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Date Posted: 03:25:38 10/09/05 Sun
Author: m - 17 Aug 2005
Subject: The Spiritual Aspect of the Vegetarian Diet


The spiritual aspect of the vegetarian diet

Everyone seeks rest and peace, but the same remain as elusive as ever. All our efforts in this direction come to naught and prove fruitless. Why? Because we work on the wrong lines. Man lives on two planes: One is the outer; the other is the inner. First, one has to settle things outside, before one can enter within to bring peace on the outer plane. There are three factors that count a great deal in this connection: right occupation – right conduct – right diet.

The greatest purpose of human life is to know one’s self and to know God, and all the rest is mere dissipation.

“Sound mind in a sound body” is a well-known aphorism. One has, therefore, to work for these before anything else. We have to keep both body and mind in a healthy condition before these can be used as instruments for spiritual advancement. For this we have, of necessity, to resort to food. We cannot do without food for keeping the body and soul together.

Our first and foremost problem then is food, for food conditions body as well as mind; right type of food – rightly earned – rightly taken – helps a lot in this direction.

One must, therefore, earn his daily bread by the sweat of his brow, as the saying goes, and should not depend on others’ earnings. We must for our livelihood engage in some honest and useful pursuit, may be physical or mental, but it must be free from all guile, hypocrisy, ill-will and animosity, for karmic law is inexorable in its working. Every action leads to reaction and thus the endless series roll on interminably. Hence, the need for an honest living, howsoever poor it may be. You cannot have riches by honest avocation. Riches grow by the groans of the poor and the downtrodden – the hewers of wood and the drawers of water – and thrive on the lifeblood of our fellow beings. We ought not, therefore, run after rich foods and dainty dishes, for these bring in their train much blood-sucking and are tainted with the untold miseries of the miserable and the lowly and, in the long run, make us miserable as well. “All of us are being consumed, in the invisible fires of hell, and yet know it not.”

Food, as you know, is made for man and not man for food. We have to make the best use of food like all the other things of life. One who is a slave of the palate cannot do anything useful. By a righteous control of the palate, we can control our entire physical and mental systems. A simple diet is more nourishing and wholesome and conducive to spiritual advancement than all the so-called delicacies which the modern culinary art provides. It will always give a comfortable feeling and serenity of mind, help you to live within your means, however limited the same may be, without extending your hand before others.

When I was about to retire after my long and meritorious government service, I was asked by my chief if I would like to have an extension, but I politely declined the offer saying, “I don’t want any extension as I know how to arrange my affairs within the limited amount of my pension.”

Now, foods are of three kinds:

1.
SATVIC – Pure foods; milk, butter, cheese, rice, lentils, pulses, grains,vegetables, fruits, and nuts.
2. RAJSIC – Energizing foods: peppers, spices, condiments, sour andbitter things.
3. TAMSIC – Enervating foods: stale foods, eggs, meat, fish, fowl, and wine, etc.

Out of the above, one should always prefer Satvic or pure foods. These do a lot of good; again, even of these, one must partake a little below the saturation point of the appetite. In case we get delicious foods, we are tempted to eat more than what is actually needed; and the extra food taken, instead of giving extra health and energy, rather proves baneful. The food which is not digested properly and assimilated in the system causes colic pains and aches; and in some cases even cholera, and one has to pay with one’s life itself. “Do not overload the motor of your stomach”, else you fall an easy prey to nausea. A surfeit of even what is good does prove harmful at times. A moderation in victuals and viands helps in the growth of vital powers in man. In the Puranas (Ancient Hindu Scriptures) there is an allegory of the food-god complaining to Lord Vishnu, the sustainer of the universe, that people misused him a great deal. To this Lord Vishnu humorously replied: “Those who eat you too much, you must eat them up, for that is the only remedy.”

Fresh air is the most essential part in our food. One must intake long breaths, retain them a while, and exhale them out fully so as to cast out all the impurities of the body. Besides this, one must drink a lot of pure water and take fruit juices to flush the system through and through to make one clean, but avoid all types of hot and soft drinks, spirituous liquors, and intoxicants, for they render the mind and intellect morbid. Grains and fruits should form our normal and staple foods.

