Food as a Complementary Practice for Spiritual Life

By Matsyavatara Dasa

In accordance with Indovedic literature, what we eat does not only determine who we are, but can also determine what we want to become. By choosing our diet carefully, we can thoroughly change our approach to life, our feelings and our relationship with others.

Food provides nutrition at all levels and nourishes both, the body and the mind. The wellbeing of the individual and its entire psycho physical constitution depends on the quality of this food. Furthermore and mainly, food should be prepared and cooked as a mean to sharpen our consciousness and its superior qualities, in order to favour a higher ethic-moral and spiritual elevation.

Therefore choosing a diet is as important as cooking. Our suggestion is to offer whole food products served in a sufficient quantity and use appropriate cooking methods to keep these products healthy and well-balanced.

A proper diet should be vegetarian and in accordance to the rules followed when food is offered to God (neither meat, nor fish, nor eggs) and should also be harmonized with the fundamental principles of a healthy nutrition. Most of the times, because of distraction and for the little importance we give to alimentation, we tend to indulge in feeding ourselves for our sense gratification, with the result of a mere superficial pleasure. Bad habits like eating fried food, too much sugar, the same kind of grains and cereals, a lot of spicy and fat condiments, make us ill, unsatisfied and certainly not brighter. This is unproductive on a spiritual level too, because such type of a diet does not favour our efforts in the practices to elevate our level of consciousness.