Baba's Storytime - Food is the Basis of Character

 

There are subtle influences that pass into food from the persons who prepare it and handle it and are absorbed by those who eat it. Food is the basis of character. The state of the mind is conditioned by that of the body. 

I shall tell you now of an incident that happened eighty years ago. There was a great yogi, Hamsaraj by name, at Badrinath. He was always immersed in singing the glory of the Lord. He had a disciple who was equally earnest and sincere. That young man was pestered by a dream for a few days which gave him no peace. In his dream he saw a fair young girl of sixteen weeping in great agony and calling out pathetically, can no one save me? The disciple was amazed at this strange dream; he could not shake off that doleful figure and that desperate cry from his mind. He recited his woes to the Master.  Hamsaraj, I can assure you, was a true Hamsa, the Bird of Paradise. The bird can discard water from milk, is it not? Hamsaraj, by his viveka, analysed the situation and discovered the cause of that horrid experience.

He prodded the young man with such questions as: "What did you do the first day?", "Where did you go?", "What did you eat?" etc. It was revealed that he had gone with a friend to a feast and eaten some puris and chapatis. It was discovered that a poor brahmin had prepared the feast. Well, Hamsaraj sent the disciple to find out why and with what resources that brahmin arranged the feast for the recluses of Badrinath. The young man cursed the day when the dream started haunting him, for he was now being sent by his Master on purposeless errands to investigate irrelevant issues; he wondered how his sâdhana could be helped by all this.

Nevertheless, he went and pursued the enquiry about the feast and its origins and the wherewithal out of which it was prepared. It came to light that the funds were supplied by a sixty-year old moneylender to whom a brahmin had given his daughter in marriage and received in return a sum of ten thousand rupees. She was now appealing to the holy men for a bit of human kindness towards a forsaken child.

Hamsaraj thus demonstrated to his disciple that one should examine the source of the food, the motives for the gift and passions that surge and sway the giver before accepting such an intimate gift as food. 

Everyday, when you take food you are offering eatables to the fire that God has put in you to digest food. You have to eat in a prayerful mode, in profound gratitude. The Gîtâ says that the fire which cooked the meal is God; the meal is God; the eater is God; the purpose of eating is to carry on the work entrusted by God or pleasing to God; and the fruit of that work is progress towards God.

 - Bhagavân Sri Sathya Sai Baba

(From the Divine Discourses of Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba)