How Mindful Eating is a practice of looking deeply
How Mindful Eating is a practice of looking deeply
And why it's important to build a well of resources over time through mindful living
I had the pleasure of teaching mindful eating at Columbia University’s Law School’s Mindfulness program this past week. My heart broke into a fury after the administration’s handling of the student protests last year in support of a ceasefire in Gaza, which is why I have appreciated programs like this where professors have cultivated a place of refuge for faculty and students; it has also become a place to explore the complex nature of what it means to be a student and alum there right now, a space to sit in the discomfort of accountability and responsibility and potential change when it comes to justice. And because of those reasons, I wanted to continue to share the dharma here.
They cultivated a foundational series around resilience this semester, and I was invited to share a practice that was near and dear to me. Below is my dharma talk walking the students through a practice that has been fundamental practice for me on how to live mindfully everyday. I hope it becomes a resource and is of service to you as well.
For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Kim Thai. I use she/her pronouns and I am a student in Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh’s Plum Village Tradition. My dharma name given to me is Ancestral River of the Heart and in Vietnamese is dòng sông tổ tiên của trái tim.
I’m grateful to be here again and to be in community with you all. I’ll be co-leading the retreat for current students and alumni next month as well if you’d like to go deeper with me and Pat Bloom.
For our flow today, I’ll do a short dharma talk, and then we’ll go into a mindful eating practice and then break out into sharing groups. I would ask if you are eating now to please leave at least 10 bites of your bowl for our practice shortly.
But before we get started, let’s take three deep breaths after the sound of the bell.
[Ringing of the bell]
When Liz Emens asked me to be a part of this series on the fundamentals of mindfulness, to help us build our resilience, I felt called to share the practice of mindful eating.
Mindful eating isn’t a practice that is typically shared or taught in the West but is indeed a fundamental part of the Plum Village tradition I practice in.
So why mindful eating?
When we typically think of mindfulness, we think of a person sitting on a cushion, cross-legged, sitting in silence, almost statue-esque, right? But the truth is, mindfulness is a practice in all aspects of our daily life, it is the practice of slowing down, becoming present with every moment of every day so you can feel a general sense of aliveness.
When we talk about a core resource for resilience, I think of it in this way – that yes, resilience is about surviving adversity, but it is also about creating fundamental practices so that when shit hits the fan, you are not completely depleted. Resilience in its best form, to me, is being able to draw from a deep well of resources that you have built over time so that when the ground underneath you begins to shake, you are actually on solid footing.
To me, that is the power of mindfulness – it is the accumulation of practice, a deep well of resources that you have cultivated in your consciousness.
People often talk about how they practice meditation, the type of meditation they practice so you may have heard of samatha and vipassana. Samatha meaning stopping, and vipassana meaning looking.
Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh, or Thầy as his loving students call him, often instructs us to not just look at things but to look deeply.
So in a breath awareness practice, our thoughts wander right? Because that’s our brain’s job, so what do we do? We have to stop — samatha — and then bring our awareness back to our breath. Overtime you may see a pattern of where your mind goes, what thoughts and feelings arise, so you start noticing. And you notice more and more and more. This is looking.
And so you notice, you look, and the more you practice, the deeper you get, the more insight you find about yourself, about the world around you.
When this insight arises, you start feeling that sense of groundedness a bit more, you sink into the Earth, into yourself, a bit more and more. You start building that well of resourcefulness, of resilience. To put quite simply — you start feeling more alive.
And that is why I practice, because I want to be alive, I want to feel the aliveness that is in me and in the world around me. Because what is the point if we are just sleepwalking through life? Why be asleep, when we can be awake?
So you might be wondering, Kim, what the hell does this have to do with mindful eating? My salad is wilting over here!
Well, mindful eating is another way for us to practice looking deeply. Instead of bringing your attention to your breath, you bring your attention to your food. That is the practice. Often when we eat, we’re doing something else — we’re watching something, we’re talking, we’re emailing, we’re walking, whatever it is. We’re always doing something while we’re eating these days in our modern society. Sometimes to the point where we don’t even remember what we ate, what it tastes like.
Raise your hand if you can recall the last time you were just present with your food and did nothing else?
Yeah, so this practice to me is pretty radical because it pushes back against the norms of our current society and invites us to be with our food, which in turn invites us to be with the earth and our bodies. It is a practice of re-wiring our brain, of letting go; of unlearning our habit energy around food; it is a practice of gratitude; and it is a deep practice of contemplation on interdependence.
It is a practice of moderation, to eat only what we need to eat. Up to 783 million people are facing hunger in the world right now, almost 47 million in the US and 1.2 million in NYC. That’s 1 in 8 families who do not have the resources or access to food like the one you have right in front of you.
So for the next 10 minutes, we’re going to practice mindful eating. We’ll start off with contemplations and I’ll guide you through and then we’ll take a few moments to eat in silence.
If you feel comfortable you can bring your hands together in prayer as an act of honoring your food you are about to put into your body, an act of deep reverence for the food in front of you as we take in the following contemplations. If that isn’t comfortable for you, you can just simply look deeply at your food in this moment to take it in.
[Ringing of the bell]
This is the Five Contemplations before Eating
This food is a gift of the earth, the sky, numerous living beings and much hard and loving work.
May we eat with mindfulness and gratitude to be worthy of this food.
May we keep our compassion alive in such a way that reduces the suffering of living beings, stops contributing to climate change and heals and preserves our precious planet.
May we eat to transform unwholesome mental formations such as greed and eat with moderation so one day, no one is hungry.
May we accept this food and eat in a way that nurtures our siblinghood, builds our communities, and cultivates our deep aspiration to create a society where we can all be happy, healthy and free.
Guided meditation
While you’re eating, notice the pace in which you eat. How quickly are you eating your food? Can you slow down to really be present with the food?
If it helps, you can put down your utensil between each bite. Perhaps taking a deep breath between each bite.
Now take a minute to really taste your food. What flavors do you taste? What do you notice in this moment that you haven’t noticed before?
And then taking a moment to think about all the people, nature, things that needed to happen for this food to be here today. Try to go back as far as you can with each bite. Sending the energy of gratitude to each step.
And if any thoughts come up – whether that’s to-do lists, emotions, whatever it may be, the practice here is just to notice, without judgment. Just notice and then let them go. We can always revisit them later.
Now we’ll take 5 minutes to eat in silence.
Contemplations
What feelings arose during this eating meditation?
What was surprising to you?
What or who did you send gratitude to for this meal today?