Man, as said before, must earn his livelihood for himself by all fair, legitimate, and honest means. Again, it is the moral duty of the housewife to cook the Satvic food with heart engrossed in sweet remembrance of the Lord. A food cooked like this, with the mind entrenched in the Beloved and the hands engaged in the work, becomes a Manna from heaven and proves a blessing to those who partake of it. The Great Master, Hazur Baba Sawan Singh Ji Maharaj, often used to give us an instance of an Indian peasant with his hands on the plough but singing paeans of soul enthralling songs to his lady love. Such indeed should be our attitude in these things.

In the year 1921, I was working as accounts officer in the Sikh unit No. 36. I got an orderly-cook in the field. I told him that I would not mind what his life was in the past, so long as he cooked my food while repeating the Holy Names of God on his lips and did not allow anyone to enter the kitchen and divert his mind in idle talk. The cook promised to do this and everything went well for two or three days, but on the fourth day, as I sat for my meditation, I felt that my mind was not steady. In the middle of the night, I called the cook and inquired of him if there was anyone else with him in the kitchen while he was preparing the food. At first he denied it, but ultimately confessed that a person had come and had engaged him in conversation and thus diverted him from the sweet remembrance of God. He was warned against this and thereafter he always followed my behests scrupulously. This then is the best criteria to weigh one’s spiritual advancement and the purity of the foodstuff that one takes, both in procuration and in preparation.

Sheik Saadi, a great mystic poet of Shiraz in Persia, always preached to divide the stomach into four compartments: Two for filling with a limited quantity of simple diet, one for pure and clear water; while reserving one for the Light of God.

We read of an incident in the life of Hazrat Mohammed, the Prophet of Islam. One day a physician came unto him and offered him his services for the sick and the ailing in the “Umat,” the Prophet’s following. He remained there for about six months in idle indolence, as none of the Prophet’s followers fell ill. He approached the Prophet and asked for his permission to leave as no one there felt the need of his services. Hazrat Mohammed, with a gentle smile on his lips, said good-bye to the physician saying: “So long as the congregation followed the instructions, there would be no chance of any of them falling sick, for they all lived by one panacea: ‘To always eat a little less than what one may, in his hunger, otherwise like to take.’ – ‘To lead a chaste life with honest earnings.’”

Baba Jaimal Singh Ji, a Great Master in His time, used to buy some loaves of bread or chapatis and wrap them in a piece of cloth and hang them on a branch of a tree. He would devote himself to meditation all the day long and when He would get up from His Samadhi, He would take just one loaf of bread, soak it in water, and partake of it before going into meditation again. Whole wheat bread is a complete food in itself. We deprive it of vital elements by removing the husk and grinding the kernel into white flour, thus destroying the phosphorus and oil in the grains, making a terrible mess of it.

I very often witnessed with my own eyes Hazur Baba Sawan Singh’s food which was always very simple and consisted of just a few wholesome items in very small quantities.

All the Saints live on a very frugal repast. So did Shamas Tabrez, a Muslim devout, and Swami Shiv Dayal Singh Ji, both of whom lived by the principle: “Eat less and remain happy.”

With a life of simple food and high thinking coupled with high morals and chaste conduct, one needs no tonics which glut the market in these days. The luxurious food not only upsets the motor of the stomach, but leads to dire consequences that at times prove very dangerous. Very often persons complain that they do not seem to progress on the path, but little do they realize that it is due to faulty diet and wrong living. Prophet Mohammed, we read, lived mostly on barley-bread.

The Satvic food keeps the head and heart free from all types of impurities. We every day read that crime and corruption are on the increase and various types of special police squads are formed to meet this growing menace. “Eat, drink, and be merry” is the order of the day. Everyone wishes to have a good time in ravelling and in visiting places of enjoyment and in watching movies, etc., and all beyond his scanty means. But how to get more money? Nothing but Aladdin’s wonderful lamp can help you to it. An honest man can hardly keep his body and soul together, but very few can escape the temptations and snares of the glittering world. Most of us live a lustful existence: some suffering from the lust of the eyes, others of ears, and still others of various lusts of the flesh. We have no consideration for the wives, daughters, and sisters of others and follow them blindly. The world is in the grip of a fast growing retrogression.

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