.