Gratitude For Your Food

I want to talk about the need to honor the food we eat today. Idk about you but as a child at the family dinner table, someone was always asked to say a blessing. And we of course, were not supposed to eat anything until everyone sat down and the blessing was said. At all family holiday gatherings it was the same only instead of one of us kids saying the blessing, one of the adults got that job. I didn’t mind saying the blessing most of the time but sometimes I said it really fast. I can’t say I was really focused on feeling grateful for the food I was about to eat but I’m glad my parents taught me to thank the creator and creation for the food that is provided. 

Somewhere along the way, like many of you I’m sure, I stopped giving thanks for my meal before I ate it. Once I went off to college, no one made us do that anymore and it seemed like there were fewer and fewer times that we were all gathering to have a meal as we went out into the world and created our own lives. 

When I did an ayurveda food sadhana training with Maya Tiwari, author of ``Women's Power To Heal”, I was reintroduced to this sacred practice. I love the sanskrit language and have a decent grasp of it. I memorized it when I got home and have used it ever since. I love not only the sound and rhythm of the chant but how it is interpreted. It is from the Bhagavad Gita.

This is a translation of the prayer. The act of offering is God. The oblations is God. By God it is offered into the Fire of God (digeston). God is that which is to be attained by him who performs action pertaining to God. 

In yogic thought, prayer cleanses the food of the three impurities caused by the absence of cleanliness of the vessel it is cooked in, the absence of cleanliness of the food itself, and the absence of cleanliness in the process of cooking. It is believed that pure food is required for a pure mind. Makes a lot of sense to me. This particular mantra is said to turn the food into prasadam, blessed or consecrated substance, since it has been offered to God first.

Are we not indebted to the forces of nature which nourish and support our lives? Have we lost our connection with the natural world to that degree? Remember, food is soil. Without soil and a seed there is no food. Oh and rain or water. Oh yes and heat from the sun. Food is more than just a commodity. 

Fire was an important way the early yoga tradition acknowledged the interconnected web of life. Mantras are recited as ghee and other ingredients are fed to the fire. The fire digest them and carries the subtle essence of this food into the atmosphere and the unseen world where it nourishes the wind, the sun, the rain which in turn nourishes the soil to bring forth the bounty of the earth which then becomes the offering. Thus the cosmic cycle continues. 

As well in the body we offer our food to our inner fire. Our digestive fire transforms food into bone, muscle and nerves along with physical and mental energy. When was the last time you even thought about this? Food provides the fuel for us to do our work on the planet which is again an offering that nourishes and sustains us.

A simple confirmation or prayer of gratitude as an acknowledgement of our connection with the cosmic ritual of life and our place in this web of creation that connects us all. Also it acknowledges the divine source of consciousness that permeates everything.

This makes eating a sacred act rather than just a mundane act. I hope you like the prayer.