Eating and the Mind

What we eat can affect our mind and not just the body. Eknath Easwaran answers queries of food, health and how to train our senses

- Eknath Easwaran

Why should we train the senses? I had a friend in the olden days who used to ask that. He would say, ‘I understand meditation, but why bring in all these other points? Isn’t meditation enough?’

In particular, he simply detested any reference to sense training. Meditation yes, even mantram yes, but for heaven’s sake, don’t talk about sense training.

So I said, these all help each other. Sense training is not only necessary for health; sense training helps the mind be onepointed, just as a one-pointed mind helps train the senses. Both help govern negative passions, and transforming passions helps to still the mind, which is the goal of meditation.

So where do we start?

Attacking the mind directly is extremely hard, but there is something you can attack directly to deepen your meditation, and that is eating. Through your eating habits –especially likes and dislikes in eating – you can get at the mind indirectly.

You can begin simply by ceasing to choose foods that don’t benefit your health and instead choosing foods that do. With this simple resolution, you’ll strengthen your will and deepen your meditation – and please your physician, too.

I first became interested in changing my diet for the better under the influence of Mahatma Gandhi, when he was writing weekly articles for his paper Young India. Diet was an important topic for him, and he experimented all his life to discover the very best. Indians can be quite traditional about food; they always want the dishes that mother used to make. But Gandhi put tradition aside in favour of health, and his example appealed to me deeply.