Page 51 - NAMAH-Apr-2025

Namah Food for Thought

attached to food. It is not through attachment the eyes, then our palette, the inner being
to food that they do it. It is for the cultivation becomes starved.
of their senses, which is a very different thing.
It is like the artist, you know, who trains his So, when one enters the den of desire
eyes to appreciate forms and colours, lines, the disguised as ‘convenience stores’, one
composition of things, the harmony found in has to be conscious. Simple measures of
physical nature; it is not at all through desire planning meals in advance to determine the
that he does this, it is through taste, culture, quantity of groceries needed to be bought
the development of the sense of sight and the without wasting due to lack of utilisation
appreciation of beauty. And usually artists who is a simple basis to feed the inner being and
are real artists and love their art and live in the not the bins.
sense of beauty, seeking beauty, are people who
don’t have many desires. They live in the sense of The Choice: Vegetarian, Non-Vegetarian
a growth not only visual, but of the appreciation and Everything in Between
of beauty. There is a great difference between
this and people who live by their impulses and The controversial topic of non-vegetarian
desires. That’s altogether something else (4).” diet vis-à-vis the plant-based diet and all its
hues of veganism, etc. has been an emerging
In short, with understanding, equilibration, area of debate, research and animosity, to say
and remembrance of the goal, food’s purpose the least. Leaving aside the spiritual aspects,
becomes apparent and a beautiful means of there are physical and neurophysiological
vitality and refinement. effects, repercussions and consequences of
both diets. Recently, a documentary was
released on Netflix named, ‘You Are What You
Eat — A Twin Experiment’. In this series, they
recruited humans with a ditto physiological
make up, with one twin following a vegetarian
regime vis-à-vis the other twin following a
non-vegetarian regime over a period of 8
weeks. Whilst the scientists marvelled at the
results of the experiment, all it did was to yet
again prove what ancient Indian teaching
has been vouching for millennia. The root of
The Shelves: Taking What We Need our problem is this: as modern thinkers and
scientific analysers, we completely ignore
As convenience stores create ever newer means everything running through our blood, until
of growing in their convenience, it rapidly it is presented in a mundane 10,000-word
becomes an inconvenience to the inner state essay with references.
with some conscious discernment. With the
mammoth variety of food available in stores, Nevertheless, for meat-eaters, the initial need
it incarnates the adage, ‘we eat with our eyes to break the habitual pattern of the body’s
first’ ever more vividly. By feasting with addiction to meat does require a little effort.

51