Food Choices and the Better Parts of Ourselves
I listened to one of Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev’s podcast teachings
this morning. It was on the subject of the yogic diet, in which he discusses
the three foods we encounter: high pranic, low pranic, and
neutral pranic. I won’t get into the depth of his discussion here: check out
Sadhguru’s teachings to learn about pranic food choices.
With his wonderful sagacity, Sadhguru reminds his students
that while attention to diet and how it relates to dosha-specific properties of
the body is important, there’s one thing that people who mind these
matters should never do. We should never become so preoccupied with diet that
food becomes our religion.
There’s an upsurge of better eating, of people and
professionals who understand how appalling the American diet has become, and
who are stepping away from things like fast food, meat, animal products like
milk, butter, and eggs, and corporate-produced foods. Pretty much everywhere I
look everyone is campaigning their version of right eating.
But awareness can become distraction. When that happens, I believe we lose sight of the better parts of ourselves - the part that woke up, rejected agribusiness, and embraced compassion. Enter behaviors like extended fasting, excessive and dangerous supplement taking, compulsive exercising, fear of food, and eating disorders. Otherwise intelligent people start to do terrifically foolish things to their bodies and minds.
The message I took away from this morning’s teaching is
this: don’t enshrine anything, including diet, as a path to personal excellence,
enlightenment, or even health. There’s absolutely no guarantee that a clean,
compassionate diet is going to do anything to improve health or extend life. It
may, but impermanence is the rule, change is certain, and life is full
of surprises - good and bad.
Instead, we should be developing our food choices in such a
way that they better the world, not ourselves. As far as diet goes, eat with an
eye toward compassion (by eliminating animal products) and keeping the body as
healthy as possible, so that we may be of service.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. There will be a turkey on the
table in most homes. There will be lots of other foods from animal bodies too.
We will all, whether we’re carnists or vegans, eat. I want to encourage kinder
and smarter choices - for our health, for animals, for others, and for Mother
Earth, so that we may be of service to others for many years to come.
Barbie xo
