The Best Buddhist Writing 2010 - Melvin McLeod [118]
Western attempts at collective social reconstruction have had limited success, because they have been compromised by ego-driven individual motivations. Buddhadharma, too, has had limited success, if the measure of its success is eliminating suffering and delusion, because until now Buddhism has not been able to challenge the delusion built into oppressive social hierarchies that mystify themselves as beneficial and necessary. Each has been limited because it lacked the other; their convergence in our times opens up fresh possibilities. Each might find in the other the perspective it needs to realize its own deepest promise.
Mindful Eating
Jan Chozen Bays
So much of our suffering is caused by habitual mental patterns, the mistakes and neuroses we fall into again and again, hurting ourselves and others. Meditation practice offers a variety of effective tools for recognizing and freeing ourselves from these destructive habits. A lot of us have bad habits revolving around food, and the Zen teacher and physician Jan Chozen Bays has developed a program to bring the power of mindfulness to our eating issues. It’s these kinds of effective techniques that are attracting so many people to the concept of mindful living.
Our struggles with food can cause tremendous distress and suffering. Whether we have a tendency to overeat, undereat, or just feel conflicted about eating, the practice of mindfulness can help us to rediscover a healthy and joyful relationship to food. Mindful eating is an experience that engages all parts of us, our body, our heart, and our mind, in choosing, preparing, and eating food. It immerses us in the colors, textures, scents, tastes, and even sounds of drinking and eating. Mindfulness allows us to be curious and even playful as we investigate our responses to food and our inner cues to hunger and satisfaction.
Mindful eating is not directed by charts, tables, pyramids, or scales. It is not dictated by an expert. It is directed by your own inner experiences, moment by moment. Your experience is unique. Therefore you are the expert. In the process of learning to eat mindfully, we replace self-criticism with self-nurturing, anxiety with curiosity, and shame with respect for your own inner wisdom.
As an example, let’s take a typical experience. On the way home from work Sally thinks with dread about the talk she needs to work on for a big conference. She has to get it done in the next few days to meet the deadline. Before starting to work on the speech, however, she decides to relax and watch a few minutes of TV when she gets home. She sits down with a bag of chips beside her chair. At first she eats only a few, but as the show gets more dramatic, she eats faster and faster. When the show ends she looks down and realizes that she’s eaten the entire bag of chips. She scolds herself for wasting time and for eating junk food. “Too much salt and fat! No dinner for you!” Engrossed in the drama on the screen, covering up her anxiety about procrastinating, she ignored what was happening in her mind, heart, mouth, and stomach. She ate unconsciously. She ate to go unconscious. She goes to bed unnourished in body or heart and with her mind still anxious about the talk.
The next time this happens she decides to eat chips but to try eating them mindfully. First she checks in with her mind. She finds that her mind is worried about an article she promised to write. Her mind says that she needs to get started on it tonight. She checks in with her heart and finds that she is feeling a little lonely because her husband is out of town. She checks in with her stomach and body and discovers that she is both hungry and tired. She needs some nurturing. The only one at home to do it is herself.
She decides to treat herself to a small chip party. (Remember, mindful eating gives us permission to play with our food.) She takes twenty chips out of the bag and arranges them on a