Life and Death
April 28, 2016
Loneliness
April 28, 2016

Listen to Your Body on Eating

Listen to the body. The body is not your enemy, and when the body is saying something, do accordingly, because the body has a wisdom of its own. Don’t disturb it, don’t go on a mind-trip. That’s why I don’t teach you any dieting, I teach you only awareness. Eat with full awareness, eat meditatively, and then you will never eat more and you will never eat less. More is as bad as less. Too much eating is bad, just like too much fasting; these are extremes. Nature wants you to be balanced, to be in a sort of equilibrium, to be in the middle, neither less nor more. Don’t go to the extreme.

 

To go to the extreme is to be neurotic. So there are two types of neurotics about food: those who go on eating, not listening to the body — the body goes on crying and screaming “Stop!” and they go on. These are neurotic people. And then there is the other variety: the body goes on screaming “I am hungry!” and they are on a fast.  Neither is religious, both are neurotic, both are pathological — they need treatment, they need to be hospitalized. A religious person is one who is balanced: in whatsoever he is doing, he is always in the middle. He never goes to the extreme because all extremes will create tensions, anxieties. When you eat too much there is anxiety because the body is burdened. When you don’t eat enough there is anxiety because the body is hungry. A religious person is one who knows where to stop; and that should come out of your awareness, not out of a certain teaching.

 

If I tell you how much to eat, that is going to be dangerous because that will be just an average. Somebody is very thin and somebody is very fat, and if I tell you how much to eat —”three chappatis”— then for somebody it may be too much and for somebody it may be nothing. So I don’t teach rigid rules, I simply give you a sense of awareness.

 

Listen to your body: you have a different body. And then there are different types of energies, different types of involvement. Somebody is a professor in a university; he does not exert much energy as far as his body is concerned. He will not need much food, and he will need a different kind of food. Somebody is a labourer; he will need much food, and a different kind of food. Now a rigid principle is going to be dangerous. No rule can be given as a universal rule.

 

George Bernard Shaw has said that there is only one golden rule, that there are no golden rules. Remember it, there is no golden rule — there cannot be, because each individual is so unique that nobody can prescribe. So I simply give you a sense….

 

And my sense is not of principles, of laws; my approach is of awareness, because today you may need more food and tomorrow you may not need that much food. It is not only a question of you being different from others — every day of your life is different from every other day. The whole day you have rested, you may not need much food. The whole day you have been in the garden digging a hole, you may need much food. One should be just alert and one should be capable of listening to what the body is saying. Go according to the body.

 

Neither is the body the master, nor is the body the slave; the body is your friend — befriend your body. The one who goes on eating too much and the one who goes on dieting are both in the same trap. They are both deaf; they don’t listen to what the body is saying….

 

Eat for the joy of it; then you are man, human, a higher being. Love for the joy of love; then you are man, a higher being. Listen for the joy of listening and you will be freed from the confinement of instincts.

 

Your insistence is not on dieting but on awareness. Eat well, enjoy it tremendously.  Remember, the rule is: If you don’t enjoy your food you will have to eat more to compensate. If you enjoy your food you will eat less, there will be no need to compensate. If you eat slowly, tasting every bit of it, chewing well, you are completely absorbed in it. Eating should be a meditation.

 

You should not be against taste because you should not be against the senses. To be sensitive is to be intelligent, to be sensitive is to be alive. You should not be against taste, they would make your tongue absolutely dull so you don’t taste anything. But that is not a state of health; the tongue becomes dull only in illness. When you have a fever, the tongue becomes dull. When you are healthy the tongue is sensitive, alive, throbbing, pulsates with energy.  Eat well, taste well; the taste is divine.

 

And so, exactly like taste, you have to look at beauty and enjoy; you have to listen to music and enjoy; you have to touch the rocks and leaves and human beings — the warmth, the texture — and enjoy. Use all your senses, use them to their optimum, then you will really live and your life will be aflame. It will not be dull, it will be aflame with energy and vitality. I am not for those people who have been teaching you to kill your senses; they are against the body.

 

And remember, the body is your temple, the body is a divine gift. It is so delicate and it is so beautiful and it is so wonderful — to kill it is to be ungrateful to God. God has given you taste; you have not created it, it is not anything to do with you. God has given you eyes and God has made this psychedelic world so colourful, and he has given you eyes. Let there be a great communion between the eye and the colour of the world…. Everything is in a tremendous harmony. Don’t break this harmony.

 

These so-called mahatmas arc just on ego-trips, and the best way to feel that you are great is to be against the body. Children do it. The child feels that the motion is coming; he holds it, he feels powerful because he feels his will: he will not yield to the body. His bladder is full and he holds it. He wants to show the body “I’m not your servant, I’m your master.” But these are destructive habits.

 

 

 

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